new room design 1200W

[untamed]

i've decided to move into something a lot bigger, so it means i'm upgrading to stealth cabinet, to stealth room!

i've got 15' of width, 5' foot depth and a height of 8.5'.

in this space, I need to have a shelving/storage area which will be a cabinet built from floor to roof.. in this shelving will also be built in clone & mother rooms.. the storage cabinets/mother room will have a width of 3', a depth of 5' and a height of 8.5' and will be sealed off from the bloom room.

the bloom room will have the remaining space which will be 10' of width, 5' of depth and 8.5' height..

for anyone needing a visual



I've got 1200W to play with in the bloom room, be it 3 x 400 Watt HPS or 2 x 600 Watt HPS, not sure yet? should I use light movers?

I want to have at least 6 plants, would love 8-10 if I could fit them in there with room to work.. I also am thinking of running a bio bucket system as i've seen some amazing things work using them.. downside to them are they take a bit of space... either that or another way someone can recommend to maximize space and have big yields?

so for anyone that can help a newb in setting up a room of this calibre, opinions would be great..

 

[gregor_mendel]

1200 watts would cover at most 24 square feet horizontally.

A 5x5 space is close enough.
This leaves you another 5x5 space to eventully expand into, or use a flip flop.

Or, add another 1200 watts.

Alternatively, you could do a 1 level sort of stadium (not really stadium at all, I guess)
with buckets along each long wall - 3 to 5 on each side, with your two 600s or three 400 hung vertically in a row down the middle

P P P P
o o o
P P P P

P is for plant
o is a lamp (vertical)

Turn the plants once a week, or just tie them up to best utilize the light.

What determines your 1200 watt limit?

 

[untamed]

good ideas there! thanks

1200W is all I can go in this place... I cant increase the electricity by too much... maybe in the long run it will eventually go to 2000W, but will have to be 1200W for now

 

[green_tea]

do a 3x9 area with 3 x 400W CMH bulbs... then the fact that your only getting 44.4W/sq ft doesn't matter as much since you can get those suckers real close (and well the fact that the CMH is so much better than an HPS or MH)

use a CMH bulb for veg too! (just keep it farther away)

one thing though... do you know what you are doing for everything else?


Sealed room? (if so questions below)
air cooled hoods or not?
CO2 generator or CO2 bottle?
dehumidifier?
Air conditioner?
carbon scrubber for the room itself.
RO system?
will you run the lights on 240V or 120?


Flip flops:
thats the nice thing of a flip flop in the future, it doesn't make it look like you are using another 1200W, it will just look like you are using 1200W all the time instead of every 12 hrs.

 

[GrassRoots]

I run 1200w in a 5x6 space and that certainly seems like the limit that 2 600 watters will cover. I don't have experience flowering with 400w but I know I've read from a lot of people that 400's can't give nearly the penetration of the 600's, also 600's are the most efficient bulbs available so that's why I picked them.

You're talking about plant numbers like 6-10 but they'd have to be some big ass plants to fill up your room. I run 25-28 plants in my 30 sq. foot space in 3 gallons of soil each. Unless you're planning doing a lot of LSTing or SCROGing I don't think your going to want bushes THAT big because the 400 or 600w bulbs you're looking at won't penetrate a huge plant like you'd have to grow to only have 6-10.

I'm sure you'll find a lot of people willing to help and give good advice but you've got to give as many details as you can for what you've got planned or supplied already, what decisions you've made, what you're open to and what your budget is like. Good luck, PM me if I can help with anything. I've only got about 6 months of practical experience with growing but I have quite a bit of knowledge stored up from my years of planning and preparing to grow.

GrassRoots

 

[untamed]

Sealed room? (if so questions below)
air cooled hoods or not?
CO2 generator or CO2 bottle?
dehumidifier?
Air conditioner?
carbon scrubber for the room itself.
RO system?
will you run the lights on 240V or 120?


