Hi all,

After a lot of discussion of Envirolights over the past few weeks, I thought it would be useful to find out what yields our members are getting with this sort of lighting?

Now I know it can be hard to measure as you may have staggered harvests but, obviously the amount of light and space are the main factors, also veg time is quite important.

So if you could state your average dry yield, Watts of lights (state red or blue), size of growspace, veg time and any other important factors such as your intake and outake fans.

Lets not turn this into the next HPSvEnviro debate please, I think we all want to know to answer to this question.

Cheers
SB

4 1/2' Square footprint - 2 x 125W (1 red 1 blue - just blue for veg) and a few 20W Cfl's - 3 plants about 4 oz dry if everything goes to plan.(which it never feckin does )

last succesfull grow - 3 1/2 ish dry off 2 plants MK and Maz. veg time 6 weeks from seed, 8 weeks flower.

taking fuck-ups into account about 3 oz dry is the usual. Not that much - but in it's favour my 'drobe is silent, smell free and fits snugly behind my kitchen door - dosn't interrupt everyday life in anyway and is non-smoker girlfriend friendly herein lies the trade off

B

n.b. latest grow.... http://www.uk420.com/boards/index.php?show...69215&st=50
see what i mean about the fuck ups!

cheers Blab sounds like pretty decent results to me.

non smoker girlfriend frendly...ha ha...too true , seeing as my one runs the flat here....same shit here mate. dont you get no smell???ive about 2 weeks left on my first lowryder enviro grow and there seems to be no smell too...only the earthy plant smell at the mo..

400W of enviros yielded 4 ounces dried (and cured) bud. I started with one 200W, found it wasn't enough and got another for the last 4 weeks flower. I could do a hell of a lot better now I reckon but I only keep them for emergencies (like this summer's heatwave). If I had to recommend a way of growing with enviros it'd be a vertical scrog. That would yield the most per watt I think but the work involved is too much for me Even just having your plantpots arranged in a circle around the lamp(s) and turning them daily would be an improvement I reckon. If you did try this then I think I'd be inclined to mount the E40 connector at the base to allow ballast heat to escape.

The canopy is the problem for enviro users generally, hence the vertical suggestion.

Edit - these were 200W remote ballasted lamps. This IS important for enviro users to know as the self-ballasted ones have a Power Factor (PF) of 0.7. The remote ballasted ones have a PF of 0.97 which makes them 25% more efficient. The result is pretty much 25% more lumens from the lamp (or 25% less power used and the smae lumens, there's a lot of different "enviros" out there). Google on "power factor correction" if you want more knowledge on why this is so.

hi, what your grow space and veg time please?

try e bay for triple and quad canopies . ive got the triple octagonal with double venting at top. only problem is i liked it so much i put a 600 hps in the middle fitting

<consults diary - a paper one chaps >

It was 2 sq ft or thereabouts (damn close to 2). Veg was 4 weeks in a home-made NFT 'thing' built for the cabinet at the time. The NFT worked fine it just wasn't very robust Effective growing height was 40 inches.

It required a hell of a lot of work to get four ounces - lots and lots of small buds to deal with. I'm not going to turn this into HPS vs enviro but a lot of those buds were ones that usually fill out a bit more on HPS when you scrog. It may well have been me but I don't know.

Knowing what I now do I'd go vertical. Messing around with canopies when you have lamps that put out 15k lumens (200W remote ballast) is not the best plan in the world especially when the tubes are wrapped around each other so to speak.

A couple of cooltubes mounted vertically with a fan at the bottom, 2 x 125W and a vertical scrog of perhaps 1 to 1.5 metres would do very nicely. It would require some serious work on scrogging though.

Edit - actually it wouldn't. Train the plants up the netting around the cooltubes then flip the switch. A fan at the bottom with some duct at the top equals really cool lamps so just let the plant grow around the cooltube. Done right you wouldn't need mylar or reflectors

At the moment in my flowering cupboard I have,

1 x 125w red envirolite
3x 20w cfl's (red)
1x 11w cfl (blue)


I have 12 square pots that are 6" square and 8" deep holding roughly 4litres of compost per pot, I grow perpetual and get a harvest every 3-4 weeks usually 3 plants per harvest.

Now from each plant I get around 7-8 grams of some of the best bud i've smoked in many many years!

so heres the maths ^_^

196 watts divided by 12 plants = 16.3 watts per plant
if I get 7.5 grams off each plant which is pretty easy really and 3 plants per harvest thats 22.5 grams per 48.9 watts of light!!

round it up to 50 watts for ease of working out..

