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Finally convinced a friend to upgrade from HID, helped him build a LED qb bar light. He was thinking of retiring the HID for many reasons. replacing shit the whole time. electricity consumption. heat.... told him if he puts out the cash I'll source and order the shit for him, recieve everything and when time comes to slap it all together I'll just need a hand, he just needed that last nudge and so it begins! I think I was more excited about the build than he was! He's got a 1.2m x 1.2m x 2m tent, so we basically copied the 4'x4' example design on LED gardener, used the Q series samsung LM301H strips in 3000k. First things first, size of the tent will determine the size of the frame that we build for the LEDs. Work out how much Aluminium strip we gona need. Source local aluminium extrusions. This was the only profile available in bulk on the day, we didn't wana wait, so we planned around this. You can work with any profile and have any extrusion company roll out the profile you want at the lenght you want. Easiest part of the build. Having the aluminium, knowing how you can lay strips on the extrusion profile you can use this information to spread out the LED strips as much as possible so there are no fluxuation areas. no need to raise the hight of the light to get better coverage which would mean loosing intensity. no need to have to have certain height requirements for best output, because you don't have excessive heat coming from the light and not ALL the light comes from one spot and then has to spread, instead you spread the strips out further so you can bring them closer to your plants without having intensity issues. also the configuration being a bar style light you wont have issues with the fixture heating up at all. we run the light for 18hrs, shine laser thermometer on the frame from below the light source, got 34°C. 5cm away from the light source on the aluminium frame we got 29°C and at leaf surface at 15cm away it was room temperature... will get a apogee under the light asap, if anyone wants to follow up on that. now, the layout.... knowing what amount of strips you gona use and the size of tent you have to put them all in, you build a frame that can easily fit inside the tent then just space out the strips as much as possible. Next step was to cut the aluminium to the right lengths and clean up the edges. Along with the aluminium for the frame you'll need the smallest pop rivets the shop has to offer and a aluminium drill bit same size as the rivets. Now, slap the frame together. 2 long slats get a tine 45° corner cut out the flat so the fin is still in one peice, make a small cut on the other side so you're able to bend the aluminium without it snapping. grab a big 90° angle, make sure you have 2 x 90° angles. lay them together making sure all 4 corners are 90°, throw some clamps on, drill right throug the 2 corners that meet and pop them together with the rivet. Now grab a electrical junction box to hide all your wire conections, use the junction box to space out the aluminium stips, making sure you can fit enough strips on to accommodate all the LED strips needed. using a pensil, mark out where the aluminium strips lay and number them 1 - X and mark the frame with numbers corresponding to the strip that goes there. drill holes in all the aluminium strips where you need to pop them to the frame, put them back on the frame using the numbers to see where each one goes, use the hole im the aluminium strip to mark where you need to drill into the frame, drill all the marked points, lay them out, pop them in. here is what ours looked like at this point. BOOOM!!!!! got a digikey box in the mail It's all there and all undamaged! Now that we have the driver. it's time to build a bracket to hold the driver in place. same like we built the square for the frame, just a small one, like this.... -note the corners driver still has some space to move around, but sits nice and snug, we ended up putting two small self tap screws throug the screw slots at the bottom of the driver to hold it in place, didn't get photos of it, but did get photos of how we attached the bracket to the frame, using two small peices of aluminium and popping them onthe the fins upside down we now had a flat surface to mount the bracket onto. like this... Here's where we're at now, Time to make this big boy easy to hang! 5.5mm threaded hooks with 2 self locking nuts, one screwed all the way to the top and one to hold it in place. Time to slap on some double sided thermal tape, this tape can hold up to 60kg at 120°C.... or so it sais..... so it should work! AND YOU KNOW WHAT COMES AFTER THE THERMAL TAPE!!!!! FUCK YEAH step by step getting there!!! now for the fun part, the wire nightmare.... luckily I have OCD-AF and find great therapy in wire management! we also quickly reaslised that we're going to need more than one junction box, easy peasy, the driver has 2 outputd so slap another one on the other side of the driver and have half the wires one side of the light and other half on the other side. I got so carried away with finishing up the light I never took a photo of what the wiring looked like when I was finished, but that was by far the most satisfying thing about the whole build. when time came to plug the bitch in I was just focussing on the damn light. here she is in all her pride and glory here she is lighting up the tent, and this is where she'll be for the next 10 years probably. hopefully. it's a 1mx1m frame in a 1.2m x 1.2m tent - fits perfect. those intetested in the wire work if you wana see what it looks like I'll lower the light to take a couple photos, otherwise this last photo will show just how hidden and tucked away everything is. not one loose hanging wire, no excessive wires, no bulky no extras. Now to answer some questions..... LED Strips - R3831 Driver - R2300 Import Tax - R1500 Aluminium - R600 Thermal tape - R200 Ratchet ropes x 2 - R300 Those are all the more expensive parts of the build, the other stuff like hooks, wires, wago connectors, cable ties + hooks for wire management, pop rivets all those things gona work out +/- another R500 Let's say all in all = R9231 that's that. buddy got 3 x Peanut Butter Breath cuts and 3 x Canna Health Genetic #21 cuttings under that light, potted in FF premium classic, will post few updates here as things progress. have a good weekend all!

