Heat problem!!!

Hi guys,

I have a major problem at the moment, I'm growing in my loft but my loft has an extremely low ceiling and I have been using 2 600w lights to run the operation. Basically I have way to much heat comming from the lamps and have a decision to make.

I could either get air-cooled reflectors for my lamps which would enable me to get rid of most of the heat during the summer months and keep some of it during the winter months but would use far more electricity than a LED setup

Or I could invest in LED lights which are brilliant for reducing heat and seem to give pretty good yield results but I'm not sure if they would give off enough heat to keep my plants warm in winter.

I have looked at LED lights from a company called Hiddenhydro on E-bay, they sell an awesome 100w LED that looks the business!

Also my flowering chamber is 2m x 1,2m, I think I would need 6 of those LED lights to run it or 2 600w HPS'. the HPS setup would double my running costs!!!

Please if anyone has any information on LED growing and any solutions for my heat and space problem please reply.

Thanks

get one of those tube fixtures and put a small fan blowing at light to blow heat away

well this would be alot cheaper than either option and you just dont use it in the winter. it works. Homemade air conditioner

Mr Reefer said:

Please if anyone has any information on LED growing and any solutions for my heat and space problem please reply

Click to expand...

they are VERY expensive still and not powerful enough to produce enough weed to pay for themselves. Someday maybe we'll have powerful enough ones. Look at it like a computer, right now we're at 286 level and you need Pentium 4 power. Go with the air cooled.

i would not recommed LED, you must look at the lumen output, and even then your flowering buds will be fluffy and yeilds reduced

go with the CoolTube, if you can get a high CFM fan while you are at it with some ducting, you should be able to get everything you need for under 400, then you should be looking at temps about 75-82

remember the temp directly where your plants are is the temp you are worried most about, but the temp say 3-5feet away from your lamp is your room temp, room temp should be lower, so having a circulating fan will reduce the temp at least by 1 degree

DO NOT TRY LEDs I SPENT THE MONEY AND NOW I JUST USE THEM FOR SUPPLEMENTAL LIGHTING....go with the cooltubes they work ten times better...the LED's just dont do it.....someday they will be the shit...just not yet

cheers guys, gonna go with the cool tubes!

Ever thought of CFLs?

No I don't really know anything about them, please fill me in

you can get 100watt crfls that put out 1.6k lumens, get 10 and build a custom board to hold them, thats 16k lumnes at 200watt

that sounds awesome, which are the best ones to buy? and could you give me an idea on how to build a custom board?

and how many coud you wire together and use one plug?

you're not going to replace 2 600w hps lights with 10 cfl's and get anywhere near the same yield. bad idea. cfls don't penetrate athrough the canapy very well at all. they have to be placed within a couple inches of the bud sites to produce any dense buds. check the cfl forum. most people using them to flower have 2-3 plants and surround the plant in cfl's to get the same yield as they would from 1 hps. i like cfl's and think theyre great for a small operation but it sounds like you have a larger operation going than what they would use. they work great for supplemental lighting if you need it but i didn't think that was your problem.

this is true, i have learned from my t-5, even though pushing 25K lumnes isn't enough, learning the hard way sucks cause once you realize you're just like shit, i should have just saved for this instead of buying this, cause i can't even use this now

goodl uck trying to return stuff to a hydro store, most on my side say 20% restock fee, that means you loose no matter what unless you just go big first time around which i recommend

How many plants do you have and are they bushes or single coala?

I have up to 30 at a time flowering, 3 weeks in age apart so I have a constant flow.

I have 3 mother plants for clones and ten veg plants in one area aswell. some I have cut some and others are straight. I'm thinking of getting the 2way CFL's from www.greenshorticulture.co.uk to power my veg area. but two 600w cool tubes are the answer for my flowering area.