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10 Overdriven Flouros. Tell me what you think

FGandalf

Member
thanks bree. There is a lot of information out there both good and bad. Sometimes it's only bad when you don't fully understand it, and its only good when you do. I have tried a lot of different bulbs. The best results i have come across was a mix. So not for lack of trying i try and get bulbs cheap from some custodial friends so i get more of some then others,but i's free. So far so good we shall see when the buds start packing on a bit of weight.
 
G

Guest

looking great man, can you hold up a lighter next to the plants for comparison, If things turn out ok(for me) I'll be doing a flouro grow in about a month, I'm going to build a cab but prolly smaller, I've done a full flouro grow before and everything looked great until I dried the buds and then they started looking a little airy but your pushing more lumens than I was for sure, I cant wait to see the outcome. Give us a dried weight for them please. Peace
 
G

Guest

I have done floros and I have done the High Output ......

I have done floros and I have done the High Output ......

So far it still takes that extra punch the giant heaters have to end up with the greater weights. It will be interesting with the over-driving. Floro light still does not penetrate even though the PAR can be quite high. For me the buds were always less weight even if I went with comparable watts. The product is still just as potent if not more so.... I think all the heat and unused radiation the big bulbs give off have to do some definite degradation to the THC and other psychoactive substances.

Studies have shown that the peak potency time for harvest is just before sun up in the outdoors. It is my hypothesis that this is due to a peak period of non-degradation of the active ingredients during the night.

LED lights produce light in a completely different way thank standard bulbs including the ones that heat gases. They only produce light in very narrow sets of nanometers depending on which ones are used. Someday when they develop to be much more intense and cheaper, I believe they will take over most of the market for visible lighting, including horticulture. Did you know that almost every stop light in America is being converted over to LED. The reason is the specific color bandwidth produced and the relative minuscule energy used. Check it out when you are setting at a stop light. If it looks like it is made up of a bunch of dots.... that is because it is.....LEDs. It is rare to find one that is not converted yet. Billions are being saved nation wide. Unfortunately, the technology is not there yet to use for our craft.... but soon. Nasa is developing them for food production in space. Anyway, sure more than you wanted to know.

Peace
 
G

Guest

Informative read Bree, I've seen a pot plant grown on LED lights before and it turned out ok for the wattage, it wasn't airy or anything.
 
G

Guest

Dank 1.......

Dank 1.......

I have studied the subject in extreme detail. I may be repeating some of what you know but think peps should know about what is going on. LEDs are going to revolutionize lighting as we know it. There are only two sites that are selling LED grow lights and they are pitiful as far as intensity.

Lighting has basically not changed much from Thomas Edison. We are heating gases (MH, HPS, Floros) instead of just hairs or fibers but really nothing astounding has changed.

LEDs have been around awhile but 10 years ago even a weak one would cost you $12. What is changing things is the prices are dropping like computers did. LEDs usually produce light in a very narrow spectrum, put the right combination together and bang.... not heat, light in spectres not used by plants, and energy consumptions 1/20th of that of conventional lighting. In the last couple of years they just figured out how to make white LEDs. That is why you are seeing them in night lights, flash lights, reading lights etc.

I have seen plants under LEDs that were mixed to cover only the spectrums that plants use for photosynthesis. The plants actually appear black until some other spectrum like from a flash light or other standard source. The reason is because the reason plants look green to us is because that is the combination of lights they reflect to our eyes because they are not using it and therefore reflect it away.

Right now NASA is studying two types of lights to furnish plant growth on extended space voyages or stations... one to provide food and oxygen, two to consume wastes (CO2, nitrates), three therapy for astronauts. The other light besides LEDS is a suspended mercury bulb that is spun at extreme revolutions and gives off a brightness comparable to the sun.... the trick is it is bombarded with microwaves and creates such an extreme temp if it were to be disrupted spinning it could cause a disaster.

Make my words..... Ten years from now lighting will be taken over by LED technology. Don't forget to look at those stop lights I mentioned in the last post. It is truly amazing and society has just not caught up with the technology. They have 3 watt LEDs that put off more light in a single spectrum that ~40-100w regular bulbs could not. Wish I knew which company was going to do it right but I have suspicions of lumeteck.

Peace
 
Last edited:

BudZad7

Active member
Hi All ! :wave: Flouros are a good thing.....try a 40 watt tube by a company called OTT-Lite.com......5900k....2200 lumens each =$10each@
Home Depot,they normaly cost $20 each.....these are the SHIZNIZEL!! LOL!
:yoinks:



GrapefruitXHaze...... :wave:
 

watermelon

Member
i really like this grow. i want to do a floro setup in order to save space and have two shelves for flowering sog. a friend of mine had good results with 8 4' t8's over a 2x4' area, and the buds were of very good quality.

however in live in the UK and i cant find fixtures for less than £15 which is far too expensive when i need around 20 of them. im guessing you dont live in the uk, but where did you get 20 fixtures for a reasonable price?
 

foomar

Luddite
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Rang around a few electrical suppliers in Brum last year and got Fitzgerald 5 footers complete for 8 quid each buying ten and paying cash.

