Two 1k lamps or four 600 watters?

the 1000s have to stay atleast 20 iches away some people say they get tehm closer like 10-14 but i dont think so and get 8" hoods and ducting with 10" blowers and reducers. i have 6" ducting and i wish i had 8.

ther is a guy with a vertical grow 1000w bulb in a water cooled tube and i think he stays like 20" away too, make um adjustible no matter the wattage.

and put it this way you can look at a 600 1000will hurt your eyes, but if you cant cool the room it takes 6000btu per 1000watter as read in nug mag, this is not a air cooled hood they used.

i run a sealed room with 8 1000wat bulbs with 230cfm perhood and 17000btu worth of ac but unless it over 80 outside the acs are just dehumifing, and blowing recirculated air. so cooling make a huge diff for sure.

withoutAchance said:

the 1000s have to stay atleast 20 iches away some people say they get tehm closer like 10-14 but i dont think so and get 8" hoods and ducting with 10" blowers and reducers. i have 6" ducting and i wish i had 8.

ther is a guy with a vertical grow 1000w bulb in a water cooled tube and i think he stays like 20" away too, make um adjustible no matter the wattage.

and put it this way you can look at a 600 1000will hurt your eyes, but if you cant cool the room it takes 6000btu per 1000watter as read in nug mag, this is not a air cooled hood they used.

i run a sealed room with 8 1000wat bulbs with 230cfm perhood and 17000btu worth of ac but unless it over 80 outside the acs are just dehumifing, and blowing recirculated air. so cooling make a huge diff for sure.

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Alright, but you see the problem is we don't want to go overboard with the electricity... We can't really afford it. However, if buying the two 1000 watters will be equal to having four 600 watters, then that's great... Only problem is cooling, I've got no idea how to cool the lamps :\ (Even if they're 600 watters....)

post some pics of the room and we can come up with a plan, youll need tools and some carpentry knowlage.

4 600 are more cost efficient in terms of energy usage. They can also be spread apart which is great for large plants.

2, 1000w are cheaper in terms of up-front sunk cost (i.e you only need to buy 2 ballasts, 2 bulbs, and 2 hoods v.s. 4 of everything). However they are slightly less efficient in terms of energy usage.

My best advise is if your growing larger plants (2-3 feet plus) it's better to use the 4 600w since you can spread everything out better. The larger the plant the more spread out they need to be in fruiting. When Vegging you don't need to spread them out that much. You can also run them closer to the plant since they run cool. However this isn't too much of an issue if you air cool 2 1000w setups.

If you're doing an SOG style grow op then I'd do the 2 1000w since all the plants are close to each other and you don't really need to spread them out much. That should save you some cash up front. Also if you air cool the hood you can run them closer to the plants by a few inches.

P.S. 30-40 plants under that kind of setup isn't realistic. If your plants are going to have a finishing hight of 2-3 feet (or more) you'll need to give them 200w of light each (thats if you want some mean ass dank). Any more than that will result in you having some pretty okay top colas and under finished lower branches (i.e. popcorn buds or buds a week or two behind the colas for harvest). For a efficient garden this means having 3 under each 600w setup or 5 under each 1000w setup (you can add a variance of +2 plants and most likely be okay in both setups). If you're doing an SOG style setup you can fit 15-25 small plants under each 600w. If your using 1000w you can fit roughly 40 small plants under each light and still get some dank ass weed.

Ronjohn7779 said:

4 600 are more cost efficient in terms of energy usage. They can also be spread apart which is great for large plants.

2, 1000w are cheaper in terms of up-front sunk cost (i.e you only need to buy 2 ballasts, 2 bulbs, and 2 hoods v.s. 4 of everything). However they are slightly less efficient in terms of energy usage.

My best advise is if your growing larger plants (2-3 feet plus) it's better to use the 4 600w since you can spread everything out better. The larger the plant the more spread out they need to be in fruiting. When Vegging you don't need to spread them out that much. You can also run them closer to the plant since they run cool. However this isn't too much of an issue if you air cool 2 1000w setups.

If you're doing an SOG style grow op then I'd do the 2 1000w since all the plants are close to each other and you don't really need to spread them out much. That should save you some cash up front. Also if you air cool the hood you can run them closer to the plants by a few inches.