50 x .45 (grams per watt) = bang on 22.5 grams

So I happily get .45 grams DRY per watt from my cfl and enviro combo

All my lights have internal ballasts, I can upload some pics if needed although they wouldn't be of much detail because it's a webcam

I used 2x125w 1 red 1 blue
6 ladies, in soil, gave 1.75 oz dry

I believe that those gram/watt figures may be a bit optimistic - mainly because you've worked out the watts exactly, allowing nothing for inefficiencies. I believe that self-ballasted flouros have a power factor correction of only 0.7 which means that they're really quite a lot less efficient that one would think just looking at the basic numbers.

Actually, doesn't that make enviros look better ?

(sorry for butting in, but I like to be even-handed )

optimistic huh?

lookie here... http://www.uk420.com/boards/index.php?show...pid=737226&

No, I don't doubt that you've weighed it correctly etc., my point was the non-factoring in of the intrinsic inefficiencies of the self-ballasted flouros. That's all.

I always aim to get a slightly better harvest each batch, sometimes I do sometimes I don't, it's swings and roundabouts really.

I don't think anyone can specifically say you will get 0.4321 guarantted grams per watt, that's too much to ask really, my .45 grams per watt was what I got on the last dried batch, considering the lumen drop in the light after x amount of weeks and many other variables, perhaps if the original question included specific parameters ie, new light or how old? or what power factor?

I get fantastic buds with lights that are i'm assuming the lower power factor.

my .45 gpw is just a general figure with probably +/- .05 gram either way.

people say they get 1 gram per watt with hps, that makes me a very happy chappy with my around .45 gpw with enviros ^_^

ps the original question was : Envirolights & Yields, Whats yours?

I answered a simple question and get intrinsic inefficiencies? eh! stick to the topic ta

so what - who goes and works that out for their HPS lights? I've not seen anyone do it ever - and definately not counting extra watts of ventilation etc

someone will at some point, until then it's all dodgy comparisons

I do as I cost out each grow with a power meter. I did it with enviros and I do it with HPS. Problem is (and this is true for enviros as well) that there's more than one equipment manufacturer and you generally do get what you pay for with HID ballasts. So you end up comparing apples and oranges.

I think we're heading off towards HPS vs Enviro again though and we have enough of those threads don't we?

Yup

yeild comparison is such a dodgy variable system it's pretty much pointless across different cultural methods and systems without it all being done with scientific rigour

can't wait to see what mine will be... almost almost there

That's interesting - have you got any figures on the differences between some different ballasts from different manufacturers, or from ones of different ages?

Also, have you any idea what it is that causes C&C ballasts to become more inefficient over time? I know that the caps can degrade, especially cheaper-made ones, and I've also heard that the transformers can become susceptible to vibration, but what is it really that causes this degradation over time? Any ideas?

No direct figures for individual manufacturers. I have figures for the two 250W ballasts I have and a couple of 400W ones but once again its meaningless as losses increase with usage on magnetic ballasts. Hysteresis gets us all in the end

A helpful link is this : http://www.hubbell-ltg.com/products/psgpag...st_circuits.pdf

I've posted the link like that so everyone can see its a PDF so you need Acrobat to read it.

It shows various HID ballast circuits and gives useful information on the 'pros and cons' of each. I have no idea who the company is but its a good document.

Edit - oh the losses over time are mainly due to the caps and/or the transformer core. It 'reduces' the power factor (not going to talk about lead/lag here) which means the ballast draws more measurable current through your electricity meter. This really isn't my speciality though. I hated electrical theory as it always seemed to lead to motors/generators and rotating magnetic fields. Bored the socks off me it really did.

Teaser - go on then, share - even if the figures won't be 'scientific' and all that.

Remind me on Tuesday night and I'll measure them again as I'm off on Wednesday and can fit it into flowering cycle. The meter I have now measures power factor so I'd be interested to see the difference. I won't remember to do it though

Edit - going way way way way waaaaaaaaayyyyyy off-topic again :S

yes please try and keep on topic all

Im using 1 125W enviro and 4 cfl (3 red 18w and one blue 20w) in a custom made shade.

Im happy.

BU

You don't seem to be calculating the grams/watt correctly. Not according to this article in the Knowledge Base anyway.

Assuming your figure of 16.3w per plant, a yield of 7.5g and a 60 day flower then the above article gives :

0.0163 x 12 x 60 = 11.736kWh/plant
Yield of 7.5g gives

7.5/11.736 = 0.64g/watt

Before I saw that article (again) it was confusing the hell out of me as to how people were getting in excess of 1g/watt of lighting so easily. I just assumed it was a simple division : yield divided by the watts which gives 400g for a 400W to get 1g/watt. The above article shows that 1g/watt for a 400W lamp and assuming 60 days flower is actually 288g, not 400g. Likewise a 250W lamp's 1g/watt point gives a yield of 180g.

All assuming no losses, which of course there are.

