LED vs. HID test grow

[relief]

This is just another LED thread that proves LED's just aren't ready yet. American grower is right, he's trying to protect the community and the burden of proof is on you to back up your claims.

My brother has grown with LED's and I've witnessed it first hand. There is something SERIOUSLY lacking in the spectrum during flowering. Plants were tall, thin and lanky with small buds (it was an indica too!). It was like the plant was trying to reach up to find light, but could never get to it.

I'm not completely dismissing LED's, I'm just saying that the current systems are lacking something during the flowering period.

 

[Boerman]

This is just another LED thread that proves LED's just aren't ready yet. American grower is right, he's trying to protect the community and the burden of proof is on you to back up your claims.

My brother has grown with LED's and I've witnessed it first hand. There is something SERIOUSLY lacking in the spectrum during flowering. Plants were tall, thin and lanky with small buds (it was an indica too!). It was like the plant was trying to reach up to find light, but could never get to it.

I'm not completely dismissing LED's, I'm just saying that the current systems are lacking something during the flowering period.

Protect the community from what???? Innovation? Research? Improvement?You guys are no different from those well intentioned idiots who are trying to protect us from "Reefer Madness". No thanks. I don't need your protection and neither does this community. Did I say "throw away your HIDs 'cause LEDs grow big, fat, tight, frosty buds"? NO. Did I say that LEDs are perfected yet? NO. Tell me ANYTHING that I said that is untrue. I think I hear crickets chirping right about now.

Are you two caped crusaders out there "protecting the community" from flouros? They don't grow as big buds as HID either. Just who put you two in charge of bud quality control anyway? Do you think that only the biggest, fattest buds are disirable? A lot of people grow buds that aren't the biggest or the fattest for specific reasons. Maybe their favorite plant has the taste or the high that they like best but it isn't a big producer. Are you going to "protect" them from that?

A lot of people use growing techniques that produce less than optimum buds for very practical reasons. Heat, available space, power consumption and security come to mind. Are you going to tell the guy with a 3x3 closet that he has to run a 1000w HID?

So, your brother grew with LEDs? I don't believe you. Where are the pics? It can't be true if you don't have pictures.

You said that this thread proves that LEDs are not ready yet. Who said they are? I think it proves that progress is being made. I never said that LEDs weren't still lacking. The whole purpose of testing new ideas and products is to find out what works and how to improve on it. But if it was left up to people like you, we would still be only growing outdoors. Gotta protect the community, you know.

I am still waiting for a single false statement that I have made about growing with LEDs. (chirp, chirp, chirp)

Oh, and by the way, they discovered some time back that the world isn't flat afterall.

B

 

[ganjadreams420]

lol, no the world isnt flat anymore... but you still have peole out there that believe anything they see or hear someone babbling away about...

boerman i enjoyed watching your experiment from the beginning and thought it was top notch and scientific... some people don't have the patience or the manners.
i understand if you lost your enthusiasm to continue and finish this online... this is supposed to be a community of people sharing ideas and knowledge...
instead people feel the need to put their 2 cents in when it does nothing for anyone.

also, american grower since you seem know everything, how much are the plants in my backyard gonna give me for christmas? thanks nastradomus

 

[relief]

I will talk to my brother and get his old LED system and start a small grow. He doesn't take any pictures of any of his grows as he's paranoid as hell.

All I'm trying to say is, LED's are not ready for the flowering cycle. Will they be? Of course one day, I'm just trying to say right now they are not. There's nothing wrong with having balance on the forums, and opinions from both sides. It just needs to be stated for people thinking about running out and buying one of these, to maybe hold on to their cash and wait for the technology to advance until LED's can produce on the same level as an HPS light during flower.

I want LED's to work just as much as you do, Boreman. I live in a hot climate and heat from lights is my biggest enemy (why my brother first got interested in LED growing). If the UFO would do just as great in flower I would gladly pay the asking price. I never said the earth is flat. I agree the world is round (so to speak), but we don't have the technology to sail boats that far YET.

 

[bazooka]

Relief - I think you are confused - his data shows that LED was better than hps.

let me explain (and to reiterate LED_experiments) - I am spending $80/month on electricity for my hps lights and yielding 13 oz, as i did last month. (not to mention the electricity on exhaust fans because of heat) For that same $80/month w/ LED I would yield 20.8 oz.

20>13=WIN

So LED is GOOD for flower. He also showed that 80w LED != 400w hps which is the fact that I think you are focusing on. For a 1:1 ratio you would need 128w LED compared to a 400w hps. Then they would have the same yield.

 

[relief]

Data? I just want to see some pics. Thats the data I want to see.

I just want to see pics of the plant after flowering, that is all. I could understand if he never took any pictures (which he took many before), but at the end he no longer had access to a camera.

