I am paying far to much for power,what can i do to pay less?

Using a generator would cost you twice as much or more in fuel than what the power company charges. Plus, even a good CAT genset is going to be a costly maintenance problem running every single day for months or years on end. Besides, I think someone would notice a 20KW or more genset running all hours of the day or night.

If it were cheap and easy to run power everyone would be doing it.

I think the best way to save power is to try to fight yourself as little as possible. It seems to me the folks having these problems are trying to grow inside while it's warm outside. They fight themselves by bringing heat in then trying to get rid of it. So before you try to get rid of it, lets first determine if it has to be here to begin with. If you can install some of the heat generating components outside of the envelope of your home, that is less for the AC to handle. This mainly means relocating the power supplies for lights and the air pump to either an outdoor box or your garage or similar. You can also add liquid cooling to your lights and pump the coolant through a radiator again outside/garage. And finally, choose lighting that produces less waste heat, especially waste heat that must be released indoors.

If you are crazy enough you can even bury a 55gallon drum, with a hose for a "snorkle" and put your air pump in there so it pulls air cooled by the earth.

BTW, I don't have this issue, so I just made up a few things that sounded good in my head.

I only run in winter and then it is about 2/3rd of my heating system, hum, maybe I should make it 1/3rd bigger? I do run my air pump in my garage so I can push cold/freezing air into the res and keep it in the 60's.

igothydrotoneverywhere said:

grow in a basement to start, basements are very cool compared to above ground operations. a basement with outside windows can intake filtered cool air when it turns fall/winter, or you can filter the exhaust from your bloom room and connect it to your hvac system to heat your house in the cold days and months. in the spring and summer months it is almost impossible to reduce your cooling costs, but growing below ground, at night, and with LEC lights that dont generate alot of heat is a good start. I have a set of lec's and they have been killing it for me, over a gram/watt with no substantial heat signatures full, full white and uv spectrum including lots of uvb. i dont need a heater or a/c and i run 4 of them. 3.5lb harvest using 1260 watts(315w x 4).

Click to expand...

We've been using the Sunlight Supply 315w Light Emitting Ceramics (LEC) in our veg rooms and I must agree that they kill it. According to the adverts they replicate the full spectrum of natural sunlight better than many other lighting systems. From our limited experience we've seen improved vegetative growth across the board with all our strains. Not just a small difference but dramatically improved vigor over the T-5's and even Metal Halides we used for vegging before. I was skeptical of the hype when they first came out, 'cause I was standing in a hydro store when I got the information. lol.

But since then I've become a believer in the LEC's. Next we're going to try cloning under them. I personally believe the full spectrum is really good for almost any stage of cannabis growth. I'd love to see similar improvements in vigor in the clone phase and I'm willing to risk a few trays to see if it works. I'm thinking that we'll keep the lights high enough to avoid scorching the babies but then the LEC's aren't really that hot in terms of ambient temperatures. I know that clones don't like too much of anything so the more robust output of the LEC could be a problem. But I'm curious so we're gonna find out.

Cutting a bunch of Gorilla Glue #4, Super Lemon Haze and Kryptonite later today. Will put a couple of trays under the good old T-5's for safety stock. Everything else will go directly under the LEC. Maybe 4-6 trays or so to get a good sampling. Each tray will hold 40 clones.

Got a pretty high bar to reach though, LEC results need to be better than these White Fire OG and Super Lemon Haze babies or it's back to the tried and true T-5s.

Super Lemon Haze


WiFi OG:

Geothermal.