Is a CFL cabinet @ 525w (actual) 30,000 lumen in a 18"x22" cabinet too many lumen?

Hello, I have been reading and searching and reading more but cant find my answer.
So here is my first post! I am building my first medical/personal grow.
Setup:
Cabinet is 18" deep, 22.5" wide and 40" tall. Walls will be flat white or reversed foil lined.
I will be budding from 2 clones (pre-98 bubba) in 2 self contained 10" pots with wick system.
I have (4x)105w 2700k @ 6200lm and (1x) 105w 6500k @ 6200lm. That totals 30,000 lumen, a little less than 15,000lm per foot.
I know the ideal is 10,000lumen per foot.
I am hoping for 1.5-2 oz / plant. any guesses?

QUESTION: Will 15,000lm/ft stunt growth or be too much light?

(Reason I went CFL: I got all 5 bulbs from a local distributor for $15.00 per bulb total cost: 75.00 for 30,000lm and I didnt want a fire hazard like the heat from a 250w+ HPS is in a small space like mine. )
I know temps will be the main problem, but my 2 fan CPU cooler (not a normal case fan) exhaust system and other small internal fans will take care of that I think. Any ideas will be appreciated-Thanks!

Also any pointers on how to use nutrient solutions in a wick system through clone root to flower would be greatly appreciated! HOLLER! (Reasons not going HID, heat venting, small space and and no large vent issues (I hope)

First off congrats on the first post, and welcome. But that would not hurt your plants, it will just get to a point that it will be wasted light depending on placement, if your wrapping your plant in light, every part gets a share and uses it all, but if using like most common growers and on top of the plant, it will be wasting because unless you have more plants, or more space for your canopy, the plant wont be hurt, it just will not use it. Also make sure you have good cooling system, and not place the lights to close to burn, also if you can set it up its better to have smaller cfl's as they put off more lumens per watt.

My Cab is 1.5'x2.5' so 3.75 sq ft, and at my max lighting I have 24,700 lumens pumping at 6587 lumens per sq ft, and thats with only 368 watts.

Ok for your exhuast with that much light in such a space 2 pc fans will not work instead get a twin window fan, or a stronger small fan(industrial strength).

Lumens are really a poor measure of light. Your 30K of CFL lumens is probably 10k from a HPS.. or less.. To be honest you would have been better off with the HPS and probably had less heat from it. That said, now you have the CFLs you're going to want to get them as close as possible, use reflectors and keep a fan on the plants.

Nice. Thanks for the replies! I plan on having 2 bulbs on each top/side and the 6500k centered each with a back reflector. I will start looking for extra fan power!! Then will come the log! Anyone know where I can find a wick system nut. schedule?

Dude, lumens are lumens no matter the source. You HPS guys seem to be all the same and mostly wrong... What you really mean is that the HPS puts out more lumens per watt than the CFL which is true. Just think about what you said, what would be the point of a manufacturer rating a bulb in Lumens if it meant different things for different types. Makes absolutely no sense... Just HPS psycho-babble again. Im really surprised you didnt tell the guy you cant grow under CFL's which is the common myth by the HPS/HID crowd. It amazes me why someone so convinced of their hps system even bothers reading a thread devoted to CFL's?

Sorry rollinbud but it's true. The drop off on CFLs is so significant that the HPS beats it out pretty hardcore. There's a reason why CFL buds are usually a lot less dense than HPS. I like using the CFLs, I don't have a HPS yet, but I am realistic about it. It takes something like 526watts CFL to equal a 400HPS, and even then I am pretty sure you still wont get the same density in buds.

You just can't get the same effect as having a larger watt single light source. In the same way two 400w HPS lights couldn't beat a 800w HPS. Even a 600w HPS would probably be better than two 400W lights, more light penetration = better end result.

"Sorry rollinbud but it's true. The drop off on CFLs is so significant that the HPS beats it out pretty hardcore."

That an entirely different matter lumens are lumens and you are wrong about the drop off....
Here have an education:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/isql.html

If you hae an HPS putting out 10,000 lumens and a CFL with 10'000 lumens everything will be the same except what I said which is watts.

Everything works at a rate. CFLs produce something like 400 lumens on a surface only inches away. Even an HPS at a few feet away put out much higher numbers. This is just fact. There's a reason why people switch from CFL to HPS and not the other way around.

I'm about to drop from 400W+ of CFL down to 150W HPS with a few CFL for filler.

Combating the heat in a small grow (18x18x42) is ridiculous.

You just wont give up will you, your testosterone and your religious belief in your HPS meme wont let you. What you are stating ...
violates the laws of physics, Ill inform the physics community
The inverse law applies to all types of light equally. A lumen of cfl is the same as a lumen of HPS...

For a given wattage yes a HPS produces more lumens than a cfl.
lumens are lumens, a 1000 lumen cfl is exactly the same as a 1000 hps or hid or quartz or incandescent or anything else.
Likely the reason people switch to HPS is because people are maiking grow bulbs and reflectors for them, plus all the disinformation that is spread such as yourself.
[img[https://www.rollitup.org/attachments/grow-room-design-setup/1492887d1284438863-what-wattage-hps-light-penetration-inverse-square-law-lighting.jpg[/img]

I haven't argued anything you've said except for the fact that HPS is better. I think what you don't seem to understand or want to because of "YOUR religious CFL belief" is that Lumens DON'T ADD UP. Hence, 2 lights that put out 2800 Lumens next to each other on a plant, the plant still gets 2800 lumens, no more! In fact if you were to take a CFL and measure the power produced by a photo cell under it, you would get the same for 1 same watt CFL as you would get for 5 above it (nearly). This doesn't take into account that Lumens are really a measurement of intensity for us and not plants, but still to argue that CFLs are any wear on PAR with an HPS is ridiculous. Give me one 400W HPS over 600W of CFL any day!