Flip flops:
thats the nice thing of a flip flop in the future, it doesn't make it look like you are using another 1200W, it will just look like you are using 1200W all the time instead of every 12 hrs.

hey man, thanks for the thoughts.

good idea with the 3 x 400's.. I'll take that into consideration..

flip flops could work... but come to think about it, i'm not making smaller rooms in this room as its tight as it is already

with regards to the rest, its not going to be a sealed room... i'll have cool tubes pulling fresh air from outside and blowing straight out the room, then i'll have a big can fan and filter sucking the rest of the dirty air out.. i'll probably heat the house with the heat from the globes, tap it into the exisitng ducted heating system.. intake will come from a totally seperate room in the house, so fresh air will always be available

co2, probably not... AC, I might invest in a portable AC, summers down here get pretty hot.. the room will be fully insulated, but it will still heat up in there..

power is 240V down here, does that make a difference at all?

i'm looking at digital ballasts at the moment, they have both the 400 & 600 lumateks down here, are they any good?

 

[untamed]

I run 1200w in a 5x6 space and that certainly seems like the limit that 2 600 watters will cover. I don't have experience flowering with 400w but I know I've read from a lot of people that 400's can't give nearly the penetration of the 600's, also 600's are the most efficient bulbs available so that's why I picked them.

You're talking about plant numbers like 6-10 but they'd have to be some big ass plants to fill up your room. I run 25-28 plants in my 30 sq. foot space in 3 gallons of soil each. Unless you're planning doing a lot of LSTing or SCROGing I don't think your going to want bushes THAT big because the 400 or 600w bulbs you're looking at won't penetrate a huge plant like you'd have to grow to only have 6-10.

I'm sure you'll find a lot of people willing to help and give good advice but you've got to give as many details as you can for what you've got planned or supplied already, what decisions you've made, what you're open to and what your budget is like. Good luck, PM me if I can help with anything. I've only got about 6 months of practical experience with growing but I have quite a bit of knowledge stored up from my years of planning and preparing to grow.

GrassRoots

GrassRoots, personally, i'd rather have 6 big plants then 20 little ones... 20 plants would kill me.. I dont have enough time to care for that many plants... 6 plants would mean less time in the room.. the thing I love withthe bio buckets is you can go away for days at a time (not the best - but it may be needed from time to time) and not worry *too much* about them.. that being said, how much did you yield off that big crop?

training wise, i'll probably LST them I guess.. I've got a SCROG cabinet now, but I think LST is a little better.. did LST the run before that, was good..

i'll be running indica strains in there, i've already got white russian going, i'll probably keep growing this out for a while

 

[Hempstress]

Depending on how tall you want to grow your plants, you might consider a 1000w on a mover, as the 1000w will penetrate deeper. You should be able to grow 8 plants within that area. I use DWC in individual 5 gal buckets and I can go away for several days also, if need be. Plan for venting and cooling now--heat is always a problem. I'm pretty "dial in", all my heating, cooling, and ventilation is on thermostats and/or timers.

 

[untamed]

hey hemptress, light mover is a possibility... that actually may be the best solution yet.

with regard to light movers, is it ok to have ducting to the lights for cooling purposes? i've never used/had experience with light movers, so not sure on exactly how they work... but i've seen them for sale here, so they are available at least

are they noisy?

cooling wise, i'll have one fan that triggers on with the lighting which will pull fresh air in, breeze over the lights to cool them and then exhaust out the room... the other i'll run 24/7 which will have a carbon filter attached to it, this will draw the rest of the air out the room and cause a negative pressure in there, fresh air will be drawn from somewhere in the house...

is that overkill?

 

[GrassRoots]

I agree with the idea of using the 1000, you need the penetration with such large plants. In my experience of seeing light movers at the hydro store they are not loud. It is ok to have ducting to the lights to air cool them if they're on a light mover.

