Old guerilla grower moving inside..

[twunit]

Hi,

I'm after assistance with starting up a small grow room. I have been growing in the bush for almost 50 years. Between the bushfires, termites, storms, disease etc,  i'm over it. Too old to slog through the bush any longer. Especially for little return.......I'm looking at led setups, but other than reading whatever bullshit the sellers have written, I know nothing. What I wish to know, has anyone genuinely grown decent buds with led lighting. I'm not real cashed up, so I was looking at a " King ll 1200 panel, 5 watt diodes.. They are 400 odd bucks. I know there are much better lights, but i'm not investing that sort of money on an experiment.. Despite my lack of knowledge, I can set up everything ok regarding fans and noise etc. All pretty basic I spose..But the light is an unknown commodity too me.. The reason for the led is the lower cost of running it, the lack of heat, and the power bill give-up. I'm thinking of growing in pots of soil, as i'm well learned with soil nutes in pots.. I am expecting the obligatory hot lights brigade to tell me that led are shit, but that doesn't help me, genuine knowledge of led will.

Cheers.. B.B.

 

[old toke]

I'm an old outdoor guy too and last year decided to try an indoor on, I used CFL and got really good results

, heat not an issue and power use moderate, don't know about led but fluro work well.

[Sir PsychoHashy]

Both fluro's and LED's will produce buds, but not as well as HID lighting.  A few guys on here have gotten results with both, but there's also been a lot of LED growers started here over the years that mysteriously disappeared from the site halfway through flowering.  From what I've seen it sounds like there's a couple of good quality LED lights out there, and most of the rest are hype marketed crap.

 

Big issue is penetration, and LED's just don't have it.  So unless you only want smaller yields they probably won't work out well.  Their big advantage sounds like low heat output, but a digital ballast that can be switched from say 250w-400w-600w with a HPS globe in a cooltube will put out fuck all heat on 250w with better penetration, and when temps cool down you can turn it up.  A decent quality Lumatek ballast, cooltube, and quality globe like a Son T Agro from Phillips, will come in at about the same money, and there's no experiment involved.

 

But if you want to go LED, search out our LED growers and question them about which ones to go with.  Gumby has been getting some nice frosty LED buds on a consistent basis, and I vaguely remember him talking about specific lights at some point.

[lookinggoodguys]

Both fluro's and LED's will produce buds, but not as well as HID lighting.  A few guys on here have gotten results with both, but there's also been a lot of LED growers started here over the years that mysteriously disappeared from the site halfway through flowering.  From what I've seen it sounds like there's a couple of good quality LED lights out there, and most of the rest are hype marketed crap.

 

Big issue is penetration, and LED's just don't have it.  So unless you only want smaller yields they probably won't work out well.  Their big advantage sounds like low heat output, but a digital ballast that can be switched from say 250w-400w-600w with a HPS globe in a cooltube will put out fuck all heat on 250w with better penetration, and when temps cool down you can turn it up.  A decent quality Lumatek ballast, cooltube, and quality globe like a Son T Agro from Phillips, will come in at about the same money, and there's no experiment involved.

 

But if you want to go LED, search out our LED growers and question them about which ones to go with.  Gumby has been getting some nice frosty LED buds on a consistent basis, and I vaguely remember him talking about specific lights at some point.

 

 

I recommend a digital ballast dimmable in a cooltube works well in my small tent running on 600 watt. Done the led thing but you need quality ones and heat is still produced. But for the price I would jump to the Hi-Par 315watt ballasts instead of led. My next move in the future would be 2 dual tents running 2 Hi-Par 315watts over 4 plants in DWC.

Edited March 28, 2016 by lookinggoodguys

[billygoat]

Try the second hand market , gumtree etc. grab s decent light at less than half the original price