Hey Dog: my time factor... I've been kicking around in my head what my time factor is, but more importantly how to calculate it... The following is really my mind rambling around and me putting it into writing here, so please don't consider it any sort of guide or truth. :-) As always, I present ideas to generate more ideas... New ideas and corrections and questions and critiques are invited and encouraged.

I have to take into account at least these things:
1. Quality of light, meaning what are the wavelengths being used
2. Relative quantity of light, meaning how much of each wavelength is present in relation to the others
3. Absolute quantity of light, meaning total wattage of light rays bouncing around

So I have some 660nm LED light and red incandescent light, but how much of each in relation to each other, and how much overall?

Some seat-of-my-pants guesses...

8 LED bulbs at 13W draw each = 104W draw... since they're 5mm LEDs, they're not particularly efficient. I don't know how to calculate efficiency, but I believe it's a function of the intensity and wavelength of light coming out of the LED. For example, if an LED takes 10W input and produces 100 lumens of 660nm light output, I'd have to figure out how much energy is in 100 lumens of 660nm light to be able to figure out how much of the electrical energy is converted to light energy. For all light sources, including LEDS, this conversion is not particularly efficient as compared to other types of energy conversion. For example, converting electrical energy to mechanical energy (via electric motor) can be as high as 98% efficient, meaning 100W of electricity will produce 98W of motion. Efficiency rates for converting electricity to light are much, much lower. Even in LEDs, it's not that great. For example, a Luxeon K2 Royal Blue LED (LXK2-PR14-Q00) produces 475mW of light on 3.85W of electrical input, making it about 12.3% efficient (475mW / 3,850mW). Even though that color blue is particularly inefficient in LED form, it's still in the range of overall LED efficiency.

Since 5mm LEDs are significantly less efficient than Luxeons, I'll take a guess that my 5mm Red LEDs are around 5-10% efficient, meaning every 13W bulb I have puts out around .7 to 1.3 Watts of light.

Incandescent bulbs are far less efficient. Common references on the internet say 95% of the electricity of incandescent bulbs is converted to heat, making them 5% efficient. On top of that, though, of the light they are producing, a large part of that is infrared (even beyond the plant-usable 750nm edge), so in terms of usable light, they're maybe 3 or 4% efficient. Add a red coating on the bulb to block blue/green/yellow and you get maybe 1-2% efficiency.

So taking the high estimates, I'd guess 10.4W of 660nm LED light and 1W of red incandescent light (ranging from 620-ish to 750-ish nm) gives me a ratio of about 10:1.

Taking that ratio, I can then figure out the time factor for each type of light, then weight them accordingly. My guesses for those are 5.5 for 660nm light and 2 for red incandescents (from post 168 of my last grow log). Weighting those ratios, I get an overall time factor of about 5.2.

My current schedule is 6/7/10/1 so I have 8 hours of AD and 10 hours of SID. If my 8 hours of AD really are at a time factor around 5.2, that gives me a SID equivalent of just over 1.5 hours. Add that to the 10 hours of SID and my guess is that my plants perceive just over 11.5 hours of SID.

I think I've already gotten way too far ahead of myself in my assumptions and calculations, but I can say that a 6/9/8/1 schedule keeps the plant solidly in vegging, so the time factor is definitely more than 2.5. I have yet to see if the new schedule produces flowering, so I can't say if there's enough SID equivalent time yet or not. I can count and calculate and conjecture all I want, but the plants will tell me what the truth is. As I experiment, I learn, and as I learn, I can eliminate what is not true to figure out what is left, which leads me nearer to the truth.

One more thing, my Vanilla Moon mother decided that it's done with vegging and it's going to flower whether I like it or not, so I'm going to put that plant in here too. It's been a mother for probably 4 or 5 months, so perhaps there are some distant relatives that are autoflowerers or maybe I just kept it around too long. The flowering stage it's in looks like a regular plant that's been flowering for maybe 10-14 days, so it should be right on schedule with the shorter-flowering HDF plant.
Mother Reviewed by Mother on . Second Martian Method attempt This thread is my second attempt at using the "Martian Method" or "Artificial Darkness" lighting technique developed by SalMayo and associates. For full disclosures and disclaimers, see my first attempt: http://boards.cannabis.com/grow-log/165934-first-attempt-24-hour-martian-method.html#post1945600 but to summarize: I didn't invent this lighting technique nor do I claim to fully understand it. I'm just testing it to see for myself what it can do. This time I'm going with one Heavy Duty Rating: 5