 

[Guest]

Just dropped by to say thanks for posting up your numbers boerman. I followed this thread thru subscription & haven't commented i don't think but i enjoyed watching it and reading along.

 

[stonedeconomist]

impressive experiment boerman, even with the led's longer flower time it still produced a better yield per kwh.

 

[hydrorascal]

Good job !!

There are of course alot of less than stellar led units out there. Its always good to see another LED grow.

Gotta say that one of the best hyped units out there...the one with 38 leds per head has to be one of the larger jokes foisted on anyone. My seedling / clone unit has 264 leds and plants just love it !!

To the naysayers... hydro works... indoor grows work... even drip irrigation works indoors or outdoors. LEDs just happen to work also, its only a matter of time until a properly designed for growing LED unit makes it to the marketplace.

The current type unit out there with 470nm and 620nm LEDs are a good start.. kinda like using an incandescent would be.... and even with that...the plants are producing!!

 

[Boerman]

"Better", like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. It all depends on what your goal is. I have not said that the LED was better. It is different and it works different. When someone comes along and says that this proves that LEDs don't work (yet), they are totally wrong. They just don't work like that person wants them to. That is what aggravates me about some of these comments. Some of you people want it all at once. It doesn't work that way. First you prove if it works at all. Then you start to prove if it can work the way you want it to work or how you can get it to work the way you want it to. That is why I didn't want to throw in any manipulations of the plants.

Some of you people (you don't know who you are) need to think things out a little better. This is a complicated issue. What factors go into your idea of "success"? Most people have some sort of limitation on their grow. If you don't have any limitations, then LEDs won't be for you for a long time, if ever. Everyone else gives up something to get the closest fit for their limitations. If you have the money available, but electric consumption and heat are an issue, then LEDs may be for you. But you are going to give up overall yield for the space you have available and harvesting will take more of your time and effort.

B

 

[Boerman]

Something it seems a lot of people are not getting is this: The number of LEDs in an array is almost totally irrelivant. If you see an array with 500 LEDs but it is only pulling about 10 watts, it isn't very likely to be much good. Obviously, wavelength is very important. Lumens mean nothing. Actually, lumens may be a contrary indicator because if the LED has a high lumen/watt ratio, then a lot of the energy is going to be wasted because the plant is not going to be using it. Photon output would probably be a good measurement, but I haven't seen lights with that measurement. So watts is, for me, a good measurement of the useful output of a LED array. I am sure that someone like LED experiments is much better able to comment on this than I.

B

 

[pinecone]

Relief - I think you are confused - his data shows that LED was better than hps.

let me explain (and to reiterate LED_experiments) - I am spending $80/month on electricity for my hps lights and yielding 13 oz, as i did last month. (not to mention the electricity on exhaust fans because of heat) For that same $80/month w/ LED I would yield 20.8 oz.

20>13=WIN

It makes sense to think like this if you are trying to optimize your electricity use, but not if you are trying to optimize your space. Most people are trying to optimize their space and are going to be much better off with an HID.

I can believe that on a grams per kilowatt hour basis LEDs do better than HIDs, but this is meaningless to me as electricity is cheap and easy to come by - but secure space for growing and time are not.

Pinecone

 

[soxx16]

wow, i was real impressed with this thread, until page 7. how is the experiment now?

 

[pinecone]

I have 400w in a grow cab that has less than 5 square feet of floor space. I can pull 9-10oz out of this space in a flowering cycle. If I were running LEDs I would need much more time - or more space (and lights) - or both to produce this kind of result.

Pinecone

 

[Guest]

Seeing this is still alive i want to say something to you L.E.D. guys; it's going to be a quickie because to tell you all the truth, i simply don't think you're going to listen. But it isn't specifically from me alone; it's a little bit of history.

Everybody already knows i go around dissing people's L.S.T. growing because it's not done the 'right way' (according to me LoL !) But seriously -

When O.G. was still up and the people who first came as close to maxing out L.S.T.ing had proved they could make it yield more than any other training method, there were a lot of people excited and all, but L.S.T.ing rapidly got taken over by the multitude of people who were fixated on using the 'best training method' without having to work as hard as needed to get a true, full L.S.T.

It takes a lot of time and manual work, is what it comes down to; and if someone tells you it's really not hard at all, then they're a partial Low Stress Trainer.

When the people who got L.S.T.ing maxed out there, there was something holding them back from the perfect Low Stress Train: the time it took, and the lack of ability to get the entire canopy: every, single, growing node - much less tip on the plant(s) - perfectly level, at one, single plane.

