LED VS T5 I am buying and need help please!

[stunzeed]

I just built a new Veg room. I am looking to reduce the cost of lighting and would like to know which technology would work best for vegging my gals? I am still using HPS to bloom but need to reduce the heat and energy consumption in the new room. It is roughly 16 feet long by 8 feet wide. The results are more important than the actual consumption but I am trying to do the best I can. Especially since lighting can be fairly expensive! Thank you friends!

Stunzeed..

 

[SPEARCHUCKER]

For that much room. T5s.
LEDs arnt very strong and dont have the power to muscle large areas.

 

[stunzeed]

That's what I thought but there is supposed to be new tech on LEDs. Are you taking that into account though? I don't know that's why I ask. I read that (on eBay) a 300 watt LED has more "usable" light than a 1000 watt hps. But before I spend that kind of money I need to find out from someone that has used them. Thank you for your time though, I appreciate it!

Stunzeed..

 

[Growdude]

That's what I thought but there is supposed to be new tech on LEDs. Are you taking that into account though? I don't know that's why I ask. I read that (on eBay) a 300 watt LED has more "usable" light than a 1000 watt hps. But before I spend that kind of money I need to find out from someone that has used them. Thank you for your time though, I appreciate it!

Stunzeed..

Ive yet to see a 300 watt LED outperform a 400 watt hps.

 

[stunzeed]

Thank you. So what do you think of t5s then? Thanks.

Stunzeed..

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

Your veg room is 16 x 8?

 

[stunzeed]

Yeah. I'm a med grower for 4 patients.

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

With that much space, I would use MH. IMO, fluoros and LEDs are more for small grows where you can micro-manage your plants and grow.

 

[stunzeed]

I agree but one of the issues is heat! I was thinking mabey in the space I could use 4 X 48 inch HO T5s. Any thoughts? Thanks for the feedback everyone, I appreciate it!

Stunzeed..

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

I'm not sure that things would be cooler when you got as many of these as you would need. You would have pretty much a solid ceiling of T5 fixtures.

You have 128 sq ft. To cover this area with 5000 lumens per sq ft, you would need 32 4' 4 tube 54W T5 fixtures that put out 20000 lumens each. To cover this area with 3000 lumens per sq ft, you would need 20 fixtures.

 

[Kupunakane]

Yo Ho stunzeed,

Here is a url to a sight that you can glean good info from in the way of lighting.

hxxp://www.htgsupply.com/

Yes cfl's work real good for the vegging, but not for the flowering part of it all.
I have to say that I agree with the Goddess, in that Led's are really for smaller grow area's. I am currently in my 1 week of flowering, and my test is running with six 48" grow tubes, and a 90 watt Illuminator Led setup as an experiment to document the results of a grow that has been kept at 78* to 82* degrees. no real footprint at all.
Carefully add up your numbers, read a bit and you will find that you can get about 3000 to 5000 lumens per tube x your number of tubes.
For your area you would need minimum 9 four foot fixtures with two tubes each, giving you a total of 18 four foot tubes at 5000 lumens each tube. Grand total in lumen output would be approx
90,000 Lumens. Barely really even enough to do a good job of vegging. But that would be an interesting cost analysis.
At 40 watts per tube though, you would be drawing only 720 watts, this is still well below a 10 amp draw, and the heat footprint would be still minimal. Number crunching is fun, wheeeeeee...

smoke in peace
KingKahuuna