P.S. 30-40 plants under that kind of setup isn't realistic. If your plants are going to have a finishing hight of 2-3 feet (or more) you'll need to give them 200w of light each (thats if you want some mean ass dank). Any more than that will result in you having some pretty okay top colas and under finished lower branches (i.e. popcorn buds or buds a week or two behind the colas for harvest). For a efficient garden this means having 3 under each 600w setup or 5 under each 1000w setup (you can add a variance of +2 plants and most likely be okay in both setups). If you're doing an SOG style setup you can fit 15-25 small plants under each 600w. If your using 1000w you can fit roughly 40 small plants under each light and still get some dank ass weed.

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Well we just want a cash crop basically - make the most dank as possible.... What would the best set up be in your opinion? I mean the normal grow op, vegging and flowering as usual wasn't so rewarding last time with a 600w, but I only had 6 plants, and I vegged them under a 250w (that was stupid - could've done better if I had vegged with a 600w, cus I did it for 2 months...)

Only made about 300 grams dry with all 6 plants (which is shit). I'm looking to produce pounds every month this time!

veg w/ a 1000 youll be amazed

RichiRich said:

Well we just want a cash crop basically - make the most dank as possible.... What would the best set up be in your opinion? I mean the normal grow op, vegging and flowering as usual wasn't so rewarding last time with a 600w, but I only had 6 plants, and I vegged them under a 250w (that was stupid - could've done better if I had vegged with a 600w, cus I did it for 2 months...)

Only made about 300 grams dry with all 6 plants (which is shit). I'm looking to produce pounds every month this time!

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If you want the dankest weed possible then you should do an SOG style op. If your on top of your shit you harvest 15-20 little plants every 2 weeks. Which is something like 11-15 oz every 2 weeks. You trim the plants in way that makes them all into top colas with very few branches. That way you only have one grade of bud (top quality) where as larger plants you have some pop corn bud or under finished parts to the plant. Shoving more plants under lights doesn't increase your total yield.

If your going to do top quality bud with larger plants remember that each one will need 200w of light each to fully penetrate the plant. Stuffing 30 large plants under 2000w to 2400w isn't a good idea. You'll just get a lot of okay bud, and most likely harm your yields.

LIBERTY MEDICAL said:

veg w/ a 1000 youll be amazed

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Sounds like a waste of power. You need way less light in vegging then you do in fruiting. For each 1000w ballast you have you most likely only need 200w-300w of light power for vegging. I say for vegging get a nice T5 setup and saves some cash. T5s run way cooler wouldn't require air cooling or AC to cool the room. 1000wers would dry the crap out of small plants without proper venting. I'm sure though once the plants are 4 weeks old or so 1000wers would be like turbo charging your vegging room.

Ronjohn7779 said:

If you want the dankest weed possible then you should do an SOG style op. If your on top of your shit you harvest 15-20 little plants every 2 weeks. Which is something like 11-15 oz every 2 weeks. You trim the plants in way that makes them all into top colas with very few branches. That way you only have one grade of bud (top quality) where as larger plants you have some pop corn bud or under finished parts to the plant. Shoving more plants under lights doesn't increase your total yield.

If your going to do top quality bud with larger plants remember that each one will need 200w of light each to fully penetrate the plant. Stuffing 30 large plants under 2000w to 2400w isn't a good idea. You'll just get a lot of okay bud, and most likely harm your yields.


Sounds like a waste of power. You need way less light in vegging then you do in fruiting. For each 1000w ballast you have you most likely only need 200w-300w of light power for vegging. I say for vegging get a nice T5 setup and saves some cash. T5s run way cooler wouldn't require air cooling or AC to cool the room. 1000wers would dry the crap out of small plants without proper venting. I'm sure though once the plants are 4 weeks old or so 1000wers would be like turbo charging your vegging room.

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Ok well you've got me convinced to do a SOG grow - however, I'm thinking of having four 600w lamps in the veg room and 8 in the flowering room, (which would have 2 groups of plants at any given time, meaning a total of 32).

Wouldn't you agree? Besides even if I wanted to have T5s in the veg room, I have no idea how to install them, how much I would need and so on...

Thanks

RichiRich said:

Ok well you've got me convinced to do a SOG grow - however, I'm thinking of having four 600w lamps in the veg room and 8 in the flowering room, (which would have 2 groups of plants at any given time, meaning a total of 32).

Wouldn't you agree? Besides even if I wanted to have T5s in the veg room, I have no idea how to install them, how much I would need and so on...

