Experienced Electrician! Here to Answer Any and All Growroom Electrical Questions

[slantxl]

Hey Common One;

I lived in an old building that was built in the 1940's and I had the same deal as you. The electricity and water were included in my rental payment. I am sure I could of been growing a little something back then and should have taken advantage of the fact that I did not pay for electricity.

On the flip side, I worked for a general contractor and he was asked to get a bid on a large residential condo to put a system in place that would monitor each tenants electrical use so that they could bill the electrical costs back to the tenants. I doubt you have such a system in place if you are not already paying rent. If your building does get one, you will probably be notified before hand.

They may not be able to pin point you, but 7,000 watts of usage is a pretty significant increase.

 

[Longest69]

Hi there fellow RIU'ers... Over and over again I continualy see new threads and posts about electrical work question and thought I would post a couple threads to help you guys the same way all of you who have done such a great job having helped me... So, Do you have a grow room question about how to wire something up, or what are the safest ways of doing things? The most important one I see alot is people running lights and fans off power chords... I have wired my own grow room and will post an example of my work.

Please, if you have any questions and are unsure of what to do or if what you are doing is safe, PLEASE! ask me first if you are even a tad bit unsure. I would hate to hear anyone have an electrical fire because they didn't quite know what they were doing when all they needed to do was to ask a couple of questions... I will do my best to point you in the right direction.

If you want to do some wiring your self, I will either let you know if your project is too complicated if your not handy with electrical, or, IF YOU ASK, I will walk you thru your project step by step.

So please, ASK AWAY!!!

You can post questions here but you may not get your question answerd on the thread, best way to go about it is PM me. You will forsure get a response back.

PS Even if you have basic around the home electrical questions, shoot em my way.

I was wondering if I could connect 4 24inc flourescent lightbulbs together for my veg. chamber? Or do you know a better light bulb so I wouldnt have to do this?

 

[harper2002]

you sure its not a 15 amp fuse, that the '1' is just worn off from age, or covered in dust/grime?

Nope I checked AGAIN and its a 5Amp.... I have ran it before with a 400 watt for 2 month but just wanted second opinion.

 

[Common0ne]

Hey Common One;

I lived in an old building that was built in the 1940's and I had the same deal as you. The electricity and water were included in my rental payment. I am sure I could of been growing a little something back then and should have taken advantage of the fact that I did not pay for electricity.

On the flip side, I worked for a general contractor and he was asked to get a bid on a large residential condo to put a system in place that would monitor each tenants electrical use so that they could bill the electrical costs back to the tenants. I doubt you have such a system in place if you are not already paying rent. If your building does get one, you will probably be notified before hand.

They may not be able to pin point you, but 7,000 watts of usage is a pretty significant increase.

Thank you for your response but you read my post a bit incorrectly lol.. I mean I will consume 3500W IN TOTAL, the extra shit what I said are the things that will make it 3500W.

 

[BigBudBalls]

Nope I checked AGAIN and its a 5Amp.... I have ran it before with a 400 watt for 2 month but just wanted second opinion.

Live in Europe?

 

[jokou]

hey everybody, im trying to get setup and was wondering:
Is there any benefit in buying a hps/mh dual ballast like this one, does it act differently than if i just plugged in a mh conversion bulb into a hps ballast of the same wattage?

 

[whiteflour]

Live in Europe?

I believe so, since he was calling ground earth. That's why I was asking the voltage.

 

[whiteflour]

HPS and MH have different ballast requirements. An MH conversion bulb is meant to run in an HPS ballast, where a switchable ballast like that in the link will run either MH or HPS. I don't believe a conversion bulb is quite as efficient as the real deal, but I may be wrong.

 

[jokou]

HPS and MH have different ballast requirements. An MH conversion bulb is meant to run in an HPS ballast, where a switchable ballast like that in the link will run either MH or HPS. I don't believe a conversion bulb is quite as efficient as the real deal, but I may be wrong.

so a dual ballast would not negate the need for a two different bases right/ or does that mean it is spliced and I could run hps and mh from the same ballast at the same time? does each bulb need its own ballast even if it is of the same type? thanks for the help =]

 

[harper2002]

Hi yea im in Europe can you advise if the loft setup will work please

 

[BigBudBalls]

so a dual ballast would not negate the need for a two different bases right/ or does that mean it is spliced and I could run hps and mh from the same ballast at the same time? does each bulb need its own ballast even if it is of the same type? thanks for the help =]

A dual ballast is not a switchable. Duals will run both HPS & MH at the same time. Get that full spectrum stuff going on. These are not very common, but are out there.