Okay, thought I would somewhat document my first indoor attempt. The plants were potted up to 7l pots on Wednesday and moved from the mother/clone box on Friday to the grow room. Seems as though they are enjoying the 600w MH. Some pics for context. Before transplant Transplant - could probably have done it sooner After the move Two weeks and I plan on potting them up in their final pots. Will then switch on the second 600w light and have them fill the space. Keep safe!

Bananium looks amazing. Very very nice grow dude!!

We're in the final stretch here! Past the 8 week mark, watching the trichomes for chop day. I'm loving the colour this cold weather brings. Seeing the 2 strains react in their own ways to it is interesting too! The Bananium has me really excited at the moment, rather sad though as I wish I had let this girl get bigger. I won't be harvesting much Bananium from this tent, it was the smallest plant in the beginning and could not compete with the stretch of the Deluxe Sugarcane. Overall I'm happy with the turn out. Growing for myself means I get to smoke all this beautiful bud, and boy am I happy with the product! In case you're wondering, the smaller dark plant on the left is Bananium, the other 3 are all Deluxe Sugarcane. Very easy to tell the difference in pictures. Let me hear some comments, things I could maybe improve on for the next grow, I am still such a noob at this!

Very nice build man. Very nice. I did a build like this not too long ago but I went for the bigger strips. Their measurements were 1100mm in length so was perfect for my 1200mm tent. Plus I only did 4x bars of 3 strips each. I just recently harvested 2 batches of 1 strain under 2 different lights. The one is the 480w diy build off of LEDgardener and the other a bought 480w from kingbrite. I must admit. With all the effort and time spent making a light (which is a fun process) I found it was cheaper to buy from kingbrite. None the less fun experience. One thing I want to mention is that with my previous harvest I found the Kingbrite light produced more nugs of good density than the DIY. Wether it is the penetration of light, or the red diodes on the kingbrite, I am not sure. I kind of think it is the red diodes because both lights are 3500K (What K are the strips you got?).So with my next batch under the DIY I will be lollipopping very close to the top to make sure all light penetrates. I am looking at getting 3x bloom booster lights from kingbrite. Still thinking about it. They are 30w red diode lights which I think could fit inbetween my existing light strips which are 3 spaces. Perfect. Only problem is they sell them seperately. I will try convince them to send me 3x lights on one 90w driver instead of 3x 30w drivers. Will see if I can add it to the DIY. Maybe they would sell me the strips seperate and I will just source the correct driver. Anyway. Just a thought. But definitely let your friend know to clean those babies up when flowering. He won't regret it. I could definitely get over 400g of proper prime nugs from that light. Very nice build. Looking forward to what comes out of it.

Almost end of week 8, still waiting some ambers…

What's up man. I am doing several different things with trim and fluff. I have started pressing some of the fluff through 90micron bags, not big yields but not bad in colour. I haven't had the time to press everything or wash. I have only done 3 presses and smoked up the first ones. I did however use a 160micron sift screen and ran all my trim over it. Got a fair amount of dry sift hash which I also pressed with a 37micron bag but my yield was not great. I got just over 10%. I think I prefer what comes out after a wash and then pressing. I have gotten 40% before out of pressing bubble hash.

Quattro Kush: 18/6 (medium defoliation). Flip to flower soon.

