LED vs CFL, 10W IKEA VÄXER, T5, PPFD, DLI, & general grow light information

[Max - LEDTonic]

Hi guys!

I've started building a knowledge bank about everything related to indoor lighting.
I have measured the light output, the PPFD (μmol/m2/s) of many different regular household bulbs. I've compared different lamp types, CFL vs LED.
I've tested how much light actually comes through a window, together with a bunch of other transparent objects.
Lastly, we have written a detailed article about DLI (Daily Light Integral) which also has a super handy chart that would tie all of the other articles together for you and make all this information useful.


Link to extensive CFL vs LED video.
9w LED, 9w CFL, 14w LED, 18w CFL.

Second video of bulb testing.
The IKEA VÄXER (PAR30) 10w bulb, together with two other similar bulbs. Also a 2x14w T5 fixture. This video will also show how light intensity is regulated by distance, in detail.

Article about DLI and how to config your grow area.

Video about light transmission
Testing the light transmission rates of various transparent objects such as Saran wrap, the lid of a seed starting tray, glass panes, a window, and grow room glasses.


Some of the videos are quite long so I've included clickable timestamps in the descriptions on Youtube for easier navigation to the juicy parts, as time is precious. We've written summaries in blog format to most of the videos since some find it more comfy to read, rather than listening.

Let me know what you guys think. Any and all feedback is appreciated. If there something else that the community is wondering about and want to have tested, we would love to get you input on that :-)

Light and love,
Max
LEDTonic

[Ray]

Hi, Max. Welcome to the board.

I only looked at the "Light transmission" video so far, and only skipped through that, so first want to say thanks for doing that and posting it.

However, I think you need to be more detailed about window transmission, only because of differences in the coatings on them, or even IF they have coatings.

[Max - LEDTonic]

Hi Ray, and thanks =)

Thank you for your input, and I agree with you.

The window in this video was probably around 70-80 years old, as that's how old the building is. I'm sure that the glass panes have been changed at least once since then. I wish I had more data on what type of glass it was as well as its thickness. It would also be nice to test different kinds of windows and compare them to each other, but I haven't had any possibility to do so, unfortunately.

I did find some great results on google which are quite similar to mine.
This picture is a screenshot from the result on google and it is from a book by Gundula Proksch
"Creating Urban Agricultural Systems: An Integrated Approach to Design"


We had about the same results, but hers are a little more detailed with spectrum included.