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Make sure you have an auto power shut off if the pump fails or you will lose all those LEDs fast and the water will boil

Very cool to see someone messing with high powered LED's. I hope these LED's bring enjoyment and massive yields your way.

If anything, I wish to impart some knowledge to you, in hopes it may help you. The biggest thing you need to be aware of, is to take the stated wattage output and Luminous Flux of Amazon LED's with a grain of salt. They are usually of poor quality and do not output enough light in the PAR spectrum that plants need. These LED's are also horribly inefficient. Most of the power used is turned into heat. These LED's can also damage your eyes.

If your willing to watch a 5 min video on how to reflow solder using an electric griddle. I highly recommend you invest into Cree JR5050 K class or Cree XP horticultural LED's. These LED's come in full spectrum white, blue and red. They have been designed specifically for growing plants. These 5 watt LED's put out more light at a given Voltage and Amperage than that Amazon 50 Watt at the same voltage and amperage.

For example. You stated the LED you are using, its Luminous Flux is 80 Lumens per watt. The Cree JR5050 output approx. 200 Lumens per watt.

Cree LED's are also very efficient at turning electric into light. Cree is considered one of the top LED brands. You can also look into OSRAM OLSON LED's, they also have a horticultural line.

Here is the Cree Horticultural LED Line up. You can find these LED's at places like Mouser.com or DigiKey.com

https://cree-led.com/products/applications/horticulture/
https://assets.cree-led.com/a/fs/Cree-LED-Horticulture-Feature-Sheet.pdf

Most high powered LED's are hard to find pre-soldered on to DIY boards. It's possible but they are rare and expensive. One way to make them work is to order star boards for each LED then solder on the LED and power leads to each board in series or parallel.

When it comes to LED drivers invest into good drivers that will last you years. They aren't expensive. Meanwell LED drives are considered one of the best in the world. I use these drivers for everything LED related. I specifically use their harsh environment HLG series with an A rating (All the A means is that the constant current and constant Amperage settings can be adjusted). I use the HLG-240H-30A and the HLG-320H-30A drivers to power grow lights.

Here is the spec sheet for the 240 Watt meanwell driver:

https://www.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=HLG-240H

A good housing for these LED's is made by a company called MakersLED. I use their slim line housings on every grow light that I build. The only difference is that I do not use starboards for my LED's. I design my own circuit boards and have them printed on a thick aluminum base.

http://www.makersled.com/products/makers-slim-heatsink/

You can easily find very quiet high output 120mm PC fans. Cooler Guys is the brand that I use.

https://www.coolerguys.com/collections/dc-12-volt-fans

I'm currently working on a project to replace my 600 Watt Metal Halide with a DIY LED lamp that will output more light and can be dimmed. I start a crap ton of seedlings in the spring for the garden and this monstrosity of a power hog needs to go. Everything listed above is what I'm using in my build. It isn't horribly expensive, I think I will be around $250 to $300 USD all said and done. Which is substantially less expensive if I were to outright buy a high quality LED grow light with similar components at the same power.

Here is one of the LED circuit boards that I'm currently Designing. I still have a little ways to go. It should output between 46,000 and 50,000 lumens.

https://files.catbox.moe/mhetdw.JPG
https://files.catbox.moe/qm772u.JPG
https://files.catbox.moe/z3i2fe.JPG

If you decide to venture further into this and need help sourcing things, let me know. I'll be more than glad to help. If you need custom circuit boards designed. Ill do it for free. I can also recommend some PCB manufactures, either in china or the USA to have these circuit boards printed.

Just for fun. Cree LED makes some of the world brights LED's. One of my favorites is the XHP35 HI. Its a 13 Watt LED that can be over driven to 50 Watts. There is a flashlight that uses one of these LED's to its full potential that can light up a tower at over a half mile away and a hotel at over a mile away. That's one Cree LED. Cree makes stupid bright LED's

Here is the video of this guy playing with this flashlight. Sorry for the Youtube link.

https://youtu.be/LStmsIyGldA


You are extremely talented at engineering. You obviously know what you're doing. It's obvious in how you welded and assembled your light fixture.

I wanted to do some math for you to illustrate you can do way better. You are running your LED's on 120V AC at .41 amps which equals 49.2 watts per LED. Just for the sake of it, we will say there is no loss when converting from AC to DC in those LED's. The Luminous Flux of your LED's is 80 Lumens per watt. That would mean each LED is putting out 3,936 lumens. Add the lumens across 16 LED's. That would give you 62,976 total lumens and consuming 787.2 watts. That efficiency is about as good as the 600 watt metal halide I'm trying to replace. The build that I'm doing, using good LED's is going to peak at around 55,000 lumens in a 16 inch housing footprint and consuming 230 watts of electric. I'm running the LED's at less than half their power. If I were to power them fully at 5 watts per LED. That light will output 96,000 lumens while consuming 480 watts of power. I can still go even higher. Their max rating is 7.2 watts which would output 138,240 lumens while consuming 691.2 watts of power.

With your skill set, you deserve to use better LED's and the money you will save in not having to build a massive housing and cooling rig will pay for its self easily.

very cool I wish I knew more guys like you irl

Nice work Canuck. Sexy manifold. I'm working on a similar project right now with only 3w LEDs for a custom lighting fixture to shine through pigmented epoxy voids in wood. Thankfully I can just use a couple inches of aluminum 1x1 angle as a heat sink hidden behind the fixture, with some thermally conductive electrically insulative epoxy to glue them on.

When the snow flies I'll start working on my wood stove heat exchanger to heat water in the winter. That will look a lot like this project with a copper manifold and water jacket loops around the sides of the wood stove. I splurged on TEG modules to go between the wood stove and water block to make a couple hundred watts while I heat the water.

Nice to see some other makers around

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What's the color (K) of your LEDs? I'd throw a raspberry pi and temperature sensor on there to shut it down if the pump stops. Or, get a little thermostat/relay for under $10 like they use in incubators.

Looks killer though. I hope it grows.

Neat!