Thanks for posting this! Please post updates, I'm very curious.

I love the job you did, but for $50, you could have built a 32 sq. ft. area had you used CFL bulbs.

Mike

I love the job you did, but for $50, you could have built a 32 sq. ft. area had you used CFL bulbs.

Well, for an apples-to-apples comparison, $35 of CFLs, sockets, and cords, plus the non-light costs, would cover about the same area. But that'd use at least 3x the power for the same PUR. An extra 140W. 140W * 24h = 3.36kWh/day = $0.336/day = 193 days payoff. And raise my cooling (or even heating) bills, and have to be replaced far more often.

I did the math before I did my purchase. :) Back when this many LEDs would have cost $500+, it would have been hard to justify, but when you can get LEDs this cheap, it's an easy call.

I'll keep you all posted!

Day 8 results are in.

Okay, first off, my apologies for the pictures. I think in the future I'm going to take the plants out to photograph them; the camera *really* is not liking this monochromatic light. Confuses the heck out of it.

The real stars of the show are the pumpkins:

{{gwi:1023494}}

Compare to the above photo and you'll notice how they've taken off by leaps and bounds. I'm going to have to move them out of there soon or they may start to do the usual mean-adult-pumpkin stuff to the other plants and the LED strings (tendrils, shading, etc). Other vining plants have also been doing well, although not as impressively. The only vining plant taking its time are the two muskmelons. They also have what appears, to my eyes, to be a bit of an unusual curve in their seed leaves; I'll be keeping an eye on them to see what they do.

I had some okra before I started the grow chamber. Three plants grew. One died right away. The other two were chlorotic and died shortly thereafter. Now that I have the grow chamber, I planted some new ones, and the one that's germinated already has been growing at breakneck pace. Just a few days out of the soil, we see:

{{gwi:1023495}}

I'd like to see more "out" and less "up", but given how little time it's been out of the ground, I'm not surprised it doesn't have large true leaves yet. Unlike its pre-LED brethren, it's not chlorotic at all; its stem is stiff and its leaves a very nice green (not that you can tell when they're under the LED light -- there's no green to reflect!) So while it's tall, it appears quite healthy.

The tomatoes started their first true leaves the day I put them in (I noticed them on the day 1 update). The true leaves are now larger than the seed leaves. An awful picture:

{{gwi:1023497}}

The least healthy of my plants before the grow chamber were my brassicas and lettuce. Both were growing flat along the ground, they were so leggy (much worse than the photo at the top of the thread, which was from well before the LED chamber was finished) and I had lost quite a few plants. Here they are now:

{{gwi:1023499}}

It's hard to see in this picture, as the leaves are getting washed out, but every one of them, while still laying along the ground, has a new spire of small true leaves sticking almost straight up from their end. The lettuce, however, is where it's really shined:

{{gwi:1023500}}

Notice that the long, leggy horizontal stems still remain, but they've erupted into a nice looking cluster of leaves at the end of each one. Not bad for just 8 days under lights, no? :)

These last two shots take some explanation:

{{gwi:1023501}}
{{gwi:1023503}}

I wish I had an old picture of this plant. This plant is a "charity case" -- a basil from last year. It, along with several other neighbors in its pot, were outside last year during the first freeze. One by one, the plants in the pot died and were plucked out. 90% of this plant died, but there was one leaf cluster that remained -- but looked sickly. I trimmed back its dead matter and put it in here. And what do you know -- it's raised itself from near the ground up toward the ceiling, and has grown a new whorl of leaves in the center of the sickly ones! I think there may be some life left in this plant after all! :)

So that's the 8 day update. The next update will be a bit different. The rest of my LED order has arrived. I've added one string of red and one of orange to the veg chamber. I'm also prepping to build a chamber for more mature plants, to be red dominated. It's based on a UFO light that I got a steal on, plus one orange and one blue christmas light string.

