first grow op, Help put my fears at rest...

Okay here's the dealie:

I am looking for a place at this very moment and once I move out I want to start a little personal grow up, I'm looking to get about 4-5 oz per every two months.
my plan is to build a grow cab to fit within a closet with dimensions of roughly (40"x40"x80")(w,d,h) and separate it into a lower veg area and an upper flowering part.
The strand will be white widow(due to the relatively short height and high yield). and i will have one mother, form which i will obtain roughly 8 clones, 4 of which i flower. I will have a charcoal scrubber(home made) at the top attached to a regular bathroom fan, along with probably two computer fans on either side of the flowering chamber. for the veg chamber i plan on using cfl lighting. And ideally i'd be able to do the same for the top because here is my main concern: Since i'll be living in an apartment I am worried that if i have about 300-500 watts being used for the grow up, that may appear suspicious on the electricity bill. I live in Manitoba, canada so as far as i know the electricity is pretty cheap but i still feel really uneasy about the whole thing.

So if I could either get some advice as to how to decrease wattage without suffering on yield that would be great, or if my mind could be put to ease by someone in a similar situation that would be swell as well.

thank you very much in advance

-Alex...I mean Mr. X

300-500 watts?

Thats my pc or 65" Tv....My Tv probably pulls more juice than that.

They wont come get you for 500 watts.

But starting off by giving your name is a good way to hear the ...tap tap tap at the door....Alex.

dont worry bout the electricity. 300-500w isnt gonna cause a major spike, im runnin 570w of lights plus fan, air pump, water pump, no major increase on bill. also just moving in, electric bills often go up a little month to month as you get more/new appliances and stuff.

Thanks mate...and yes now that i think about it that does kinda make sense, that 500 watts wouldn't do anything too drastic...but hey better safe than sorry.
so would*my best bet be to go with a 400 watt hps(for flowering) and something along the lines of maybe 4-5 23 watt CFLs for veg. and also due to height limitations, I am worried that my mother may grow to be too tall for the veg compartment, is there a way to keep her short. ooh and one last thing will a 400 watt hps create too much heat for my setup? (ballast can be kept outside the grow cab).

thanks again

I have an idea y dont you go get a pen & sum paper then go back to the home page of this website, & take sum notes instead of bothering everyone else with ur dumb ass questions...

" Amy - Oops ! I mean Mrs. A " (weird-0)

jmac said:

I have an idea y dont you go get a pen & sum paper then go back to the home page of this website, & take sum notes instead of bothering everyone else with ur dumb ass questions...

" Amy - Oops ! I mean Mrs. A " (weird-0)

Click to expand...

if you are going to be the "dumb ass question" enforcer for rollitup, better put alot of time aside cause there are plenty, this unfortunately is not one of them. electrical bills can be a real problem, not with such small amounts of lights, but he evidently didnt know that. we all start out knowing nothing. go and smoke one of these when your parents go to bed and calm the hell down.

what "jmac" meant to say is to check this out,
https://www.rollitup.org/view.php?pg=faq
alot of useful reference material. btw, welcome to rollitup

Sorry to have wasted your precious time "jmac", however for someone who never actually had a grow op, let alone see one in real life. I think I know quite a bit(because I have been reading up....a lot), I was a bit sketchy on the above question so I figured I'd be best off asking people with experience. and sure enough within a very short amount of time I got the answer I had been looking for. This was by no means my first attempt and figuring this question out...it was however my last resort, and best way to get an answer. as for the follow up questions. Yes, the answers are available elsewhere however in most cases, the questions aren't that tailored to my specific situation. I got the answer I /needed/ and thought that if people had the time to answer my follow ups that would be great, but if not oh well.
One thing I did not expect was a hostile reply....why even take the time? did it really bother you that much? did you lose sleep over this thread?
I was under the impression this was a place to learn and share what others have learned along the way...if everyone is going to be afraid to ask questions, in fear of them being called "dumb ass questions" no one will ever learn and you may as well close all forums down.

-end rant-

we're not that bad here, sounds like a kid too young to be on this site anyway, just wanting to flex his nuts and sound like he knows something.

dude ask away with the questions. there are plenty of cool people on here that are willing to help.

if i were you i would prob look into t5 lighting. if youre renting you prob will want to be stealth and wont have a lot of room. you can mix the bulbs for each light cycle. they run about the same as a 400watt HID light and use less power for that electric bill

the price runs about the same as a 400watt is what i meant

lets all spend more time flaming on jmac since he was obviously never new at anything at any given time.

flame-a-ton in order?

Yeah, definitely. Fuck you JMAC. LoL

Okay "weediscool" i looked into the t5 lighting a bit, not completely but enough to get an understanding and perhaps bounce some ideas off you guys.
The obvious advantages off using t5s for me would be: electricity, temperature, and also the height i will gain from not having a huge hps hood.
what i would probably do is have three 22" high output bulbs on each side off the cab(except for front because that wont be a a solid wall) and then probably 4 22" hight output on the ceiling of the cabinet. giving me a total off 312 watts producing 26000 lumens. And for vegging ill probably have something similar but not quite as many.

so how will the yield change from a 250watt hps, 400 watt hps and this setup?
will i need reflectors on all the lights or is will it be most beneficial for the top ones only(price and size concerns). and i'd probably use a thin layer of mesh to keep the plants from growing into the lights.

thanks in advance mates.

iblazethatkush said:

Yeah, definitely. Fuck you JMAC. LoL

Click to expand...

nicely done.

if you have any questions about t5 just ask VV. i mean im sure he will be in this thread within a day or two since someone mentioned t5s. its like the batsign for him. his shit looks tight tho and he does veg and flower with them. from what ive gathered hes used both HIDs and t5s for both cycles and still believes t5s can out perform/equally perfrom just as good as HID lighting. if space is going to be an issue(ie- closet builds, homemade grow cabs) i would really look into t5s.

heres a pic of one of his grows:

and grow journal:
https://www.rollitup.org/grow-room-design-setup/33421-my-current-set-up-journal.html

i wanna try some t5's also but they are too pricey for my budget