How many lights can You Put in a Room - A Garden Sage Lesson

A fun question that I get asked is how many lights can I put in a room? So one of the answers that I like to say is as many as you can handle the heat load. You can literally put 4,000 watts over a 4x8 area. You could put ten 400s over a 4x8 area if you could handle the heat, right?

Sunlight is the equivalent of like 5,000 watts or something like that on a 5x5 area. It is hugely intense and powerful. We are typically not getting close to the light levels of sunlight in our gardens, so these plants can take a lot of light.

Traditionally a 1,000-watt bulb in a vertical mount could lightly cover as large as an 8x8 area. Is that performance gardening? Not really. In general, we’re going to want to hit a 4x4 area with 1,000 watts, a 3x3 area with 600 watts.

Let’s talk about a 10x10 room, for instance. We could definitely put 4,000 watts in it. We could definitely put 3600 watts, six 600’s in it. No problem. Keep in mind we always have to handle the heat load, so you have to match your cooling to the heat load that’s in the room. We can do this with air conditioners. We can do this with intake and exhaust. If we’re looking at T5 fluorescent lighting, it’s just important that we have solid coverage, so our plants aren’t stretching and reaching for light that’s not there.

If we’re looking at the double-ended fixtures that have just came out, the 750 Flex is covering a 5x5 area and the 1000 DE is covering a 6x6 area. Really what we want to do is we want to look at the square footage that is actually going to be used for growing. It’s important to leave areas on the walls for oscillation, air movement. It’s important to leave areas for us to move around and tend the plants.

As you keep these things in mind, you probably can come up with a decent lighting layout for your garden. However, I would recommend going into your local hydroponics store, speaking with a professional. They can definitely coach you in the correct direction for your particular circumstance.

Working in the garden creating a healthy harvest provides you with a sense of achievement and feelings of success. When working with plants and hydroponic systems there is wide variety of products each designed with a specific purpose.

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[sunhoney]

I miss the guys from the shop! Great crew! free drinks at the door. Man do I miss Nelson and Slocan!

[DJTechnoboom]

i got 280 watts going in my 2x3 it's working pretty good

[Sara-xiug]

Plants can use up to about 11% of the sunlight therefore I wouldn’t go too crazy with led panels. I suggest spreading the light through the canopy by using low wattage leds and installing them as strips surrounding the plants. In my set up I’ve installed one strip along the perimeter of the tent above the plants pointing 45 degrees downwards plus a strip along the lower perimeter that lights through the canopy horizontally, all low wattage. I only use green wavelength the first and last hour of the daytime photoperiod to awaken and shut photosynthesis respectively, that’s when plants expect a higher green/blue ratio. Giving green throughout the day will give you undesirable results due to shade avoidance responses which is stem elongation, closing of stomatas and leaves pointing upwards as opposed to perpendicularly. What I’m trying to say is that you don’t need green and should save energy.