When you hardcore low stress train, if you horizontalize everything: even the buds themselves, they get bigger. That's a proven fact: because the plant can sense the difference in height of just a couple of inches and in a couple of days, the lower parts of a growing bud begin to grow slower than the highest tip. It's the function of Auxin to ensure this happens.

The original thread where the people were, who gave low stress training it's name and it's set methods, those people were amateurs more or less; and as such didn't have a lot of equipment. It was a really big deal at the time to learn there was one more way to train, which could give awesome yields. The agreement by the more talkative people there, was that the perfect L.S.T. hadn't ever been done: because no one had ever grown a plant perfectly horizontally.

Their solution? They looked forward to the day when someone would do some grows under a pane of glass. That was what they, and i, reading along, came to consensus about. Grow the plant under a pane of glass: perfectly flat.

The pane would hold the plants perfectly L.S.T.'d without the need for tying; without even the need for the trouble of a scrog screen; the plants would remain perfectly adjustable all through the grow; by just lifting off the pane: and the perfectly even height would be automatically assigned just by placing the pane back down; literally, the easiest method of training imaginable. While simultaneously giving - again literally: the very best application, of the very best method ever devised to enhance yield. Better than anyone has ever been able to do by hand with string/hooks/weights/ i.e.. manual tying.


Well: you L.E.D. people have the opportunity to revive the #1 yielding method in the world, which can't even be found nowadays: growing a plant completely horizontally.

and what you have, is a set of lights whose faces can be spread out perfectly flat; have a great need to be in very close contact: and which give off small enough heat and electromagnetic signal that you could do that.

Now: w.a.r.n.i.n.g.: A plant grown in a true, no shit, the way it was laid out by the people who discovered the most hardcore therefore highest producing method of training: looks like shit while it's growing. Not one single bud is higher than any other; the buds are all down in the canopy; and frankly they photograph like pure shit. I've seen it, I grow that way more or less, and they do: photograph like pure shit. But the production is there.

It was proved that it's there by new growers, old growers, hydro, soil, scroggers, and single plant people.

It's just too hard to make a perfect L.S.T.

Knowing this is going to fade away without a peep i feel foolish saying it, but what one or two of you ought to do, is get your l.e.d.s all in a big, flat panel: and grow some plants using the flat panel of L.E.D.s as the pane of glass, to hold the plant down perfectly horizontally.

Touching it.
If some resin sticks you can spray it with alcohol and take it off that way.
But you guys are missing out on a real opportunity to show your stuff by not doing some grows that way.

I don't use l.e.d.s. My experimenting bag is in aeroponics; things i build having to do with the chemistry of growing are a lot more interesting to me, because i'm an electronic technician, and d.c. voltages and electronic components are something I deal with every day; and i grow more as a way to teach myself the chemistry of botany than anything else.

I don't know how much a pane of white plastic, or reflective mylar'd plastic, embedded with l.e.d.s would cost, that was about oh... i'd say 2X3 feet; that's about what it would take to hold down a couple of plants on top of a rubbermaid tub. But if you guys did that, i think you'd form a new method of growing: true, perfected L.S.T.s using the only light source which actually NEEDS a method of growing, which is JUST LIKE THAT: one where TOUCHING: HOLDING DOWN THE PLANT even, is the best distance deal you could get.

Now; since i'm all full of coffee and on a roll, and all; do you guys know what a front plated mirror is?

They sell them for the same price as a back coated mirror; and they're sold to the people who build those home projectors, out of a metal halide lamp, and an l.e.d. display off a computer - to make the screen 6X9 feet or whatever on a wall.

These mirrors are simply the same reflective covering; and the same pane of glass; except instead of the reflective coating being on the back side of the glass. resulting in a double image due to the refraction THRU the glass, it's on the front: resulting in nearly zero losses, and no distortion of the image that is shined on them.

You could actually put the L.E.D.s under the plants: flat: and hold the plants horizontal with those mirrors, if touching the leaves and buds caused them to be damaged from the slight electrostatic effect of the d.c. voltage in the l.e.d.s: which i doubt would occur; but in any case a few of those mirrored tiles glued to a piece of plywood or glass, used as the reflector for the l.e.d. light that got lost, would be able to make a lighted compartment for the plant that would result in nearly zero losses, and increase the efficiency of the l.e.d.s even more.

Anyway; i'm sure nobody in the l.e.d. field wants to hear from me since i don't grow using them, but it's a shame you guys don't try that: because as i say: the very people who invented l.s.t. in the form that got it to where it would beat scrogging for production themselves, some of them at least, scrog instead, because it is so much easier to do, and take the losses;

but what they were looking forward to, was the day when somebody figured out how to grow a plant held perfectly horizontal in every respect, held flat by a pane of glass. And you guys have the ability to do almost exactly that: AND, your growing technology craves EXACTLY that kind of application.