Vegging well under 5 tubes and as they are t8,s the plants grow through them without scorching unlike t5,s and cfl,s.

Doing it now i would buy the fittings and ballasts seperate and have bare tubes and a seperate ballast box.
 

watermelon

Member
foomar- yeah, i looked into buying the componants seperate, but it actually works out just as expensive, alougth it certainly would be alot nicer to have remote ballasts.
 

bounty29

Custom User Title
Veteran
Here's a couple pictures I found when looking for information about overdriving floro tubes. Apparently magnetic ballasts are no good, you need to get the electronic ones. I might have to look into this...





 

FGandalf

Member
yeah bounty29 that is the same info i used to get into the overdriving. I bought 10 4 bulb ballasts on ebay for about 90 bucks i think. Then i used 5 to wire up my 10 bulbs and it gives me the same output as about 18 bulbs and uses less power to drive them. The ballasts i mounted along the center of my make shift setup and it all fit nice. The bulbs will burn and or bleach the plant so once it touches you have to move it or it will do it harm. I may have a picture of this i'll check.

Anyway someone asked me to snap a picture of a lighter next to the buds so here they are.












 
G

Guest

Anyway someone asked me to snap a picture of a lighter next to the buds so here they are.

I was the one who asked for the lighter comparison, nice buds man. Are you running any co2, I will be if I run another flouro grow, you'll just get more weight and tighter buds, that was my main problem with the flouro's the buds dry light and airy. where I live I cant use hps or mh lights because of the hellicopter cams they use here so this is the best some of us can do. So much respect to you Gandalf
 

bounty29

Custom User Title
Veteran
Hm... this may be exactly what I need for my new cabinet. I've seen how well floros can do, and I would have no problem using them. This makes the decision a lot easier. I'm thinking about getting six of these ballasts and using 12 bulbs, an assortment of the top three from this link. That would give me, based on the 1.7x output, around 15,000 lumens, which is about equal to my 150w HPS (Even though I'll probably be using closer to 200w, I feel it's a more efficient use of wattage.) The footprint on this would be much more even, and I could get the light much closer to the plants. I would without a doubt be scrogging all of the plants to maximize the use of this. I think I could get some great results.

(The reason I'd be using 18" bulbs is because the cabinet is already built, it's 2'x2'x4', and I think it'd work great. I could have an 18"x18" square hanging in the middle with the ballasts on top and the bulbs on the bottom, hung from the top of the cabinet so I could adjust it as close to the scrog as I needed.)
 

bounty29

Custom User Title
Veteran
It lists a few brands of ballasts that work with this, will others? Does it have to be one of those, or will most electronic ballasts do this? I've been thinking about this and I think it's going to be great.
 

FGandalf

Member
I'm kinda bummed because i had to remove the flouro grow because of odor issues. My place was smelling like the dank. No that i mind but it was getting too strong. And the only thing i could do was break down and fire up my cabinet, I built a dual 400w hps with a homemade cool tube passing air into a homemade carbon scrubber and it's for a dwc grow next but i am going to finish the grow off in there. Once i get the odor issues cleared up for the flouros i'll give it another go.

You could wire up a few lights each. What I mean is you can wire 2 24" bulbs in series and it will act or behave or how ever you like to put it just like 1 48" bulb. so with the right bulbs and wired correctly you could run same amount of bulbs with only 3 ballasts. Yes i know 3 X 18 is 54" I'm not 100% sure but i think you could run 3 of the 18" bulbs in series and hook them up to an overdriven ballast and it would drive it without any problems. Then you would only need 4 ballasts to do the 12 bulbs. You could use the other 2 ballasts to run bulbs on the 2 sides and the back wall for two rows down? Good luck with it.
 
G

Guest

Too bad Gandalf.... This was a great grow and something different...

Too bad Gandalf.... This was a great grow and something different...

Its good you did break it down though. If you can smell it, others can smell it three times stronger because your neurons become desensitized..... Sort of like a skunk doesn't smell himself. :pointlaug

Good to push the boundaries in unusual ways. Bummer. Well, thanks for the part we were able to see. Always best to be safe!

Peace
 

bounty29

Custom User Title
Veteran
It's the $1.97 ge or sylvania bulbs from the HD.

I just went to HD and the cheapest bulbs I saw were like $6. Are the shorter ones more expensive? I've got an idea for a 360 degree lighting cabinet, I'm trying to sketch it out now.
 

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