h4ppyf4rmer said:

just to let you guys know, no matter what I do, it's going to be a little down the road after a save a little cash for a separate bloom room anyway. I think I can swallow $1200 to $1500 for lighting. I was kind of thinking if a scaled back a bit and get a 5x5 tent for blooming, only bloom 4 plants at a time with two p600, it would cost $1200. if the two 630w CMH would fill a 4x8 tent, I think I could work with that. is there a heat issue with the CMH lamps? I honestly don't know anything about the CMH fixtures. and how far off the plants do they need to be, tents are only 80" tall.

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sixstring said:

That is the biggest light i would ever put in a tent. But these de 630 are good at making light instead of heat kinda like cobs.so like my 35w cree cobs are doing approximately 55 to 60% efficacy so 55% is light and 45% is heat.a standard hps does maybe 30% if your lucky so 30% light and 70%heat. These new de630 are supposed to be around 40% or better (cant remember the exact numbers ) but they put out alot of light for the amount of heat they make.then you factor the spectrum of a cmh which has a very good,balanced spectrum with uv also and these things may just be better than cobs.on paper they look awesome,I don't own one so i cant say for sure.but i.most definitely will have 4 or 5 real soon.once my new shop is done i plan to have about 60% cobs and my gavitas and getting at least 4 of these cmh.should be an awesomely balanced spectrum in there if i pull it all off :)

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h4ppyf4rmer said:

Thanks for all the info, I'll certainly be looking into the 630 cmh lights when the time comes. I also saw these Gravita PRO1000e for $500 on Amazon, but they seem to be too much for a tent.

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h4ppyf4rmer said:

this is the four week flowering result so far with the one p600, I can't imagine what a full lit room would do.
these are three different bud sites...

so I was doing some poking around and it looks like I could put together a COBs system for around $65 a light. still too expensive to build 32 of them };-) I'm wondering of I could get away with on COB light per 2 square feet. that way I'll only need 8 of them for a 4x8 tent.

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sixstring said:

yes you could if you ran them @ 100w per cob.

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h4ppyf4rmer said:

so what you are saying is that for COBs/LEDs you need a 25w LED output per sqft to be optimal. when I mentioned 2 sqft, I really meant 2 foot square area (2 foot x 2 foot) which would be one COB per 4 sqft which was 8 COBs total, my bad... and yeah, doesn't seem like 8 COBs would do the trick.

On a different angle: how many COBs do you think would be needed for a single plant, I was thinking 4 per plant max. Because of state laws, I'm only allowed 12 plants total which means I will never have a "full" bloom tent and a "full" veg tent at the same time. So, I was thinking of only having 4 to 6 plants at a time in the bloom tent which would lead to 16 to 24 on these lights. It's still very expensive but I could add 4 COBs at a time slowly.

I'm still wondering what the benefits of COBs over just two 630 cmh fixtures are seeing that you believe that two 630 cmh fixtures would do the trick nicely at a total cost of $1200. Is it that COBs are more efficient? last longer? better spectrum? ...

Thanks

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h4ppyf4rmer said:

so here is a couple of layouts that I drew up if I go with 35w COBs ... does this make any sense?

one would require 19 COBs and the other would require 16 COBs. The 5x5 would give a little more space within the tent but the 4x8 would give two more plants for the added 3 COBs.

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sixstring said:

yeah they would both work but why are you set on leaving empty spaces in both setups ?

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h4ppyf4rmer said:

well, because each one of those red X spots are equivalent to roughly $65 plus more on the electricity bill. If I'm only going to have a maximum of 6 plants, I don't need the whole space. That's just my rationale };-)

What 35w cree COBs do you use, I was looking on Digi-Key for the parts and there's a bunch of them. I also like the bridgelux vero29se for the ease of wiring.

I notice in your pictures that you don't have any shades or optics on your COBs, just wondering why, looks like they are not needed.

sorry if I'm asking too many questions, I usually research the crap out of things before I commit to spending the money };-)

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sixstring said:

I like those new vero 29 with the built in wire holders,its also a great cob.vero has 3 voltages,37.8v,50-52v and 69v the 69v are the most efficient but finding a good driver combo can be a pain.i will look at some part numbers when i get home.are you in the USA?

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sixstring said:

The 5 x vero wont work on the hlg 185-1050ma driver,i just found out the hard way.they light up but the driver is in limp mode so it only puts out 40w total over the 5 cobs.go check out rapidled.com for those veros.yes 2 vero29 @69v running around 65 to 75w is a very efficient cob and very fucking bright.you can use parallel wiring and it will give you some extra driver options also.

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