Dog, no worries if your uncle is happy with the results he's getting, he should stick with it! Experimentation can only go so far if you are on a schedule. :-)


I made a few modifications to my setup. First, I swapped the LED bulbs that were combo red/blue with solid red ones, so all eight LED bulbs are solid red now, and to counterbalance the loss of blue, I swapped the 2700K CFLs with 6500K, so during the daylight hours it still looks like high noon in there. :-)

The cheese and the BK are still vegging, so I took out one of the incandescent bulbs. I think (hope?) this will help encourage the plants to flower. If not, I might reduce Far Red to nothing and/or introduce some complete darkness at the just before the start of the day cycle...

So right now, I have:
12h:
2x 42w 6500K CFLs
4x 13w Red LED bulbs

24h:
4x 13w Red LED bulbs
1x 25w Red incandescent

Sometime in the future I intend to rewire (again) to have all eight LED bulbs on 24h and have only the CFLs go on and off for daytime, but before I work on intensity I will have to figure out how the balance works. :-)

Pondering...
(Same as Dog) I wonder if running 4 Red LED bulbs and 1 red incandescent would affect the plants differently than 8 Red LED bulbs and 2 red incandescents. Of course the ratio is exactly the same, but how would the doubled intensity affect the time clock of the plants?