Affordable COB LED Build

Growroom Design
#137

No one is pushing you to do anything bro, you can choose to do nothing at all if you want.

From my point of view i’m producing the same yield with 9 Solstrips running at 280W as i was with a 600W hps fixture. The electricity saved allows my Mrs to have a similar setup in which she grows autos.

We have effectively doubled our output without burning any more power and less powerful extraction cos of less heat generated means smaller fans, carbon filters, ducting as well as less power burned by the fans, it all adds up.

This is before i factor in a better tasting product than i ever got in 20yrs of growing with hps. The potency is also at least as good if not better as less resin is evaporated.

We could not run 2 hps lit tents in our warm house without running A/C which would add much more expense and noise.

In areas where legality is an issue and the cops use infrared cameras to spot grows it’s nice not to have that single point of blazing heat that hps lamps produce. They can spot that from a long way out btw.

If i think for a bit there must be a good reason why we are spending so much on led’s…

I know, how about they don’t fry your plants when they get close enough to produce a decent yield :grin:

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#138

I can get behind that idea. It’s mostly an argument of cost per year to me rn as the cost per grow difference itself for myself personally rn is negligible. Maybe in a few years once I’m comfortable enough during my grow that the only questions I ask is about odd issues, but that’s pretty much where I’m at now.

While 15 a month is nice I’m on my last jar now and I’m a bit away from my next harvest. I’m trying to find my zone where I can keep myself medicated as I need to, so that I’m not living off ibuprofen while I wait on more weed. I’ll have to deal this time, but I’m trying to plan for the future. I go through a hour a month apparently and honestly I’m at 10g left to last me until harvest.

Tbh all of this is from me freaking out that I’ll have to go back to Tylenol to move around without my back grinding itself to dust or at least feeling it do that.

When I went into the diy mindset to get the pound I need between grows I’ve been seeing that it’s way more expensive than I can afford to pay for. I was raised to be as frugal as humanly possible when calculating long term cost, but I’m trying my best to listen to logic instead and at the wattage I need to achieve the yields I need it’s currently prohibitively expensive at 600-1k per light that I don’t have, but I could manage to buy a 1000w HPS/MH for 100-200. My problem is the electric bill will be too much with the cooling costs. If this summer when I just had my 150w HPS running is what you all deal with on average with a 1000w that’s really enough to deter me from that.

Sorry about the wall, but I just had to put it in words to understand what I’ve been told. Part of my disability I guess. Sometimes I can’t process something until I ask someone and that’s enough to Kickstart my thought process in the right direction. Again sorry for the trouble.

Something I just realized through all this is that you’re all using 200w or so to compare to the performance of a 1kw HPS with tastier bud?
Also what about CMH? I’ve heard amazing things about it compared to old tech hid.

Can someone show me the thread where @Palindrome is doing the Chinese cob stuff? I’m thinking ATM that’s where I’m most comfortable even if they don’t compare to solstrips or luminous cobs unless someone can recommend a good build for me.

I’m a total noob here and I’m just trying to figure out what’s best for me. I’m not trying to argue in favor of hid lights. I’m just trying to find the better investment and my learning disability combined with my anxiety attack made it very hard for me to understand what I was told.

I’ve smoked since as I realized after awhile that I was stuck in a cycling rant I couldn’t seem to break out of. Again sorry about that. I try not to as often as possible, but occasionally one finds it’s way out the cracks by surprise.

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#139

Not at all you’re asking the important questions and my empathy sensors are picking up how stressful this is for you and that’s the last thing we want.

I’m about to head out tonight or I’d get more in depth but a few quick answers:

200w led is not comparable to 1000w HPS. 1000w HPS can produce anywhere from 1-1.5gpw on average.

LED performs as well and usually better gram per watt wise as HPS, I’d argue it’s more reliable as I’ve struggled to get anywhere close to 1gpw under HPS but my cheap LED rig produced almost 1.5gpw.

I usually averaged about a pound with my 1kw HPS.

With my 146w LED rig I got 223g so I mean that’s half a pound but 1/7th the wattage.

2 Likes
#140

Getting a pound of weed isn’t done cheap bro or everyone would and the street price would be less than catnip :laughing:
Ok i’ll try to keep this quick.
My guide to getting as close to a pound of weed with led’s is eight X3 solstrips actively cooled to avoid heat building and the need for A/C. Hang them in 4 x 4 tent with a scrog net and have 2 big yielding strains growing in 10 litre hempy buckets. seen it done and the led’s should be good for up to 10yrs if they don’t get overheated. The money saved in electricity over those 10yrs is awful if you if you own shares in an electricity supplier but i cant see any other drawbacks besides initial higher cost for the equipment.

