I must be spending to much time with my girls, in my basement grow. Came up for some easy reading, and a 4:20 break. Seems LED’S r the way to go, cause that’s about all I can find in the Lighting n Vent. topic section. Did the world leave me and my HID’s in the dirt. I purchased a KINGPLUS 1000W series and was not impressed at all. To say it’s 1000W is just laughable, Although it’s a great supplemental to my 1000W HPS, that’s about it. I guess I could pair it with my 600W MHL n veggy room, but it’s already a crowded house. Maybe to start my beans, but my T8 flos. have never failed me. Am I just to old r am I missing something with the LED’s, is my head buried in the dirt?? If this topic as already been covered, please point me to the post. :confused
Hi I’m sorry I can’t help as I’m a newbie but I am growing in my cellar (UK) too. I’m using 2 HP’s in a 4x7 foot. I agree led is a minefield.
What size is your room? I’d like to hear more responses. What are you doing for ventilation? Something I need help with.
Going on what you said you have sounds enough. For a 4x4 at least. I was told to use a 600w HP’s for every 4x4 but as I say I’m here to learn. Waiting for other proper growers. Hope you don’t mind. Sharing could still help us
There are quality lighting options from HLG (Horticulture Lighting Group,) Chilled, Fluence, DIY with Bridgelux, and even some of the Spider Farmers have come a long way. Be sure to get an LED with red spectrum that also has the latest Samsung LM301 diodes.
Many growers will agree that the burple lights are worthless. I bought one a few years ago myself when I started a grow back up.
Quality LEDs are the way to go. The light you have really only draws 185w. If you want a real replacement for a 600w HID take a look at something like the hlg 350R.
Somebody posted that Samsung stated NONE of their diodes are being used for the lights coming out of China and sold on Amazon. They are far inferior to latest tech. My 3 year old diy strip build, despite it being 3 generations out of date, blows away any HID fixture made. The efficacy and Color Rendering Index are so much better than older lighting that it’s hard to even compare. Unfortunately these outrageous marketing claims are casting LED’s in a bad light.
The main downside is the upfront cost of LED’s: generally figure about $1 per watt. The upside is the lights only need to run at around 30 watts per square foot which is an ongoing electrical savings.
HLG have some seriously cracking lights with an insane PAR output.
The efficacy rating on most of their LED’s are north of 2.6umols/j
Take a look at their selection. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
My veggy room is aprox. 3’X5’X7’, I constructed this room myself. My grow room is actually a converted small bed room, it’s partitioned off to aprox. 4’X8’X7’ that I can adjust with my reflective, double bubble R19 insulation for metal buildings. Both have fans drawing air from the basement, although I do have a inline duct system that connects the two rooms under the basement steps. Inline fan pushing air through out both rooms, with carbon filters. I got no problems controlling humidity, and temp.
Thanks for the feed back, have been doing my homework on LEDs, it seems they all claim to be better than sliced bread. Sifting through the various claims they ALL wright about themselves, separating the nuts from the bolts, makes my head spin. But I do understand the pictures of the various lighting spectrums, and the importance they bring to grow. So… I’ll smoke on it, then get back to my homework, got to separate them nuts, n bolts. Thanks for narrowing the field for me, much appreciated.
LEDs are the way to go, QUALITY is the major adjective here. From the replies, HLG seems to be my starting point. The KINGPLUS has found a home in my bud room, along with my 1000W HPS, seems like the girls have really perked up. I’m sure the red light spectrum has something to do with this, I thought they were happy, happy, but my eyes tell me differently. I’ll be taking your advice n check out the HLG 350R for my veggy. room. Thank you 
very much sir.
It would be a shame to put top tier diablo QB in a veg tent. That light is made to produce buds not lettuce. The kingplus is perfect for that. I have a 600. I like it. It draws 125W and I pair it with another 125W Bestva blurple and the two of them do OK to flower 2x2. I will admit, I am supposed to be receiving a 400 watt quantum board light next week. Going rip that 2x2 space a new one.
