# Red Light Blue Light



## theyorker (Feb 5, 2007)

Well here are the lights I am using for my all flourescent grow.  If you click on the picture and look at it full size you can actually see the color of the bulbs are blue and red.  So I will have a total of 34 of these 20 watt bulbs (680 watts for a 4' x 4' x 2' area), and they will be surrounding the plants from the sides and the top.  For flowering I will use all blue starting out and over 4 - 6 weeks gradually move to all red for the last 2 - 3 weeks.

My hypothesis is that by using flourescents I can better use light color (blue/red) to produce a high percentage of female plants that in the end yield a high quality bud in high quantity.  I will be interested in comparing the results to those produced with HID setups.


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## cyberquest (Feb 5, 2007)

i tell you i know i will be watching your grow. my ones that got moved from my CFL veg room to the 400w hps room are now getting tall and lanky looking. there were very short, compact and bushy and now are taller and stretching out. 
i have a temp sensor wrapped at the highest point of one of my plants nearest the light and temp is around 91 degrees so i cant get it any closer. the light is 14 inches away from the plant, so i am losing about half my lights value at that distance. 
with my cfl's they were only about 3-4 inches away at any given time. and like what your trying to achieve with yours the light is more around the plants and not just from directly above. although the lights are above the plants they are spread over the canopy and not just coming from one angle like the HPS light. 

i had decent growth from four of my plants that were only under two 4ft flouro with the same color bulbs that you have. although they were still far behind the CFL plants and have since been moved into the CFL room cause the ones that were in there are in flower now. they are showing much more growth under the cfl's then the flouros, but i had much less light then you have. 

cant wait to see the results! keep up the pics so we know how they are doing.


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## Brouli (Feb 5, 2007)

CQ  im going to try  flower under CFL's   couse  i agree with you and cfl's make plants stay short thru whole grow stages and we will see how thos that go   i tell you what help me with lights  look around  how many i need  and what caind  right now i got 18 42watt CFL's  
thats like 48600 lumes thats good for like 4x4 room right


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## theyorker (Feb 5, 2007)

Cyber, I find your interest in compact flourescents to be interesting.  I haven't been able to find any compacts that are specific for plant growth like I was able to find with the T12.  Also, with the compacts the light is coming from a single point, where the tubes seem to "spread" the light more evenly.  The funny thing is, from everything I read, people don't seem to like T12's much.  I hope I'm not wrong about these lights, because I have a lot of $$$ into them.  I guess we'll know in a few months.


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## cyberquest (Feb 6, 2007)

brouli you are correct with that many lumens in a 8sq ft room you would have about 6000 lumens per sq ft of canopy.

yorker, here are a couple shots of my cfl's in my veg room. see how they are spread over the whole top of the canopy. so it provides light coming from not just one point, although they are still above the plants the lights spread very evenly through the whole room, plus the mylar to help reflect it all. 

cause with the way they are setup, say the bulbs to the left allow light to get to the sides of the plants on the right, and the lights on the right allow light to the sides of the plants on the left. 

the last pic shows the plants sitting in there and you can see how well the plants are getting the light. the plants sittin in the front look shadowed buts tha ts because i have the door open taking the pic. when the door is shut, since its lined also with mylar those front plants light up like the others. look at the plant sitting in the left hand corner, notice how light is being thrown on the whole side of the plant and there are no dark areas around it. 

and all those bulbs are not "plant" lights, they are just regular household bulbs in the correct light spectrum.


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## theyorker (Feb 6, 2007)

You got a great looking setup there CQ.  Are you going to flower the plants in there also or is that just your veg area?