I feel less inadequate now

I feel more inadequate now. Maths -aaargh!

just to get back to the subject............small drobe 3 by 2 and 6 ft high..........one red 125 enviro..............5 20 watters (2 blue) under a homemade reflector. pulled 2.4 oz from 2 sats of zambian origin.....they were an excellant smoke, although there were a lot of buds, i must say that they were "light and airy" .....being sats these plants went very tall (over 5 ft), and i must add that the bottom of the plants suffered from lack of light. flowering time was 90 days.............but they were sats..............all in all, quite pleased coz it was my first go peace

this makes no sence to me. one moment were talking in 1000 watts per hour, the next sum the 1000s are single units.
its a 0.64 ratio, but what is it meant to prove? a watt of power grew 0.64g? because that means the full 7.5g took 11.736watts. we know the lamp ate 16.3w per hour for this 7.5g plants. its close to the truth but the sum is infactual. its infactuwhat? look what you have done to me. my heads out of wack now


i can pick out a few sums...
16.3w for 12 hours per day=195.6w per day. over 'say' 60 days is 11736w to do the 7.5g so thats 1564.8w each, or as we call it, 1.5648kwh. each gram took enough power to run a 1000w light for 1.56hours.

grams per watt? about a trich

edit:
0.64g per kilowatthour. thats what your talking about. not grams per watt. grams per watt is a simple comparison done on your fingers. grams per kwh is very precise. incidentally, a kwh is a unit on the electric meter. about 10p. it cost nearly 15p a gram in electric. im sure he will be pleased to hear that

Yes you're right. Sorry about the confusion

I don't normally bother with this as the meter I use works the cost out for me. I find that dividing the yield by the total cost of all the energy used (fans+pumps+lights+heaters which the meter gives) is much more useful. Anything else and you can pick holes in the methodology all day long

That method of working out grams per watt is what i've been using for years, it should also be taken with a pinch of salt, as there are way too many variables to take into consideration between harvests so can we just call it an estimate?

when I read that article I got baffled! thanks to a friendly sparky for making it more understandable!

I've got a 200 watt envirolite plus 2 cfls @ 20 watts each all red spectrum.


my growspace is 15" x 30" with 3ft height.

my ventilation consists of 3 x 120mm PC fans : 1 drawing air in, one blowing air out and one that I move around to stir the air up inside.


In this space I have 8 plants in 3 litre square pots and I run a rotational system where each week (or there abouts) I harvest one plant and put a new one in, I veg my plants for a minimum of 5 weeks and can harvest anywhere between half and one ounce per plant, my biggest ever harvest with this setup was a little under 40 grams and I suppose the average is somewhere around 20 grams per plant .

I think I can improve this with a little tweaking.


it's also worth noting my veg space isn't the best, it's very cramped and has a combined total of 34watts of lighting.

First harvest,More to come

Click above for details

G.A.T.I

looks very nice to

tho must admit it looks a small amount of bud for 375w of light

still nobody has come close to that 600w 20oz grow yet?

Thankyou SB,

I will be taking the second harvest soon and reckon on getting at least another 60g of it

Dont think it's too bad for one plant,Could of been more if i put another plant in there but wanted to keep it simple and learn how to grow first before getting carried away

Jarred the first lot last night and me and Bimjob have 1.8 oz of sticky buds each so far from it.
It will lose a bit more weight through curing but honestly the last smoke i had that was anywhere near this was the Nevilles Haze i had in the dam last month at the Tweede Kamer.
The quality is there so it ain't all bad
Ticked all the boxes so far,Quality smoke and a strong healthy plant to regenerate then hopefully loads of mass babies for the 600w HPS Micro grow.

Keep watching there will be some interesting grows going on in the near future.

G.A.T.I

Well i'm gonna put the cat amongst the pigeons now and argue about the efficiency of enviros, True they use less electricity than a hps. BUT when you consider that you yourself are putting the same amount of time and effort as someone using a 400wt hps but only getting less than half the returns. Meaning a person using enviros would need to do 2 grows and twice the work and twice the electricity consumption to achieve anything close to a hps user. So in this respect i would only advise using enviros as a cheap first step on the ladder to growing.


Sorry if this upsets anybody as its not my intention.

lots of members have been saying this for a long time

tho this thread aint the place for it

more enviro yields please

No worries herman

We should have around 4 oz of excellent bud after the second harvest so this has more than paid for itself and i have done what i wanted.
Learnt to grow some nice plants and got a nice little set up that can easily be upgraded.
This has cost less than 1/2 of what 4oz of weed would cost to buy off a dealer.

The dealer has been dumped
Oh and now i have a strong mother plant in the making that will produce a lot of babies

Then the 600w Hps comes down to play.

