I've got two small 4x4 bloom tents to show you. All the same model: Sun Hut
Blackout 100s. Very nice, indeed. Plants are growing and Grodan Unislabs
and a rather unorthodox Delta Hugo arrangement. I've not set up any
irrigation yet; still hand-watering, and we'll talk some more about rockwool
irrigation once I have things set up and dialed in. But back to my bloom tents! In
the first I have- wait for it, wait for it- another brand new LED fixture! Woohoo!
This is the other 300 watt Sun Par model from AgroLED, but this time it's
pumping out a beautiful blue spectrum. Cue the Barry White music. Actually, it's
intended to have the same spectrum as HPS ;you can kind of tell from the color.
2000 Kelvin, a very deep orange light to help drive buds flower and fruit
production. And in the other tent, I have yet more chilli plants, ladies gentlemen!
Woohoo! I can almost feel the sting on my ring-a-ding-ding.
Yeah! Okay, now over to these lucky guys.
I have an 8 inch AC/DE infusion with a 1000 watt Digimax, double-ended HPS lamp,
sensibly dial down to 600 watts. Say that five times fast. I'm venting the AC/DE
straight out of the grow room with an 8 inch-er - get your mind out of the
gutter- Hyper Fan on full power. I'm not worried in the slightest about
over-cooling the lamp, as the air does not pass over it at all thanks to the
unique design of the fixture. This is really cool if you haven't seen it
already. The lamp resides in a sealed optic chamber and the heat from the lamp
rises by convection into the cooling chamber above. That's a whole lot of air
keeping the fixture and the on-board 105 kilohertz electronic ballast cool. You
should also notice that I'm pulling my air through a fresh 8 inch intake filter
to keep everything inside clean and dust-free. I do this anyway for a regular
air-cooled hood, but it seems like an especially good idea when the ballast is
integrated into the cooling chamber. All ducting is secured with duct clamps. Go
overboard with these, people. I lost count of the number of times ducting has come
loose in the past. Now my motto is: do it right, once. And I should say, please don't
misconstrue this as a "this versus that" test. While it will no doubt be
interesting to compare how the same species of plants all grown in rockwool
will develop under these two different light sources, we have just over 600
watts of consumed power on the AC/DE, versus 300 watts with the Sun Par
Bloom. The Sun Par bloom LED is passively cooled, so there are no fans, just a huge
heat sync above the fixture itself. The majority of the plant is about 17 or 18
inches from the lamp, which is just about fine. I'll use soft-mesh netting to ensure
that it doesn't get any closer than that. I have a high point of around 700
micromoles directly beneath the lamp, and high 400s, and into the 500s,
around the periphery of the canopy. Plenty of light to bloom chilis. The
light is on for about 12 hours every night when ambient temperatures are
their coolest to mimic their native tropic photo cycle. It can easily cover a
3 foot by 3 foot area, and I've left the 120 degree optics on to spread
the light out a little. The Par readings from the AC/DE are, not
surprisingly, quite a bit higher. As I said, I got it dialed down to the 1000 watt
Digimax double-ended HPS lamp is running at 600 watts. We're pushing 900
micromoles 18 inches beneath the fixture, and 600 at the canopy periphery. This
fixture definitely lights up a 4 by 4 space. Anyway, I'm going to stop there, as
this is just a quick update video so you can see what I'm working on. It's only
been a few weeks, but I'm already very impressed with the plant response to
these LEDs. Very glad I finally took the plunge. I'm still suffering from very low
humidity in my attic: around 25 to 30%. It's so dry and temperatures are
just creeping into the low 80s. This is forcing me to keep my nutrient strength
on the low side, an EC of around 1.2 to 1.4. If you don't know why high
temperatures and low humidity oblige you to lower your nutrient strength, don't
worry. In the next video, I'll be talking all about VPD, or vapor pressure deficit,
which is really going to help you understand how to keep your plants
happy throughout all stages of their lifecycle. Until then, thanks for
checking in, bye for now. This is Everest OUT, like a light... but an LED one.