I'm glad you got things back on track!! :)
A lux meter would have done the same thing for you, BTW. And at $10-$15 for the simple "LX-1010B" model I use, it's a no-brainer to add to your toolkit if you can't afford a PAR meter.
You can use the lux meter, stand-alone and do fine.
But since you have access to the PAR meter, you can take the same measurement with both meters to create a conversion factor.
Once you have that, any future lux measurements taken can be accurately converted to a PAR number if/when needed.
You can read a bit more about doing this here:
A lux meter would have done the same thing for you, BTW. And at $10-$15 for the simple "LX-1010B" model I use, it's a no-brainer to add to your toolkit if you can't afford a PAR meter.
You can use the lux meter, stand-alone and do fine.
But since you have access to the PAR meter, you can take the same measurement with both meters to create a conversion factor.
Once you have that, any future lux measurements taken can be accurately converted to a PAR number if/when needed.
You can read a bit more about doing this here: