The Convenience of Dimmable Grow Lights
When it comes to growroom design, indoor cannabis cultivators have to make important choices between convenience and affordability. As a general rule of thumb, you can count on the fact that the more automation you have, the more expensive your growroom will be. Conversely, the less automation in your growroom, the more manual labor is required to keep it running.
Horticultural lighting systems have expanded exponentially in their sophistication over the past few years. While many recent innovations in grow light technology have been dedicated to important aims like energy savings, manufacturers are also looking to make the growers’ lives easier with new features. To this end, a majority of leading horticultural lighting manufacturers make their lights with dimmable features.
When looking at the daily routines of indoor cultivation, the convenience of dimmable grow lights simply cannot be denied. Whether it be lowering the intensity for regular duties like spraying or keeping your room running in an emergency, having dimmable grow lights greatly increases the versatility of your operation.
One Light for Everything
The biggest selling point for dimmable lights is that you can use a single fixture for every cannabis growth phase. Without dimming technology, cultivators are forced to buy several different lights to grow plants from the propagation stage all the way through flowering. Not only is this option expensive, but it can be a real hindrance to move different light fixtures in and out of your growroom.
With a dimmable LED such as the AC Infinity Ionboard, you can adjust the light intensity for every cannabis growth phase. In fact, the easy-to-use control panel on the Ionboard is dimmable in 20° F increments from 0% to 100%. With such precision controls, you can dial in the perfect output during propagation, vegetative growth, and flowering. Such advanced LED lights also feature optimized light spectrums for different growth stages.
With dimmable lights, you can keep all your grow equipment and plants in a single room the whole time. Especially for hobbyist tent growers, the ability to simply adjust light output for different growth phases is a huge asset.
Spraying plants under full strength lights can lead to issues with burned leaves.
Spraying Plants
If you are not properly set up with your light system, spraying plants in your indoor garden can be a real headache. Mainly because, spraying plants under full strength lights can lead to issues with burned leaves. As such, growers are forced to come up with creative ideas for spraying their plants without burning them, while also not causing abnormalities in the light cycle during nighttime.
In order to spray their plants, growers without dimmable lights generally have to turn their main lights off early, then get the job done under a weaker fluorescent work light. In other instances, growers spray during the nighttime under the power of green light. Because of added workloads and potential plant stressors, neither of these methods is ideal.
Having dimmable grow lights gives you the ability to turn lights down for spraying. Instead of sneaking around in the dark or manually switching light sources under tight time constraints, all you need to do is dial down the light intensity. Most growers would agree that 20%-40% strength is a choice range for spraying plants.
Read also:
Environmental Anomalies
Another important notion to consider concerning dimmable grow lights is environmental anomalies. While most indoor growers pride themselves on the ability to control growroom climates with precision, things occasionally happen that are simply out of one’s control.
If your AC breaks down in the middle of summer, temperatures in your room can quickly climb to levels that will stress or even kill cannabis plants. In other cases, people growing indoors during the shoulder seasons of spring and fall simply run into abnormally hot days sometimes. No matter what the cause, being able to turn down the output on your lights is a great way to control unexpected heat spikes.
Without dimmable lights, growers experiencing environmental anomalies must disconnect a good portion of their lights, or even turn them off altogether.
Stressed cannabis plants need time to recover from before they can be put under full-strength light again.
Working with Stressed Plants
Working with stressed plants is another time when dimmable lights are extremely convenient. Whether it be from nutrient burn or a nasty pest infestation, stressed cannabis plants need time to recover from before they can be put under full-strength light again.
Without dimmable lights, growers have been known to raise whole light fixture when their plants are stressed out. When further away, the overall light intensity hitting the plants is greatly diminished. While raising lights helps with stress issues, you are still paying electricity for costs for them running at full strength, although much of the usable light is getting wasted.
Being able to dim the lights not only eliminates any extra labor with having to raise and lower fixtures, but it will also save on your electrical bill.
Conclusion
Being able to dim your grow lights whenever needed makes your entire indoor operation more versatile. Whether it be streamlining regular chores like spraying and foliar feeding, or pivoting in the event of an emergency, dimmable lights will make your life as a grower much easier. Even more, if you are a tent grower, the convenience of having a single light for every cannabis growth phase simply can’t be beaten.
When planning your next indoor garden, opting to increase your budget for extra features like dimmable lights will likely save you some serious time and money down the road. That being said, the most talented indoor growers tend to find a happy balance between automation and manual labor. In finding this balance, you can make your life easier with extra features like dimmable lights, while still spending enough time in your garden to know how your plants are doing at all times.
|
AC Infinity is the foremost name in air delivery systems, designing and developing the latest innovations in cooling and ventilation technology. They offer a suite of quiet inline fans that automate the growing progress and track key metrics. Visit acinfinity.com or contact [email protected] to learn more. |
