15 amp circuit - electrician advice needed

So here's the situation: I'm a single bedroom apartment dweller with my living room, bathroom, and bedroom (where my ladies reside) all on one 15amp circuit. And the older style at that. I know I have at most ~1850 watts, less with how old the wiring probably is. I've already been able to blow it a couple of times with just a portable heater, the girls hairstraightener, and a 150watt hps. I've recently upgraded to a 600 watt dimmable light and have a 25 and a ~ 100 watt inline fan taking care of my venting needs. I've figured out that with my equipment on and at 75% the portable heater will blow the fuse, obviously the hairstraightener would as well.
So my question is when summer gets here, how fucked am I going to be trying to run a 5000 btu air conditioner on the same circuit? I'm on the top floor of my building too, so the heat rises bad.
I'm hoping just to be able to run the air conditioner through my tent, thus allowing me to keep my place cooler and hopefully keep the air conditioner on a lower setting.

Suggestions? Advice?
I'm feeling a bit frustrated that I'm limited to that little bit of wattage, especially since my bedroom has the only viable window for an air conditioner.

my suggestion would be to move. You aren't running an a/c with all that on 15 amps

You're describing yourself as a prime candidate for Cree/Vero COBs or A51 LED's. 400w of quality/efficient LEDs will provide the same yield and your overall power/amp usage, power for cooling/fans and heat issues go away.

im hoping to try this led...http://www.mars-hydro.com/led-grow-light/reflector-series.

greenghost420 said:

im hoping to try this led...http://www.mars-hydro.com/led-grow-light/reflector-series.

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I've tried those, actually use them for vegging, they're a great veg light and quality isn't bad, haven't had a single failure out of about 6 panels, one is 1 1/2+ years old. I got mine through TOPLed, the brand is LG. I gave them a good shot for flowering but they just don't produce decent bud. Switched flowering to Philips Elite Agro CMH and tripled my yield over those panels using the same environment and grow methods. If you're buying LED's and want to match hps output, imo you need to stick to the top end or DIY for flowering. I've yet to see fully documented grows with these and others Chinese panels getting any decent yields, while COB and top end panels like A51 or Apache consistently produce decent numbers and quality bud.

No Kitchen or Kitchenette

And I'm pretty sure that the new codes state a minimum of 15 amps per bedroom not combined with other room,

thanks, you just made my mind for me, need that led and a cmh

chuck estevez said:

my suggestion would be to move. You aren't running an a/c with all that on 15 amps

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That's the conclusion I've come to as well, 8 months left on the lease unfortunately. I'm looking at portable air conditioners now so I can use it in my kitchen.

GroErr said:

You're describing yourself as a prime candidate for Cree/Vero COBs or A51 LED's. 400w of quality/efficient LEDs will provide the same yield and your overall power/amp usage, power for cooling/fans and heat issues go away.

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Are the heat issues really that non existent with those top brands?? Like, how far away from ambient temperature on could I keep my tent with one?
My girlfriend is going to freak if I tell her I'm buying a new light, considering I just bought this one lol.

jarvild said:

And I'm pretty sure that the new codes state a minimum of 15 amps per bedroom not combined with other room,

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If the building is old it gets grandfathered in. Plus our landlords just bought the property and are remodeling the different apartments as people move out.
And yeah there's a kitchen. It has a 30 amp and a 15 amp run to it, just no window. I'm looking at portable ones now. My wallet is crying looking at these prices.

There you go 30 amps of 230

jarvild said:

There you go 30 amps of 230

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Shitty part is that I have to run an extension cord to the living room. But at least I can still keep up my hobby.

jarvild said:

There you go 30 amps of 230

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30 amps of 110v I believe. Only ~2,640 watts :/

GroErr said:

I've tried those, actually use them for vegging, they're a great veg light and quality isn't bad, haven't had a single failure out of about 6 panels, one is 1 1/2+ years old. I got mine through TOPLed, the brand is LG. I gave them a good shot for flowering but they just don't produce decent bud. Switched flowering to Philips Elite Agro CMH and tripled my yield over those panels using the same environment and grow methods. If you're buying LED's and want to match hps output, imo you need to stick to the top end or DIY for flowering. I've yet to see fully documented grows with these and others Chinese panels getting any decent yields, while COB and top end panels like A51 or Apache consistently produce decent numbers and quality bud.

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I spent a good 2 hours doing all of the math for every appliance or piece of tech that pulls electricity in my apartment and even with a portable air conditioner I think I won't have enough amps to use our other stuff, like my gaming computer, 400 watt dehumidifier that keeps us from living in 15% rh, etc.
So I you're right in that a Cobb setup would help me tremendously. So area 51 and Apache are good companies? If I wanted to get a comparable yield to my 600, what's a good wattage to look for? My understanding of leds is still pretty sad.

I have never seen a 30 amp that was 110, That would require at least 8 gauge to handle 30 amps of 110. I'm running 1400 watts of light and only use a little over 20 amps for my whole set-up. That's with fans and scrubbers. What does the outlet look like ?

Yea your 30amp line in the kitchen should be for elec stove or elec dryer. The ones with the big ass plugs, that is a 240v line and a 30a breaker would be 7200w or 5760w at 80%. I had an electric dryer once, added more to my electric bill than all my lighting and fans and ran on a 30a 240v line. Also, do you have a seperate furnace or water heater in your apartment? A seperate circuit might be run to those things.

Why not just run a new 20 amp circuit? It's super easy to do, $20 worth of materials depending on the distance you have to run. If you can't figure out how to run the wires hire an electrician to fish the wires and you can make all the connections yourself. Or pay him/her (lets be honest here...him) to do the whole thing. It should be like $150 total
About the LED's...build you own light, the diy led threads on here might be the most comprehensive anywhere on the internet. You could do 400w worth of led's for about $600 and guaranteed it'll out perform any commercial lamp

Run that 30 amp plug to a 30 amp sub panel in ur room!!!! walah

tightpockt said:

Why not just run a new 20 amp circuit? It's super easy to do, $20 worth of materials depending on the distance you have to run. If you can't figure out how to run the wires hire an electrician to fish the wires and you can make all the connections yourself. Or pay him/her (lets be honest here...him) to do the whole thing. It should be like $150 total
About the LED's...build you own light, the diy led threads on here might be the most comprehensive anywhere on the internet. You could do 400w worth of led's for about $600 and guaranteed it'll out perform any commercial lamp

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They are in an apt.

Midwest Weedist said:

Are the heat issues really that non existent with those top brands?? Like, how far away from ambient temperature on could I keep my tent with one?
My girlfriend is going to freak if I tell her I'm buying a new light, considering I just bought this one lol.

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Sounds like you have some options for another circuit in which case it'd be better to stick with what you have and know. The ambient temp question is a tough one as it depends on your room. if you have some height like 7ft+ it's minimal. In my case LED's ran about 6-8F above ambient and require heating in the winter as I'm in a cold area. Significant difference between them and hps.

Midwest Weedist said:

So I you're right in that a Cobb setup would help me tremendously. So area 51 and Apache are good companies? If I wanted to get a comparable yield to my 600, what's a good wattage to look for? My understanding of leds is still pretty sad.

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Again sounds like you have some better options if you can pull from another circuit. If you were to go COBs or A51/Apache you'd be looking in the range of 400w (actual pull at the wall) imo.

And your figure of 1850 watts is that resistive or inductive ? there is a difference . Ballast use inductive so you'll lose about 200 watts.