Redwood Ryan
Masterpiece
As Dave said, heat isn't an issue. It's more-so an issue of bleaching the leaves. The chips are 5W, so they're pretty powerful.
Indoor Light Setup
- Thread starter eugen_onegin
- Start date
As Dave said, heat isn't an issue. It's more-so an issue of bleaching the leaves. The chips are 5W, so they're pretty powerful.
Leo in N E Illinois
The Professor
- Messages
- 11,339
- Reaction score
- 23,284
- USDA Zone
- 5b
I have been growing orchids, roughly 1000 orchids in pots under lights for close to 30 years. I also have a modest number of tropical trees worked into the orchid collection. I have used just about any light you can name. Up until about 5 years ago I was most happy with a series of 400 watt High Pressure Sodium lamps, even with their hideous "orange light" effect on the color of my orchid blooms, they did a good job of growing.
Now my favorite lamp fixture which is slowly replacing all the HPS fixtures is the Sun Blaze 48 inch T5 fixture with 6700K T5 lamps. Getting good performance out of a lamp is greatly improved by a well focused reflector than directs the light straight down. Sun Blaze is great in this respect. I love the natural color of the light. I am using the 8 lamp Sun Blaze fixture for my "full sun" orchids and trees. What I love is the 8 lamp fixture has 2 on-off switches, so you can if you like use 4 lamps or 8 lamps. The fixture itself is reasonably attractive, nice industrial white enamel finish, the color of light from the fixture is natural enough that if it is used in a living space it won't drive you crazy (my personal issue with LED and HPS) and they do not throw a lot of heat. They are more energy efficient than HPS, not as energy efficient as LED. For being attractive, easy to use, and reliable - never any problems with bad ballasts. Every unit I bought worked the first time I plugged it in. You can't beat Sun Blaze as a brand. Now there are other brand T-5 fixtures out there, some may be very good, but this was the first I tried I really liked. Sun Blaze has many size and lamp number configurations. So if you need a 24 inch, a 30 inch, etc - they have fixtures available off the shelf. Similar, 1 lamp, 2, 4, 6 or 8 lamp fixtures are available. That's my endorsement.
Metal Halide lamps simply did not last long enough, nor put out as much light as the others. Very costly to run.
Compact fluorescents, that fit in the standard screw base an incandescent bulb uses are fine if you only are trying to light a single plant or two. Not easy to configure for a large collection.
LED - I have tried several fixtures, several manufactures and have been very disappointed with what is currently commercially available. Quality Control is a big issue - not one of the fixtures I tried worked for more than a week out of the box. Yes, returned and tried again, failed and eventually got money back. This was not a one time bad experience. I tried LED in 2005, 2009 and 2012 and each time the poor quality of the electronics resulted in failures of one type or another.
While giving a talk in Minnesota in 2013, to orchid growers, I did a survey. 70% of the audience of about 75 were under lights growers. Of them roughly 30% of them had in operation or had tried LED. Over 50% of the LED growers reported fixtures not working fresh out of the box, or failures within a week or two of start up. LED is a great idea, when it works it is wonderful, but the crap most companies ship is enough to keep most growers using a more reliable technology, such as T5 fixtures.
So in my singular experience - T5 fixtures are the way to go. Sun Blaze was a very good performing fixture for me. I'll stick to it until average failure rate of LED's right out of the box is better than 95%.
Now my favorite lamp fixture which is slowly replacing all the HPS fixtures is the Sun Blaze 48 inch T5 fixture with 6700K T5 lamps. Getting good performance out of a lamp is greatly improved by a well focused reflector than directs the light straight down. Sun Blaze is great in this respect. I love the natural color of the light. I am using the 8 lamp Sun Blaze fixture for my "full sun" orchids and trees. What I love is the 8 lamp fixture has 2 on-off switches, so you can if you like use 4 lamps or 8 lamps. The fixture itself is reasonably attractive, nice industrial white enamel finish, the color of light from the fixture is natural enough that if it is used in a living space it won't drive you crazy (my personal issue with LED and HPS) and they do not throw a lot of heat. They are more energy efficient than HPS, not as energy efficient as LED. For being attractive, easy to use, and reliable - never any problems with bad ballasts. Every unit I bought worked the first time I plugged it in. You can't beat Sun Blaze as a brand. Now there are other brand T-5 fixtures out there, some may be very good, but this was the first I tried I really liked. Sun Blaze has many size and lamp number configurations. So if you need a 24 inch, a 30 inch, etc - they have fixtures available off the shelf. Similar, 1 lamp, 2, 4, 6 or 8 lamp fixtures are available. That's my endorsement.