All the best

G.A.T.I

Is that the Famous 5

nah just those in the know

how about those with stealth requirements that mean no big growrooms or ventilation?

anyhows

lady #1 a week and a few days ago...
[attachmentid=106764]

lady #2 just yesterday...
[attachmentid=106765]

and that main cola from lady #2 - yummy
[attachmentid=106766]

first load is pretty much dry now but untrimmed/measured as I've lost my little scales. Still loads of it left though and been smoking off it for the last 5 days or so

it's very strong but not the best tasting - a slight crackling sound makes me think I should have flushed it before harvest but it's still damn good and there's loads

maybe not as much as i'd get with an HPS but enough - which is the point weights to come when I find the scales

How small would you like? I have had two council workers in the same room as my grow for 2 days. They didn't notice. That was WW at 48 days flower in a 0.5 x 0.5 x 1.5m box under a 250W HPS. Yes I must have been insane and no I really don't know what the hell I was thinking about at the time

As I keep saying "Enviros work. They don't work as efficiently as HPS"

Anyone who wishes to claim they do is a snake oil salesman and will probably mention PAR When they do it is helpful to point out that 'enviros' are pretty much nothing more than fluorescent tubes made in the same factory as most of the office fluoros you see. In other words there is NOTHING special about them. There are a couple that are out of the ordinary in the light they appear to emit but yet again where is the independent test results?

HID is proven technology. Fluorescent is proven technology. "Envirolites" are nothing more than compact high-power fluorescent lamps. Yes just like your 'energy saving' lightbulbs. Nothing more, nothing less.

No magic.

Apologies SBB but I think you mods need a FAQ entry based on both science and experience. Either that or we re-run this every week

And noone's contested that so who are you arguing with? Noone's claimed any magic or anything

Simply stating that they do work ok for those of us who need them seems to bring out all the nutcases who insist on shouting them down no matter what. Do people misread the posts as saying "i'm getting 3x HPS yield" or summat?

As it goes I've got a crop I'm very happy with considering my stealth requirements - job done That's all folks.

Well done on your workers not noticing. I got away with my 250w'er too, but only just and I'd rather it never got that close again, hence the shift until Phase 2.

Couple of webcam shots taken earlier, these were two of many and lots of littler buds, aurora indica grown under 200w of enviro/cfl's, shame the quality of the pics is lame maybe santa will be good to me in that dept

[attachmentid=106787][attachmentid=106788]

Thats a nice looking bit of bud.

I don't want to rain on your parade but the previous two photos are pretty much airbuds as far as I'm concerned and would go into bubblebags.

I (unlike some) have grown with both HID and 'enviros' and I'll tell you what I do now shall I? I try to be as energy efficient as possible and with my consumption (1-2oz per month) I feel that HID is the more efficient by perhaps 30-40% in yield. That is with C&C ballasts but if the digitals are 'safe' now then really no contest at all.

It all depends what you wish to do (you appear to know what you want) but the endless stream of people claiming that enviros (self-ballasted FFS!) are in any way 'environmentally friendly' is becoming more than a little tiresome.

I'm not having a go at you as a grower or your results but you are not growing as well as you think you are. If (when) you switch to equivalent wattage HID lighting your yield will increase enormously. Been there done that trying to teach people not to waste their money

However I see from a previous post of yours that you seem incapable of understanding that people have used both and have an opinion based on experience so I'll stop here and stick you on ignore. Seems best all around I think?

[attachmentid=106817][attachmentid=106816] Ah, what was the question? Yields from enviros? Around 70 grammes of cured bud from 200w in a small, little space.
Happy enough.
[attachmentid=106818]

Agreed, but so are the ridiculous claims in the other direction.
Feel free dude, I switched to this from a 250W HPS and have enjoyed happier plants due to less heat stress as you would have found if you actually bothered to read my posts - so ya might as well have had me on ignore anyhows. If you also bothered to read you'd have found that I'm planning on switching back once I can arrange to be able to - a matter of a few hundred quid that I don't have, though a nice cold winter might make it all easier. But I guess you didn't read that either.

So aye, feel free. Can't imagine it'll make much difference. Enjoy the victory

Good job! comperable to mine although I do mine perpetual, we get about 7 grams dried bud from each plant and can have 12 plants in our space

Just said to the missus I hope santa brings me a Kodak C310 4MP Digital Camera

[attachmentid=106829]

Nice one, "perpetual" sounds good
The enviros are o.k., right now, a small space next to the window is just fine, low maintainance it is, just a few minutes here and there.

[attachmentid=106831]

The strain is B52, cloned and tied back to give 3/4 short colas, veg 7-8, or was it 9-10 weeks, slow grown under 110w fluoro, then under 200w enviro for "about" 8 weeks flower.
Pictures show buds at about 4 weeks.