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X-grower, growing again

PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2014 11:34 am
by Johnsonbigs
Hi, I am an x-grower getting back into the hobby and was looking for LED advice. I have been studying LED's for quite a while now and always wanted to splash into them but was always skeptical to say the least. I am quite confident now that the LED systems are very advanced and have proven to work great. So here is my question: I think I have settled on the "California Lightworks SolarStorm LED with UVB so the question is should I go with 2x 440w or 1x 880w? I have a 4x4 box 6ft height. I have about 4-5 years experience using 2x600w HPS soil and hydro (DWC, and EBB and flow systems), I will start using soil to see how it goes. Any advice, need more info?
Thank you for your help!

Re: X-grower, growing again

PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2014 1:27 pm
by SisterMaryElephant
Welcome to the forums!

With only 6' of headroom you'll definitely want to keep them small/short which is good if you want to use LED. ;)

Unfortunately, neither option is really enough, imho, to cover a 4x4 space (in flower) properly but the 2x SS440w *would* give you 2x the UVB too. If you don't plan on using the whole 4x4 for plants or if you don't mind slightly less than top-shelf results then you'll be fine. To me, I'd say that 1x SS880w (or 2x SS440w) is about the same as 1x 600w HID light, maybe slightly less penetration power.


SME

Re: X-grower, growing again

PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2014 2:10 pm
by Johnsonbigs
Really? Neither one would get good results? I've been following a few grows from guys that ran the 880w UVB and they said that they had great crops in similar set ups. What would you recommend, I really want to go LED?

Re: X-grower, growing again

PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2014 4:06 pm
by Johnsonbigs
Hey bro, I thought I already posted on this... So you do not think the 880W or 2x440W will cut it? I really want to go LED, I live in a very hot humid climate and do not want to spend the money on cooling. Do you have any recommendations for different LED's that might be better? I don't really have a budget. I will grow them short, super crop, and trim lower branches, "lollipop" them. I only want big fat cola's lol I can do a scrog too. I looked into a few lights like: Apache At120RB, Advanced Diamond 10w Cree XML350, Blackdog Platinum XL-U.

Any other thoughts brother?

Re: X-grower, growing again

PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2014 7:55 pm
by SisterMaryElephant
No matter what you'll still have to deal with cooling, the cost is mitigated by the savings of growing your own vs buying.

I didn't say you wouldn't get "good" results with the CLW lights, you certainly can. They're just a little underpowered for a 4x4 space if you want top-shelf results compared to say that 600w HPS that you used to run. If "good" is good enough, then the 2x SS4440w would be slightly better than the single SS880w due to the extra UVB. CLW does make a good light...

Out of those other 3 the BD XL-U is the one I'd look at with 46w/sqft in a 4x4 area if I remember the BD specs correctly. The Apache uses weak 1w diodes and the advanced light mixes a few 10w diodes with a lot of the 3w diodes so I'd skip those last two personally.