Switchable ballast have a switch to change from a HPS to a MH.

Digitals usually will run HPS or MH with no intervention They sense the bulb thats plugged into it)

 

[Vidian]

OK I got one.
We've had 2, 1000w HIDs with electronic ballasts, (just added a third and about to add our 4th) 3 medium fans, 2 small fans, a big exhaust fan, an 8 bank of T5's, for extra cooling we re-routed some of the AC into the added insulated room in the garage. Had a $600 power bill for the first month of ops, not including the 3rd HID. Expecting a little less, so we cut down on excesses like fountains with pool pumps and other stuff. We looked around for anything other than the expense of solar and the football field of panels needed to cover AMPS and found this thing called '208 wiring?'. Someone said it would cut our bill in half - the 420 friendly electrician we had originally said it would mean permits and all that kind of thing, plus replacing all the copper wire in a 10 year old house and it would cost a small fortune.

What can you tell me about it?

 

[BigBudBalls]

Not gonna save you a dime. If the 208 is triple phase then there *might* be a bit of savings on motors, since they are only using 2 phases at a giving instance. I haven't seen triple phase balasts. Most industrial lighting in trip phase buildings, just use one leg of the trip phase.

Power is power and thats what you are paying for (not the voltage or amps, though they are the items used to calculate power, but they are equally proportional one goes down 10% the other goes up 10%). Doesn't matter how its delivered to your place.

OK I got one.
We've had 2, 1000w HIDs with electronic ballasts, (just added a third and about to add our 4th) 3 medium fans, 2 small fans, a big exhaust fan, an 8 bank of T5's, for extra cooling we re-routed some of the AC into the added insulated room in the garage. Had a $600 power bill for the first month of ops, not including the 3rd HID. Expecting a little less, so we cut down on excesses like fountains with pool pumps and other stuff. We looked around for anything other than the expense of solar and the football field of panels needed to cover AMPS and found this thing called '208 wiring?'. Someone said it would cut our bill in half - the 420 friendly electrician we had originally said it would mean permits and all that kind of thing, plus replacing all the copper wire in a 10 year old house and it would cost a small fortune.

What can you tell me about it?

 

[IAm5toned]

THE SECOND PARAGRAPH IS ABOUT THE ELECTRICAL BUT IF YOU CAN PLEASE ALSO GIVE ME ANY OPINIONS ABOUT MY FIRST PARAGRAPH OR ANY CHANGES I SHOULD MAKE WHICH IS ABOUT MY GROW ROOM OVERALL
I just wanted to keep everything in 1 place. Really sorry if it causes any inconvenience as I do understand that this thread is solely about Electrical.

Alright so I have been doing quite a bit of research of how to build my grow room (probably about 1 months worth and mind that I have had no previous knowledge of any of this type of work lol) and this is what I got so far..

I will be going with a EBB flow hydroponic system. The dimensions of the table is a 4x8 the reservoir is 100gallons, pump is rated at 1056 GPH, 38L/M air pump, will be going with 4"x4" rockwool cubes (will try to find 6"x6" at other local stores) and I will be going with a SOG grow. Each plant will get 1 sq/foot of space therefore 4x8 = 32 sq/foot so that is enough room for 32 plants. Obviously I cant just make the room 4x8 because getting in would be impossible so I will make the room a 5x9x8 instead so I can have some room to work with (inspecting plants and etc.) A room of that size would equal 360CFM sooo.. If I wanted to exhaust the room I would need 720CFM exhaust fan bare minimum and a carbon filter that is 133% of the exhaust fan so 1.33x720=957.6 so lets just round that to a 1000CFM carbon filter. For the inlet I will be using negative pressure to bring in fresh air (trying to save a little money there for now). Also since I will have 32 plants I want to make sure that each plant will get at least 50W light/each so if I had 2x 1000wHPS lights that would be 2000W/32 = 62.5W per plant which is fine. You are probably wondering if I will be air cooling these lights with a second exhaust fan and the answer is no..Well..initially I will see how everything turns out BUT I will be purchasing a 12,000BTU A/C /Dehumidifier so that should take care of any heat issues..Lastly for the grow room reflectance I will be using Mylar.

