3 X 600 hps = how much bud?

[VerdantGreen]

1.33 grams/watt is my best so far - in organic soil - and i think i may still do a little better with my 250. i dont choose my strains on the basis of their yield as i am not commercial. - i just want good smoke but the yeid is a good measure of efficiency for me.

and yes the pics are in my journal

V.

agent smith - just to be clear - are you saying you HAVE acheived 1.86 g/watt or that you have predicted that you will if you get it all dialled in right?

 

[blackone]

Agent-Smith's pics may be gone from this site but I'm looking at some of them atm and I can tell you they all look great.
I would say for a beginner 0.5 g/W should be pretty doable - that's what I hit the first time I grew. Since then I've maxed out at 0.75 g/W - have also done worse than 0.5 when I made some stupid mistakes. This round I'm hoping to get closer to 1 g/W and I know it can be done even better. I'm growing in soil btw.
I don't doubt for a second that if you take my grow - remove the thrips - go hydro - add a better reflector - perhaps use a higher yielding strain - make less mistakes - then it should be pretty doable to get well past the 1 g/W for a flat grow.

 

[Aerokush101]

Very respectable, but what are you growing???

 

[deathtosoapbar]

Im just not buying the 40 ounce dry from 1 600 watt story, unless your weighing it half damp.

 

[blackone]

1.33 grams/watt is my best so far - in organic soil - and i think i may still do a little better with my 250. i dont choose my strains on the basis of their yield as i am not commercial. - i just want good smoke but the yeid is a good measure of efficiency for me.

and yes the pics are in my journal

V.

agent smith - just to be clear - are you saying you HAVE acheived 1.86 g/watt or that you have predicted that you will if you get it all dialled in right?

Just pulling out the calculator - 1.33 g/W was that with a 250W light? If so then one could estimate a maximum yield of 1.51 g/W or 906.8 grams with a 600W light.
(250W hps : 33000 lm, 600W hps = 90000 lm, 90000/33000/600*250*1.33 = 1.51)
Sounds crazy - but with 20 square feet and near perfect light distribution perhaps not? If 2.2 g/W can be done with a vertical then I'm sure a flat garden can come real close if the light is just distributed correctly. Subtract 10-20% yield because of lossy reflection and still 1.87 g/W is definitely not theoretically impossible...
Gotta get rid of these hotspots tho I think...

 

[blackone]

That being said any such claims should probably be taken with a grain of salt - sorry Agent
DrBudGreenGenes's estimated yield was based on a couple of plants weighing 21 grams each - he wouldn't be able to fit enough of those in the cab to reach the 3 g/W.
As impressive as Heath Robinson's yields were he also showed pics of his buds - I must admit I've seen better trimjobs than that, hehe.
Also he didn't pull 2+ g/W every time - mostly in the 1.5 g/W range.

I guess back to the subject again - with a high yielding strain and no serious problems 0.5 g/W is pretty easy, 0.75 g/W attainable by all if everything is pretty well tuned, 1g/W+ is only something you reach when almost all parameters are optimized.

 

[kopite]

Heath Robinson gets over 2.2 GPW and I don't hear people say bullshit to him!

I remember someone did over his 34oz plant

 

[VerdantGreen]

hi blackone, nice calculation but not sure you could convert with lumens quite like that because of the extra distance you need between light and bud with the 600. i dont do anything special nor am i that experianced - i put my success so far down a very good reflector, maxing out the canopy with 9-12 colas per sq foot and using big pots + guano - and probably a bit of luck!
also many people (imo) dont use a big enough footprint for their light. my 250 illuminates at about 60watts/sq foot and above this you may get slightly better yeild per square foot but not per watt.

V.

i hope i can get up to 1.86 sometime - i think it may be within the realms of possibility but i would agree with others that if you are going to (smugly) claim that yeild then be ready to show some evidence.

and...
methinks the agent doth protest too much....

 

[medmaker420]

1g/w makes me happy anything above that would make me cry

 

[Agent-Smith]

Verdant Green, yes my best to date is 1.86 GPW. It takes time to dial it in though to your strain and environment. When I first started this new style I got just under 1GPW and since then I have been tweaking it little by little to reach what I have gotten so far. I don't think I'd be able to do much better honestly unless I add a few more plants, but then they all might suffer a little bit so I'm still not sure if I will try it or not. I could also use CO2 but I never have used it before, and would rather not deal with the annoyances of the system (dialing it in, making sure it is off 30 minutes before I go into the room, etc.)

AeroKush, read again I said I grow Farmers Choice.

deathtosoapbar, again, I don't care if you believe it or not. I know what I do.

Blackone, those "hotspots" you speak of are actually helpful. Because of the design of the reflector, those "light rails" you see helps extend the usable light to the outside edges of the reflector and grow space, and most times the plants on the outside edges get bigger than the plants directly under the bulb.

And again, all of those pics are from the two people's setups of whom I've copied and learned from except for the trim pictures. Once my legal problems go away and I feel it is safe again, I'll post pictures of the actual setup. But until then, I'm sorry, you're just gonna have to believe me. If not, I'm cool with that too, it wouldn't be the first time LOL

 

[blackone]

There is definitely no doubt in my mind when it comes to believing that the idea of seeing the whole room as a giant reflector is the optimal solution for a flat grow.
If any setup can do it then it's gonna be a growtunnel or similar system.