The orange LEDs I bought are unimpressive. They're only half-wave rectified (you can tell because there's a faint rapid flickering), and at least part of the orange color comes from orange-colored plastic rather than the LEDs themselves. And orange is inherently a less efficient color for LEDs; red and blue are the most efficient colors. So even though these are 100 LEDs with the same resistance as the other 7W blue and red chains, and are only using 100*sqrt(0.5)% of the power (since half-wave rectified LEDs aren't on nonstop), they still draw over 7W per chain. All of that said, I'm not adding orange to provide energy to the plants. The orange is there to stimulate the carotenoids to produce more antioxidants. To use a human analogy, these are vitamins, not carbohydrates. :) And hey, they were cheap.

The UFO light is something else. Wow. Well built, nice and compact...very professional. It cost more per watt of LEDs, but not too much since I was so patient with my bidding and didn't insist on their latest model. :) It has only 100 LEDs, but each are over an order of magnitude brighter than the xmas light LEDs. It uses 90W, more than is in my entire veg box (even after the two new chains). And it shows -- uber-bright. My only concern about it is that the light is all concentrated into a single "spotlight". I think I'm going to dangle a crumpled cone of aluminum foil directly beneath it in my new grow chamber to try to scatter its light back up to the ceiling and edges, so it'll approach from all sides. I don't want the plants in the center to get it all.

Well, that's the update for this week! I'll do another in a week or two.

I'm very interested in the new LED growlights as I despise fluorescents. I saw an article on line about making plant lights from xmas lights, and when I went to buy some lights (out of season) the seller asked me what I wanted them for this time of year. When I told him, he told me they were the wrong frequency and no way would they work and I should save my money. So I'm very interested in your report.

Here is a link that might be useful: Here's the article (blog post) I was looking at

So, it's day 15. I decided to take out most of the plants this time to so I could get better photographs. I also tried to select appropriate baselines -- ones that sprouted close to the time they went in the chambers. But first let's back up... because I got my new lights!

Before the chamber:

{{gwi:1023504}}

After the chamber:

{{gwi:1023505}}

The blue (veg) chamber got a red strand and an orange strand. The orange LEDs aren't very nice -- orange plastic over the light and only half-wave rectified. But hey, that's only there to promote antioxidant growth, not to provide energy. The red (growth) chamber has a 90W UFO, a blue strand, and an orange strand. It's also 1' taller. The veg chamber is using about 85W, and the grow chamber about 105W.

The chambers were built last weekend, shortly after the last pics were taken. The most mature plants were put in the grow chamber. To diffuse the concentrated light of the UFO, I dangled a mobile of curved, twisted strips of aluminum foil from its base.

Okay -- on to the plants. First off, my crazy okra, which was my main concern last time:

{{gwi:1023506}}

I'm starting to think that this behavior has nothing to do with the lights, and everything to do with the seeds. These are four okra plants from the same seed pack. Two opened up short and chlorotic. One opened up short but not chlorotic. And one grew freakishly tall and not chlorotic. Same conditions. These seeds are pretty old, so I suspect that's the problem.

Here's a video showing the strength of the stem. Oh, and notice the true leaf forming on the big one.

Up next: Odessa squash

{{gwi:1023507}}

Pumpkins:

{{gwi:1023508}}

Muskmelons:

{{gwi:1023509}}

Ronde de Nice sqaush -- finally germinating!

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Peppers and lettuce:

{{gwi:1023511}}

The peppers aren't my biggest, but I wanted to get the lettuce in the same shot. Notice how this lettuce compares with the lettuce that germinated and started growing *before* I had the chambers:

{{gwi:1023512}}

Ample leaves after its veg time, but obviously, it has the leggy stems from before the chamber.

I'll use these as my representative tomato plants, since they germinated in the chamber:

{{gwi:1023513}}

Basil:

{{gwi:1023514}}

Shiso:

{{gwi:1023516}}

My stevia finally germinated!

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This last one is the only one I have a concern with right now: my watermelon:

{{gwi:1023518}}

The stem is quite healthy, as are the seed leaves, but the true leaves look rather shrivelled and somewhat crisp. Not sure what that means.

Well, that's day 15!