Hey @Naughty.Psychonaut All good bud, I'm just starting up and haven't really found my way around everything but I must say everybody has been awesome thus far. Always great feedback and starting to feel the brotherhood (and sisterhood) in the community. Made some good buds already. Peace ✌

I remember seeing that name around yeah, hopefully all is well with the man! oh well, I guess you're right, I know a whole lot of growers and I am the only one in my friend group that uses the forum. one or two guys that are aware of the forum, but they never bothered with other peoples growing and or asking for information to each their own, they say! all good man, no pressure on updating or anything, I just wanted to check in and check up, the community likes to hear and see form the rest of the members! keep strong

Hoooozit guys. Thought I would share some final thoughts on my last grow. All the nugs that were exposed to direct light came out extremely dense and hard. Very happy with the outcome. I did however realize that I need to clean up even more. I came out with alot of fluff aswell. Have never experienced this kind of fluff. Underdeveloped nugs that look like leaves with trichome on it and that is it. So we learn. Drying was abit difficult with space. Did not expect so much but we managed to get them hanging with an average humidity just shy of 60%. We had big rains the first few days of harvest but I was not able to stretch the harvest longer than 10 days. Still came out very nice. The following are the numbers I got off the plants. I harvested each set of 4 plants under each light seperately to try get a better understanding of the two different lights and what product I get from it. I will name them "DIY" for the light I buildt and "KING" for the bought kingbrite light. DIY Prime Nugs: 312.7g Fluff: 353g Trim: 326g KING Prime Nugs: 437.4g Fluff: 268.2g Trim: 331g So as you can see from the numbers there is actually a huge difference between the lights in producing dense nugs. I have a feeling the kingbrite having red diodes is what makes the difference. I might actually buy a couple of Bloom booster lights from Kingbrite to supplement my DIY light. Will see. Through the weighing I just learnt what kind of cleaning up I am going to do in the future. Overall I am still happy and having 750g of proper prime nugs. Both batches were also trimmed with a trim bag and was also interesting to see what the bag dig with the fluff. I am defenitely aiming to get 1000g in the next harvest because getting 1g per watt would be very good with these LED lights. I would be over the moon with 1000g. (Just before anyone thinks I smoke kilos of weed, this gets shared between 3 people that are all heavy smokers ). Over all I am very happy with the harvest and how it came out. I give it a 10/10 for bag appeal. The flavour is nice and fruity, not a specific kind of fruit but like a bowl of fruit. In the flowering stages it reminded me of the smell when you walk into the smoothy section of a fruit shop. I love it. I didn't use a carbon filter this time simply because it was not the over powering smell I would get from other stanky strains. I enjoyed this strain so much that my next grow will be half of it and the other half Cheese donated by @John Stonedwell. Super excited for that grow. Will just add it to this diary. Unfortunately there might be a mistake that was made in the transplanting when I was not available and I think we might have the Cheese and Mango mixed under the scrog. Not a problem though. Will still count seperately. Thanks for watching and hope you enjoyed. Here is some nug porn.

Thanks... will update weekly from now. And try and take pictures with a better camera.

Ok final decisions made natural selection. Line up. Sour Apple Auro - Humboldt Planet of the Grapes - Ethos Pluto Cut - Ethos Skywalker Haze - Dutch Passion Gorilla Cookies - Fast Buds Sour Diesel - Seed stocker (I hope it is worth something. Maybe it turns out to be the best) I will be planting the Bobby’s Widow some time this week. Just waiting for some heat.

☺ oh stop it!! Thanks for the kind words brother! don't know if it's just me, but I see a lot less engagement on the site and I wana try call on some of the more recent threads to keep the activity pumping! also haven't seen any activity from some of the long term members that used to interact here on the daily, I just hope everyone is still doing fine and all in good health!

Evening @Naughty.Psychonaut 11 days into flower.. Had a hiccup after spraying Tenazole.. used a low dosage as recommended but plants did not take well to it at all. Cost me a two weeks extra veg for them to recover. Lesson learned. Anyhow, they seem to be over the worst of it. Pics at flip Some pics taken Saturday night after swapping the MH bulbs for HPS Planning on doing a big clean up and defol tomorrow night.

Finally I get to run the winning pheno. I have 11 of the PC12 mixed in with Divine Storm and Dirty Banana. We are now at 3 weeks 12/12. Just in time for the flower show to begin.

Dqxslurri: Day 18 of flower.

I somehow completely missed the update last week, but here I am 2 weeks later haha. The 2 week gap really shows the progress. Checking on them everyday can sometimes make things seem like they're not doing much. The proof is in the ppudding they say! Bananium showing some nice purples in the leaves, while the Deluxe Sugarcane just gets frostier by the day. DS leaves have gone a very light green weirdly, I remember it doing the seem thing on the last run. The burnt tips of all the plants also resemble the last run, clearly haven't quite figured out the nutes yet. I will get there!

They have filled the space nicely. Will flip in the next couple of days after last round of IPM. Took some clones tonight, first attempt so fingers crossed.

*Varieties - Sorry I couldn't help myself Or strains, I know the modern cultivator prefers using the correct term - cultivar