The two are made for each other like a hand and a glove.

And i'll let it go at that. But it's a doggone shame... a doggone shame...

Good luck, i follow these threads, although i usually don't participate since like i said, i don't grow that way; and because i know it's bad form to just come in and say, without any experience in growing with a technology at all,

"What you OUGHT to do is..."

It's tacky. But some things just need to be mentioned, and i'm going to go out on a limb this one time and say : i've seen these two trying to get together like Raisins & Bran, for about the last 4 weeks. And making a flat panel of the l.e.d.s similar to the white plastic square in the photo on the page above or one page back, and holding a plant horizontal with it, to simulate that pane of glass, would have you growing with

(1) the world's very highest yielding method; and

(2) your l.e.d.s in EXACTLY - EXACTLY - the configuration they demand, to give you back the maximum return for the dollar per illuminating watt.

Here i go posting up: awaiting the trolling.

Good luck again and thanks for the informative side-by-side grow thread.

 

[chosen]

Nice idea Kingmaker. I've used Cfls in that way as well.

 

[reaperz]

I have 400w in a grow cab that has less than 5 square feet of floor space. I can pull 9-10oz out of this space in a flowering cycle. If I were running LEDs I would need much more time - or more space (and lights) - or both to produce this kind of result.

Pinecone

you could always double stack the led's im sure you could scrog to plants in what ever area you have. 2ft(tall) could easily be used to scrog plants, then you could scrog another plant above it(4ft total size), then have a mother chamber and ventilation next to the clone room, and seeing how heat is more distributed you wont need as much ventilation, just a fan blowing between the led's and bud's and a small carbon filter and a fan sucking out air

 

[pinecone]

you could always double stack the led's im sure you could scrog to plants in what ever area you have. 2ft(tall) could easily be used to scrog plants, then you could scrog another plant above it(4ft total size), then have a mother chamber and ventilation next to the clone room, and seeing how heat is more distributed you wont need as much ventilation, just a fan blowing between the led's and bud's and a small carbon filter and a fan sucking out air

I think what you are suggesting is to create 2 grow areas with a 5 ft^2 footprint by partitioning the box. Given this results of the test (w/ the 82w LED versus the 400w HID) such a setup would still yeild less bud for a flowering cycle than my current setup. I concede that such a setup would require less ventilation to keep things cool.

Also - 2ft is enough to scrog a low stretching indica - maybe, but not a plant that has any stretch to it.

think 300w of good leds could improve your yield in that setup. Specially in hightly lit cabs, where light distribution is very uneven, producing too high light density at some points (and lower than desired at low areas if you grow tall plants), LEDs allows to a far better light distribution, increasing light's productivity (gr of yield per mol of photons) and allowing to use all the volume of the grow cab for plants.

With 300w of LEDs I might be able to get close to what I get out of my current setup. I don't have issues with light distribution (via plant training, reflective walls, and a monster hood that is nearly as big as the cab) or heat in the current configuration so I'm pretty skeptical being able to do better with the LEDs.

Pinecone

Oh - and -KiNgMaKeR- -- You've been smoking too much lately.

 

[WTF-over]

This is exactly why I don't like to post ANYTHING. Everybody wants information. All of it - right now. If you don't have time to give it all right now, the assholes start crawling out of the woodwork questioning your integrity and your motives. If you don't give them anything, you must be hiding a failed effort. If you can only give them a little information at the time, you MUST be hiding the bad parts and in cahoots with a dealer of manufacturer. I have been nothing but honest with every aspect of this grow. I stated in post #7 that I wanted the LED side to win. But I reported things honestly. When the LED side was outperforming, I said it. When the HID side passed the LED side, I said it. I explained EXACTLY what my relationship with HIDhut is. I explained that I just can't get very good close-ups with the only camera I have. I am not going out and buy a camera just to satisfy the curiousity of some little cockroach.

I said I was going to give more info when I get the time. But here I am spending time responding to twerps who are obviously not interested in learning anything. WHEN I GET THE TIME, I will compose a comprehensive review of this experiment, including detailed description of the results. But I don't plan to post it here. I will make it available to those who show genuine interest in actually learning something. I don't owe anybody on this site anything.

So, if you want to know anything about growing with LEDs, or this experiment or anything at all about growing, just ask relief or Americangrower or Mr Celsius. They contain the sum total of all useful knowledge.

B

What a charmingly insecure response! Sorry can't contain myself any longer. Put a green or just a regular lightbulb in the grow area and take a freakin picture.

 

[Lumen]

I hope you continue posting in this thread, Boerman. I joined this forum because of posts like yours and general LED lighting, which is at the very begining of entering the markets at various new places, plantgrow is among them.