question
- Thread starter 5ag3
- Start date
Pureblood89
Well-Known Member
depends on the strength of the lights... dirp!
BadKittySmiles
Active Member
Well... it really depends on the lights. A lot.
It's going to vary a little depending whether you're talking about 3 x 1,000watt HIDs, or 3 lil CFLS
It's going to vary a little depending whether you're talking about 3 x 1,000watt HIDs, or 3 lil CFLS
depends how big you veg it to. I'd do one in a scrog (screen of green)
tommyboy420
Member
i would say one light each plant if your using big cfls..it depends on how big you want them..
mededcannabis
Active Member
your cfls will work for a while then you will need an hid especially for flowering. you can fit 3-4 plants under a 400w hps but they cant be more than 18" -20" tall.
manditroy
Active Member
You can do a complete grow with just CFLs!!! You do not NEED HID lighting to get results, you just need to have good placement with a decent amount of CFLs. I harvested over 4ozs(dry) from 2 plants - they grew 34 inches tall - using only 8 CFLs and 3 single T5 tubes. Use 6500k 'daylight' bulbs for veg and the 2700k 'cool white' for flowering.
-Mandi
-Mandi
Hoja Morado
Member
HIDs use alot more power. cfls are generally low wattage light sources (commonly in the 10w-42w range, although there are cfls as small as 2w and as big as 200w). HIDs on the other hand come in wattages of 400w, 600w, and 1000w (they come in other wattages as well, but 400, 600, and 1000 are the most common for HIDs). If you want to check to see how the wattage difference directly affects your electricity bill, you can compare by deriving the kWh and then checking your personal electric rate to see the cost.
Hoja Morado
Member
For anyone that needs it, to convert to kilowatts per hour (kWh) and determine power cost --
1) Take the watt usage of the bulb and convert to kilowatts by dividing by 1000 (because there are 1000 watts in 1 kilowatt). For instance lets pretend we had a 600W HID, divide 600 by 1000 and you get .6, so a 600w bulb uses .6 kW every hour.
2) Multiply the kW by how many hours you are using the light per day to get kWh per day. Let's say our 600W bulb is a metal halide and we're using a 18/6 veg. light cycle, so .6kWh x 18hr of usage = 10.8 kWh per day! You can expand this out to KWh per month, per year, per decade etc. by continuing to multiply the number of days, number of months, number of years, and so on.
3) For the purpose of checking costs, I like to use kWh per month, because my bill is monthly so it makes thing easier. For this example, 10.8kWh/day x 31 days = 334.8 kWh used in March. So now you can determine the cost per month of the light by multiplying the kWh/month by the price per kWh, which you can get from your utilities provider.
*Note. If you are on a Tier system (like PG&E), find out what tier you will fall under by adding you grow system kWh usage to the overall electrical usage of everything else in your house (use a pre-grow op power bill,if you have it, to find that number easily) and checking how much over/under your baseline kWh quantity (find on power bill, or online) you are. For instance, with PG&E, if you use 101-130% of your baseline, you get bumped up to tier 2. Using 300% or more of the baseline puts you in ultra-expensive tier 5. If you already know and understand this stuff, you should have stopped reading a while ago bud!
-Hope this is useful to someone! One Love -HM
1) Take the watt usage of the bulb and convert to kilowatts by dividing by 1000 (because there are 1000 watts in 1 kilowatt). For instance lets pretend we had a 600W HID, divide 600 by 1000 and you get .6, so a 600w bulb uses .6 kW every hour.
2) Multiply the kW by how many hours you are using the light per day to get kWh per day. Let's say our 600W bulb is a metal halide and we're using a 18/6 veg. light cycle, so .6kWh x 18hr of usage = 10.8 kWh per day! You can expand this out to KWh per month, per year, per decade etc. by continuing to multiply the number of days, number of months, number of years, and so on.
3) For the purpose of checking costs, I like to use kWh per month, because my bill is monthly so it makes thing easier. For this example, 10.8kWh/day x 31 days = 334.8 kWh used in March. So now you can determine the cost per month of the light by multiplying the kWh/month by the price per kWh, which you can get from your utilities provider.
*Note. If you are on a Tier system (like PG&E), find out what tier you will fall under by adding you grow system kWh usage to the overall electrical usage of everything else in your house (use a pre-grow op power bill,if you have it, to find that number easily) and checking how much over/under your baseline kWh quantity (find on power bill, or online) you are. For instance, with PG&E, if you use 101-130% of your baseline, you get bumped up to tier 2. Using 300% or more of the baseline puts you in ultra-expensive tier 5. If you already know and understand this stuff, you should have stopped reading a while ago bud!
-Hope this is useful to someone! One Love -HM
BossRingsB
Member
i disagree, my first grow netted me an ounce on one plant using 1 20w 6500K CFL for veg, and 1 68w 2700K CFL and with a 32w 6500K florescent for flower
MsBotwin
Active Member
I grow 3-4 plants at a time. Just upgraded to a 400 Watt HPS from CFLs. In order to get enough wattage from CFLs for flowering, I'd say AT LEAST 100 ACTUAL Watts per plant. JMO, I'm a newb myself, only completed one grow so far, but from experience, the CFLs don't penetrate the canopy so you need to make sure you position your lights to get max coverage.