Growing with LED Christmas lights?

Discussion in 'Lighting' started by SsmokeWeed, Nov 30, 2010.

  1. #1 SsmokeWeed, Nov 30, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 30, 2010
    This may be crazy but it was an idea that just popped into my head.

    So they're growing marijuana with LED lights, which I think are ridiculously overpriced. So I was wondering, how credible is it that you can grow marijuana with LED Christmas lights (if you got the correct spectrum of course).

    :wave:
     
  2. dude awesome idea i would love to know if this would seriously work!!
     
  3. i dont think you would be able to find them in the right spec but i can always be wrong
     
  4. I always thought I noticed my christmas trees getting bigger after we put the lights up. :eek:
     
  5. I thought that too, but the it occurred to me that they come in virtually every color you can think of :rolleyes:

    :laughing:
     
  6. well why not try a canimas tree this year lol
     
  7. That's PERFECT :D;)

    No one knows if LED Christmas lights will grow a tree?
     
  8. I don't really think anyone thinks tree lights will grow cannabis.You'd be better servered to buy an led flood light for under $20 at least the leds are grouped together and they are a blue spectrum.Add a cool white cfl 2700k and you got your red spectrum cheap too.


    Heres one for $23

    PAR30 60-LED Flood Light Bulb, Long, White
     
  9. Nah, LED's are the future of grow lights, but not today. They still lack the power of a HPS bulb. Don't waste your time with any crappy christmas leds, you'll get nowhere.
     

  10. sounds about right
     

  11. yep.

    try asking this question in one of the beginner questions threads to get a better explanation of why this would not work.

    http://forum.grasscity.com/absolute...want-grow-marijuana-your-s-answered-here.html
     

  12. i meant you should post it in that particular thread, titled "so you want to grow marijuana? questions answered here." the mod is a grower of some 15 years experience, but he has been out for awhile with an illness so on second thought it might take some time. in the meantime, the reasons this is a bad idea are 1) growing cannabis (any plant really) requires a specific color temperature, corresponding to specific wavelengths of light, which appear at different points on the EM spectrum. not to say that christmas lights couldn't coincidentally have an appropriate spectrum, but it is unlikely. i haven't looked at a box of christmas lights recently, but i would venture a safe guess that the color temperature is not listed. 2) even if you found a perfect match for spectrum, the number of lights required for even one plant are enormous. i'm assuming you're wanting to use the LED christmas lights, so the CFL "rule of thumb" of 100 true watts per plant doesn't necessarily apply, but even commercial LED grow lights are barely climbing up just above the threshold of efficiency that makes them useful. the technology is advancing, but is nowhere near viable, and that's for LED's engineered to specific standards; christmas lights are for lighting doorways, not growing plants. actually, i bet if you used enough christmas lights to crowd out all the volume in your grow space, you could get some growth. cannabis is an impressively resilient plant, and it might grow. but would there be any bud to smoke? nah. even if you could you would be spending so much money on the required number of frigging christmas lights that you might as well just go get a real grow light and save some space. same goes for heat.. bulb for bulb, LED's produce less heat than HID's, sure.. but you would be using so many that you would have no advantage whatsoever in terms of heat control, and likely a similar story with electricity. those christmas lights are also extremely dangerous around moisture, and you can be damn sure there's going to be plenty of moisture in the air, on the plants, around the plants, on the floor, spills, etc. there's a reason those lights are cheap. they have barely any insulation around the wires, and so are prone to melting/overheating/shortages/potential sparks.

    also, it's worth noting that christmas lights have been around at least as long as indoor pot cultivation. if there was any significant advantage to their use, there would already be tons of people using them.

    lastly, please don't take this personally, but people who fuck off and try to get away with reckless shit like using cheap christmas lights to grow pot put other people's lives at risk. if someone got hurt in a fire caused by christmas lights in a grow tent, people would begin (continue, really) associating pot growing with people doing the proverbial concrete swan dive into the darwin awards. that doesn't lend any legitimacy to the practice.
     


  13. Then you can call it Christmas Blend
     
  14. Yeah, bad idea with the Christmas lights.
    They arent cheap but if you want to try led's use Stealth Grow's 1250 HO. I just saw it for the first time at my local hydro shop and it was f'ing blinding! I'm not sure if it is ready to compete with a 1000w HPS but this is the only one I have seen that looks like it might be! :D

    From what I have heard, led's will produce good bud just a little airy, not solid dense buds BUT apparently they really help the plant pump out the resins. If this particular LED lamp can make a good dense bud, I would be willing to give it a chance. (I just wish they didnt cost so freaking much! :eek:)

    Peace
    GT
     
  15. Didn't offend me at all, thank you for answering my question. I knew it was a crazy idea, but it was so...out there, that I thought it was worth a shot posting it just for the hell of it. I took a second or third look online and LED's aren't really that expensive. I have never heard a bad thing about them, but just now (on this thread) I hear they produce .. ... airy bud? That's the first time hearing that, I saw an LED tent on an Urban Grower episode that looked pretty damn impressive.

    No need in trying to start growing with Christmas lights. It hit me a couple days ago, the sheer amount you'd need, it would take up... ..most.. of your grow room to say the least.

    Thanks guys, and thank you Mind, +rep, your response is definitely deserving of a /thread
     
  16. #17 tplat, Dec 5, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 5, 2010


    I read an interesting article on LED grow lights the LED bulbs designed to emit the proper spectrum range of light simply isnt cost efficient enough for the manufacturers to use. The ones on the market now are close to the proper light spectum range but the LED bulbs that are manufactured in that proper range are simply to expensive.
     

  17. LED grow lights have a strong concept behind them, that you narrow down the spectrum to *nothing* but the useful ones.. makes a lot of sense. and it is entirely plausible, but like the previous poster said, at this point, to make them truly what the manufacturers claim them to be, is just cost prohibitive. but yeah man you can look up list after list of LED grow journals of people that harvested genuine dank; pretty uncanny, but you are just as likely to find similar grow journals where people with LED's got really whispy, light buds. i was thinking about LED's when i was first researching about growing, and the spotty results were what led me to just pick the tried n' true HID's, but there are definitely some people that just have success with it and i have no idea why it's such a crap shoot. i'd love to do one of those "comparison LED vs HPS/MH" grow journals, but i can only assume the guys doing those are fucked off rich to be able to buy a $1,200 LED light just to test it out.
     
  18. Shit, I saw them on an online hydro store for $39...
     

  19. hmm, you gotta link? i can't say offhand, but there are plenty of cheap LED "grow lights" that are just crap you can glue together with parts from electronics supply stores. i would guess that whatever they're selling for $39 is a gimmick for the suckers. like the christmas lights, if they were getting the job done and cost $40, everyone would be using them.
     

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