LED Grow Light Forum

Well I wasn't intentionally ignoring your argument SME...just don't feel like discussing organic chemistry right now, i'm on my phone so can't link or write the proper formulation but just look at O3 WIKI PAGE where it shows how ozone interacts with carbon = CO2.........and it is effective at odor removal/no question

Surprised at you recommending tried and true HPs and not magnetic ballasts/dead reliable also very tried and true.Don't care for the five percent efficiency gain or dimming (most bulb manufacturers disapprove of this anyway) granted their are some electronic ballasts/fixtures like the Gavita 1000w pro series that gets over 1.5 ppfw and has a specific Philips double sided designed for it(which I highly recommend Frank).Not to mention most digital ballasts sold still have cooling fans and we aren't even gonna discuss home repairs on a digi vs magnetic right?

The only reason commercial growers and the Dutch didn't find CMH appealing was the low wattage (400w max) and no one runs less than 1000w fixtures in a green house. Now we have the 830w CMH just released and it has the best spectral distribution of any single bulb on the market BY THE SPECS,I haven't tried it! only the lower wattage versions and they rock!

This is all mute any way with the advancements in MH/sulfur plasma getting better and better, also not to mention warm white
leds from Osram(Oslon) and Cree xt-e hitting 150+ lm per watt this year with excellent spectral distribution along the par curve...hid has a couple years left IMO

this phone sucks.....alright back to my scotch



urve

I saw the wiki page and quoted it myself. I don't think you're grasping the big picture. CO2 does have carbon but in order for the CO3 to interact with the carbon in CO2 it has to break it first.

Let's break it down for everyone:
So, you inject O3 into a room with high CO2 and and it breaks the O2 off of the C and then strips O2 off of the O3 to form CO2 + O2 and O. What that means, in the end, is that you're only breaking the O3 into O2 and O. Since the whole purpose of supplementing CO2 is for growth, adding more O + O2 dilutes the CO2 and since the O3 is already broken, it can't work on odors and pathogens as well either. You're effectively wasting the O3.

That doesn't even take into account the fact (already quoted) that at "safe levels" it's not effective for what you suggest using it for. Nor does it account for the damage to the plants. If you want to use wiki to show the interaction with carbon (which nobody denies) then you should also read the part that I quoted that says that it's NOT effective for odor/pathogen control at safe levels. Also from the wiki page that you're selectively relying on:

The Canadian Center for Occupation Safety and Health reports that:
"Even very low concentrations of ozone can be harmful to the upper respiratory tract and the lungs. The severity of injury depends on both by the concentration of ozone and the duration of exposure. Severe and permanent lung injury or death could result from even a very short-term exposure to relatively low concentrations."

As I said, ozone is very good for odor and pathogen control but only in higher concentrations than what are safe. The best way to use it for odor control (which is what we were talking about) is to vent your exhaust into another area, like an attic, that has a higher concentration and then is vented outside or allowed to dissipate.

HPS:
When digital ballasts first came out I avoided those too, technology has improved and they're now tested to be "tried and true" too. Modern digital ballasts (the better quality ones at least) are just as reliable as magnetic. My problem with magnetic vs digital ballasts isn't reliability, it's heat, weight and noise. Digital ballasts are more efficient, even if only slightly, and while not generally repairable for the average consumer, they do carry good warranties so reliability is a non-issue.

Or perhaps the commercial growers stick with HPS because it is "tried and true" (regardless of which kind ballasts people prefer) and CMH hasn't been around long enough to justify the cost of switching? I'm sure that the lower powered bulbs that were first weren't the "only reason" CMH has been rejected so far.

Reports on plasma are mixed but I plan on doing some plasma testing. More LED manufacturers are adding white spectra that before, it was once thought that plants only use red and blue but that's just not true. It wasn't that long ago that people thought that plants didn't use green light but that's a myth too. I've often said here that LED may very well be the future of grow lighting but, also, not today. HPS is still king and, obviously, for good reasons.

all I ask for is a two to three hundred watt (actual) panel with 5 watt top bin warm white emitters and a couple of 660nm ones to hit that chlorophyll b peak that the ww can't and make it passively cooled with massive heat sinks/clw has plenty of those(remote dimmable driver = awesome) and spread then out over a large mcpcb with no secondary lenses or glass plate:-P . I'll buy one George and so will allot of people!!.....don't let Apache tech steal your thunder with their new all white panel

I can't take the purple hue anymore, it bothers me and allot of other growers....we want white! ha

GREAT discussion Sme and yes I agree with certain things you say and on paper it may seem factually correct but I didn't see those issues running ozone and a sealed room with a ppm meter showed no decrease at all...but many factors could be at play there.......let's just leave it that because i'm not budging and i'm drinking;-)

yes hps is king....the king is dead long live the king!....I just like sitting under a CMH over an hps, it seems so "natural" and closer to natural sunlight which is what we strive to replicate anyways......i'm blabbing and making no sense....happy growing fellas

LED companies are adding white to their lights more and more but I wouldn't do away with any of the blue and red, I'd just add the white. I don't know why you'd want such small lights (200-300w actual draw) but not everyone has big grows I guess. I'm still waiting for 7-10w diodes. As far as passively cooling them, that was over when LEDs got bigger and more powerful. Air-cooling will be next, then maybe water-cooling.