Cooling wise your plan is exactly what I am doing now. 2 air cooled lights on a 6" vortex inline with the air coming in from and exhausting to the outside. For ventilation in the room I use a 4" can fan brand inline hooked up to a can fan brand carbon scrubber (i think the can 33 model) and I also run that 24/7. For intake I use a passive 6" by 12-14" hole (can't remember exact dimensions). That has a air vent cover similar to what is throughout my house as an intake for the central a/c and heat. Then on the grow room side to keep it light proof I have 2, 6" 90 degree hvac elbows painted flat black on the inside.

That 1000 watter will be great for penetration is still not enough in my opinion for the size of your flower space. 1000w/50sq ft is 20w per square foot. Most people recommend 50. Some go to 100. I'm low with ~40psf but with just 1 1000 you'd be at half that. Any reason you're not able to do some more wattage? If no matter what you can't give them the extra light they need you should really consider making the flower room smaller.

Also, you asked elsewhere about the lumateks and I'm running 2 of the 600s and have had no problems at all. I got 12oz's off my first harvest with 16 plants grown from seed and no training. 2nd harvest I got ~25 oz's with 28 plants and LSTing. My current crop I'm growing 25 plants with minor LSTing and I cut off all the low branches this time to make things easier on myself come trimming time and to (theoretically) make the main buds grow larger.

What are your entrances into this room? Could you throw up your first sketch but with the door(s) in there.

GrassRoots

 

[untamed]

hey dude, thanks for the comments

i'm having 1 door come into this room, it will swing outwards so I dont lose any space..

pretty much, what I have here is usable space, I may partition it off with panda film? or I could even make the length of the room smaller?



1000W on a mover might be the go..

i'm also starting to consider fireproofing as much as possible.. as much as we hate to think about it, its always a big risk with what we do here

i'm considering bricking this in as it will be part of the house, but not.. dont want to give too much details away (as you can all understand).. i'll even have a fire proof door on it...

the ceiling is the only part of concern, it will have sheetrock/plasterboard up top, but this is not entirely fireproof to my understanding? as far as I know, its only a fire retardant

anyway, whoever knows about this subject, post away.. the more ideas the better

 

[Jerry Maine]

Wow dude, that's going to be a monster room. Are you going to convert your stealth cab to a mother and clone box?

J

 

[untamed]

hey dude, yeah it should be pretty good... what i've learnt in the cab should really do well in a size way bigger with better and bigger lights!

the stealth cabinet I own now is going to get destroyed and i'll construct a small mother box into a storage cabinet where i'll have a clone area, mother area (bonsai mums) & of course storage space for nutes etc (floor to roof type cabinet).. the only things i'm keeping out of the cabinet are the 2 foot fluro's to keep 2 white russian mothers I'm growing now alive..

i've also been thinking - based on what everyones telling me, I may have to make the bloom room smaller than what I initially planned... I'm thinking of running a 4x4 with a single 1000W HPS above and only going 4 plants... how big yield (realistic) can I expect from 4 big plants running under 1000W?

 

[GrassRoots]

how big yield (realistic) can I expect from 4 big plants running under 1000W?

Lots of factors to consider but anywhere from 500-1000 grams (17-35oz) would be realistic.

 

[untamed]

i'd be happy with 32 oz... 2 pound is very attractive!

 

[GrassRoots]

How are things going so far with your setup untamed? Any updates? Problems? Decisions? Keep us in the loop.

GrassRoots

 

[untamed]

hey grassroots, thanks for following this up

havent been thinking about it too much, its pushed back 1 or 2 months, so i'll start reconsidering it again soon...

that being said, i'm looking at the 1000W HPS option.... 4-6 plants under it..

 

[gregor_mendel]

Especially with a 1000W, hang it vertically inside a circle of plants.

I once did this with biobuckets and NYC Diesel.
I left town, hooked up 700 ppm water at about 8.0 pH for the last month, and it turned out great.

 

[gregor_mendel]

That bad water was from the tap, just in case that was confusing.

I don't recommend water like that.

Just pointing out that I has a great crop in spite of it.

 

[untamed]

what was your yield?