Light spacing...what is too close

I have LED lights. Judging from the picture, are these lights too close to the plants?

The top light is 270W

The little side LEDs are 28W a piece…

3 Likes

My opinion (very limited experience) is you are fine. Rule of thumb: if you put your hand over the top of your plants and it feels hot, move the light up.

3 Likes

@Bogleg sounds good, I can pretty much touch with he lights with my hands and they aren’t even hot.

2 Likes

Just keep an eye on it. If you have any bleaching from light burn then move up. I made the mistake of being way paranoid about light burn in my first grow. Imho get as close as you can. My grow now I am going to do a lot of limit pushing with my lights. I had one whole plant I ended up chopping up for bubble hash as a result of improper light placement.

1 Like

@Bogleg sounds good. This is my first grow so I’m super worried I am screwing things up.

Light bleaching causes the leaves to turn yellow correct?

Yes. You will see it specifically from the top down. A lot of nutrient issues either are from the bottom up or take place all over the plant. With light burn it will be obvious top down. The best thing you can do right now is find out what the PAR is for your light. This will give us an idea of light intensity at a specific distance and we can give you better advice. What make and model is your overhead light?

Yes what @Bogleg said. I had light bleaching and thought it was something different so I took longer to correct it than I should

1 Like

Oh and light bleaching from led looks different than incandescent

1 Like

@Bogleg it’s Roleadro 270W ufo light. Of course I can’t find it for sale on Amazon anymore.

I’ll google it and see if can find some data.

I can tell you right now that three plants (I think that’s what I see in your pics) under a 270w LED is going to be an issue. For flower you are going to want more light.

2 Likes

So it looks like that light draws around 90w from the wall. In LED grows you want to look for 35-50w per square foot. I’ll let the smarter, more experienced people chime in, but I think you seriously need to look at more lights to get those girls through flower.

1 Like

@Bogleg I have that and led bulbs on the side. I also have some CFL and other white LED lights that are 2700K color…

You can do the math. Just add up all the true watts (from the wall). Ignore the numbers manufacturers claim for “equivalent watts” For example LED floods that claim 65 watts are really about 8-10 watts. Use the true wattage of CFLs, not the “equivalent to” number. When you get the total, divide that by your grow area square feet and see if you get 35 watts/square foot. If not, add more lights.

Make sure you have a reflector on all your CFLs. Most of their light misses your plants otherwise. Even a cardboard reflector painted flat white is good.

1 Like