Sorry, I'm not just leaving it at that but I might break off the discussion and move it elsewhere so we don't end up hijacking his journal.

*Of course* O3 works for odor control but you can't measure the tissue damage done at the levels where it's effective for odor control. THAT is the problem. CO2 levels will not decrease, since it reforms, after breaking but once the O3 is broken you're simply adding oxygen which the plants don't need. That's why people supplement CO2, because plants use CO2 and give off O.

We've debated the "mother nature" thing before too, natural isn't always better but I do agree, completely, that the purple light is hard on the eyes.

Aye............safe/dangerous levels of O3 and it's effectiveness are always going to be debated and the research and studies are not without flaw as with the wiki page........ozone generators (uv or corona discharge) are sold at all hydroshops as a ODOR control option........not saying that they should:P

Of course leds are gonna be air cooled(they already are) either passively or actively(fans), water cooled also exists...higher wattage(3-5-10watt) single diodes are less efficient than 1watt(350ma) leds and all these new smd (50-200w) modules that you see in led flood lights are not the right direction either (cough budzilla cough)==too hot!!

passively cooled leds are the only option for commercial use, you do NOT want dirt/dust/moisture being drawn into the fixture! and if a fan fails and causes premature led failure? how the hell are you gonna hear it when all the other panels are running? Passive cooling is the only way to go===separating the hot drivers from the leds and massive heatsinks with quality MCPCB's using high quality emitters with good junction temps(the new Cree xt-e can take the heat)

just look at Rhinogrow/neosol panels from illumitex/etc. are great designs(passive) but that purple hue!!! ........

I'll be damned if someone takes my mag ballasts, fucking solid use for a decade; changed a couple capacitors and that's it.....no worries about bulb compatibility or shitty sunpulse/digilux bulbs and their markups(yes this includes Horti too), I can run down too home depot and pickup a philips 400-600-1000w hps starting at $23 in an emergency and it will fire up!!

yes gavitas are nice without question if you have a dedicated 220 line......i guess phatom's are good too, anything without cooling fans which screams "points of failure"......

Many of the O3 generators sold in hydro shops are for inline ducts. The ones that are sold as whole house/room models have often been been tested to have dangerous levels. I'm not saying O3 can't work for odor control I just don't trust that it's safe at those levels and it's a waste for CO2 supplemented rooms. The only studies that I've seen saying that it's safe at effective levels are from the people that make/sell them.

By "air-cooled" I mean like air-cooled HID lights with intake/exhaust ports. Passive cooling is a pipe dream now, the power is going up and so is the heat. Even if you do passively col the LED light, the heat is still put into the grow room. Air/water-cooled is the answer for heat removal. Rhinogrow uses lower powered 3w diodes, those are the past not the future.

Buy what you want, I'm just saying the digital ballasts are better now. Most digital ballasts run on 110/220. I don't know about where you live but every house here has 220 and as you know, double the volts = half the amps so you can add more 220 load on a service panel than you can 110. Since we're talking about a future commercial grow, I doubt the 220 circuits will be an issue, this isn't a small 400w grow, in a apartment/dorm room, that Frank is talking about building. Most commercial growers aren't going to be bothered by replacing ballasts every 3-5 years because it doesn't take very many grams to pay for that, it's a business expense.

(I think I'm going to split this off to another thread, it's becoming an academic debate not based on the OP's journal.)

I see you stuck me in the far corner of this forum SME

If you use a remote driver passive cooling is possible and no 5-10w leds are not even close to as efficient (lm per watt) as 1 watt led (350ma) ATM. Maybe the trend is to replace high wattage HID with high wattage led fixtures but that doesn't benefit your overall electrical cost reductions for a large scale grow op; why bother even switching???

I warned everyone that I may split off the debate since it was going off-topic and becoming purely academic...

I doubt we'll see many higher powered passively cooled LED lights, I believe the trend will be air-cooling (with separate intake/exhaust (like HID hoods)) or water cooling.

True. 1w diodes *are* more efficient and as the power goes up they lose even more efficiency but they gain penetration power. I believe that the desire for larger plants will win against the desire for efficiency because the tiny difference in cost to power 1w vs 3w vs 5w vs "future diodes" pales in comparison to what is gained in terms of yield. It doesn't take many more grams of yield to pay for the lost efficiency.

Once again, every growing decision made has pros and cons.

SisterMaryElephant wrote:I warned everyone that I may split off the debate since it was going off-topic and becoming purely academic...

I doubt we'll see many higher powered passively cooled LED lights, I believe the trend will be air-cooling (with separate intake/exhaust (like HID hoods)) or water cooling.

True. 1w diodes *are* more efficient and as the power goes up they lose even more efficiency but they gain penetration power. I believe that the desire for larger plants will win against the desire for efficiency because the tiny difference in cost to power 1w vs 3w vs 5w vs "future diodes" pales in comparison to what is gained in terms of yield. It doesn't take many more grams of yield to pay for the lost efficiency.

Once again, every growing decision made has pros and cons.

Is their no "like/agree" button here???? ^^^ good post....Ah here comes the "penetration" word used so loosely in this business; maybe "throw" is nicer

Led technology IS about efficiency and longevity===== cost reduction.......making up for it with yield is ignoring the technology IMO. again WHY bother switching then?, just keep using high wattage hid, and make up for it with yield increase