Grow Room Electrical - best way to increase capacity?

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vtguitar88

Well-Known Member
hey RIU! Haven’t posted a thread here in years but I’ve learned most of what I know from you guys over the years.

I’m renting a house and want to run a small/medium garden in the basement. Last winter, I was running 2000w HPS in flower and up to 1000w MH in veg in the same basement. I was seriously taxing the capacity of my basement circuits, and had to run extension cords to all four of the outlets in the basement just to power everything. I want to avoid this precarious situation in the future, but also don’t want to have to drastically scale down and let my equipment collect dust.

What would be the best way to upgrade my electrical capacity? I’m a total noob with electric and almost certainly need to hire an electrician, but I want to know what to tell him/her.

I understand that if I could run my grow room at 240v instead of 120v, I would almost double my maximum wattage due to lowering the amps/watt. All of my gear has regular plugs - is there some kind of transformer I could get that would plug into my regular 30 amp circuit and run my lights at 240 volts? I’ve thought about adding a dryer outlet if necessary/possible, or even running a sub-panel to the grow area. Thing is, my house is from the 50’s and I’m pretty sure I most likely have 100 amp service, although I can’t tell by looking at the main breaker because it just doesn’t say anywhere. I think if I could just run at 240 on the 30-amp breaker I use, that would give me 7200 watts max capacity which would be more than enough. Thanks in advance for any suggestions or links that could point me in the right direction here..
 
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vtguitar88

Well-Known Member
nxsov180db said:
Just tell your electrician you want 3x 20 amp outlets/circuits (1 for each light.) 12/2 wires is cheap and so are breakers, it's a basement so there is n o fishing wires or anything time consuming, he'd probably be in and hour in an hour.
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Ok that sounds easy enough. What about the 120v vs 240v thing? Should I bother trying to run it at 240?
 
iPerculate

iPerculate

Well-Known Member
If you only have a few lights, I wouldn't go 240V.

When you double the voltage, you cut the amperage in half. The wattage and overall power consumption stays the same.

The benefit of this is that you draw less amps per light. Most houses have an overall total amperage rating with breakers assigned to different parts of the house.

What you could do is make sure the breakers are big enough for the area you plan on growing to handle the number of lights you plan on using. You will have to do some math. Including fans and all aux equipment
 
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somedude584

Well-Known Member
vtguitar88 said:
Would something like this be a solution?

https://www.zenhydro.com/titan-controls-helios-18-12-light-240-volt-controller-w-dual-trigger-cords-4-cs.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiAzfrTBRC_ARIsAJ5ps0u9RUg3T_CJQ4Y0X927u8QGsiLW7cOuPQg-ihyDauUyf58nGNvBodAaAlvyEALw_wcB

I can’t tell if this is plug and play or what.
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You could use something like that. It's certainly not "plug and play" and in order to run a 240v you would need a 2 pole breaker installed with appropriate gauge wire for the size of the relay (what you linked). A relay is basically just a sub-breaker, that can cut the power from the relay to whatever is plugged into it, they're useful because instead of cutting power to entire room, it just cuts power to the lights or whatever is plugged into it. A mechanical switch physically disconnects the connection to the wire leading to the electrical box. They often come with mechanical times (far superior to digital and can handle higher amperage).

If you insist on going this route, the cheapest way to do what you're asking is probably that. Buy a 30 amp 4 plug relay switch and have a trusted electrician run 10-3 wire from a 30 amp 2 pole breaker in the electrical box to the relay. It's really quite simple if you know what you're doing, key here is if you know what you're doing, if you don't you may wind up dead, particularly when it comes to 240v.
 
iPerculate

iPerculate

Well-Known Member
As far as I know, there's no easy plug and play 120V to 240V transformer adapter, perhaps for your own safety.

If you had said adapter, and had 120V from the breaker to a transformer, that transformer would take it to 240V, plugging the lights into a 240V source.

The power is still coming from that 120V line! and those minimal amps that the lights are pulling at 240V? they are pulling double further down on that same 120V line. The wattage is still the same. You have to get the 240V from the line
 
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iPerculate

iPerculate

Well-Known Member
The link provided earlier for the "Titan Controls" - . 80 Amps input power/60 Amps output power/240 Volts/60 Hz./12,000 Watts.

There's no way you can provide this with 80A input at 120V, and if you did, there would be no need for this thread.

Bottom line is, don't mess with someone else's rental house electric
 
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vtguitar88

Well-Known Member
Thanks for the suggestions guys. Probably best not to modify a property I don’t own. I would certainly own if I could, and part of the reason I am doing this is to generate extra income so I can eventually save up enough to buy my own place. I think for now it would be wiser to use lower wattage LEDs for veg. I should still have enough head room to run my flower tent as it was. If I do clear these changes with my landlord, I will look to this thread when talking to the electrician. Thanks again!
 
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somedude584

Well-Known Member
vtguitar88 said:
Thanks for the suggestions guys. Probably best not to modify a property I don’t own. I would certainly own if I could, and part of the reason I am doing this is to generate extra income so I can eventually save up enough to buy my own place. I think for now it would be wiser to use lower wattage LEDs for veg. I should still have enough head room to run my flower tent as it was. If I do clear these changes with my landlord, I will look to this thread when talking to the electrician. Thanks again!
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vtguitar88 said:
Thanks for the suggestions guys. Probably best not to modify a property I don’t own. I would certainly own if I could, and part of the reason I am doing this is to generate extra income so I can eventually save up enough to buy my own place. I think for now it would be wiser to use lower wattage LEDs for veg. I should still have enough head room to run my flower tent as it was. If I do clear these changes with my landlord, I will look to this thread when talking to the electrician. Thanks again!
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I think that's a wise decision on your part, though I will add (I know it's unsolicited advice, I'm sorry) that this hobby doesn't generate as much income as it once did, and certainly won't be any easier in the future depending on where you live.

My only other words of advice would be if you're close to maxing out your panel, align your hours in a way that the least amount of wattage is being used when you personally are using the most. So in my case, I have a veg and flower room, the 6 hours that they are on concurrently are from 1am-7am. Make sense?
 
charface

charface

Well-Known Member
somedude584 said:
I think that's a wise decision on your part, though I will add (I know it's unsolicited advice, I'm sorry) that this hobby doesn't generate as much income as it once did, and certainly won't be any easier in the future depending on where you live.

My only other words of advice would be if you're close to maxing out your panel, align your hours in a way that the least amount of wattage is being used when you personally are using the most. So in my case, I have a veg and flower room, the 6 hours that they are on concurrently are from 1am-7am. Make sense?
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Yeah, what about staggering the startup also.

I have my lights fire up a few minutes apart

Edited, sorry I thought this was a different thread when I posted that
 
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