Thanks

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Each 600w can have roughly 15-25 small plants under each one (it depends on how bushy a plant gets). We'll say you average that to 20....20 plantsX 8 lights shit thats 160 plants to manage. Thats like a full time job. You'll have your work cut out for you. If you're going to be growing in that kind of volume then yeah veg with MH. I was thinking you wanted a small grow op (2) 1000w or (4) 600wers in your fruiting room + 400w in a vegging room. If you got that kind of money to spend then I'd do 6 1000w in fruiting and air cool the shit out of them. 1000w setups are roughly the same price as 600w systems, they only have a small increase in price over 600wers. Both use the same type of hoods (both need larger models), the only difference are in the bulbs and ballasts which command a small premium over the 600w model. Why have 8 600w HPS for fruitng that will only get you 4800w, when (6) 1000w will get you 6000w giving you an extra 1200w and costing roughly the same as 8 600wers in terms of total sunk cost. Thats just how my logic works. I really don't care about moderate power efficiencies of 600w vs. 1000w for that to matter you really have take into considerate sunk costs V.S. the power savings. If you did an SOG style grow op you can fit 40-55 little plants under each 1000w. Like I said if you do an SOG style grow op you don't need to space out your plants much. Thus making the 600w's advantage of spacing out plants a moot point.

Plant wise you'd have 160 on average plants under a 8x600w SOG op. While you could have on average 200 plants=(6X40) under a (6)x1000w SOG op. Due to the larger foot print of a 1000w setup you can stuff some more plants making you more cash.

Also you should read up on SOG grow ops if your not familiar with them. Also with an SOG grow op you don't need too many lights in the vegging grow room. You fruit clones once they start rooting roughly 1-2 weeks after you cut them off their mother plant. You only need enough lighting for the clones to root (they then go straight to fruiting). You also only need enough lighting for the mother plants. If your running 4 strains you'll have 4 mothers. A 400w MH or T5 setup is enough for 4 full grown mother plants. You'd also need a T5 or MH set up for the clones. I will note some people veg their clones longer than others and wait to have larger root masses.

Another thing to consider for every 1000ws in Fruiting you have you only need about 300-400ws for vegging (so you need 30-40% of the light in your Fruiting room for vegging). Those figures are for full sized plants too with SOG plants you'll only need (15-25% of your fruiting rooms total lighting for vegging rooms total needs (moms included)). SOG plants are smaller and need less light than that even. Thats the whole point of an SOG op is that you maximize your light usage since your plants are tiny and light can deeply penetrate them. Thus you have a better usage of light (less light needed for more plants), Take that into consideration. Bottom line is I think you have way too many lights in your vegging room. I say use some of that cash and get a CO2 generator for fruiting, an AC unit (if you need one), a Dehumidifier (which you'll need in an SOG grow op), and a Sulfur burner (which you'll need too). Buds mold easily in a SOG setup. A dehumidifier and a sulfur burning will take care of that right quick.

P.S. Lumatek 1000w ballasts can run at 600w either using 1000w bulbs (which I wouldn't recommend) or using 600w bulbs (they run both wattages). Also a 1000w lumatek ballasts running in 600w mode using the same amount of power as it's 600w counter part. I think their is roughly a 30-50 dollar difference between most 1000w and 600w ballasts depending on brands.

DieselB said:

Yeah, that's not even debatable.. Anyone that knows anything is gonna tell you to run the 600's, and actually they are more efficient than the 1k's.


EDIT: As far as number of plants and added yield, you will get a better yield off of more light, but you would need to veg the plants out bigger to gain the potential of the added light.

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100% agree!! I have a couple 1k's and I will be switching to 4 600's.. for many reasons..

No, no... look - we're going to do four plants under each 600w in the veg room, so that means we'll have a total of 16 plants under 4 600watter plants.

After 1 month, we're gonna move them into the flowering room.

After another month, the next 16 plants we'll be moved into the flowering room. That means there will always be 32 plants in the flowering room, starting from the 3rd month, and for each month thereafter this shall be the case.

So with double the plants, I'm thinking I should have eight 600 watters in the flowering room, meaning double the lights.

dont put 4 600 watt lights in your veg room .... put 1 1000 watt in there thats sufficient.

instead use the money your spending on the 600 watters for the veg room , into your grow room YOULL SAVE MONEY


4x 600 watts in your grow room === 2400 watts on electricity ... your not trying to spend money on electricity

1x1000watt ======= 1000 watts of electricity.... WAY less electricity being used..


if you want 8x 600 watts in your grow room and you change your veg room to 1 x1000 watt , you can use the money not spent on the 4x600 watters and invest it in the grow room.,,