My apologies -- the pics are dead links right now because my server is getting its net connection upgraded. They should be back online later today.

There we go -- that's more like it!

Oh, and I think I may have mislabeled one entry -- I think those "muskmelons" may actually be my vine peaches... I'll have to check when I get home.

Hey,,instead of tinfoil.. the silver coated car sun shades.. a ilttle sturdier. And you can use a staple gun.
I am so stealing this idea.

I am building a seed starting setup that I think will be much better than yours and cheaper too. Right now southern California Edison is subsidizing the cost of single 4 foot long fluorescent light fixtures so it only costs $1.99 that have a modern electronic ballast in them. Add $2.00 per a fixture for a 4 foot 40 watt T12 bulb and it comes to about $4.00 per each four foot light fixture. I plan to use a total of 12 lights for a total cost of $48 for lights not including misc like wire, cords, etc. I bought a used six shelf wire rack unit that is 72 inches high by 48 inches long by 18 inches wide for $30, but the going rate for a used shelving unit like this one would probably be more like $50. Using four of the shelves would give me a growing area of 24 square feet. I have a lot of wire and other hardware laying around so I won't have to buy that, so my total cost will be around $80 to $90. But I will have 480 watts of light if I turn all the tubes on at the same time. I plan to install individual plugs for each fixture so I can turn on as many as I want just by unplugging them from some multi-outlet strips that I already have or one can buy very cheaply. I plan to wrap aluminum foil around three of the sides to reflect light back onto the plants. The heat from 12 light fixtures would also probably supply all the heat I need.

It's not the upfront costs that are the big issue. Fluorescents use 2-3 times the power directly for the same amount of PUR. And if you care about the environmental effect, unless they're specifically rated as high power factor, they're actually using a lot more power than that due to throwing the current off phase (you're just not being billed for those losses, since they don't happen in your home).

If you live in a place where California Edison serves, you're paying, what, $0.16/kWh or so? 0.480kW of light * 24 hours/day * $0.16/kWh = $1.84/day = $673/year.

I'll stick with my LEDs, thanks ;)

I wouldn't run the lights 24 hours a day, someone posted a study that found anything over 14 hours a day yields no additional benefit. Second, I only use my lights for about a month to a month and a half each year to start seedlings for my garden, and a few extra to sell. In California there is no need to use lights after March as its above freezing all the time and one can put their plants outside, at least during the day. Also don't compare my powerful setup with an LED setup producing only a fraction of the lumens. Also, as I said, I would set my setup up so I only have to turn on the number of lights required. I estimate I would only use around $18 a year in electricity for my planned usage.

24/7 light: There's another, recent thread in this very forum that very vividly documents a huge benefit of 24/7 light, at least in the case of peppers.

Length of time: Fair enough. Adjust your time accordingly.

Lumens: First off, no; lumens are *not* what you want to measure by. Lumens are a scale based on the sensitivity of the human eye. The human eye's sensitivity to light is precisely the opposite of plant sensitivity -- we're most sensitive to green while plants are least sensitive to green (in fact, they reflect most of it; that's why they look green!). Plants like red and blue. In general, red and blue LEDs deliver about 2-3-ish (most studies I've seen say 3-ish, but I like to be conservative) the amount of PUR (Photosynthetically Usable Radiation) per directly measured watt.

However, that's only the end of the story right there if you're only looking at your power bill. If you care about the environment, you also have to look at power factor. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the term, so I'll go ahead and explain it anyways. We live in an AC world. Power comes to our houses in 240V split phase power -- that is, two 120V circuits exactly out of phase with each other, so there's 240V difference between the two. You can see this kind of power in the socket your dryer uses. For normal NEMA 5-15 outlets (the standard type), you only get one of those two phases. Same with light sockets.

The meter on the back of your house measures volt amps going into your breaker box. Volt amps are "apparent power" -- how much your system appears to consume. However, there's another issue: power factor. If, in the process of consuming power, you throw a circuit out of phase, the power company is going to have to generate more power to make up for it. This won't increase your amp draw, and thus your power bill, but it's equally destructive for the environment as though you had actually used the power.

