Setting up a new large legal garden

I'm setting up a new grow room, the dimensions are 9.5 x 24 x 8ft.

I have two permits for 35 plants each, so there will be 70 plants in the grow.

Equipment from previous grows:
4 x 1000w hps
1 x 1000w halide
5 x air cooled shades(cool tubes)
2 x 6" vortex's
1 x 8" vortex's
2 x medium size carbon filters
3 x light movers
c02 controller
25 pot flood and drain bucket system, 3.5gal buckets

I was thinking of buying 7 more 1000w lights, and completely filling the room with lights and larger shades. The big 4' umbrella type shades. Using the 8" vortex for venting out hot air also a 6" if need be as well and the other 6" for intake air.

But... the power usage from 12 000watts of lights will kill me. would be $600 per month for power.

Also i'm going to go with soil the first time around them hopefully upgrade to hydro the next time.

In the past light movers have given me very little increase in yield, and the cool tube shades pretty much all have cracks and i've seen less yield from them then the 4" umbrella shades.

Anyone have any advise for a larger grow like this?? would light movers be benefitial to keep my # of lights down ??

I'm in a very similar situation as yourself, just getting a medical garden running for 50 plants. I will be utilizing light movers for the simple reason that it allows me to put my light much closer to the plants than with a stationary light. Also, I would recommend using an air cooled hood instead of 4' umbrellas because, again, you can keep the light much closer when the bulb is air cooled. The combination of a light mover and an air cooler hood should get your light about a foot closer to the plants without burning them. A bulb's intensity decreases exponentially for each 12 inches from the bulb so moving plants a foot closer to the light source will make a drastic improvement. Your not going to double the size of your grow space with a light mover, but you could turn a 4'x4' grow room into a 4'x6' grow room and make better utilization of your lumens.

Also consider 600W lights, they are more efficient than 1000W lights. An average 1000W light produces ~140,000 lumens, a 600W ~90,000 lumens. So, two 600W lights next to each other spread your light out better, give you 180,000 lumens instead of 140,000 lumens, and barely uses more energy. Not to mention they run cooler so you can keep them closer to the plants.

Keep me posted on your progress. I'd like to compare results and techniques to increase both our yields. Good luck.

Wingnutt said:

I'm in a very similar situation as yourself, just getting a medical garden running for 50 plants. I will be utilizing light movers for the simple reason that it allows me to put my light much closer to the plants than with a stationary light. Also, I would recommend using an air cooled hood instead of 4' umbrellas because, again, you can keep the light much closer when the bulb is air cooled. The combination of a light mover and an air cooler hood should get your light about a foot closer to the plants without burning them. A bulb's intensity decreases exponentially for each 12 inches from the bulb so moving plants a foot closer to the light source will make a drastic improvement. Your not going to double the size of your grow space with a light mover, but you could turn a 4'x4' grow room into a 4'x6' grow room and make better utilization of your lumens.

Also consider 600W lights, they are more efficient than 1000W lights. An average 1000W light produces ~140,000 lumens, a 600W ~90,000 lumens. So, two 600W lights next to each other spread your light out better, give you 180,000 lumens instead of 140,000 lumens, and barely uses more energy. Not to mention they run cooler so you can keep them closer to the plants.

Keep me posted on your progress. I'd like to compare results and techniques to increase both our yields. Good luck.

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Thanks for the reply,

I'm not very impressed with the performance of the cool tube air cooled shades I have. They have very very poor light distribution.

I was getting around 8lbs off of 5 x 1000w's using the umbrella shades. No c02. The first grow with the cooltubes my yield dropped to 6 lbs with c02. No matter what I seem to try, my yeilds have been considerably lower with those shades. Now i'm not doing a SOG, i'm growing fewer larger plants. Maybe a cooltube would be better with a SOG since you can get it so close to even canopy. But where my plants are larger, I need to keep the cooltube higher to actually cover the plants completely. The large 4' umbrella shades have amazing lite coverage.

I was thinking about changing the refelector on the cool tubes, but after about 5 grows on them i'm getting alot of cracks. In my opinion they are a waste of money from the performance i've seen. The umbrella shades are $50, the cooltubes were $150 go figure. I've used a diamond bit to cut a hole infront of the cracks on the shades and filled with epoxy to stop the cracks from creeping.

I have considered 600w's in the past but locally they are considerably more expensive then 1000w's. I can get 1000w setups for around $180 including the bulb if I wire the ballast up myself. 600w's are around $250-$300 the last time i checked. The main kicker for me is the cost of the 600w bulbs here, about 50% more then the 1000w. Just because they are more efficient doesn't mean they should cost more, lol.

Right now i'm thinking about 10 x 1000w lights, 2 of them on light movers to see if its worth while to drop more lights to keep the yield up and power low. No air cooled shades, so i'd need some massive air movement, don't think my one 8" vortex would do it. I'll have to do some research to see how much air movement i'll need to keep that area cool with that much light. Any Idea?


Cheers