wondering if anyone has some experience or advice for flipfloping?flipfloping is having 2 flower rooms in the same place.for example instead of four 1000hps going on at one time you seperate them up into two flower rooms alternating the 12/12.when one room is running the other is in its dark period.basically it looks like your running 2000 watts 24 hours a day.any information on this will be very helpful.peace!
Cutting a room in half loses space,pulling x amount of amps in 12 hrs cost the same as in 24 hrs. Running at night helps the community and you would have less worry of power dropping. Flip/flop boxes are easy to put together yourself if you are used to using your hands. On the plus side I guess you could use a smaller a/c. I do not think heat signatures are that important, at least in calif which is all I know. Suerte JK
jalisco kid i do plan on using those boxes,just not the diy your self kind.also im from a big city,and i dont plan on using an ac.my lights come with air cooled hoods.
the n man good tip thanx
mcn i agree.it actually makes sense to run 12/12 24 hours a day.you get more bang for your buck
Hydrosolutionz does a nice one. plug and play. I actuall bought one , but my room was just too hot during the daytime. It shows no 12/12 surge in your power consumtion either because its constant. its also better for your ballast as turning off and on electronics is what breaks them down. Alot of people dont like the idea because you cant veg in those rooms, but all you have to do is throw a tek-5 in there to be on when your lights flop and the room goes dark. great if you want to max out your avialable amps, do a 20 light grow off 50amps. they perfect when the situation calls for one
Flip flop relays save money numerous ways:
1) When a mag ballast fires up, it draws more power than when it is warmed up; i.e. a 1000 watt ballast pulls more than 1000 watts upon start-up. The actual amount varies. Letting your ballasts run 24/7 eliminates this "surge" of start-up
2) When a ballast is first powered up, it's not exactly pushing the bulb properly, so this puts more stress on the bulb. By far the most damaging thing to a bulb's life is starting up. Flip flops reduce stress on your bulbs, which can help to increase bulb life.
3) When building your room, you only need to buy half as many ballasts.
4) Say you're wanting to do a 8k grow. With a flip flop you'd only be powering 4 ballasts, and only burning 4 bulbs at any given time. This will reduce heat build-up which again will help lower your elec bill.
Another interesting thing that can be done with these types of controllers is "zig-zag" relaying. This is where you have an array of lights, but only burn banks or groups of them at any given moment. Say you have 20 lights, you could burn 4 groups of 5 lights, so you could break it up into 3 hours of each bank of lights burning at once. That's just a simple explanation of how it works, but it's kind of similar to having a light rail. It's crazy what you can do with some relays!
Sour P if you do go ahead with this consider venting your air for the lights on into your dark room....
it helps if your not wreaked wen thinking about and setting this up!
good luck!!
. . your on the right track as it is amigo, you've lots of pm's too, relax. i'd say your already on the right road, you'd wanna be speaking to an electrician too ok, things seem to be good for you so fare . .
Forgive me if this isn't allowed and feel free to delete my post. But i build custom controllers for growers and ONLY growers. I challenge anyone to find a more durable and reliable product. I love knowing that i've help out my fellow growers, not many ppl out there are here for us and us only. I love building gear. If you're ever interested in ANY type of controller, hit me up. I design controllers on a case by case basis, or better yet a room by room basis.
You could just put them all in one room and alternate every other light on for two hrs. at a time. This would save more electricity and results have been good with this method. Jorge Cervantes shows a commercial example of this method in his Indoor Bible. I think they reported the same yields too!