Most fluorescent bulbs on the market today have a power factor of around 0.5. That's really bad. That means that you're actually burning twice as much power as you get billed for. While that's still twice as good for the environment as incandescents, it means that these bulbs are actually a lot more wasteful than they appear to be. There are high power factor bulbs out there, with power factors in the 0.9 to 0.95 range, but they're more expensive and not widely available. LEDs, like incandescents, generally have a high power factor (over 0.9), so this isn't an issue with them.

But, anyways, backing up, and assuming that you only care about cost, not the environment: 0.480kWh/h * $0.16/kWh * 14h/day * 45day/year = $48 a year, not $18. And that's some pretty minimal usage there. And while versus LED you'd have to subtract the LED power usage cost, you'd also have to add in the bulb replacement costs, since LEDs last so long. In terms of PUR, you're looking at the equivalent of, say, 160-200W of LEDs. About as much as I'm using.

Even in your situation, I'd stick with my LEDs, hands down ;)

First off, I have two 40 watt U-tube fluorescent bulbs that have been operating anywhere from 1 to 6 hours a day, almost every day, for the last 20 years and never needed replacement. I did have to replace the ballast for the first time yesterday though. So only operating my setup for ten hours a day for at the most a month and a half each year, I expect my fluorescent tubes would last more than ten years on average. The bulbs in the shop light fixture I am using now are over ten years old and still operating fine. I suspect your Christmas tree lights will be failing long before my fluorescent bulbs do. Also, since my lights put out so much more lumens than yours, if you want to compare apples to apples, I should only operate four of the 12 tubes to get the same light you do. Also, I just looked at my latest electric bill and my average cost per KWH is 12 cents, not 16 cents. Plus my shelving unit has casters on it, and I plan to roll it and all the plants outside into the sunlight on nice days, which we have quite a few of in California, further reducing my cost.
And finally, looking at the plants in your pictures, it looks like some of them are so long and spindly from lack of light that they are falling over.

I have two 40 watt U-tube fluorescent bulbs that have been operating anywhere from 1 to 6 hours a day, almost every day, for the last 20 years and never needed replacement.

Yes, light bulbs burn out according to a Poisson distribution, and it has a long tail. Congrats for having bulbs that are part of that tail, and witness the awesome power of anecdotal cases.

I suspect your Christmas tree lights will be failing long before my fluorescent bulbs do

Mean Times Between Failure say otherwise. Fluorescents have MTBFs of 6,000 to 20,000 hours. LEDs have MTBFs generally more like 50,000 hours. And even if the cheap Chinese rectifiers fail at some point, big deal; I just hook them up to a higher quality rectifier, all of the strings on one. The real cost is in the LEDs, and they're essentially immortal.

Also, since my lights put out so much more lumens than yours

How many times do I have to point out that lumens are based on a scale that is precisely the *opposite* of what plants use? Four? Here, let's try a fourth time: lumens are based on a scale that is precisely the opposite of what plants use. I can say it a fifth time if you'd like.

Human eyes are most sensitive to green and least sensitive to red and blue. Plants are least sensitive to green (they reflect most of it, which is why they look green) and most sensitive to red and blue. The lumens weighs green an order of magnitude more than red and blue, but red and blue light is what your plants want the most.

Please don't make me say it again.

if you want to compare apples to apples

Did you even read my post? I'm putting out at least as much PUR -- Photosynthetically Usable Radiation (the actual scale you want, *not* lumens) as you. Namely because my lights are so much more efficient than yours and because they're putting it out in optimal frequencies. If anything, I'm putting out more PUR than you.

Also, I just looked at my latest electric bill and my average cost per KWH is 12 cents, not 16 cents.

And you live in California? Wow, nice deal. CA power averages very expensive. I know some people in CA who pay almost 20 cents. You're barely over the US residential average. Nonetheless, that only changes your very-minimal-usage (14 hours a day, 1 1/2 months of light) to $36 a year.

And finally, looking at the plants in your pictures, it looks like some of them are so long and spindly from lack of light that they are falling over.

