Hello!
I need professional advice how to grow 15 lb of great hydroponic pot
1. How many Sqft do I need?
2. How much space needed for clones ?
3. Aprox. how much does it cost to start growing 15lb at one time? (I mean everything)
4. What the cost of running such operation monthly?
5. How much electricity needed monthly?
6. How can I know how much light do i need? How many bulbs and witch ones?
Thank You
I would personally suggest just doing a small grow a couple plants under an HPS, do that until you understand the plant and your setup and everything well enough to answer all of your above questions on your own.
Not trying to bring you down, it just seems like theres alot of this around here with new growers who have never grown a single plant dreaming up there pipedreams of growing hundreds of pounds and thinkin of how there going to spend all that money before they even have a seed in the ground or a nail in the wall. Its good to dream big just start out somewhere more realistic.
I'll give a shot at answering your questions though, if anything it will show you really what your dealing with.
1st off in an op this size you'd probably want to stagger your harvests to be more efficient and not having to take and root like 1000 clones at once, so it would be more like 4lb every 2 weeks, if this is what you meant originally and your looking to make 15lb every 2 weeks then just quadruple everything from here out.
You also have to take into account your experience factor and other variables, this is a plant not a computer, you can't just put Plant A under Light B and get Yield C, its much more involved than that. Ideally experienced growers usually aim for the 1g per watt figure, while a new grower could expect to yield half that or even less. So for your operation I'm going to assume your making about 1lb per 1000w HPS a little less than .5 gpw. Thats 15 lights total.
1. Keeping each light over a 5'x5' table thats 25sqft per. About 400 sqft. Your going to need to spread them out a bit for maneuvering around and stuff though so about a 30'x30' area, so like a small warehouse or like 3-4 seperate rooms.
2. This is kind of an odd question, it depends if your staggering or not but I'm assuming you are and I'd really just have an entire seperate 4'x4' area for them you'll probably need 100+ to fill 4 tables at a time.
3. With a setup this big it really would be hard to calculate because you have to factor in cooling systems, ventilation systems, co2, the table construction, and the lights reflectors and ballasts themselves, total I'm going to guess $20,000-$30,000.
4. Electricity alone will probably run you over $1,000 a month + supplies/nutes/bulb replacements probably another $100-200 a month.
5. This question seems the same as question 4 so I'll elaborate a bit, this is way too much electricity to be using without putting up redflags.
6. Answered earlier.
2 Final reason why this isn't a good idea.
Plants take tending too, especially that many. No matter how much you try to automate the process you still have to inspect trim and keep your entire setup clean. It seriously will be a fulltime job 40+ hours a week and you may even need a bit of help when it comes to harvest.
I wont go into too much detail about the legal consequences such a largescale grow could earn you, basically you could kill someone and be out in less time. By no means I'm not telling you to not do it because of this, just that you need to keep that in mind and be smart, don't cut a single corner, and remember that 9 times out of 10 no matter how loyal or close of a friend they will sell you out before going to jail themselves anyday.
