Hi all, I thought I would create a thread for my DIY quantum board build. I flower cannabis in a plastic patio box as seen below;
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I have a smaller box of the same style for my vegetative plants, and I run 6 in each. When one is done, the veg plants move over to the bigger box, and clones take their place. The box lives on my balcony, and while it is exposed to the elements, I have another balcony above mine, so it doesnt get rained on and has limited exposure to direct sunlight (5pm to 7pm). The interior dimensions are 45" x 24", however, because the front bows outward to 26", there are 8.1 square feet inside, so it is essentially a 2'x4' setup. Its 38" tall on the inside, so vertical height is very limited. I cut holes in the floor and actually raise the box about a foot in the air, so the plant pots actually sit on the ground, but the level of the dirt is the same as the floor, as to give me more vertical space.
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Currently, I have 6 Kingbo LED panels and 8 100w equivelent LED A19 bulbs that are mounted to an aluminum frame(or attached to plastic forks), which is held up by moveable shelving brackets as you can see here.
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For my most recent harvest (I have only had 2 so far) I netted 7oz, or about 200 grams of trimmed and dried bud. If I add up all the stated watts for each component, I get to 320 watts, however my recently purchased Kill-a-watt device says the lights are actually pulling 360 watts from the wall, which would equate to .55 grams per watt, which isn't that great. Also, the buds aren't that dense, even the top most ones.
So here is the plan: I purchased 24 2ft LM561C strips, each containing 48 diodes, or 1152 diodes in total, along with a Mean Well HLG 480h-24a driver. I am going to glue each strip to 1" wide x 24" long heat sinks from heatsinkusa.com. The strips are actually 22" long so there is an extra inch of space on each side to mount to a 1" square aluminum tube. The whole thing is going to be mounted to the lid of the box:
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Because it will be right up against the lid, I plan on installing some fans into the array to dissipate the heat. I do have a 4" ventilation fan in the top right corner of the box, but I dont think it will provide adequate airflow.
So it should look like this if you were looking from the top down.
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The shorter side will be 2" above the long side, as to give the heat sinks some space from the roof. I'll be putting this together this weekend, let me know your thoughts and suggestions. I'll post some updates.
). In comparison, I was looking at getting a 6 Cree CXB3590, 300 watt kit from timber grow lights, which would have cost me $629 + tax. Alternatively, this setup is comparable to the HLG 550 (four 288 quantum boards stuck together) ($1,049), in that mine setup and the HLG 550 both have 1152 diodes and run off a 480 watt driver.
we can hit -10 without a wind chill during February. with 3 feet of snow over a weekend lol