Quote:
Originally Posted by Billm302
I am liking to replace some of my 4 foot Fluorescent fixtures with LEDs. My primary reason is heat. I built several 48”x 18” racks six feet high for my seed starting, so I need to replace the fluorescent fixtures with something similar.
What I am looking for specifically is a LED fixture whose coverage is an area of approximately 18”x 48” and something like 10,000 lumens. These hang about 4-6” above the seedlings so The 10,000 lumens is the area I need.
Most of the LED fixtures seem to be much more powerful and are designed to hang much higher than 4-6”. I do not have the airspace to hang the fixtures much higher than I already do. What type of fixtures am I looking for?
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Do you want to use it to start seedling and get them ready to plant outside or take plants all the way through maturity. I have had good luck with some inexpensive LED shop lights. I started with the 4' LED shop lights from Costco, but found some cheaper and much better on Amazon. They put out much more light than those from Costco. Three of the fixtures cost $60 and put out 14,400 lumens at 5000k. (They actually sell 6 for $120) I don't know what type of life they have or how long they will maintain their brightness. Mine are about a year old now and doing fine.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I put three fixtures across a 4' shelf. I can get three rows of lights on a single 72" X 48" X 18" shelf. You might be able to get away with two per shelf for starting seedlings. The lights sit on top of the edge shelf brackets and the two middle shelves I set on top of the three lights below.That leaves about 15-20" or so between the shelf and the light above. I use pieces of foam board under the trays of light to keep the plants 1-3" below the lights themselves. The closer to the light you can keep them the better. They are cool enough that even if the plants grow to touch the lights, for a short time it doesn't damage them.
I take micros from start to finish under the lights and they do fine.
I hadn't looked through all the links mentioned above. Perhaps the actual grow lights mentioned above may do better. I'm not sure. Perhaps I'll try some to see. The shop lights have worked well for me.