No negatives. I mean, it’s burned when they touch it, it’s just that the spot is the size of the diode and the leaf’s not fried to a crisp.
It’s not at all like bulb growing. I don’t recommend it because you don’t want to damage them, but you can touch the diodes and they’re not very hot in most of the builds recommended in this thread. That’s one reason why we try to get you guys to go with the most diodes run at the lowest power and not overthink it with a bunch of wackadoodle stuff that bulb based marketing companies have convinced us we need.
LED growing requires us to kinda unlearn all the misinfo and bad habits we learned as bulb growers, or ignore it if you’re a new grower. There’s still lots of bad info about LEDs, but most of that is easily avoided if you read forums and ignore IG/youtube/lighting company websites. I guess that probably goes for almost anything weed related, now, doesn’t it?
Cool man. Same difference for the most part. You’ll want to harden plants off when you take them from the blurple to the new LED light you’ll build, or they’ll bleach and get sad. The new 2x4 light will be an enormous amount more light than the blurple.
i have burning of leafs on the similiar setup 180w - 180 lm/w ( vs 150 w @Greasсозданиеe_Monkey creation ) 40cm from colas minimum for me. i’l try 50 cm next day. If it not help i dimm to 140w,. my tent 2,3 x 2,3 x 3,6 and i use 3 x pc fans in carbon filter.
Just like putting plants outdoors, you may need to harden off new plants you put under LEDs, but once that’s done, they will soak up all the photons you can throw at them from the builds typically recommended here. If your plants have proper nutrition/temps/humidity/watering, you will not get any bleaching if you don’t go from low light to blasting them with new LEDs. I have my EB3 LEDs 5" from tops in flower with no bleaching or any other ill effects.
Also, you should dim your drivers rather than raise the lights. Raising the lights just wastes electricity, and walls eat 15% or more of all light that hits them. We use LEDs for efficiency, so deploy them effectively with that in mind.
I went through a few days when I first turned up my HID lamp; they all looked really sad for a day it two… came right back and loved the light, just needed a couple days. Glad I didn’t do too much to them.
Really wish i looked at this before getting my mars hydro… I think ill go this route to replace my veg flourescent lights. Thanks for posting this
Much love in the garden
You know, I guess it depends what your max wattage is and what LEDs and what height. Context matters! Got a KillAWatt to measure your LEDs?
I hate referencing watts, since power draw literally doesn’t mean squat when talking about LEDs. BUT, here’s a very general guide of wattage requirements for high efficiency modern white LEDs at each plant stage, and at no more than 6-12" above your canopy:
Well friends it’s time to upgrade my array a touch methinks, my array in its current form did give me flower I am still convinced I am a bit underpowered for my space and fall off distances. (28-30k lux from 24x EB2 4000k 1190mm strips driven by 3x Meanwell XLG 240 ABs)
The plan: At the end of this cycle I am going to rework my EB2 array.
Goals: Reduce the frame’s footprint and increase diode density and power
I am looking at putting in another 240w driver and the appropriate amount of strips to achieve this however I had lots of great help from this thread the first round which left me with everything I need except how to calculate the appropriate amount of strips per driver…
So here I am asking again if someone can check my maths.
if wanting to add in some of those gen3 thrives and going with a HLG driver, you will want to go with the HLG-240H-42 instead of the 54, and to figure out how many strips your can run you divided the max rated amperage by the desired strip amperage so long as your at or just under the rated max wattage of the driver.
so in this case with the 240h-42’s its 5.72a so that /0.7a = 8.17 strips, so 8 strips, or you can over drive the strips a little and say go with 6 strips which would be 953ma a strip which they are speced at being able to run.
Also only costs and extra $20 to go up to a 320h driver, just to note.
I know we discussed it in PM that it does seem underpowered, whats the wattage a sqft at the moment as my opinions have changed slightly since earlier in the year on what we can actually run so long as we have the temps and other supporting requirements.
well that makes sense why its low… so say 480w at the strips over 32sqft, definitely on the low side at only at about 15w/sqft when current recommendations are 30-35w/sqft and i think we can run higher so long as the environment can support it.
Im gonna have to go back and see where the mix up happened in comments, as would make sense for a 4x4.
edit : ok correction even still then, yeah doubling would get you into that very happy potential range
my 20-25w/sqft experiments were with autos and why i figured i could get away with it due to the longer days which i could, though starting to lean that high ppfd rates can be the same photos or autos so long as the plant is working and autos just have the ability to do it longer in a given day up to a point, and that it may not be a direct DLI day length time thing vs ppfd.
I had similar concerns. I mapped out the house wiring back to the breakers and then popped an extra duplex box through the back of a closet into the grow room so I had two Ccts to play with.
And Santa gave me a 15Lb. fire extinguisher for Xmas!!
@TerpSneeze The HLG-320H-42a or 42ab drivers are your best bet for the money, as @Mr.Sparkle noted. I just employed two of them powering 20x EB3 strips (10 per driver) and they pull 360w at the wall. Three of them would get you to the right ballpark wattage, and you’d want to run 10-12 strips per.
4000k isn’t optimal for flowering, so that may have also contributed to your suspicions of being underpowered. There’s too much blue in the 4000k for optimal flowering, and blue makes plant cells grow smaller and slower. To your existing 4000k strips, I’d swap out the three 240w drivers for three 320w drivers and add 10 eb3 strips in 2700k. If you do that, run 12x 4000k per 320H, and then 10x of the 2700k off one and call it good. Or add one 320w driver and 10x 2700k strips.
Your temps and humidity are low for LED growing. 27C should be the minimum temp with lights on. 80-85F is the recommended range, but I’ve had better growth at the high end of that range. With proper air movement and air exchange, much higher humidity (60-70%) will greatly benefit growth until day 42 from flip with most hybrids. After that, I’d recommend dropping it to 50% max to avoid budrot.
There’s still lots of bad info about LEDs, but most of that is easily avoided if you read forums and ignore IG/youtube/lighting company websites. I guess that probably goes for almost anything weed related, now, doesn’t it? 
Got a KillAWatt to measure your LEDs?
