As indoor growers know, it’s crucial to control the heat in your garden, otherwise your plants will suffer heat stress. Grow light plays an important role in grow room, we can improve indoor overheating problem by optimizing the grow light:
3.) Optimize Your Grow Light
There are several ways you can optimize your grow lights, up to and including upgrading to better ones.
Get the Right Size Grow Light (doesn’t necessarily mean lower yields!)
Grow lights that are optimized for your size grow space tend to reduce problems with heat. Too much heat hurts yields by making plants grow poorly. On top of that, too much light (light stress) can prevent buds from fattening and make plants more sensitive to heat. That means having the right size light for your space will help prevent the space from overheating. When buying a grow light, many manufacturers list which size space the particular grow light is optimized for (aka 1’x2′ or 4’x4′). Try to match the right size grow light to your space.
In some cases, getting a smaller light can actually increase yields, especially if the heat is out of control with your current light.
If you’re struggling with heat and plants are constantly heat stressed, consider stepping down a size.
Use an LED Grow Light
When it comes to heat control, LEDs are hands-down the best cannabis grow light. If you have tried LEDs in the past and been disappointed, we feel your pain. A decade ago, the LEDs at the time were not great for growing cannabis.
However, as of 2022, multiple newer LED grow lights have proven to be incredible at growing cannabis. These modern LEDs have been developed using real cannabis plants and live up to the LED hype, producing amazing yields and beautiful bud quality.
In our experience, nearly all newer LEDs run cooler per watt than other grow lights like HPS, LEC, or even CFLs/T5s. On top of the fact that LEDs produce less heat compared to other lights, cannabis plants under LEDs typically can stand higher temperatures. So LEDs give you a light that puts off less heat and plants that can stand more heat. If heat is a concern, you want to go with LEDs.
There are a lot of LEDs to choose from and the sheer number of options can be overwhelming. If you’re interested in getting your first LED and aren’t sure which one to get, Aokairuisi LEDs are a good mix of quality and price. They get a good rate of growth in the vegetative stage and better yields/bud quality than many LEDs in the same price range. Some good lights: Shop
Reduce Power
Many LEDs and other types of grow lights are “dimmable” which means they have different power settings that allow you to reduce the power of your light. For example, you might be able to set your grow light to 75% or 50% power. In these modes, your grow light will use less power and give off less light/heat. If there’s a heat wave coming up, it might be helpful to turn down the power until things cool down.
Raise Grow Lights
Raising your lights tends to help bring down the temperature experienced by the plants. Getting a lot of light can make plants more likely to suffer from heat, so another bonus of moving your lights further away can help them be more heat-resistant.
Note: If we need to raise my grow light higher than the normal hanger allows, we use zip ties to attach the grow light to the top of the tent. However, make sure to leave at least a little air gap so you don’t have a hot lamp touching the top surface of the tent directly (this can be a fire hazard).
Raise grow lights (if possible) when the plants are getting too hot to help reduce the heat they experience and especially reduce heat on developing buds. Sometimes a few inches can make a difference.
To be continued…