215 Watt LED Grow

I am growing under a 215 watt LED light I made my self. If you are curious about it I show some of the build at the end of my 25 watt grow as well as some pictures of the closet. My grow area is 24" x 35" with about 6 feet of grow height if needed. The walls are covered with shiny Mylar. I also have a removable side that sits in front of the sliding door on the inside it is just a big piece of card board with Mylar taped to it. It is removed for the picture. A 4" cooling fan blows in for air exchange and a can fan with a carbon filter is used for exhaust through a hole in the top of the closet.

I have my new grow up and going. I put 16 good bag seeds in to germinate Sunday night and by Monday at bed time about a dozen had cracked and sent out a small taproot. I planted 10 into 4" flower pots. Yesterday night 5 had poked through the soil. Today all 10 are up and growing, so I am going to call today Day 1 of the grow. I am planing on culling 4 of them when I transplant in a week or so to 8" flower pots. Where the plants will live out there life.:hubba:

Now I am going to answer the question you've been wondering.

'Why LEDs?'

The new high power LEDs are only slightly less efficient in producing light than HPS, but you can control the color of light being produced. I have designed my setup to produce light close to the PAR light spectrum. I am hoping by doing this to actually give the plant more usuable light than a comparable illumination by HPS. My setup is using about 35 watts per square foot of growing area or about the same watts per square foot as a 400 watt hps used on a 3.5' x 3.5' area.

dude.........thats awesome. first led set up ive seen. i wish i had the room for somthing like that.

nice !!!!! i wanna see what it does

Keep us posted. It would be so cool if we could get the same results with LEDs as we get with HPS.

Im definitely watching this too. I would love it if I could use LEDs. Smaller, better positioning, no heat! no $300 electricity bill!

Looks great! How much did it cost to build the array?

Awesome looking setup and concept. Curious to see how it goes. Lots of luck and plenty of Green Mojo for the ladies....:48: :goodposting:

bombbudpuffa said:

Looks great! How much did it cost to build the array?

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It was about $200 for the LEDs, $90 for the power supply and about another $50 for the various other pieces and parts.

i would get those seedlings up CLOSE to those led's man.
Within an inch . The stems are stretching and you are going to have to support them before long if you aren't careful. A fan in the grow room will help them strengthen also.

Keep em low man. Led's are nice but they aren't HID's and they ain't flourescents. You must keep em close as possible to the tops.Just wondering... with all the $$ you spent on the led's why not a small HID like a 250 HPS ?

Temps are managable with a 250 and can be used from seed to weed. Anyways just wandering if you were just curios on the led's or what. i just haven't seen too many people happy with them

Very cool looking setup.

Mr.Wakenbake said:

i would get those seedlings up CLOSE to those led's man.
Within an inch . The stems are stretching and you are going to have to support them before long if you aren't careful. A fan in the grow room will help them strengthen also.

Keep em low man. Led's are nice but they aren't HID's and they ain't flourescents. You must keep em close as possible to the tops.Just wondering... with all the $$ you spent on the led's why not a small HID like a 250 HPS ?

Temps are managable with a 250 and can be used from seed to weed. Anyways just wandering if you were just curios on the led's or what. i just haven't seen too many people happy with them

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Just doing it as an experiment. I have done several grows in the past with fluorescents. My 25 watt grow was done because a friend of mine did some web work for a guy that imports LED lighting from China and as part of the payment he had some prototype bulbs made for him. My buddy was hoping to start importing them and sell them on the web. He has never grown so he gave them to me to test out. They were a bust but got me interested. While helping him do some research for the prototypes I discovered MP and have been hanging here learning since. If my try at making the perfect LED growlight ends up being a bust as well I am going to switch to a HPS as I have never used one my self and I really have the growing bug again.

As for bringing the plants closer that wont really work as the LEDs are very focused beams and the plants need to be about 6" away for the beams to merge and cover the whole area evenly. The stretching doesn't seem real bad yet except on a couple and it is proably as much from the MG soil as the lights. I have already begun to supercrop them to try and control them.

That is one hell of an LED setup. I love experiments like this, I think that LED's are the future once growers figure out the best way to do it. I myself was thinking of a box that fit over the plant that had LED every 1 inch for spaced out light just to try on one. I will do that kind of stuff once I can grow something to begin with. Well anyway the setup looks awesome and I cant wait to see the updates on the little baby buds.

now when you say 215 watt LED grow, do you mean equvilant to 215 watts, or 215 watts of actual LED's?

I ask because the research I have done on LED's says that to have 215 of LED's would take up a huge amount of space. I have been looking at buying a few panels for my new veg room.

massproducer said:

now when you say 215 watt LED grow, do you mean equvilant to 215 watts, or 215 watts of actual LED's?

I ask because the research I have done on LED's says that to have 215 of LED's would take up a huge amount of space. I have been looking at buying a few panels for my new veg room.

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It is 215 watts of LEDs!!!

I am running 384 LEDs that are said to be 1/2 watt. In reality some colors are a bit more and some less so all in all in ended up being 215 watts. I am using a 25 amp 12 volt bench switch mode power supply which actually puts out 13.8 volts. The resistors and the LEDs are pulling a little over 18 amps so I am actually running closer to 250 watts but about 35 watts are being used up by the resistors.

Very cool man. pulling up a chair and a :bong1: to :watchplant:

Just a little update. The sprouts are doing fine and starting to respond to the supercropping and fan treatment.

The babies are growing. One of the stretchy ones got blown over by the intake fan, kind of a leaner now. Oh well going to cull 4 of them any way.

Mr.Wakenbake said:

i would get those seedlings up CLOSE to those led's man.
Within an inch . The stems are stretching and you are going to have to support them before long if you aren't careful. A fan in the grow room will help them strengthen also.

Keep em low man. Led's are nice but they aren't HID's and they ain't flourescents. You must keep em close as possible to the tops.Just wondering... with all the $$ you spent on the led's why not a small HID like a 250 HPS ?

Temps are managable with a 250 and can be used from seed to weed. Anyways just wandering if you were just curios on the led's or what. i just haven't seen too many people happy with them

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I was thinking the same thing except for 250 watt, for that price he could've gotten a 600 watt HPS setup...

mebeafarmer said:

Looks awesome!

I'm a rookie but I was wondering if Mylar on the entire floor surface would also aid in light reflection?????????

Good luck,

farmer

:farm:

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yes....

You'll have a great canopy with LEDs, but underneath, not so much. LEDs have poor canopy penetration due to their tuned wavelength.

Just bear that in mind. Even an array of 5w lumilux bulbs would have problems getting more than a few inches past the canopy.