You didn't even read the thread, did you? Some of the plants were put into the chambers so leggy that they were dying. That's discussed right in the very first post of the thread. Many of them have been making pretty impressive recoveries, but if you know anything about plants, once a plant becomes leggy, it will *never* lose that initial leggy stem. If you plant leggy broccoli in fulll sun, for example, you get L-shaped broccoli.

Why am I wasting my time debating with someone who's not even reading my posts?

Day 22 Update!

Peppers and lettuce:

{{gwi:1023519}}

The same peppers and lettuce from the previous shot. They're in the second-worst part of the UFO grow chamber -- far from the UFO in the center. Nonetheless, the peppers are doing beautifully. I've got a whole tray of them looking just like that. The lettuce, only so-so. They're putting out leaves at a good rate, but two of them never did stand up like I was hoping they would.

Next up, the monsters:

{{gwi:1023520}}

Okay, these pumpkins are getting a bit scary:

{{gwi:1023521}}

The larger of the two now has three tendrils on it, and leaves the size of my outstretched hand. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to keep them in here before they decide to crush everything else in their path, but I'll keep them in as long as I can ;)

I realized that last time I forgot to photograph my eggplants. They're doing just shiny:

{{gwi:1023522}}

So, now for my crazy okra:

{{gwi:1023524}}

If you'll recall, one germinated tall like a freak, but with a strong stem, and dark green leaves; one germinated short with dark green leaves; and two germinated short with pale, chlorotic yellow leaves. I credit this to using old seed. I'm pleased to report that all of them are doing great. The tall one is now working on its second true leaf, while the two chlorotic ones are starting to turn green. All three of the small ones have just started on their first true leaf; I expect they'll look like the tall one (minus the crazy height) next week.

My Ronde de Nice squash that just germinated? I transplanted one, and surprisingly, the transplant is doing better than the non-transplant!

{{gwi:1023525}}

Now for the one that was my biggest concern last time: my watermelon. If you'll recall, its first true leaves had turned crisp and stopped growing. Well, I'm glad to report that it has not one, but two sets of normal, healthy true leaves now!

{{gwi:1023526}}

Here's a shot of some of my miscellaneous squash and melons. Not a complaint from me about a one of them; they're all growing very healthy.

{{gwi:1023527}}

My cinnamon basil was looking healthy enough that I felt it time to thin it out into individual pots. The remaining plants in the original pot are below:

{{gwi:1023528}}

So, what's my primary concern this time? I'm starting to suspect that I'm getting more growth in the UFO chamber (red, grow) than in the Christmas chamber (blue, veg). I'm not sure yet, though. Now, that is to be expected to some degree, since that chamber is higher wattage (~105W vs. ~85W), it may be more than that. It's really hard to tell, though, because I moved my most mature trays to the red chamber and kept the youngest trays in the veg chamber. However, I do have one good comparison point: basil. I have a basil pot in the veg chamber that's exactly the same as the basil pot in the grow chamber -- same soil, same size, same plants, and same planting time. So, next week I'm going to photograph and measure the two and see how they compare.

But overall, another good week :) The plants pretty much take care of themselves (since the LEDs are pretty cool, the soil takes a long time to get dry, so I rarely even have to water). Hence, I've been busying myself readying my outdoors for the new plants, for once it gets warm enough. I'm going to be training my vining plants to strings suspended from guyed poles this year, via vine clips; should be neat to see how they do.

Ack!

I just discovered a new risk factor with LED lights. Remember how I mentioned earlier that the monochromatic light has very poor color rendering ability? Well, that bit me. I hadn't noticed that my pumpkins had started gulping up the water far faster than they used to (makes sense now that I think about it, given how big they've gotten), and their pots had been allowed to dry out. The bigger one lost two or three lower leaves (completely yellowed out) and has a yellow fringe on one more. The smaller one has a couple yellow fringes on lower leaves. But the color yellow just didn't show up as distinct from green, because there's virtually no yellow *or* green light in there!

