First grow room need advice!

This is my first experience growing although my roommate has attempted one other grow last year. My room is 9 1/2' x 15 1/2' and we plan on taking full advantage of the entire area. I've included a diagram below of how we situated our room. I am very new to this and I am finding out the stress when you jump head first into something you understand very little about...Here is the specs on what I purchased:

5 Hyrdafarm luminaire series radiant 8 hoods
5 Xtrasun grow light convertible ballasts
5 Hortilux super HPS 1000w bulbs
2 8" Vortex power fans (one fan cools 3 lights, the other 2)
1 Hydrofarm T5 4' 6 bulb (clones)

Foxfarm ocean forest soil in 3 strains
Gold fiber soil in 1 strain
I wanted to try two different soils to see which that I preferred.

I can comfortably fit 100 plants (20 under each hood) in 2 - 2 1/2 gallon buckets during vegging and flowering. The 3 light set up on one side of the room has a floor base that I built about 6" high that is 4' x 12'. The two light side is 4' x 9'. 100 clones under the T5 clone box at a time.

After transplanting my first set of clones I killed about 75% of the 100 clones I began with. I was relying on only my houses a/c unit to cool the room and during the first night it shut off... the room became very hot and humid and dried my plants out, killing almost everything. I had originally watered 2 full red solo cups during the transplant that morning, around 20 hours before I found them dead. Since then I have kept the rooms door open to maintain a stable temperature until my portable a/c unit/dehumidifier comes in. The 25% of plants that have survived look very poor, as it has been around 5 days and I still have not purchased any nutrients or a ph tester for the soil. They now almost look like they are getting burned because my top leaves are changing to a spotted yellow color and becoming crisp. My lights are positioned around 3' from the top of the plants. I'm basically scrapping my first attempt completely and I want to be more prepared for the 70 clones I have that will be ready for transplant in around a week...

So to my main concern: my house is older and the grow room only has a 20 amp circuit breaker. I have not had an electrician come to see if he can replace this with a larger circuit breaker and instead I have purchased 3 50' 12 gauge extension cords that can handle 1,875 watts each. Knowing that the room itself can handle up to 2,400 watts (although I know you never want to max this out) I ran two of the lights off of the room itself, then the 3 other lights off the extension cords which can handle up to 1,875 watts. I also ran each fan (260 watts each) from two of the extension cords. The T5 is also running off the room itself. I will most likely plug my a/c unit into the third extension cord. My question is, will it be safe for me to continue running these extension cords from other rooms in the house, through the attic and into the grow room? I am worried about causing a fire. So far I have not had any issues with the cords heating up or my breakers flipping. I've been told by several people that they have seen grow rooms done like this without any issues. Also, my ballasts are positioned just in front of the plants but still are feeling the heat of the lights. Is this bad? There's a total of 5,844 watts running from a room that can power up to 8,025 watts now.

I appreciate any help and advice you can give me on the room. Thanks

You do realize that you yourself can learn how to wire rooms, houses, etc, right? Electrical theory is not that complex, as long as you're not diving into what electricity actually is, and how voltage correlates to the orbit of valence electrons, nerding out on that level. Haha. I am more careful than some people, generally I do not pull more than 11, 12 amps or so out of a plug, even if it is rated at 20 amps and has 12 gauge wire going to it. I've seen loose connections and loose plugs overheat and partially melt, and that was under less of a load than 12 amps. (nothing to do with a grow room, just a normal house)


The best way is to run 220v from your main breaker box into a sub panel in your room, and then split that up into multiple separate outlets, each with 15 or 20 amp breakers. People often times don't want to do this, because it's not "up to code" or they have no confidence in their ability to do so. I think that's just silly, because for one, they're already breaking the law 99% of the time, and also, as you're finding out, growing, even if it's not all high tech like me, is not easy! If you can learn how to grow, you can easily learn electrical theory, amperage, wattage, power factor, common neutrals, 3 phase, etc, etc. Not to mention, a lot of electricians get high on the job, so if they can do it, you probably can too. Lol