I assembled mine standing up, I know it says to tip it but I did not see the point.
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thatās not going to be an option with this one. Itās OK though, Iāve got a bro coming over to help w/ the setup, we can wrestle it into position. Iām still tripping from prohibition days, when I had to be ready to take down at momentās notice because of my landlord.
This tent will be set up until I move out so I might as well relax and enjoy the high ceiling & extra space. During veg I will be able to use benches and get the plants at a comfortable level.
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Once you get setup what are you planning to grow?
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Ohh yeah. Iām following this .
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Same issue. I just built it in position from inside the tent itself.
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Will be germinating a batch of BOG Sour Bubble in this tent on the 13th after my holidays. I will set up a grow thread for it. I wanted to keep this test separate from my grow log. This is all about the gear, my grow thread needs to be all about the plants.
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I read that on the BOG thread, I wonāt dilute the gear thread. 
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Itās all good bud, I donāt mind talking about it. I am quite excited to get it going to be honest. BOG, BOG, BOG, lol
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i beleive i read while researching this light they can go over close to 700 or something so your fine. looking good now time to put that light to test and get those bog seeds going!
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Hey all, ok so got some numbers for you. So to start with letās look at the power draw, on full it is reading 642.5 watts, when turned down to itās lowest setting it is drawing 68.2 watts. Now I also took some par readings while light was set on full. At 24" the PPFD is 841.6, at 18" I am getting a PPDF of 951 and at 69.5" it is giving a PPFD of 387. I missed taking a pic of the last reading but you can take my word, nobody is likely going to have their lights at 69.5" from their plants.
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Looking forward to hearing your report on the tent. Iāve had the 3x3 from them in use since end of July and the zipper is already leaking light pretty badly. Iāve also noticed the seams at the corners likely werenāt stitched well as they are starting to leak too. Iāve been draping a dark bed sheet over the door and front corners and that stops the issue, but annoying that this is happening < 2 months from purchase. Going to hit some spots with black silicone this evening and will live with the zipper like this until harvest when I can then assess next move.
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Iām not an expert on LED lighting but I think most fixtures run more efficiently when dimmed, so using a more powerful light thatās dimmed most of the time saves electricity & extends the life of the fixture too
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Nice equipment Doug, Iāll be tuning in on this op.
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Hey bud, have you contacted Mars regarding the issue?
I have heard that. With the PPFD numbers I am seeing the light will most likely not need to hit full power, time will tell.
Thanks bud, going to use it for my BOG run so we shall see how well it does. I am hopeful it does well.
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Waiting to hear back from them. Iāll update here once Iāve received a response. Aside from the leaks, itās a great tent, but darkness is imperative.
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I donāt remember where I read it and canāt provide a link but the way I understood it leds are designed to run at 100% power and running them dimmed was harder on the leds themselves
I have no proof to go with that though
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This is an interesting read. It basically says reducing power reduces heat and as such can extend the degradation of your leds.
https://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/nlpip/lightinganswers/led/dimmingLampLife.asp
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Iām an electrician for 35 years and in my experience running things underpowered always made them last longer, maybe not necessarily more efficient, but always lasted longer 
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Wattage is wattage. Whether itās a lamp capable of 600 watts dimmed to 300 or a lamp turned clear up to 300 watts your energy consumption is gonna be the same.
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Some more details on what I believe Muleskinner was trying to convey. Work being done for our purposes are the photons. Watts can be converted from electrical watts to a number of other forms, which can also be measured in watts, including photons and heat.
LED conversion efficiency (along with the power supply efficiency) changes with the current and junction temperatures. Also, as temperature decreases, LED reliability and aging will also change.
For instance, these plots are from the Cree XP-G3 white LEDs:
Luminous flux vs forward current:
Luminous flux vs junction temperature:
Notice for this particular LED (and the majority of LEDs on the market), the output tends to decrease as the forward current increases and also if the junction temperature increases. This is in addition to the ideal conversion efficiencies between LED technologies and OEMs.
While the wattage utilized may be equivalent if two fixtures are tuned to match on the bench, the luminous output can differ particularly for fixtures that are designed to drive the LEDs hard. So, while the power consumed may be the same, the actual conversion into useable photons (vs heat) will differ.
The metric generally utilized is the measurement of the luminous output (e.g. PFD) vs wattage. This generates an efficiency metric (PPE, for instance). If the PPE of one unit is greater between the two, you could run such a fixture at a lowered electrical wattage (for less cost) to obtain a similar luminous output as the second fixture.
Similar thing can be said, for instance, when utilizing a modern fixture vs an older fixture with first gen LEDs. The wattage may be the same but the luminous output will be different. Sometimes drastically different.
Now, power supply efficiencies also change depending on the loading. Typically, many switching supplies are most efficient at a relatively high load compared to the max rating. In such a case, itās possible to lose the gains achieved from an improved LED efficiency to the power supply inefficiency but this varies greatly between power supply manufacturers. Some are pretty good from around the midpoint to max load. Although, the reliability and the MTBF will generally improve running them at lowered loads.
In order to understand if there is a difference requires some detail on the LEDs and the electronics utilized. Or, simply bench measurements.
Is it worth it? Maybe. If youāre talking about a PPE of 2.7 vs 2.8, probably not the most important thing to fret about. On the otherhand, if the PPE is 2.1 vs 3.0 ā¦ to obtain a similar luminous output thereās a significant difference. It will show up on someoneās electric bill. If the price between the two are similar, the higher efficiency unit should obtain a check mark in the plus column.
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