Choosing Lights for Your Grow Tent - Lamps Part 1
Are you planning to get started and do not know which light is suitable for which tent? Is just one enough for growth and flowering? And what about so-called dual lights? We will answer this and many other questions in the following articles.
The first criterion according to which you should choose the power of the discharge lamp is the size of the space, often the grow tent, which you plan to use for cultivation.
- 250W discharge lamps are suitable for a tent with dimensions of around 60x60 cm. You can take 50x50 cm as the minimum, and in a tent larger than 80x80 cm, 250W is too little and you are "wasting space".
- 400W discharge lamp is ideal in a tent of around 80x80 cm - in a tent under 70x70 cm, you will already not know what to do with the heat. There will be too few plants to make use of so much light. On the other hand, in a 100x100 cm tent you will already be looking at a 600W discharge lamp, and from 120x120 cm a 400W one is unnecessarily weak.
- 600W is a discharge lamp with the best price-performance ratio not only in terms of its own price/Watt output, but also because the necessary accessories such as the ballast are not much more expensive than the weaker variants. This light is ideal for space dimensions of around 100x100 cm - 120x120 cm. The size is already sufficient for proper extraction, and the plants can make use of all the light from the discharge lamps. Also, all accessories are usually limited for use with discharge lamps up to 600W.
- 750W professional discharge lamps usually used for special sets from manufacturers in the USA. The tent size is similar to that for 600W discharge lamps. They are usually supplied as a set with a ballast and reflector, and the recommended tent dimensions range between 100x100-130x130 cm, and I would definitely not recommend putting them into smaller spaces.
- 1000W are already professional discharge lamps and are suitable for experienced growers; the equipment is usually more expensive (but given the efficiency, it can easily pay off in the long term, as for example you only need one reflector, one cable, one timer socket, etc.), as most common active components are manufactured with a limit of approx. 690W (3A at 230V for those familiar with electricity). It is necessary to pay attention to which components you use so that they are sufficiently powerful. As for the tent, we recommend them for tents from 140x140 cm to approx. 160x160 cm.
- 1200W - this is a set of 2x600W, with which you illuminate twice the area as with a 600W discharge lamp, i.e. 200x100 cm - 240x120 cm.
- 2000W+ these are sets with multiple light sources, usually multiples of 600W or 1000W, and the area they can illuminate is always multiplied by the number of sets used. ;-)
In the next part, we will look at the differences between MH and HPS discharge lamps, and you will also find a tip on how to use the energy from discharge lamps to the maximum!