Hello everyone
I'd like to present my indoor grow shelf which I built because I was starting to get low on space on where to put my cacti during these harsh winter months we get here in Sweden.
It has three levels, the top one is mostly used for my Pereskiopsis grow, the 2nd level is not populated with anything at the moment due to the lack of proper lights.
At level one is where I keep the rest of the cacti (more pictures will follow regarding this).
Dimensions:
78x35x147 cm
(31x14x58 inches)
After putting the shelfs together I started adding the lights.
I'm using a LED+CFL combination.
Lights:
Level 3:
1x Blue LED panel with 225 LED's running at 13.8 watts combined with two 16 watt CFL's (6500 K, 900Lm)
Level 1:
Blue/Red LED panel with 60 blue LEDs and 165 red ones combined with two 16 watt CFL's (6500 K, 900Lm)
Since these lights are quite bright I decided to put plastic around the whole shelf so that it won't light up my whole kitchen. I'm using Velcro to attach the plastic to the shelf, which makes it possible for me to remove all plastic within a minute or so.
I hope this gets you inspired if you need a indoor grow
Any suggestions on improvements?
Indoor cacti grow shelf
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- Posts: 17
- Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 11:25 am
The most critical improvement is always going to to make it bigger. You can never have enough space for cacti
Then more lights. I think you just about have enough for overwintering, but its always nice to have a few more. See how it goes, and you can very easily put in higher wattage bulbs. With the blue LEDs, you probably don't need to worry about using 6500K bulbs, and can just use the regular 2700K ones. Not sure about that with the panel that already has a lot of red LEDs, but you can always try it some times when you have the bulbs.
Are the lights on a timer? Its nice to not have to worry about switching the lights on and off every day at the same time.
Then more lights. I think you just about have enough for overwintering, but its always nice to have a few more. See how it goes, and you can very easily put in higher wattage bulbs. With the blue LEDs, you probably don't need to worry about using 6500K bulbs, and can just use the regular 2700K ones. Not sure about that with the panel that already has a lot of red LEDs, but you can always try it some times when you have the bulbs.
Are the lights on a timer? Its nice to not have to worry about switching the lights on and off every day at the same time.
--ian
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- Posts: 17
- Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 11:25 am
One caution with the CFL bulbs: they lose a lot of brightness. After a couple of thousand hours they may have lost 20% or more of their light output. I just swapped out a bulb in my seed box that's maybe 4,000 hours old and the light level in the box increased by nearly 20%. Given that was only one of two bulbs, that means its output was down nearly 40%. I don't have the equipment to accurately measure the total light output of a bulb, but I replaced it with the same shape and the same power so my spot brightness readings should be reliable. Also, the difference was easily visible by eye which implies a considerable percentage since the eye perceives brightness geometrically (ie. 40% isn't much and 90% is perceived more like "half").
CFLs lose output quite quickly in the first few thousand hours and then stabilise until they finally stop working. LEDs lose output in a slightly different way, more or less constantly until they are too dim to be usable. Total life can be very long, 50,000 hours or more, but they might have lost half their output by 50,000 hours. There is huge variation and its hard to find the data for most LEDs, so measure the brightness and then check it every few thousand hours to see that its still doing its job.
CFLs lose output quite quickly in the first few thousand hours and then stabilise until they finally stop working. LEDs lose output in a slightly different way, more or less constantly until they are too dim to be usable. Total life can be very long, 50,000 hours or more, but they might have lost half their output by 50,000 hours. There is huge variation and its hard to find the data for most LEDs, so measure the brightness and then check it every few thousand hours to see that its still doing its job.
--ian
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- Posts: 1
- Joined: Thu Aug 22, 2013 10:33 am
Re: Indoor cacti grow shelf
Very exciting thread.. I will try to do similar setup and hope it works well for me..The Pixelacrobat wrote:Hello everyone
I'd like to present my indoor grow shelf which I built because I was starting to get low on space on where to put my cacti during these harsh winter months we get here in Sweden.
It has three levels, the top one is mostly used for my Pereskiopsis grow, the 2nd level is not populated with anything at the moment due to the lack of proper led light.
At level one is where I keep the rest of the cacti (more pictures will follow regarding this).
Dimensions:
78x35x147 cm
(31x14x58 inches)
After putting the shelfs together I started adding the lights.
I'm using a LED+CFL combination.
Lights:
Level 3:
1x Blue LED panel with 225 LED's running at 13.8 watts combined with two 16 watt CFL's (6500 K, 900Lm)
Level 1:
Blue/Red LED panel with 60 blue LEDs and 165 red ones combined with two 16 watt CFL's (6500 K, 900Lm)
Since these lights are quite bright I decided to put plastic around the whole shelf so that it won't light up my whole kitchen. I'm using Velcro to attach the plastic to the shelf, which makes it possible for me to remove all plastic within a minute or so.
I hope this gets you inspired if you need a indoor grow
Any suggestions on improvements?
-
- Posts: 3194
- Joined: Sun Oct 25, 2009 7:44 pm
- Location: Grand Isle Co., Vermont
Re: Indoor cacti grow shelf
That's a very well planned, compact but highly useful space. May it bring you many happy cactus moments!
Catch a falling star--but don't try it with a cactus!