CFLs gram per watt?

i used 3 36w CFLs and got a yield of 38 grams. it was a scrog 12/12 from seed. buds are quite airy but has dense top colas, i shouldve lollipopped but i didnt

people talk about 1 gr per watt so i was just wondering how i could increase my yield?

38g of dry from 100 watts of cfl is great man.. im pretty sure that the 1g per watt is prob HPS. we give up lots of bud for lack of heat. Less AC, less electric draw signature...

so how much do people usually get from CFLs feel free to share your harvests and pics guys!

It all matters on how much cfls you are going to be using. Last grow i used about 300 watts for 3 plants and got from 20 to 24 grams a plant. Vegged for 5 - 6 weeks got them really big (not a good idea with cfls) and then flowered. I would suggest upgrading to t5s or hps if you want a bigger yield but if not you will have to use a bunch of cfls.

Keep in mind that people talk about 1g/w as ideal - an ideal most don't meet even with HIDs. 1g/w Would be over 2lbs from a 1kW light when most growers are happy with 1lb.

I've hit .56g/kWh with CFLs. g/kWh is a much more accurate comparison than g/w. For comparisons sake a 1kW grow with a veg of 4 weeks and flower of 8 weeks and a yield of 1lb would be equal to .38g/kWh. A yield of 1.5lbs would be .57g/kWh and a yield of 2lbs would be equal to .76g/kWh

1/3 gram per watt is a perfectly good result for cfl's, that's what i get for good grows
sometimes less, depends on the strain mostly
have gotten 1/2 gram per watt with NL, but as we know, NL is a large producer

growone said:

1/3 gram per watt is a perfectly good result for cfl's, that's what i get for good grows
sometimes less, depends on the strain mostly
have gotten 1/2 gram per watt with NL, but as we know, NL is a large producer

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growone, is that 1/3g per watt in dried weight? Damn I would love to see that with my WW.

nflguy said:

growone, is that 1/3g per watt in dried weight? Damn I would love to see that with my WW.

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that's trimmed dry weight, and just bud, but it has to be a pretty good strain for production
i do see plenty of HPS growers that don't do more than 1/2 gpw, so many variables

What size container?
Id say yield is affected by:
1) light type/proximity
2) Amount and type of soil/soiless medium
3) What happens to the plant in veg

That being said .3gpw with cfls is pretty freaking good imo. Id be glad to pull that off one plant in my setup sh!t...
Only things I could possibly suggest are the above; get a bigger, better draining pot, if possible keep the lights closer, and be more tedious in veg than you would in flower.

what i have found is normal cfls are about 50-70 lumens per watt, while T5 lights are more. I have a small high output T5 from HTGsupply 110watts and it gives off 10,000 lumens @ 92 lumens per watt so T5's are definitely the way to go! That is a beautiful plant though up top looks great.

thanks guys for the comments guys next grow ill will be using a 400 or 600w mh, my buds with CFLs werent quite as dense and i would have hoped

@RC7 what color spectrums do you use on your T5?

6500k for veg, 3000k for flower. I have heard that t5 light is better for veg than MH but am not 100% sure. I'm not sure if you know saldaw, but just to make sure MH is used for Veg, HPS is used for flowering if you aren't using florescent light.

To answer the original question, I think if you can pull 0.5 g/w with CFLs you're doing pretty well.

Though obviously not as good as HID or T5 fluorescent lighting, CFLs are actually fairly power efficient if you look at total light output/watt energy.

The big problem with these is that the spiral design of the bulbs is meant to throw light in a spherical shape. Even though the bulbs put out a lot of light, in practice lots of the light output gets wasted by being trapped inside the spiral, and (more important) by being radiated away from the grow area.

If you want to maximize yield per watt in a small setup, I think good reflectors are a MUST.

The problem is that good commercial grade reflectors are hard to adopt for CFL use. In this case, because of the rounded bulb shape of typical small CFLs, if that's what you're using, I think the optimal reflector is going to be parabolic (not "batwing") shaped, and something like that is simply not practical to fabricate yourself.

You don't need the whole lamp, obviously, but I think ideally you'd want something like THIS around each bulb to ensure that ALL the light gets used:

I usually get 3 oz a plant with 4 plants under a 400w so do we measure GPW per plant, or the whole grow or what?

because if it is for the whole grow then I am really close at 336g under 400w there abouts...one plant will be 2.4 and the next might be 3.5 or something, but on average 3 o a plant..

sorry to revive this fairly old thread but i think 38g from jus over 110w of CFLs is an exceptional yield already! i used 140w on my grow n got about 35g.. and that cola is dense for smth grown under cfl man, respect