Alright so now for electrical.. I looked into it for a bit and I THINK I understand what I would have to do..BUT I am just making sure because I don't want to burn my building down.. Soo.. On my control panel it is a Commander 100amp (which is old as shit) but I realized that it still has 2 sockets available for additional breakers and thank god it does..I will want to purchase 2 separate 20amp breakers and install them into the control panel and then connect them with 12-3 gauge wiring all the way to the grow room. I will then install 2 outlets, each outlet will run on its own circuit so that each of them will have 20amp's of power (therefore equaling 40amp's) which is sufficient for running my grow room. There is one question I want to ask though because im already going to spend shitloads of money for this growroom so I need to go a bit cheap so I want to purchase 120V ballasts which are $150 cheaper than the 120v/240v so I would save $300 BUT I figured out that I can't run both lights on 1 20amp circuit because I have read that you can only use 80% of the breaker's total amount of amps so 0.80x20=16amp's (constant use) but since I will be using 120v ballasts I would consume 120v X 16amp's = 1920W. So if I were to use ballasts rated at 120v the 20amp circuit would only give me 1920W of power which is 80W shy of the 2000W lights so I am wondering if I can use both lights on the 1 20amp circuit using 120v or should I just put 1 1000W light on 1 20amp circuit and put the other 1000W light on the other 20 amp circuit (only reason why I am asking this is because I just want to keep everything clean..) but w/e if I have to I have to :/ Also if there is anything that sounds wrong with my grow please tell me because I want everything to be perfect before I spend 1 cent on my growing materials.

Last question if I started to consume this much power (probably 3500W extra, 2000W from HPS lights, 1000W from 12,000BTU A/C, 500W from the miscellaneous ex. fans, pump and etc.) would this raise enough suspicion to get me caught.. I live in a Condominium where all the expenses are payed for including electric/hydro and it is 29 floors so it is a pretty big building. I am just wondering though would they even be able to know or realize anything because there are just soo many people living in this Condo.. Also forgot to mention that I will be using sound dampeners for the 8" ducting to minimize the noise.

If you guys have the chance just give me any more advice or anything I should change at all would be very much appreciated
Thank you!

Common0ne

it would take me 5 mins and a clamp on amp meter to find you......

 

[mmd604]

it would take me 5 mins and a clamp on amp meter to find you......

if you live in a apartment were the hole building is metered and divided amongst the tenants then no you will not get caught. Some asians in toronto were doing this but they had 10000 watts per unit and had the hold floor going 100 1000 watters LOL. IF you wanna now what you garden is pulling then you have to use a watt meter not a amp meter(amp meter finds VA)

 

[jrinlv]

Killer thread, thanks for all the help..

I purchased a CAP xgc-1e controller and it is awesome. It runs of a 15 amp fuse built into the unit, last night it had popped the fuse as soon as the unit came on. i have had this unit for almost 2 months and this is the first problem I have had with it. Why would it pop the fuse just this one time. I am worried about leaving it for a few days ( the whole reason I got the unit) Any insight would be good. if you need more info please let me know, Thanks JR

 

[IAm5toned]

if you live in a apartment were the hole building is metered and divided amongst the tenants then no you will not get caught. Some asians in toronto were doing this but they had 10000 watts per unit and had the hold floor going 100 1000 watters LOL. IF you wanna now what you garden is pulling then you have to use a watt meter not a amp meter(amp meter finds VA)

with an ampmeter i can track the heavy usage right thru the switchgear, right thru the dist. panels, and then to the individual units.
i do this kind of thing for a living.... watt meter will be a waste of time, takes to long.
if theres a bus duct, then your really fucked, because then all i have to do is go to the tap on each floor, and paydirt.

 

[IAm5toned]

Killer thread, thanks for all the help..

I purchased a CAP xgc-1e controller and it is awesome. It runs of a 15 amp fuse built into the unit, last night it had popped the fuse as soon as the unit came on. i have had this unit for almost 2 months and this is the first problem I have had with it. Why would it pop the fuse just this one time. I am worried about leaving it for a few days ( the whole reason I got the unit) Any insight would be good. if you need more info please let me know, Thanks JR

starter/cap going bad......

 

[jrinlv]

starter/cap going bad......

I don't think there is a "starter" and it has a 3 year warranty so I don't think it would go bad in 60 days.
Have you ever had one or known one to go bad that fast...Thanks JR

 

[BigBudBalls]

I don't think there is a "starter" and it has a 3 year warranty so I don't think it would go bad in 60 days.
Have you ever had one or known one to go bad that fast...Thanks JR

I think he means the start/cap in the light, not the CAP unit.