Led vs T5 flourescent....

Kingrow1

Kingrow1

Well-Known Member
Would you rather 100watts of the best cob leds or 100watt t5 flourescent unit?

Id say the t5 will out grow the cob...

What say you?

:-)
 
xtsho

xtsho

Well-Known Member
hotrodharley said:
From a neighbor's experience with them all - LED is great to veg but can't beat HPS for flower until your LED is in the $1200 price range unless you build it yourself. He uses T5 and LED to veg though.
Click to expand...
I've been using a 4 ft 4 bulb T5 to veg and HPS to flower for years. You can have both for under $400. Until decent LED's come down in price I see no need to switch. I haven't seen any LED grows that are better than HPS. Now there are reasons to use LED's. Heat being one of them but more and more I'm hearing about people still having heat issues with LED's. Electricity costs are another reason to use LED's but where I live the power is cheap so it doesn't make sense to invest the money in quality LED's because it will take years for me to recoup the initial cost based on electricity savings.
 
hotrodharley

hotrodharley

Well-Known Member
Our electric rates are nuts. Co-op in Alaska and very rural. He was disappointed in LED. Even added a second one in the flower tent before giving it up until quality meets price a little better.

I used a Quantum Bad Boy for a few years. Vegged under it then flowered under HPS. Great for bushy plants. Especially those strains that stretch a lot in flower. Makes canopy control easy using supercrop or LST.
 
Kingrow1

Kingrow1

Well-Known Member
I dont think at smaller wattages led can touch t5's, at 100w and under t5's are proven but ive never seen anyone come close with 100watt of cob or led (true wattage) to them yet.
 
Moflow

Moflow

Well-Known Member
I'm very happy with my 110 watts of cob led for cloning and vegging.
I used to use a 250 HPS IN A restricted height area , around 3ft to work with.
I've 5 plants in 10 litre pots, 4 small plants in party sized cups and a bunch of clones in a cloner.
Give me the cobs any day.
 
Kingrow1

Kingrow1

Well-Known Member
Johnny Lawrence said:
Well, you happen to be wrong. I'll take A19s over T5s.
Click to expand...
Not a challenge to your growing but if you have pics or links to a 100watt led/cob/a19s veg tent that you think beats t5s id like to see it for some reference. I and others have posted what are 96watt t5 units can do many times here so thats easy to see but not seen many 100w led veg's that i though were better yet.
 
Kingrow1

Kingrow1

Well-Known Member
Moflow said:
I'm very happy with my 110 watts of cob led for cloning and vegging.
I used to use a 250 HPS IN A restricted height area , around 3ft to work with.
I've 5 plants in 10 litre pots, 4 small plants in party sized cups and a bunch of clones in a cloner.
Give me the cobs any day.
Click to expand...
I love the 250watt hps's but never run that low as tents a 1x1x2m. I get very little heat from it :-)
 
Johnny Lawrence

Johnny Lawrence

Well-Known Member
Kingrow1 said:
Not a challenge to your growing but if you have pics or links to a 100watt led/cob/a19s veg tent that you think beats t5s id like to see it for some reference. I and others have posted what are 96watt t5 units can do many times here so thats easy to see but not seen many 100w led veg's that i though were better yet.
Click to expand...
Don't have pics on my hard drive, and I'm too lazy to run down there right now, but I switched a 4 bulb 2 foot T5 with 4 14 watt A19s. This is in my clone/nursery setup. It's been a year now, and I haven't noticed any difference in growth or performance from my girls.

As mentioned before, in my 4x8 veg tent, I replaced 500 watts of T5 with 300 watts of LED panels(Sun Boards - 5000K). Again, no difference in performance or growth from the girls. I was able to cut a total of 250 watts from my 18/6 room and get the same performance.

I understand that it's different in your part of the world, but electricity in SoCal is prohibitively expensive. I've been able to cut my bill down quite a bit in the past couple years by converting a few of my setups to LED or LED/CMH. Half of my garage has 14 foot ceilings, so I still run HID in there. Gonna eventually switch my 600 out with a custom CMH/strip rig that I'm gonna build to be around 500 watts. My big flowering room is a DE/CMH combo that is beastly.
 
Last edited:
Moldy

Moldy

Well-Known Member
I bought a 300 W cheapo white LED thingy for $84 to grow seedlings and veg before transplant. Ugrow from Amozon lol. It has 198 led's. Unit measures 13" X 7.5". I don't know shit about LED but needed something that wouldn't get as hot as T5's due to hot summers here. I put an auto seedling under it to figure out distance so I wouldn't destroy good seed$. Right now that plant has out grown any seedling I've ever grown. It only covers about 2.4' x 2' and it's working much better than t5's. Thing is to get the coverage the 4 lights X 4' you need 3 or 4 of the led's I bought but the intensity of the led's are much better according to my cheap light meter. My AC/DE light cooks the shit outta the grow room in this heat. Probably move to LED for summer grows down the road when I figure this shit out.
 
Dynamo626

Dynamo626

Well-Known Member
in the above vid they use spectrometers and par meters testing the output of different 5t lights including the hortilux powerveg and a led replacment tube.
remember the light produced by florescent tubes is uv and must pass through the phosphorous coating in the tube to be changed to visible light. when light passes through anything some of the light is lost even with clear glass. if you put a coating on a hps lamp the output would be lessened
 
Moflow

Moflow

Well-Known Member
Here's what I do with 110 wall watts of cob led.
2 x cxb3590, 25 watts each
3 x citizens 1212, 20 watts each.
5 plants in 10 litre20180703_133138.jpg 20180703_132036.jpg 20180703_132121.jpg 20180703_132104.jpg 20180703_132049.jpg pots.
4 plants in small pots.
10 in 4" rockwool blocks.
16 clones in cloner and 3 clones in pucks........ 37 total lol
No fans or filters used as attic has a good draught of air pulling through it.
It's plenty of light for me in my situation. I have measured PAR.
I can also move the 2 lights further apart for more light spread and as they're running on low wattage I can get the lights close to plants without any problems.
No heat issues.
 
Kingrow1

Kingrow1

Well-Known Member
Moflow said:
Here's what I do with 110 wall watts of cob led.
2 x cxb3590, 25 watts each
3 x citizens 1212, 20 watts each.
5 plants in 10 litreView attachment 4159450 View attachment 4159451 View attachment 4159452 View attachment 4159453 View attachment 4159454 pots.
4 plants in small pots.
10 in 4" rockwool blocks.
16 clones in cloner and 3 clones in pucks........ 37 total lol
No fans or filters used as attic has a good draught of air pulling through it.
It's plenty of light for me in my situation. I have measured PAR.
I can also move the 2 lights further apart for more light spread and as they're running on low wattage I can get the lights close to plants without any problems.
No heat issues.
Click to expand...
With 6 x 18watt t8s i could do that and slightly bigger plants, i would have expected more from a veg tent on cobs to beat t5s but rep+ for posting a comparison picture :-)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top