This is a good point and where my mind has been up until now. My “plan” was to get through this grow, and probably one more, then invest in a new tent/space. I would use my existing space for veg, and make the new space into a flower tent. I would build/buy lights for the flower tent. I kind of want to go down the build route, but I’m open to getting a kit as well.
The SCROG on my GL is 22" x 39". The SCROG on the SSH is 21" x 36" (I had to leave some room for heater, etc. so didn’t go the full 24x48 on both):
Not a current pic but you can see how the whole thing is set up there. Obviously with the door open it looks different than reality to me, as no reflection is occuring on the near side of the plants with the door open.
In any case I can afford a couple hundred bucks now, but yeah, I would prefer to throw that $200 into something that will provide me both a longer term solution and an increase in intensity.
I guess I’m just paranoid that I will have some of the same problems I had during my last grow.
If you think you can use the Mars lights later in your veg tent then I say go for it! Build a dedicated light for the flowering space where you really want a lot of light. I would try to find a light that is ideal spectrum for veg.
I have a much better idea of what you’re working with from that pic, thanks!
So to answer your original question, a couple of small panels would compliment that well for now. But the real answer seems like it may be to try your hand at a build. Assuming you want to focus more on the flowering end of things if you were to go that route? For $200 I think we should be in the neighborhood of four 50 watt cobs as long as you don’t mind doing the fab work for a frame. You could do a single bar shaped build now, and just shift the current lights to one side a little. Assuming you liked it, build two more bars of similar specs would cover a 4x4 well. So $200 now gets you by, and then if you choose to get another space you would already have a third of the lighting covered. Assuming you could then dedicate your current panels to veg area? If you’re picturing something different, that’s fine too. Just let me know and I’ll try to find the most suitable components.
This is correct. For now, get through this grow and make it as good as possible. Future: build a flower tent, turn this one into a veg tent. I am totally okay doing the work to build a fab. I am tool-poor right now, but I don’t mind buying tools, and the wife won’t balk at me getting tools either.
Tool poor isn’t a big deal. We can go with solderless cobs and/or cob holders, won’t change cost much on that size build. Will be cheaper than getting a soldering iron anyways. You’ll need a drill and basic hand tools to assemble frame, and a way to cut some aluminum. Hack saw works fine for that. As far as mounting and wiring cobs, screwdriver or hex wrenches and wire strippers should do it.
I know you’ve been lurking around the builds, is there a specific brand of cob that peaked your interest?
Seems like everyone likes the Crees, but I’m open minded. I’ll trust your judgement on that. I do have all the tools you mentioned so we’re good to go!
If what I envision is what you are envisioning, are we looking at something similar to this eventually? Essentially building one strip of this, but eventually expanding to three?
Not gonna lie, I like the cree stuff. I don’t think we’ll be able to hit the $1 per watt mark with it though. I would expect to be in the $250-$300 range with Cree, maybe do a little better if we can find some good holiday discount codes. At 50 Watts the citizen cobs will offer similar performance at about $15 per cob cheaper. Bridgelux is around $30 per cob but you can get with built in holder. Something you you will pay like $2 extra for with Cree or citizen.
Any of the three are hard to go wrong with in my opinion. But assuming we stay in the 50 watt range, driver and heatsink cost are going to be about the same, so will your frame. The only real leverage point on price will be in the cobs.
I’m cool going up to $300 but not over until after I recover from Christmas.
I noticed on the Rapid LED site they do have substrate’s for sale and they aren’t hugely expensive. They have a lot of variety, as well - I really like the way that 4x4 one in the pic above looks, and they do have them in bars as well. I am sure you know all this already .
Yep. I had pictures three individual bars though if you’re not building all at once. But you could always go to that when time comes.
See comment above about the vero. I used them for a while, and majority of builds I do have been with them. Solid choice, just as the others. They are popular because they don’t have the drop off in efficiency above 50 Watts that the others do. So a lot of people like to build them at the 60-75 watt per cob range. I know you can get that done under $1 per watt, I do it regularly.
Those are really nice! They do require the brackets for mounting heatsinks, so pay extra attention to that. If you want to go that route, perfectly fine with me. We can probably get you a discount code too
You won’t want them. Well, you won’t want or need them at this point I should say.
They just focus the available light into a more intense beam, but they also give up some photons and you’re ability to blend with the other cobs. If you wanted to have a super high efficiency build you would drive the cobs really low, like 30 Watts. Then add a butt load of them and install reflectors to make up for the low power. It’s led nerd stuff really, and you’re talking about spending a lot more money so you can say your light is 5-10% more efficient than everyone else’s. You’ll already be above 50% efficient, which is probably double the panels you’re currently using.
I have a few things to wrap up at work but I should be back shortly. If you want to snoop around at different peoples opinions of the different cobs or whatever, go ahead. I can’t really say one is better than another. The citizen is going be the best bang for your buck. Performance data is almost identical to cree at much cheaper price. The bridgelux doesn’t perform quite as well at 50 watts as the others, but we’re talking paper data. You wouldn’t see any difference with eye. The cree is going to give you just a slight bump in the deeper reds but you pay kind of heavily to get it.
Here’s another thing to keep in mind. I would most likely suggest getting the rapid heatsinks. I don’t think they sell the citizen cobs you would want if you decided to go that route. So if wanting to get all from one place, that could play a little role.
Well, you’re going to have some tough decisions to make lol!
So rapid led has 10% off first order and I believe you can get everything you need from them. I think they offer free shipping with minimum purchase. But when I was plugging stuff into cart, it was insisting on wanting to charge me sales tax. Not sure why, they are in California. So if you decide to go that route, you’ll definitely want to check on the shipping and sales tax, as that could be an expense I wasn’t expecting.
Arrow electronics has the lowest price on driver, and they are currently offering 10% off as well. They also ship for free overnight. They also sell bridgelux and Cree leds cheaper than rapid, but they don’t have required heatsinks.
Here is the big kicker. I found a smoking deal on citizen clu-048-1212 cobs over at cobkits. It looks like you can get latest generation 3000k 90 cri for $9 lol. These cobs can be run at 50 Watts, but they get like 6% increase in efficiency at about 40 Watts. If you wanted to take advantage of that, it would be 5 cobs to get to the 200 watt mark. I can see if I can find a little better driver fitting for 4 cobs too. Or just going ahead and running them at 50 Watts at little lower efficiency is still an option.
The citizen 1216 is a little better option at 50 Watts, those are $17 something. At any rate, going with a citizen cob will put you into a cob kits or hlg heatsink as the rapid heatsink isn’t tapped for the citizen cobs.
I may have been putting cart before horse. It’s looking like cobkits and hlg both currently sold out of heatsinks. Still searching though, want to find every option available and get you the best deal possible.
