Growing with cheapo $35 LED floodlights.

[Mospeada]

I got a whole bunch of cheap LED flood lights off eBay a while back, eight in total at an average cost of $35 each. They output 350 watts in a 3.5k warm white, total power consumption is 2800 watt. They are growing a Banner strain with 16 plants in total. To compare I have my horticultural lights growing a gelato strain, 8 plants with total power consumption at 1200 watts. It is currently towards the end of Week 3 flower and are growing in a 6 pot, 375 gallon RDWC system.

The horticulture lights are performing much better which isn't a surprise however the flood lights have done an amazing job considering they are an eighth the cost of the legit lights. I will be moving on from them after the next couple of grows but it's been fun regardless.

 

[916Fisherman]

Where are the 350 watt flood lamps? I doubt that’s pulling 350w at the socket for $35 but would love to see these lamps

 

[Mospeada]

Where are the 350 watt flood lamps? I doubt that’s pulling 350w at the socket for $35 but would love to see these lamps

I literally showed a photo with the draw power from the socket lol. But here's another photo showing the power draw of four of them. It's interesting that it's doesn't add all the way up to 1400+ considering an individual one was drawing 357.

 

[Mospeada]

Just in case anyone else gets confused these are the eight floodlights talking about.

 

[916Fisherman]

I was thinking they were individual flood bulbs not hoods lol. 350 true watts for $35 is amazing. What brand are they?

 

[Mospeada]

I was thinking they were individual flood bulbs not hoods lol. 350 true watts for $35 is amazing. What brand are they?

No brand, there's thousands of these from different suppliers. There's an over supply of them in my country which is why I got them at a good price but from what I saw on amazon they go for about $70 which is still cheap. Anyways I don't want to encourage it but at the very least I think it's a better alternative to the "1000" watt 100 diode LED's, which I started on lol.

 

[Jimster]

It looks pretty good, although are there always the dark areas that runs in a row? The darkness didn't seem to relate to the plant and light position, but it might just be an oddity from the angle the picture was taken from. Things look pretty nice, although I'm wondering about the efficiency of the boards that you are using. I don't know what the efficiency is for a ton of smaller LEDs compared to the larger ones produced nowadays, but for $35 I think you did very well overall. If I had your setup and felt ambitious, I might try to concoct some sort of supplemental blue and deeper red/IR LED panels. You will get plenty of light from your current setup, but the extra reds and blues have made a difference, at least in my experience.

 

[Mospeada]

Proper horticultural lights are something I want to look into making myself. In the end these flood lights will always perform worse than lights that are actually designed for growing.

Although it's a different strain there is a pretty noticeable difference in size with the plants being lit by horti lights.

Also these lamps generate a crap load of heat...I'd really struggle to use them in a tent without heavy extraction up top or a/c directly in the tent.