Got to say I’m a beginner to the wonderful world of Mr. Bergman, and really to this whole computer thing. When I started growing I kept my mouth shut because that’s what you did back in the day. The only tents out there were for camping, things have changed a lot since then and I haven’t, if it ain’t broke kinda thing. Laws have changed, it’s now legal to grow my own. So I’m playing catch up with the times, n everything I read about lighting, is LEDs, a subject I know nothing about. I stuck my toe n the pool n feel I got burnt, ignorance is not bliss. So I turned to Mr. Bergman and his wonderful world to educate myself the best I can. I’ll take your advice and any others I can get on LEDs or anything related to growing seed stock. Got to move on from the stone age. Thanks you sir. Wilma’s calling, Yabba dabba doo…
Gidday mate. HLG for sure. Got a 650r and a scorpion in a 8 ft tent. Frighten awesome.
Thanks for the solid advice, your proving my point. You say your diy build being 3 generations old as out of date n will blow away any HID. That’s what I got hanging n both of my rooms, I feel like I’m living n Bedrock and need to modernize. So no comparisons for me, it’s time to do some serious reading here, and at the suggested sites from the replies I’ve received. As for the upfront costs, the prices never go down it may seem expensive now but it ain’t going to b any cheaper n 3 months r 3 years. I’ll heed your advice about the upside and start my journey to LEDs. It’s just hard to leave my tried n proven methods behind, I’m pulling 2 to 21/2 ozs. every 10 r 15 days per plant. Mind you I’m paying through the nose every month n electric bills, n I’m reminded of this every billing cycle from my better half. Thank you very much for the feedback it’s much appreciated…
I made the move from 600 watt HPS setups to HLG led lights about a year ago, could not be happier. I also bought some crappy mars hydro blurple leds when they first came out about 7-8 years ago, tried a grow with them, deemed that they sucked and went back to HPS/MH, but led tech is very good now from the american led companies like HLG, Chilled, and others but stay away from the chinese junk, they still push old led tech and make up all the specs (watts, PAR, etc)
You can also do like I did and build your own. If you have access to aluminum that makes it even more attractive. That’s what I did and have enough set aside to build the final light in my 4 X 8 ‘room’. The thing is though I want similar performance out of this fixture and the newest diodes are well over 200 lumens/watt (mine are 156) so need to calculate PAR and build as close to that as possible.
The first month I switched from blurples my electric bill went down $60.
There are valid reasons to run lights of lower efficacy that generate heat: some Canadians grow under MH/HPS in the winter then either LED’s or outdoors. Conversely if you are in a warm climate the new LED tech is the way to go. And they are most efficient run at around 75% of rated output so you can tune your grow space very nicely. My fixtures have a built in potentiometer and have a Kill-a-watt to measure output and balance lights.
I totally concur… my Fluence fixture is a killer light and only pulls around 400 watts from the wall. But its a high end fixture for sure. There is no way I would ever go back to a gas lamp… only way forward is a diy big assed LED
Yeah but man… having a big assed Samsung loaded LED synthetic sun beaming down on vegging plants is like next to god tier!
Its more than that! You pay more for gas lamps to run em, to remove the excess heat, to replace bulbs each year, possibly a ballast now and then. The bulbs are potentially explosive if you get water on em… they lose efficiency fast when they get old… they are toxic! You can burn yourself with them. You cant dial them back to work in the room without sun glasses like led, the fixtures are way deeper than led and thus you lose grow height. So you can see that while initially you pay more for a good quality pro grade LED, in the end you save quite a bit. Also, because LED can be turned up and down quite accurately by a wide margin, you can use them all the way from seedling to bud. Oh one other thing… led run cooler do not only do you gain on a thinner fixture, you can get that fixture closer to the plant and not catch it in fire!
Now for the good part… 10 years ago, led were sorta getting there… lots of blurple lights… good for lettuce and early veg maybe seedlings and starts, sucked for bud… in the last decade LED have really surpassed gas lamps… the diodes can be arranged in various color frequencies including UV… blue and red spectrum. Gas lamps… not so much… kinda get whats in the street light. Seriously, turn up a modern 550 or Fluence fixture and man its like being on the surface of the sun! Friken nasty bright!