Anyone have experience with light rails (LEDs)?

[CimbaKat]

We're looking to do a 38'Lx20'Wx8'H Flower room for a legal grow. The Plan for this room is to have 4 rows, with three 3'x3' soil beds for flower with 33" paths around each face of every bed. We would run one 4'x4' LED (Spydr2p by Fluence) on a rail for each row, covering the four 9'x3' grow spaces. If this is feasible, it lessens start up costs drastically, which would be ideal, obviously. If not, good bye lots of money.

The only issue is we don't know much about light rails... im taking a trip to the grow shop tomorrow to pick someone's brain with more knowledge. We've always wanted to use them and now we definitely want to, if we can. Any help is appreciated, thanks.

 

[GOT_BUD?]

2 questions you need to ask are -

How much do the lights weigh?

How much weight can the rail handle?

From what I remember from recent searches is that even the heavy duty rails are close to maxed out with the full sized canopy fixtures. To me, that would mean I'm that much closer to failure.

There's also the problem with hanging the lights from the rail, as it usually consists of a single hanging point from the trolley. Which means you'll need wire hangers from the four corners of the fixture to the rail trolley which cuts down on your maximum height significantly.

Have you considered running a mix of LED and CMH for now, and replace the CMHs as funds allow? CMHs run cooler that your standard HPS or MH light, especially if you can remote the ballasts outside the room. Thery're not as efficient as LED, but they are far cheaper and produce excellent flower.

 

[f-e]

Rails are at their best with just one light in a room, which can be lower, and not burn them. Once you have a few lights, stray rays often find a plant to land on, and with leds you don't really gain from getting lower in the same way. Is it 3x9 you're trying to cover? as rails are too long really. Long enough to have your motor and a dummy car. Holding a second light. Covering half a rail each. That is when they work best. When your 3x3 light, covers 3x4.5 gaining 50% more coverage.

Maybe buy smaller lights and position them correctly. It will be cheaper than the saving of a bigger light. As that bigger one, needs a rail, and higher delivery costs, and more annoyance when it eventually fails.

I actually found, that while my supplier had many sizes of light, the cheapest per watt was the 240w variant. The 480w was over twice the price. The 300w was also more per watt. though may of run a tad cooler. At 70cm wide, they sit along a 3' wide system nicely. Using bigger lights and rails would of just been expense and hassle.

We see very few rails in use. I think they were a hobby fad decades ago, that just lingers on. When a poot 600 cost hundreds it was viable.

I believe I have two motors and a dummy car sat about, but havn't seen the rail in ages. I remember halving it, and the poster tube. But it's 20 years ago now.

I don't think your budget will be well spent on them.

 

[prune]

Light rails have been mostly misunderstood in the community through the years. Their original benefit was to stretch an expensive fixtures footprint for personal grows, but the real selling point was stretching watts when everybody was paranoid about the power company reporting heavy users to the LEO.

While both reasons still apply in certain areas, today their most useful nature is defusing light, rather than stretching photons. Got DE's and a low ceiling? well a nice light rail can mitigate that situation.

That said, if I read you correctly as wanting to stretch one fixture over three spans, you're going to suffer greatly insufficient light energy. Do some math with square footage, light output and compare that with what most people finding productive.

 

[CimbaKat]

Thanks guys. I did just begin considering CMH in conjunction with LEDs until we can fill it up with LEDs. I heard CMH come a far way and are solid on low energy bill and heat. Plus marginally more affordable than 1300 to 1500 a pop