Metal Halide lamps simply did not last long enough, nor put out as much light as the others. Very costly to run.
Compact fluorescents, that fit in the standard screw base an incandescent bulb uses are fine if you only are trying to light a single plant or two. Not easy to configure for a large collection.
LED - I have tried several fixtures, several manufactures and have been very disappointed with what is currently commercially available. Quality Control is a big issue - not one of the fixtures I tried worked for more than a week out of the box. Yes, returned and tried again, failed and eventually got money back. This was not a one time bad experience. I tried LED in 2005, 2009 and 2012 and each time the poor quality of the electronics resulted in failures of one type or another.
While giving a talk in Minnesota in 2013, to orchid growers, I did a survey. 70% of the audience of about 75 were under lights growers. Of them roughly 30% of them had in operation or had tried LED. Over 50% of the LED growers reported fixtures not working fresh out of the box, or failures within a week or two of start up. LED is a great idea, when it works it is wonderful, but the crap most companies ship is enough to keep most growers using a more reliable technology, such as T5 fixtures.
So in my singular experience - T5 fixtures are the way to go. Sun Blaze was a very good performing fixture for me. I'll stick to it until average failure rate of LED's right out of the box is better than 95%.
davetree
Omono
I have the LED lamp that Ryan has. So do several of my friends. All of our lamps ran for 6 months every day last winter without the failure of a single LED. 5 different lamps total.
davetree
Omono
I have tried HO T5 lamps with the equivalent wattage and the results were not as good as my LED lamp. Much more heat to deal with as well.
Stiple
Sapling
I had wanted to try LEDs for a few years, but only recently after seeing the COB models did I really seriously begin researching. I ended up going with a Cree CXA 3070 chip, which has several different color temperature options. You do have to build it yourself, but that's 90% of the fun.
As long as you have a heatsink from a somewhat recent (last 5 years) computer that's available for scavenging, and are comfortable with a bit of soldering (some other COB LED's have solderless holders you can buy if you don't want to risk it) it's relatively easy. Mine's been running for a few months (and one of those it was running 24/7) without issue (except before I had the wires in place. When they were flexible and not set in place, one came cm's away from the surface of the chip and started smoking immediately from the strength of the IR spectrum. About a foot away from the light your hand can feel the warmth of the light, and your hand becomes blindingly reflective). If your concerned about quality of materials, perhaps the cheaper Chinese options aren't the most reliable.
All said and done, my LED chip and a power supply for it cost about $110 ( ~$40 for the chip, $70 for the power supply), and an old heatsink I had in my closet. This color temp is ~4K.
As long as you have a heatsink from a somewhat recent (last 5 years) computer that's available for scavenging, and are comfortable with a bit of soldering (some other COB LED's have solderless holders you can buy if you don't want to risk it) it's relatively easy. Mine's been running for a few months (and one of those it was running 24/7) without issue (except before I had the wires in place. When they were flexible and not set in place, one came cm's away from the surface of the chip and started smoking immediately from the strength of the IR spectrum. About a foot away from the light your hand can feel the warmth of the light, and your hand becomes blindingly reflective). If your concerned about quality of materials, perhaps the cheaper Chinese options aren't the most reliable.
All said and done, my LED chip and a power supply for it cost about $110 ( ~$40 for the chip, $70 for the power supply), and an old heatsink I had in my closet. This color temp is ~4K.
Attachments
Last edited:
Paradox
Imperial Masterpiece
Updating this to report that my ficus and Brazilian rain trees are doing very well under these lights. Much better than the set up I had last year which is to be expected as this provides a lot more light.
The 2 tiger bark ficus freaked out and dropped their leaves when I first brought them in for the winter, but both are now happily growing new leaves all over. My baby willow leaf ficus didnt seem to mind the change at all and also seems happy. I trimmed the 2 BRT a bit before bringing them in as one was a bit tall. Both of them are also putting out new leaves.
So overall I am very pleased with this new set up.
Similar threads