Now, I ultimately planned to remove the lower leaves anyway (as these are going to be trained to strings), but I didn't want to do so for another month ;) Thankfully, even the harder-hit bigger plant (rear) still has 1/2 to 2/3rds of its leaves still healthy, so it should be fine (assuming this doesn't happen again).

Well, that taught me two things: 1) Observe the plants with normal light so I can see colors better, and 2) Check the pumpkin soil moisture *every day* (and the soil moisture of anything else that gets that big in the future).

So if I wanted to pick up a few of these light strings myself, which ones would you recommend? Better yet, can you point to a current auction that has the ones you bought?

Well, I think this next picture will answer your question :) It's day 29, and here are two large pots of basil, each planted at the same time in the same soil and receiving the same watering regimen:

{{gwi:1023529}}

The one on the left is 84W of xmas lights. The one on the right is 90W of a UFO plus 14W of xmas lights. Now, the one on the right has more power, but still... I mean, look at it. :) And this pot was at the far end of the grow chamber (the UFO is in the center). And also, the UFO is more convenient and higher quality than the LEDs; its only downsides are that it's a beam rather than ambient lighting, and more expensive per watt (but seems to deliver notably more per watt, though!).

I'm not getting any more xmas lights, but would love another UFO. :) The xmas lights, in general, do work (the squash and melons loved them, peppers and tomatoes did okay, but lettuce and brassicas didn't), but things just took off under the UFO (lettuce and brassicas had to be right under it, though -- everything else could be off to the side and just rely on reflections). I got my UFO for $140-some plus shipping on Ebay; I had to watch auctions for perhaps 5 days to get that price. When I got it, they were $225 for buy-it-now. Looking on ebay again for "UFO" and "90W", I see that they're now down as low as $188 for Buy It Now. So looks like the price is falling.

I think this'll be the last week that I post pictures for, as it takes time to photograph them every week. Remember those Ronde de Nices that germinated a couple weeks ago, and that watermelon plant that I was worried about two weeks ago? They're thriving:

{{gwi:1023530}}

Here's a general look into the chamber:

{{gwi:1023531}}

It's hard to see in there, but if you'll look on the back left, there's a squash climbing up the rear wall, and a couple of the squash near the front that look like multiple plants are actually individual plants crawling across multiple pots.

The peppers from before:

{{gwi:1023532}}

Remember how I said that the ones I was photographing weren't the biggest ones, as they were on the far side from the central light? Here's the biggest ones, nearly ready to go in the ground:

{{gwi:1005694}}

That's it for now; if anyone wants any followup at any point, let me know.

Net conclusions:

Xmas lights: Good for squash, okay for peppers and tomatoes, generally insufficient for lettuce and brassicas. Inconvenient, but cheap.

UFO: Good for everything, even in a chamber as big as I had, although lettuce (at least the type I'm trying -- Devil's Ear) should be to be directly under the lights rather than in a distant corner. Convenient and high quality. Would strongly recommend. I plan to buy another and to use every year.

Both: Look at your plants under full-spectrum lighting every now and then, since the LEDs don't show colors. :)

I hope this is helpful!

Okay, okay, I said there weren't going to be any more pics, but... I just had to show this, as I thought it'd wrap things up nicely. My Dill's Atlantic Giant pumpkin is now blooming. Under 90W of LED light plus a couple xmas strings. On the far side of the grow chamber. In a tiny pot, with "imperfect" watering (to be kind).

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{{gwi:1005696}}
{{gwi:1023534}}

Yeah, I know, I need to cut it and the other buds off so the plant focuses on growth, but...

karenrei, i must say I have found this post extremely helpful and informative. My main concern at this point with starting an indoor hydroponic setup is lighting. Although my final option may be to go with a hotter burning HID, this interests me far more than any other option.

Safety is a huge concern since burning down my home and its occupants would be very unsettling. As well as the financial considerations with lower watts. Do you have an email address i can reach you at?

Sure thing -- meQme@dauQghtersoftQiresias.orQg (remove Qs to despammify).

got it. dropped you a line, if you can delete the post its all clear