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#141

I didn’t mean to get a pound per plant by far. More like eventually when I find my method, but we all know some methods will never yield that much.

Now if I can add more plants to fill out space and get a HP again I’ll be happy for now. I can only imagine what I would have gotten if I had trained and not had so many issues last grow. Still I’m looking at 0.5g per watt at my 400 or so watts used. I got 200g after trimming it all and I had sampled enough while it was drying after the possible mold scare(that turned out to be nothing) to fill a pint jar completely full. To get a pound per grow I’d have to basically double everything and cross my fingers as inexperienced as I am.

Rn I’m interested in the science behind the grow. It’s looking like by the time I have it all figured out this auto will be harvested anyways.

I’m interested in seeing what I can yeild even with the small container.

Thank you for helping me to understand the lifespan I can expect if I don’t push the LEDs hard enough to burn out diodes. That will easily pay itself off no matter the initial cost at a 10y responsible and safe usage assuming faults don’t occur replacing drivers as needed. I assume the drivers would be the first to be replaced if you were able to make the LEDs last 10y.

At least I got the approval to continue growing again as long as I keep the smell contained this time. I finally squeezed the real answer out of them and it was the smell that made them say no to future grows. Yet not once did they tell me I had to contain it past the first month of the grow. I had so much time to fix that if it was a priority for them, bit with their nonchalant attitude they made it seem like they don’t mind the smell. I mean they went noseblind to it and somehow none of their friends noticed there was weed in the house, so maybe we’re all just sensitive to the smell. IDK. Either way I’m excited I don’t have to stealth and lie to my folks about growing this time as they’re not exactly stupid.

Oh yeah🤦🏻‍♂️ half the reason I had to grow in secret was my sadly dementia suffering grandma who moved back in the house. She’s a reefer madness believer. If she so much as smells a faint hint of weed she freaks out that she’ll go crazy.

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#142

Im doing China Strips, not cobs but here it is

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#143

Maybe go for small (micro) stealth grows then cos they are very cheap to light properly with led strips and you can still get decent yields if you have a couple of cabs going in constant rotation. Check out what @Mr.Sparkle (among others) have managed to achieve with very little space or investment.

Ultimately you need your own place/space to grow where you control who gets access. Good luck pal. A

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#144

Okay I am doing COB’s

I just got my first delivery of 12V 28Watt COB Strips - Will follow up on it, in the Hack Shack later on!

IMG_20181128_125246.jpg1200×900 811 KB

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#145

Can you get a lux meter app for a phone or something bro cos you are doing a lot of experimenting and it would be nice to see what you actually get from these things :thumbsup:

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#146

I have a lux meter on the way, my phone have a terrible light senssor I guess.
Have tried a few app’s and I can only get a max reading on 10.000 LUX from it, no matter what light I put it under and how close.

But in the end the plants will paint a clear picture, but yeah it takes a lot of time and not as easy to calculate with.
Once I get the Lux meter, I will post some numbers on the different strips!

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#147

What width are those heatsinks mate and could u possibly send me a link for them?

Cheers

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#148

146mm bro, chose profile A from the list then length etc :thumbsup:

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#149

Cheers mate I was actually looking at the same ones last night :wink:

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#150

You can passively run a 1 meter length with cobs or strips at around 120W but if you bolt on a couple of 5" case fans it’ll take 300W no prob and still be cool to touch.

The negative = If both fans fail you’ll have meltdown :grin:

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#151

Make sure your circulation fan picks up the slack if you have a meltdown. Should at least cover you till you get to your room

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#152

If i ever build another active cooled rig i’ll look into some kind of thermal cutoff switch. The easy way is just to run each fan from it’s own individual wallwart PSU so if one fails the other will still run :thumbsup:

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#153

I just want to run 4 cobs at 120w all together on 2 seperate lengths of heatsink, 2 to each piece without having to have fans running if that’s possible.

I’m already having a meltdown :sweat_smile:

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#154

Just no where near a metre for 2 cobs

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#155

No prob bro just order 2 x 50cm sink bars at 146mm wide. They will handle 60W each no prob without having to fit fans.

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#156

I don’t think his tent is even 500 wide @Albannach. It’s a canny little thing but you would struggle with a single plant in it unless you top it multiple times and constantly train it.

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