LED Grow Lights Used In Combination With Tight Spaces Totally Rules

Posted by bsledlee on January 3rd, 2014

LED Grow Lights For Closet And Grow Box Grows

Led grow lights have hit the market 5 years ago now, and have came up in a big way. Now, you can get led grow light in all kinds of shapes, sizes, and types. What hasn't really been discussed a lot in the world of led grow lights is their great usefulness in tight spaces such as closets and grow boxes. Probably the best property a led grow light system has is the ability to keep cool- even in situations or spaces where there isn't a lot of space for the led grow light to be sitting in.

HID grow light systems need a great amount of cooling to keep the grow space cool enough to grow in properly. Plants when growing in normal conditions need to be kept at between 72 and 80 degrees if you want optimal growth. Because of this, most growers have to use inline fans that push hundreds of cubic feet per minute of air past the light bulb itself in order to keep that heat out of the grow area. This fan is usually pretty loud and consumes some electricity all in its own never mind it adding extra cost to run the light system itself. Besides maintaining a cooling system for your hid grow lights, you must also must replace the bulbs themselves every year of operation to keep peak light efficiency. Expired bulbs will not produce the proper spectrum of light being produced that plants like and will guarantee a lack luster product.

Yes, this light produced by HID systems is very intense, however the costs associated with maintaining this type of light system is actually becoming near par with what it costs to actually purchase a quality led grow light system that actually works well.

The main disadvantage that these HID light systems have is the fact that these light systems need their heat pumped outside of the room that they are in, and not just into a close adjacent room where the plants are growing. If a grow room intake air is coming in from one area, then you need to be exhausting your light systems heat somewhere else. In a lot of situations, it is not easy to dump this heat somewhere else, and especially for smaller grows.

A typical way that people get rid of this hot air that comes from their hid lighting hoods is to vent this heat to their attic as heat always rises. This is actually probably the best way to get rid of the heat, but it requires you to cut a hole in your ceiling, and may not be the best option for you if your growing in an enclosed or smaller and are not running a commercial operation.

An led grow light system will allow the closet or grow box grower to light up his or her plants with some intense light that simply will not require light cooling that extends beyond the typical air circulation that is generated for co2 replenishment. If you are not aware of how often a grow space needs to be replenished with fresh air, the general rule of thumb is 6 times per hour, so this should give you an idea to how little heat the efficient led grow light really produces.

I have seen quite a few people put together great little closet grows that just line their closets with led panel systems. The people that have done this have shown quite impressive results. What these guys would do is put the units edge to edge in the closet and then only about a foot off the top of the plants as to generate the ideal amount of lights for the plants. In order to make the best out of the fruiting or flowering cycles, they would actually swap out their vegetative led grow light systems when it was time for flowering with some led lights that were more suited for flowering.

Led grow lights that are suited for flowering are in the 2800-3000 kelvin range and veg led grow lights are in the 6800-7200K range. My friends were always telling me to buy the led grow lights from Ms-led-store because they were a solid unit. The units they make there at their main distribution center are well suited for both vegetative growth and flowering both depending on what stage of plant growth your plants are in; they have units that are perfect for both stages of growth.

Don't be fooled with those high price usa led grow light units that are made with crappy led's as they simply don't shoot out the right spectrum of light that your plants need to grow properly. Stick with paying just a little more for the quality units and receive the results that your looking to achieve with led in the first place.

As a bonus when your growing in a grow box or closet, you can line the walls of your grow space with some mylar film or actually just paint the interior with super bright reflective paint to make the most of the led grow light you have in there. Since you can actually keep your led grow light units so close together in your grow space, you don't really even need to do this, however every little bit of light your plants can soak up from the sides will result in an overall greater yield.

Additionally, you can go ahead and join your led grow lights units together using some sort of adhesive materials such as sticky tack or tape so that light can't escape past the sides of the led grow light units themselves, but again this is not entirely necessary to be getting decent results from this type of setup.

If your looking to grow with a smaller setup, then go for the new technology- led grow light panels. You can end up paying about the same amount of money for the led grow light technology in the long run when you figure in the costs of electricity, bulb costs, cooling, and ancillary parts that are necessary to run a hid system, so get with the times and start running LED already.