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In The Question, Where I Was Asking About Inverting A Light Vertically In One Of My Taller Chamber's, & Centering A 1000w.HPS In The Center So It Shined 360*,,,,,,The Question Is, Would It Be Better Vertical In This Space In The Center Or In The Center Horizontal????
Vertical mounting of cooltubed HPS lights is kinda interesting; light is emitted mainly from the side of the tube and it's better to hit the plants with light directly from the tube than with light which has been bounced off a reflector, as occurs with half the light leaving a tube when mounting a lamp & reflector above the plants in typical fashion.
If you do fit any cooltubed lights vertically, feed cool air in from the bottom and fit the thing so the lamp socket is at the bottom as well. Sounds a bit complex mixing vertical and horizontal fixtures though, particularly from a ducting perspective.
Ducting is already kinda interesting in my space...
I Like Your Drawing,,,,,,& That Is What I Will Be Doing With The Chamber's That Are 5'-6" & Take Out The Light Track, & Use maybe 400w,MH + 400w.HPS????,,,,,Or Just 2-HPS 430HPS????,,,,That Would Be About 800w. To 860w. Total..........Wouldn't 2000w. Be Way To Much For 21sqft????
I wouldn't use MH in flowering if I were you. While it is mainly the photoperiod which determines the growth habit (flowering vs veg), the bluish spectrum in MH can induce excessive leafiness on buds in flowering.
Where possible, cover an area with the most powerful
single HPS lamp you can. Larger HPS lamps deliver greater intensity and are more efficient in lumens/watt. Cooltubes allow closer lamp-to-leaf spacing, allowing you to make use of that high intensity. It's a rough guide but 50W/sq ft works pretty well for HPS. With efficient batwing reflectors, horizontal HPS fixtures cover a rectangular area. A cooltubed 1000 with a batwing ref covers a 3.5'x6' area nicely and when the lamp is at 12-18" above the tops, gives the highest avg intensity of any conventional horizontal HPS arrangement.
I Would Love To Get The Chamber's Back To 25c!!!!,,,,Can't Wait On That!!!,,,,,,,I Know I'm Repeating This But, Thank You, Thank You, For The Input,,,,,,,,Some-Time's Seeing It Through Another Pair Of Eye's & Thought's Are Priceless!!!!!!!!
No worries.
Good luck getting the temps down. Will increase your yield and density dramatically. Cooltubes will help lots!
Hey Al.
Great thread.
Just wondering if a 4 inch 160 cfm inline fan would be enough for 2 cooltubes?
If not, would it be better to get a bigger inline fan or a 150 axial?
I think I'd opt for the 150mm axial. Not terribly expensive and the greater diameter will match the diameter of the cooltube and will flow a bit better than the 4" unit.
Also, do you think I would run into much trouble for this kind of setup using 4 inch pots filled with rockwool floc for clones, placed on a table once rooted, and the table filled with hydroton
What would be the drawbacks? I'm assuming portability(moving plants around). Anything else?
Yep, portability is the main problem when planting in a common bed of any medium. Means that roots knit and if you get a dud, you can't remove it until harvest time for everything else.
You said you use 8 inch pots filled with rockwool and fytocell ...Why use the fytocell? Is it like perlite? I'm assuming you trim the roots back from the bottom of the pot? Wouldn't this stunt growth? I guess what i'm asking is why do you choose the medium you use?
My pots are actually 175mm dia on the top and 130mm on the bottom, 175mm tall. 175mm = 6.9". If roots escape pots, they usually get 'air pruned' since there is no medium in my trays. If you water so often that roots escape your pots and live to knit with roots of other plants, they'll be torn to buggery if you move the plants. If roots don't air-prune themselves, trim them off as they escape the pot drain holes while they are still small. The plant won't notice some small roots being trimmed off. However, if you allow the escaped roots to develop into large masses, the plant will come to depend on them and you will see transplant shock-like responses to cutting them off. If you have to trim them, do it often while the escaped roots are still small.
I use Fytocell because it is inexpensive, very light weight and easy to dispose of after a single use. I can carry 2x 100L bags with one hand. Pellets can be re-used but cleaning and sterilising them is a pain. If not cleaned and fully sterilised, root diseases can be passed from crop to crop.
