I am sitting here high as fuck off my first homegrown and my room is fucking spinning but I am going to try to write a guide anyway. I will try to completely cover the three main types of indoor lighting used in the growing of cannabis in this guide. Please excuse if I don't, I don't claim to be a great grower, just to have done a lot of research and I wish to share it. I am also here to perhaps persuade some of you HID growers into T5/LED, even if just for an experimental grow, just read on.
To start off there are now three types of lighting usedly mainly for growing cannabis indoors. HID (High Intensity Discharge), T5 Fluorescent (or any other type of Fluoro), and now the introduction of LED lighting by products such as the LED UFO and the Procyon 100.
The basics of indoor lighting. The more lumens the better, I cannot stress this enough. When it comes to indoor lighting you almost can't have enough light. 5,000 lumens per cubic feet is a good number to go by when growing. Also another factor you have to add in to your lighting is heat. Don't want a big red pimple in your attic when the popo fly-by right? Also, the more heat the further away you have to put your light or lights. Lumens degrade at a rate square to their source. In other words the further away your light is from your plants the less light they are recieving. Just having a large amount of light isn't all though. You need "usable" light. This means you have to hit the wavelength of light that your cannabis plant needs. This has a little bit to do with color temperature but not much. Color temperature is the color that is emitted when all the different wavelengths come down and mix together. So you can have a 3000k warm Fluoro and theoretically not have the right wavelengths to grow cannabis. This is something that should be considered when purchasing a grow light. Also something to consider is the wavelengths received by the sun change throughout the year, constantly, and to achieve this transition would reduce stress on the plant and achieve greater growth. You can do this with T5/LED but not HID.
400-470nm and 640-665nm are the wavelengths you want to have when growing. You can find the exact absorption spectrum of cannabis if you google it I am sure but those are rough numbers.
HID Lighting
HID Lighting has been around for a while and most of the growing community, who have been growing for a while, use them. They produce large amounts of light for very little power and put out moderate heat. Your average HPS spikes at 610nm, 630 if you have a good bulb and ballast.
Advantages: Large amounts of light, low energy usage
Disadvantages: Spectrum cannot be manipulated as well as T5 or LED, also emit more heat.
T5 lighting is relatively new. Though fluorescent lighting has been around for a while, the HO or High Output bulbs/fixtures are a nice new addition. They produce Large amounts of light as well though they use more watts per lumen than HID lighting. They put out very little heat if any and can be setup to run cool to the touch. NO INFARED SIGNAL IS YOUR HOUSE ANYMORE.
CFLs Can also be used to grow though they are not as good as T5, I would suggest at least 4 26 watt cool white 6500k bulbs for veg and 4 47watt warm white bulbs for flower for any significant growth/bud
Advantages: Good lumen output per watt, run cool so they can be placed as close as 2 inches from your plant, dramatically increasing their potential since there is little lumen loss between the light and the plant. Also their multiple wavelengths can be simultaneously run to achieve a fuller spectrum.
Disadvantages: Not as many lumens as HID but damn close
The same goes for LED lighting on an even more efficient scale. The only downside to LED lighting is that in order to achieve a full spectrum, you have to invest a substantial amount before even beginning to build the light. (ALL LED lights on the market do not use the best spectrum and could use a good amount of improvement. It will not happen b/c it is not cost efficient yet, as soon as it is good LED grow lights will be available.)
nlite products - Revolutionary for T5 fixtures. You can achieve a near perfect spectrum, by far better than any I have ever seen other than sunlight with these bulbs. Combine several types in one fixture and you can hit the wavelengths you need within 15nm.
I plan on doing a SCRoG with a mixture of those bulbs with T5 fixtures, you can expect to see results and conclusions when it is done.
Also I would like to point out the Sulphur Plasma bulb manufactured by Nlite
System Frequency: 250 kHz
Lamp Power: 1000 Watt
System Power: 1320 Watts
Cap: Quartz rod 4mm dia.
Bulb Finish: Clear
Bulb Speed to Generate Light: > 300 rpm
Bulb Type & Size: quartz sphere 36mm dia.
> 32mm internal diameter
Overall Length: 150 mm
Atmosphere: Sulphur / CaBr2 & Argon
Luminous Flux: > 150 000 Lm @ 100 hours
Luminous Efficacy: > 100 Lm/W system efficiency
Colour Temperature: White 6000K / Red (CaBr2) 3500K
Burning Position: Universal with bulb rotation about axis of quartz rod
Rated Life: > 60 000 Hours (lamp)
> 30 ,000 Hours (magnetron)
> 40 000 Hours (power supply)
Warm Up Time: 20 seconds
Re-strike Time: 5 minutes
Lamp Output Depreciation : < 1% during 1 x 20 hrs < 10% during Rated Life
Wow is all I can say, they have already been implemented in greenhouses is the UK and the results are astounding.
Hope this answers some questions anyone had.
