Downgrading? Time to ditch my 1k hps’s.

So I’ve got 10x7 flowering room that I’m currently in the middle of a big remodel on. I’m essentially using it as a 4x8-9 with ample room for pruning, plumbing, and air.
Up until this coming spring I’ve been relying on HPS lighting in the room specifically to keep the heat up during the winter and making my life generally miserable during the summer. My room’s in a basement and had barely enough local juice to power the lights and a few fans.
In a week or two I’m getting a mini split for all my climate needs and my electrical limitations have gone.
However, now that I have the power doesn’t necessarily mean I’m trying to rack up a massive electrical bill. I didn’t install an AC to cool my already taxing 2000w lighting setup.
so let’s talk options.
I know very little about LED but I know every time I google Jeff bezos is trying to jam the same spyderfarms down my throat and I really have had enough of that f’n dude. That said, LED is pretty attractive now that I don’t need my lamps to double as heaters and the idea of nearly halving my wattage doesn’t sound bad, but then who cares if I need to setup a second garden to match the yields.
I’m also very interested in cobs, but ffs I’m still trying to finish learning plumbing so I can get some GD sleep instead of hand watering until it’s safe to close the door and stop venting heat every night all summer long.

If you get the right led it's an upgrade! You can flower an 4x9 space with 1000-1200w of good led. 35-40w per square foot, around 1400w total, will put you comparable to the 2 hps.
If you get ready to hang fixtures, it's going to cost a lot.
If you're able to put some screws in and hook a few wires up you can save tons of money by building your own.
Theres lots of options, but most people seem to be going with the samsung 301 diodes now. The 561C is also good but a little older and slightly less efficient.
You can get these diodes in several form factors.
HLG and timber have some nice ready made options. There other decent ones out there that others will add in, but I'm all diy minded so I dont pay a ton of attention to those lol.

Ledgardener.com is a good place to start to pick up some diy basics.

Replace 1kW HPS with Timber Redwood or Fatty VS. It's an upgrade.

I use the gavita 1700e leds and I cant say enough good things about them. Yield is bigger, more colorful plus I pay way less on electricity and a/c. The gavita is only 645 watts and out produces my 1000w DE bulbs, run side by side the led nugs are noticeably bigger.

I second the gavita 1700s! I replaces 6 600watt HPS with 4 of the gavitas. Used 2/3 of the electricity and got a 1.5lbs above my average.
My friend uses fluence spydr and has similar results.
I wouldn't go buying LEDs off amazon. U never know what your gonna get as far as quality and safety.

I think you should change both hps lights down to a single 600w hps (follow me here) and build your own led pans (its super easy and you can mix up you spectrum the way you want this way too (very important because here you can afford to mix in some nice 4k or 6.5k light into the light along with some 27k and give those little ladies some blue light in flower and keep that node spacing nice n tight and have that red spectrum for flower power) i built my pans out of aluminum sheet pans, 3 samsung 301b v2 96diode strips per pan (2-27k's and 1 35k strip) and a 240w meanwell dimmable driver, 12-60v dc dimmer switch, some black and red 16gauge dc wire, a few nuts and bolts and some soldering and poof you have a wicked grow light... research ur diodes, boards, or strips you buy well, before you buy them lol (lots of people dont lol)... i have mixed hps and led for a couple years now and the combination is really impressive in the growth rate department for my ladies ill never loose that hps lamp its light intensity is still unmatched even by some of the better cobbs out there, they are tried and true, they really help them leds produce big fat buds... here is a bad picture of my pans lol very simple and about $160 a piece total... the drivers are the expensive part along with the strips but you can hang them from anything you can mount them to basically... as long as it can transduce heat out of the diode, strip, or board like steel, aluminum, fish tank lid lol be creative... dont loose your hps though kick down to 600w or 1000w of sodium and add 2 or 3 pans with 3 strips each and a meanwell driver to powwr you samsung diodes (they are the top of the line diodes the new v2s are even better and they work) but this would throw you into the 1100-1350w range for light but the leds should be equivilent to about 1600w of hps putting you around 2200w worth of light at only 1300w, i think you would be impressed with yield and quality of your herb... hope this helped, i also can provide links to strips and give a breakdown on my diy led boards and better pictures of the lights lol

Jimmy_Nugz said:

I’m also very interested in cobs, but ffs I’m still trying to finish learning plumbing so I can get some GD sleep instead of hand watering until it’s safe to close the door and stop venting heat every night all summer long.

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Are you in soil or no? Either way, there are so many options to automate watering so you don't have to break your back hand watering.

Ideas would be blumats (soil), drip lines, res + pump, etc. I think you will find automated watering options are much more appealing (and doesn't really cost you much to setup)

Thanks for all the help, everyone. I think I’ve got some direction and hopefully this weekend I’ll wrap on my drip system and have time for research.

The gavita 1700’s took all of fifteen seconds to get pretty infatuated with, unfortunately that price tag is just a bit much when I see all the “optional” 2&3 digit add on items. Not that I think it’s overpriced, it’s just that my sweaty-palms and heartburn for a month hard cap is around $3k, and even now I’m not sure how committed I am to going over $2k in lights if I should anticipate going a few hundred over that figure to get it it functioning as needed with the proper cables, controllers, etc, etc.

I was on timber’s site at the beginning of the month looking at a daisy to sorta see how I felt about their equipment, but the the units were pretty overboard for a 4x2 seedling/baby clone tent. I think a redwood and a fat boy should handle my coverage and supply more than a few dick jokes for my inner 12 year old to enjoy.

I have been pretty DIY focused on this project for the past two years, but lighting is where I draw the line. I think I must have shocked myself really well when I was a kid, electrical just freaks me out in a really irrational way. So naturally, my wife is an electrical engineer. if I start trying to build a light she’s gonna wind up adopting it. I’m not trying to add to her work load. Or get made fun of forever.

anyway, it’s taken a few days to get back to this thread, I think I saw a question about the irrigation. I’m in promix with cocoa and feeding jacks hydro and I’m actually almost done! I’m doing research in between juggling a 6 month old all day, but I’ve got three of those sexy floraflex octos going on a 3/4” system with an 800gph vivosun pump this weekend. Skipping the caps and using some cheapo amazon emitters. Really excited to see what happens when my 2L/3-4 nights gets spread out into smaller doses. Also sleeping. Anybody got a tip on a sweet low watt aquarium heater?

I just pulled down some 1000w bps and replaced with a bunch of BLI 315’s. Flowering them today but so far I am pretty stoked

So It was the yields of some dude running 6x 315’s and his army of pot dildos that started my whole remodel. Dude was claiming a very believable 4 lb 4x8 from the pictures with that setup. Still though, I think I wanna get away from bulbs. And I don’t want to hang 6 of those units off my ceiling. Although I’m about to sound like a compleeeeeete hypocrite about that part.

can’t decide between timber redwood vs x2 +3VL x1 orrrrr grower’s choice roi e680. I like the idea of Cobb and all that penetration, but it would cause me to reduce my number of bags to a larger size(one oriented below each cob), but then again, who gives a fuck, the best shit is I the canopy and the e680 has the kind of uniformity I’d love to see with a height of the unit that allows me to maximize my limited overhead space. Then there’s trust, I am extremely comfortable with timber, e680basically got a nod from green gene on this forum(in a one or the other vs some brand I don’t know), and that’s pretty much all it’s got going for it, but that’s a lot considering I’ve been on his feeding regimen for a year.