CFL Lighting Set-Up

Hello everybody, I am a first-time poster (Though I've been reading this forum for a while; It's very helpful) and a first time grower.

I have a meager set-up in my closet with 5 little plants about their 3rd or 4th week through their veg and im lighting them with helical cfls. I've searched for a while and found a variety of answers for my question so i've decided just to post to find out what is right for me. Currently i have 2 26W CFLS, 3 42W cfls, and 1 23W CFL. I realise many more will be needed as the plants continue to become bigger.

My Question: How should i disperse my light set-up (In other words, what bulbs should I use and for when / should i just use them all/ use mostly one kind and maybe throw in one of another different kind of bulb?)... Also how many lights per plant and of what kind should i look into buying in the near future?

Many Thanks. Peace.

My understanding is that you are currently running 201w for 5 plants. You desperatly need more light, or your plants will struggle a lot when it comes to flowering.

Daylight bulbs (6500k) are the best whilst vegging, whilst cool white (2300k) are better for flowering.

As a rule of thumb you should be aiming for around 7000 lumens per square foot of space, a 250w hps puts out around 30k lumens which is just enough at a push for my small tent for 4 plants.

You either need a) a lot more bulbs or b) Less plants

The light you have at the moment will be good for two plants max (it will keep them alive), but you will have to find a way of getting those bulbs up close and personal, the penetration on cfls sucks ass

It may be worth considering a bigger light, you can pick up some pretty good deals online. The way i see it, once youve bought all the bulbs you need, paid for all the wire, circuit breakers, and materials to make reflector etc (oh plus the costs of fire proofing your house!) You may as well just buy an HPS.

Just my 2C

BlazingGlory said:

Hello everybody, I am a first-time poster (Though I've been reading this forum for a while; It's very helpful) and a first time grower.

I have a meager set-up in my closet with 5 little plants about their 3rd or 4th week through their veg and im lighting them with helical cfls. I've searched for a while and found a variety of answers for my question so i've decided just to post to find out what is right for me. Currently i have 2 26W CFLS, 3 42W cfls, and 1 23W CFL. I realise many more will be needed as the plants continue to become bigger.

My Question: How should i disperse my light set-up (In other words, what bulbs should I use and for when / should i just use them all/ use mostly one kind and maybe throw in one of another different kind of bulb?)... Also how many lights per plant and of what kind should i look into buying in the near future?

Many Thanks. Peace.

Click to expand...

What up dude. I started my grow a couple of months ago, used only one 250W CFL for vegin. It all depends on what u are tryin to get. If you want them tall then you might need more light. But at the same time it depends on how big your grow space is etc. You need to find out lumen/space ratio and go from there. My 250W Cfl was great, had about 6-7 plants gettin nice and bushy, but they were in a really small place 1x1x1 meters. (google to get in feet at the same time it was a special CFL designed for growing, 25000 Kelvin. But when flowerin came around I went with HPS. CFL compared to the 400W Hps was non existant back to your question, seedling stage u will only need one of them cfl of 26W, but as soon as a week later that wont be enough. Increase gradually, but sooner or later the will begin to strech and that is no good. As you may know it's not in the amount of Watt, but what kind of light spectrum they are. A lot of info on this here on rollitup and otherwise on the net. Time to put on the nerd googles best of luck

I always start mine with one 23 watt 6500K CFL directly over the seedling. I always have a "Y" splitter with two bulbs and two seedlings side by side in 4" pots. when the plant needs to be transplanted into bigger pots I then put each plant under two CFL bulbs and put the other pot under it's own two CFL combo. i keep them under these two lights until i'm ready to flower. some may say more light is neededbut i never have a steching problem of poor growth by doing this. your plant will tell you what it needs. it sounds like you have done your homework, i'd start with the small bulbs, and if your plants need more light they will show you signs. hope the grow goes well for ya!!!

http://www.concept420.com/marijuana_lighting.htm

nice info

Thanks all, I will be hitting up the stores tommorow in search for more lights!... Of course the more lights I add, the hotter the room gets, and its hard to set up a fan in a stealth closet to keep it cool without it being noticed... But thats a matter Im going to have to figure out on my own... I have to consider that maybe until i can upgrade to a bigger, more functional grow space, I might have to just suck it up and use CFLs... But like I said thanks so much!

While we are talking about lights and lighting and what not, super quick question; Say I usually stuck with a 24/0 light cycle, but i wanted to throw in a 3 or so hour break every few days for certain stealth reasons, will that harm the plant? In other words, provided i give my plants the appropriate light they need, does it hurt if i give my plants random breaks (spaced apart more than 24 hours of course)?

Hi again bg,

Good choice with getting more lights. In a space that small you will want to get the bulbs as close as possible. To do this you may have to employ a combination of training techniques namely topping and lst (low stress training). Here is a great guide for topping i employed this yself with great results:

https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/151706-uncle-bens-topping-technique-get.html

There are also guides out there on lst as well, so that you can keep the plants close to the pot, this gives you opportunities to really utilise your space and get those lights nice and close. With 4 colas you could train these to the edges of the pots to form a cross, from there your plant will get more light to lower buds and increase your yield..... but there are many possibilities with lst

With the 24 hour lights on thing, personally i grew this way before with cfls and it stressed the hell out of my plants to the point where they hermied. I think now looking back that 16/8 is a more natural approach or if you really want to push it then 20/4. 24 hrs of light does strange things to a plant IMO, and theres nowhere outdoors where they would have these conditions.

Can you use a couple of pc fans to exhaust it? The more the better. Even with a passive intake it will keep things cooler