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## frankpeterson (Feb 6, 2007)

brouli said:
			
		

> CQ  im going to try  flower under CFL's   couse  i agree with you and cfl's make plants stay short thru whole grow stages and we will see how thos that go   i tell you what help me with lights  look around  how many i need  and what caind  right now i got 18 42watt CFL's
> thats like 48600 lumes thats good for like 4x4 room right



18 CFL'S is only 48600 lumens? And 756 watts?


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## Brouli (Feb 6, 2007)

yes i know but i wont to flower in CFL just to try how tall with they get


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## cyberquest (Feb 6, 2007)

theyorker said:
			
		

> You got a great looking setup there CQ.  Are you going to flower the plants in there also or is that just your veg area?




its my veg room, BUT i switched them to 12/12 light just to see how they do flowering in there. they are just a tad early to flower, BUT i have been doing it to the ones in the HPS room and so far we got 4 out of 5 that are fems and one just hasnt shown its sex yet. so far so good with early flowering, only one of the 5 plants had an alternating node, but they were all the same age basically cause they were all planted at the same time. 

the ones in the CFL room, none of them have alternating nodes yet, so we will see how it goes. i have had to raise the lights twice since i switched them to 12/12, they have about 10 inches of grow room before i have to raise it, then i give them another 4 inches, then about another 4 more inches so about 18 inches or so of growth on them now. we got a good two feet or so we can raise the lights so we will see how it goes.


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## noodles (Feb 6, 2007)

I was wondering how tall were plants were when you put them into flowering. Just curious


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## trillions of atoms (Feb 6, 2007)

no offense- but if you had alll those flo cfl bulbs...the equal amount of energy consumed, an HID would be cheeper and produce more lumens-BY FAR.


a 400wHID HPS is 100 bux at insidesun.com and will yeild FAR MUCH MORE than those cfls could ever compare-  with MUCH denser nuggs!!!......



just a thought....


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## cyberquest (Feb 7, 2007)

trillions of atoms said:
			
		

> no offense- but if you had alll those flo cfl bulbs...the equal amount of energy consumed, an HID would be cheeper and produce more lumens-BY FAR.
> 
> 
> a 400wHID HPS is 100 bux at insidesun.com and will yeild FAR MUCH MORE than those cfls could ever compare-  with MUCH denser nuggs!!!......
> ...




yeah thats the "common" thought everywhere isnt it. HID lights are slowly become the less efficient light by far. i run a 400w HPS light as well, and would anyday of the week pick the growth pattern of the ones in the CFL room over the HID light anyday. my cfl plants are short bushy and very compact. with the heat that HID light puts out it has to be so far away that they stretch like crazy to get to it. 

the HID light is more intense of a light, BUT at the 12 inches (minimun) it has to be away from the plants take whatever light it puts out and cut it in half, cause for every foot away from the plant that light is it losses light intensity by half. 

so what we are trying to prove is that the lower bang lights can produce us the same, if not better, yeild the the HID. cause we will have light coming from all sides of our plants and not just from the one angle shining from above like the HID. yorker has a hypothisis on using the flouro tubes, i am impressed with the CFL growth so i will be using those but still need to add to my grow room right now.


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## theyorker (Feb 7, 2007)

trillions of atoms said:
			
		

> no offense- but if you had alll those flo cfl bulbs...the equal amount of energy consumed, an HID would be cheeper and produce more lumens-BY FAR.
> 
> 
> a 400wHID HPS is 100 bux at insidesun.com and will yeild FAR MUCH MORE than those cfls could ever compare- with MUCH denser nuggs!!!


 
Trillions, the point of this thread is to prove the flourescent light is better then HID light.  The problem with flourescent is getting enough fixtures and getting all the ballists outside the box. By using flourescent bulbs I can perfectly mix light color and give the plants exactly the type of light they need.  Giving them 100,000 lumens of yellow light just puts them in a really bright environment if your human, but puts plants in the dark.  They don't see the light.  So by using flourescents that give only light that plants can see, I'm guessing that while these lights don't look all that bright to the human eye, to the plants they are getting really intense light.  I have more pictures.  I'll be uploading when I get back, gotta run to Lowe's and Home Depot.


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## theyorker (Feb 7, 2007)

Here are a couple of pictures of my light setup so far.  I will hang another 5 fixtures from the top of the cabinet.  Also, I included a picture of the outside of the box, so you can see how I mounted the ballists.  This way all the heat is outside the box and 340 combined watts of cool light is inside.  The fixtures are $18 each and I have a total of 20.  The blue bulbs are $4.50 each and I have 40 of them.  The red bulbs are $9 each and I have 24 of them.  By the way, can you tell which bulb is a flower bulb in the picture?  

So yes, I could have done this a lot cheaper.  My plan was to do it the best I could and I'm hoping this is it.


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