 

[Agent-Smith]

And the funny thing is, this system has been out there for you guys to try for years. There's tons of setups out there to copy and learn from. It just takes time and a little bit of trial and error but if you are willing to work at it, anyone can do it. I started out the way most people here do, overwatering, overferting, and listening to everyone at once which ruined many attempts LOL. But it was when I decided to listen to the greats like pH, and LUCAS, KeefTreeez, SoQuick, DSOTM, and many others that I started to learn what was REALLY needed. So the design I've been using for years and modifying is the same, I just tweak it little by little. Just in the last year I finally made the switch out to buckets over using the table style setup like KT used and the one in my grow journal which that, combined with the adjustable reflector, helped push me up from 1.5GPW to where I am now.

 

[HIGHGROOVE]

hummm just curious why he has his lights so far away from the canopy?

 

[Agent-Smith]

hummm just curious why he has his lights so far away from the canopy?

Because the reflector is heavy and the walls and doors are fixed, it was very tough to devise a way to make the reflector adjustable so KT always ran his reflector at the height he knew his plants would finish at. I did the same thing for the past few years until I made the above described changes to my system. It does help for sure to have it adjustable. Before moving to an adjustable height, switching to buckets, and using the light movers, I was stuck hovering around the 1.5 GPW mark. Once you start getting to that point it really starts to cost more and more to keep making your numbers better. Just like in Drag Racing, when you run 15 second 1/4 miles, it doesn't take alot of money to make your time better. But when you start getting faster, sub 9 second area, it costs more and more to keep getting better. Some of those guys spend thousands of dollars for that extra 1/10 of a second, and that is kind of where I am at the moment. I have experimented with this design so much that I have learned slowly but surely what it likes and doesn't like, and I know to get any better numbers than what I have now would cost me more money and aggravation than it's worth to me at this point.

I HONESTLY, would love to see more people try this design and see that it works great and for a basic setup really isn't very expensive. But to get the great numbers, you gotta spend some money. You know the old saying, "It takes money to make money", and it's true. This setup was never originally designed for the hobby grower, although it can and has been scaled down to fit individuals needs (the one I use in my grow log and the even smaller one I made before it). So all of you little guys, don't get discouraged, I've seen cheaper versions of this setup that work great. Others have messed with it as well. One guy made an Aeroponics table for it and another guy even uses 1000W bulbs in his, so anything is possible. And as always, I will help anyone with their designs or to help custom tailor one to your specific needs or style of grow. The reflector really is universal in that respect but you do have to make sure your environment is in order as well. Being as how it is an enclosed space, the airflow is critical so as not to heat stress or even burn your plants. And if you can do all of that, be prepared for an amazing grow

 

[VerdantGreen]

what surprised me in the pictures is the distance between the bulb and the reflectors - the light going upwards is going to be severly diminished by the inverse square law by the time it hits the plants.

 

[blackone]

Forget about the inverse square law. It doesn't apply A whole room reflector of the correct shape will make sure no light escapes - all of it will be reflected back at the growing area. If it's a parabol then the light should be in the focal point to create parallel beams downward for the reflected portion of the light.
Parallel beams are not subject to the inverse square law.
Could be funny to try and design it with a computer program - parabolic might not be 100% optimal when also taking into account the 50% of the lightrays that go downward and are not reflected - as Smith said earlier the direct light from the bulb is concentrated in the middle (No escape from the inverse square law for direct light, hehe) and it needs more light on the edges (I'm still arguing that the picture shows that it had been overdone and light is being wasted on a hotspot)

 

[VerdantGreen]

Forget about the inverse square law. It doesn't apply A whole room reflector of the correct shape will make sure no light escapes - all of it will be reflected back at the growing area. If it's a parabol then the light should be in the focal point to create parallel beams downward for the reflected portion of the light.
Parallel beams are not subject to the inverse square law.
.....

thats not the way i thought that it worked.
can anyone provide some links to explain this a bit further? -

i thought that light travelling to the reflector and back to the plant would be reduced by the inverse square law just the same...

V.

 

[blackone]

If you understand exactly why and how the law works then it becomes quite obvious.
Light is not reduced by the inverse square law - it's merely distributed over a larger area proportional to the square of the distance. Total amount of light is the same (the amount of light being absorbed by the air is negligible)
Add any reflector and everything changes.
Add a parabolic reflector with the light in the focal point and you get parallel beams : No increased distribution with distance and no inverse square law - it's really pretty simple.
For links check out this one: http://www.portraitlighting.net/inversesquare_law.htm - it's using a Fresnel lens as an example of parallel beams but the principle stays the same.
This of course only goes for the portion of the light that's reflected by the parabol - the last 50% still bevahes according to the inverse square law BUT the reflective sides should help confine all light within the growing area and offset it somewhat.
Of course some light is lost to reflection as with any reflector - there is no doubt that a vertical SOG like Heath and others do them is the optimal solution but this one should come close.
I don't think I'm enough of a handyman to try this one out myself but it definitely sounds tempting.

 

[VerdantGreen]

ok thanks blackone i get that now, but the light is still diminished on its way to the reflector by the inverse square law i would have thought. also i imagine it would be very hard to get perfect parabolic reflection in a prismic tunnel with a light source that only comes from one point or even 2 or 3 lights. basically what i am saying is that it would work in theory but almost inpossible to get it to work in practice!

V.

 

[Abja Roots]

In response to the question I would say without knowing any details about your system or strain choice plant number temp etc....

Approximately 1.25 lbs - 2.25 lbs.

My only advice would be forget about numbers and money(not that you mentioned that but it's not uncommon for people to think 1 lb = $36,38,3900....)

Just do the best you can. I think Wayne asked the best question. Are you going to be an active grower or lazy grower.

Best of Luck

I just want to thank you for sharing the link Agent Smith. Loved the idea of the tunnels. Thanks again.