Might be helping out another friend do a grow room build. He is interested in gavita led. Do you guys recommend led at all?
I don't know Gavita other than seeing their name along with a bunch of other corporate names to avoid (including General and HLG). HLG seems to be the one that gets the most love around.
If you are going to go LED. The only successful ones I have ever seen were COB (chip on board) self assembled kits. I believe he used samsung LEDS, I am sure you can buy them assembled, but you can buy the components and assemble the exact board you want for significantly less money if you go that route. You will save money on the electric bill and the light bulb bill for sure, but there are some give ups as well.
Have a friend that did a setup that grew great quality, he had to actually turn down his intensity a bit because his light saturation was a bit too high. The problem that he still has, especially compared to any HPS grow is in size. His being a medical grow, for personal use meant that he wasn't going for maximum weight, so he didn't mind the smaller plants. He grew enough (legally via the New Mexico grow rules 8 Immature and 4 mature plants at one time max) to keep himself certainly over supplied, but not as much as if he had used HPS.
That, as far as I can tell, is fairly standard across the LED grow world still. Some people claim to be doing just as good as when they had HPS, but I haven't ever seen that out of an LED grow.
So to sum up, it is possible, but you should be looking at doing your own board setups rather than buying prefab lights. I know that he did a shit ton of research into what exactly to buy and how to assemble etc and it worked pretty good. His power supplies were outside the room and only the LEDS were inside helping to keep the heat down. He had bought 3 or 4 pre-assembled lights and none of them got him the results he desired. They did barely ok on the veg side but didn't produce good on the flower side.
Had another friend that tried the LED's in two different pre fab forms, and switched back to HPS because the results just weren't there.
These were all people doing personal medical grows.
You're way behind the times. COB is old. Quantum Boards are the new in thing. Technically take that big inch square of COB and spread it out over a larger surface.
Instead of one bright square inch you get the same amount of light that's spread out over square feet.
I vegged with COB LED floodlights. They worked great until I threw another plant into the mix, then I could see how spotlighty they were. No such problem with a Spider Farmer SF2000 QB.
The LED's made in the US are good. But they are expensive as fuck. The ones from China suck and they advertise false spectrums.
Only so many companies in the world make the boards and they're Chinese. Others buy those boards and put them together as the greatest thing to ever hit the planet.
About the only real difference is spectrums and/or how the colors are arranged.
I got SF because they were easy. Because they are easy on Amazon they've been jacking their prices up where I bought barely under the price that would've made me get HLG. I do like SF's spectrum better, but now their prices would have me go to HLG or look on Alibaba.
As long as they say they're Samsung and are believable I'd get it.
For my buddy the cost part isn’t a big deal to him especially right now corona has increased the price per pound. He’s looking at led cause he’s a scared little bitch about getting a visit even though it’s legal to grow 72 lol. The drop in electrical usage keeps you off the radar. But everyone’s response is you won’t get the weight or why fix what’s not broken. Weight is definitely the goal here
I got 8oz from a 2x2 square x4' high, 3 plants. Not the tightest buds but it was way over crowded in there. Weight is definitely not an issue.
I've seen grows on a SF FB group that had tight buds. Maybe a HPS/CMH would've made mine tighter, but they would've also caused heat issues in that space.
If you want to wait 8-10 weeks I just started flowering the same variety's clone, single plant. If LED still sucks at making tight buds I'll have no problem saying it. Although if I still suck at thinning the plant out I'll admit that too.
www.globalgarden.co
101growlights.com
