Mr. Sparkle, youre a true grow master-engineer!
I Dont mean to hijack your thread, but you seem to be the most successful pc grower here.
Im thinking of making a pc grow box (big tower 62cm tall) with one 1212 3500k 700ma ~25w, is this enough for one plant at the time, or should i ad one more cob?
You're not hijacking at all that's what these forums are for, to spread knowledge and info.
A couple things, with you having a tall case which isn't really needed, you're gonna have to have brighter sources of light to get further into the canopy, one thing you'll notice once you start growing is your plants will rush to the light and will do the majority of their good dense growth within 6-8" from the Light Source and all that space below it being mostly wasted. Now because you will have brighter sources of light you're gonna have a "bubble" underneath the led that bud can't get in because they will heat burn and light bleach, with you creating a kinda reverse cone canopy to avoid those issue, unless you tie down everything, so could you get away with one light source for one plant sure, but two or more would be better, because i found you get a lot better and more even growth with multiple light sources instead of just one or two as you will have dark corners and areas where plants get crowded out by other plants or themselves and you will have underdeveloped bud or stuff that takes longer to finish vs the stuff directly under the light.
So i would say go with at least 2 or more sources, 4 or more would be better and its what i did recently to my taller case, its the same amount of power as before just more sources (2@700ma vs 4@350ma) and i can tell already its doing a better job for all the plants under it.
With all that said take a look into the Bridgelux vero18's Gen 7's, vs the citizen clu048's your looking at, spec wise they look to be putting out similar light amount at the same current and voltage, but the bridgelux's are 1/3 - 1/4 the price, which gives no excuse to run a couple of them just at lower amperages.
Another suggestion if looking to do it all on a bit more of a budget, and its something i should've done instead of what i did, is if you dismantle some big box store led bulbs and make your own custom lights like i've started in the previous post, that is another option, to give you an idea the base 8w "60w equivalent" philips bulbs above i roughly measured at actually only consuming 6w of energy and if their rated lumens are correct, that means they are producing 133lm/w with the driver, which is pretty damn good, my bridgelux vero18's are in the 190lm/w range because of underdriving and that's before the driver is included.
So if wanting to go overkill and match my similar light outputs or the same as two 1212's or gen7 vero18's at 700ma, you would need 10 of them at a cost of around $20-30 bucks or 5 of the "100w equivalent" bulbs, and you already have the drivers, which sounds like a win win.
But do you need that many bulbs ? probably not, on another forum people are happy and producing very nice bud at 30w/sqft actual wattage which is only 5 of those 8 watt Philips bulbs, total cost $8-10 bucks
My new build will hopefully put that to the test and see if i've wasted alot of money of my setups, with the $150-250+ ive spent over the last couple years on different ballasts, Leds, and Heatsinks, vs the whole $20-60 of store bought bulbs and cheap heatsinks i could of went with.