What matters is that intensity your plants get hit by. And a 400W HPS putting out 50K lumens at a foot away is going to be much stronger than any amount of 2800L CFLs you cover that plant with.

The only thing having multiple lights does is increase penetration.

Kinda like doin' twins.

i liek l00menz br0

eYm sh0re j00 d0!

The inverse square law wont really apply too much here that the cab is only 18"w x 22"l x 4"h The walls will be close enough keeping the bulbs near either the plant or the reflective surface. I cant wait for the bulbs to deliver so I can see what kind of heat temps I will have to deal with. I went cfl as I think it is less of a fire hazard and they were so so inexpensive. If I had good ventilation of course a HPS would have been better. But I doubt I could make a non-fire hazard HPS setup with 30,000lm for less than 100.00 total like I have with the CFL's =) Thanks for the input guys I will keep you updated on the internal temps once the lights arrive.

But you're not getting a real 30,000 lumens worth of growing power.

You're getting 6200 usable lumens with great penetration for the size of your cabinet - Compared to 16,000 lumen from a 150W HPS.

While producing 4X the heat.

I'm running 2 x 125W (8600 lumen) as a base with 7 x 23W spread throughout for penetration...

Loads of heat for 400W+ in an 18x18" box.

The problems is we can't really apply Lumens to plants. We just use it to get an idea of the light penetration. Obviously there's been some great grows with CFLs. But we do know that they don't produce bud as dense as a HPS or as much typically and at some point it's not financially sensible to use CFLs over HPS.

here is the calc. I used for figuring out the lux http://www.ledrise.com/shop_content.php?coID=19 and http://www.weedfarmer.com/cannabis/lighting_guide.php I find even with the max height with shortest plants (a combo I don't plan on using) it wont go below 10000lux at the base (without any reflector lux taken into account)

found on another forum describing how lumen are cumulative so my 6200 x 5 = 30,000 is correct.
Re: Will addding bulbs add more Watts and Lumens?
[HR][/HR]An einstein is a unit used in irradiance and in photochemistry. One einstein is defined as one mole of photons, regardless of their frequency. Therefore, the number of photons in an einstein is Avogadro's number, 6.022×1023. Irradiance might be measured in einsteins per square metre per second, if the frequency is well defined, as for a monochromatic source. If the optical frequency is not well defined this is a sloppy misuse of the term irradiance, which is defined in terms of power per unit area.

The einstein is used in studies of photosynthesis since the light requirement for the production of a given quantity of oxygen is a fixed number of photosynthetically active photons (about nine photosynthetically active einsteins per mole of oxygen formed).

It is named in honor of Albert Einstein, who in a 1905 paper explained the photoelectric effect in terms of light quanta, now called photons, an idea introduced by Max Planck.

Photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) is usually reported in microeinsteins per second per square meter (μE/m2/sec), one microeinstein being one-millionth of an Einstein.

It is also called the energy possessed by one mole or Avogadro number of photons.


The lumen (symbol: lm) is the SI derived unit of luminous flux, a measure of the total "amount" of visible light emitted by a source. Luminous flux differs from power (radiant flux) in that luminous flux measurements reflect the varying sensitivity of the human eye to different wavelengths of light, while radiant flux measurements indicate the total power of all light emitted, independent of the eye's ability to perceive it.

The lumen is defined in relation to the candela as
1 lm = 1 cd·sr
A full sphere has a solid angle of 4·π steradians,[1] so a light source that uniformly radiates one candela in all directions has a total luminous flux of 1 cd·4π sr = 4π ≈ 12.57 lumens.[2]

If a light source emits one candela of luminous intensity uniformly across a solid angle of one steradian, the total luminous flux emitted into that angle is one lumen ( 1 cd·1 sr=1 lm ). Alternatively, an isotropic one-candela light-source emits a total luminous flux of exactly 4π lumens. If the source were partially covered by an ideal absorbing hemisphere, that system would radiate half as much luminous flux—only 2π lumens. The luminous intensity would still be one candela in those directions that are not obscured.

The lumen can be thought of casually as a measure of the total "amount" of visible light in some defined beam or angle, or emitted from some source. The number of candelas or lumens from a source also depends on its spectrum, via the nominal response of the human eye as represented in the luminosity function.

The difference between the units lumen and lux is that the lux takes into account the area over which the luminous flux is spread. A flux of 1000 lumens, concentrated into an area of one square metre, lights up that square metre with an illuminance of 1000 lux. The same 1000 lumens, spread out over ten square metres, produces a dimmer illuminance of only 100 lux. Mathematically, 1 lx = 1 lm/m2.

A source radiating a power of one watt of light in the color for which the eye is most efficient (a wavelength of 555 nm, in the green region of the optical spectrum) has luminous flux of 683 lumens. So a lumen represents at least 1/683 watts of visible light power, depending on the spectral distribution.



Look people, let's make this simple: brighter lights emit MORE photons. ALL PHOTONS of the same frequency contain the same amount of energy no matter the source. The only difference is the number of photons hitting a predetermined surface area. Photons do not interfere with, collide with, amplify or cancel out other photons.

One candle = 1 candlepower
One candle + one candle = 2 candlepower

300 lumens + 300 lumens = 600 lumens.

Photons that carry the most enery have a lower wavelength; i.e. blue has more energy than red.