What's a good bar light size for 4x4?

[Badfinger]

I been checking out bar lights like the MH4800 and the SF E5000 for my 4x4, but I cant help thinking I should be considering the next bigger sizes. Right now I'm running 600w of board lighting. With my boards I get more heat, but the benefit is the ability to have them at different heights to accommodate different sized plants in the tent.
Whats the consensus on this subject. I could really use some input. Is 480w really enough for this size tent?

 

[TrichomeAssassin]

My newest one long bar light, the Marshydro SP 6500, is running 24/7 once past the seedling stage. I'm currently using 75%. 100% is coming later. I like it a lot in my 4x4 tent.

 

[Delps8]

I been checking out bar lights like the MH4800 and the SF E5000 for my 4x4, but I cant help thinking I should be considering the next bigger sizes. Right now I'm running 600w of board lighting. With my boards I get more heat, but the benefit is the ability to have them at different heights to accommodate different sized plants in the tent.
Whats the consensus on this subject. I could really use some input. Is 480w really enough for this size tent?

I'm a "lotsa light" grower so I'd got with more light rather than less.

You're referring to the Spider Farmer SE 5000, right? If you look at the PPFD map for that light, there's a pretty dramatic falloff around the edges and SF is honest enough to say that for "commercial" growing, that light is suited for a 3' x 3' area. One step up, as you're thinking, is to the SF 7000 and that's a really nice piece of hardware.

Check out this PPFD map — it's very impressive. Compare the uniformity of that light to the other lights on that site or on cocoforcannabis.com (just to name two sites) and what Spider has done is really impressive. Compare the SE 7000 to the HLG offerings and the difference in board vs light bar design couldn't be more clear.

My grow is in a 2' x 4' tent so I'm not in the market for a light of that size but, if I were, I'd probably go with the SF 7000. It's got all the "must haves" - detachable driver, IR and UV, daisy chain able, high efficiency, etc., etc.

 

[Badfinger]

I'm a "lotsa light" grower so I'd got with more light rather than less.

You're referring to the Spider Farmer SE 5000, right? If you look at the PPFD map for that light, there's a pretty dramatic falloff around the edges and SF is honest enough to say that for "commercial" growing, that light is suited for a 3' x 3' area. One step up, as you're thinking, is to the SF 7000 and that's a really nice piece of hardware.

Check out this PPFD map — it's very impressive. Compare the uniformity of that light to the other lights on that site or on cocoforcannabis.com (just to name two sites) and what Spider has done is really impressive. Compare the SE 7000 to the HLG offerings and the difference in board vs light bar design couldn't be more clear.

My grow is in a 2' x 4' tent so I'm not in the market for a light of that size but, if I were, I'd probably go with the SF 7000. It's got all the "must haves" - detachable driver, IR and UV, daisy chain able, high efficiency, etc., etc.

I do not see UV Leds being used on any MH or SF lights above 480w. Which is odd to me. Makes me wonder if UV is a fad or fact. Does that mean commercial growers don't buy into the UV thing?

 

[Delps8]

I do not see UV Leds being used on any MH or SF lights above 480w. Which is odd to me. Makes me wonder if UV is a fad or fact. Does that mean commercial growers don't buy into the UV thing?

I just checked the Spider lights and, you're absolutely correct. The 5000 has UV and IR but not the 7000.

The grow light market is that is a commodity market so customers benefit from competition, large scale manufacturing, etc. but it also handicaps the customer in that innovation drives cost and that drives price. Think about how little differentiation there is in the PC market - it's the same issue at play. Increased cost/price will tend to delay introduction of UV and IR but, to your question, it may well also be that growers haven't taken to the idea of UV and/or IR.

Bugbee just released a video re. ePAR and there's no increase in yield for UV but he did show an increase in yield when IR is introduced. He didn't go into the cost/benefit of IR, that's not his bailiwick, but looking at the headwinds in the economy + the massive problems in the regulatory costs that have been inflicted on the legal cannabis market, it might be that growers are focused more on "keeping the lights on", pardon the pun, vs sinking more of today's dollars into a more expensive light for a payoff in 1, 2, or 5 years. Lots of things up in the air when inflation is approaching double digits and the cost of money is higher than it's been in decades. :-(

Re. UV - In one of Bugbee's videos, he discusses UV and he doesn't support the argument that it increases terpenes. His comment was that a lot of people have glommed on to the research paper that was published…30 years ago - the researcher's name begins with "Li", IIRC - in which there was benefit in one trial. However, the conclusion was that UV's value was "equivocal". Bugbee asserts that the industry has disregarded the finding in favor or the fact that one trial had a benefit.

Shane at Migro released a video about how he designs grow lights and he says that he doesn't include UV or IR. I don't recall the exact phrase the he used but it boiled down to that he didn't think that they were worth including. A couple of items - Migro used to have an option to include IR but that option is no longer//not currently available. Second, Migro lights are not as powerful, for a given area, as other lights on the market. If you look at the input wattages and PPFD levels that his lights produce, they're a bit lower than some of the other vendors. That tracks with what he recommends for light levels and the resultant yields. Check out his YouTube videos re how much light and what type of yield to expect and those data will stand out.