Room spec questions

OregonMeds · Jan 6, 2010

Widowmaker please note dd's words above yours "Please remember guys that a 400 watt and a 600 watt does not equal a 1000 watt bulb. " True true true don't be fooled into wasting a bunch of money on stacked light systems you need the penetration of the big lights and you can't get it adding up small ones. I should have assigned them even lower values than .6 and .4 technically to be more accurate about it.

jflo · Jan 6, 2010

would 4 , 400w hps in cool tubes be too much for a verticle grow in a 5x7 8ft tall grow space?

jflo · Jan 6, 2010

but the heat of a 1000 is a factor if you don't have much space. do you think the g/watts is a linnear ralationship? meaning a plant with 4,1000w lamps around it would yield 2.5 times more than a plant with 4,400w lamps around it?

Widowmaker · Jan 7, 2010

How light can we use?

Good call OM, like your grey matter!!

The goal of a quite high yield grow room is a multi facetted problem and will take some out of the box thinking. I’ve made a lot of measurements at different angles and distances and have not pulled them all together in a coherent form yet. When it’s done I'll post it here. One interesting observation is that the 1KW Horti doesn’t follow the inverse square law exactly. I believe it’s because the light is not a point source, but a line source.
Another thought is that because of the water cooling, the light can be moved closer to the plant increasing the lumens with less heat. But that makes the beam width problem more of a problem. Keep in mind that the four lamps or a single 1KW light for each 90 degrees of the 360 degrees of the plant is an improvement over the single Mega Goggle Watt System, AKA the SUN. It’s got to be about lumens delivered to the leaf without burning it.

Is the minimum distance limitation with our lights due to thermal radiation alone?

Using A/C and fans for cooling how close can a bare 1KW Horti bulb (no reflector or cool tube, ETC.) get to the plant and still do big things?

:icon_spin:

OregonMeds · Jan 7, 2010

jflo said:
would 4 , 400w hps in cool tubes be too much for a verticle grow in a 5x7 8ft tall grow space?

No you'd be fine. Mini trees though, with limited yields, not big ones. It may not be the best use of your lights though, dwc sog with a bunch of little near zero veg girls in large bins would be better for you I think anyway.

OregonMeds · Jan 7, 2010

Widow If you let it get much closer than around 18" growth slows. You can push 12" but then that's really too little growth to be worth it, normally anyway maybe with trees this big it changes when it's still worth it or not.

I don't know if it's the radiated heat or too much light that slows growth first, never had a water cooled light to play with and see if taking some heat out of the equation makes a difference but at some point you just make the plant do a whole lot more sweating than growing.

jflo · Jan 7, 2010

OregonMeds said:
No you'd be fine. Mini trees though, with limited yields, not big ones. It may not be the best use of your lights though, dwc sog with a bunch of little near zero veg girls in large bins would be better for you I think anyway.

Im in a state with 12 plant limits so sog isnt really a good option..I hear ya though. what do you think would be better in a vertical grow

4 400w in a tictactoe design with 5 plants like

x0x
0x0
x0x x=plant, 0=light

or 2 1000w

x
0
x x
0
x

thanks in advance

OregonMeds · Jan 8, 2010

Two 1k's man no comparison, the lumens and penetration difference...

3 plants if you are still stuck on dd's method, which is still probably not at all ideal for you even if you can only do 12 plants. It's absolutely not ideal for you if you won't also have a veg area to make them flip zero veg, co2, sealed room, chiller.

jflo · Jan 8, 2010

OregonMeds said:
Two 1k's man no comparison, the lumens and penetration difference...

3 plants if you are still stuck on dd's method, which is still probably not at all ideal for you even if you can only do 12 plants. It's absolutely not ideal for you if you won't also have a veg area to make them flip zero veg, co2, sealed room, chiller.

I see...well all I'm really "borrowing" from DD's is vertical grow and bulb placement. I'm gonna run 18 gallon stand alone "bubbleponic" tubs (dwc plus direct feeder drip into the hydroton from below the lid)with airstones, 5 inch net pots. Seeing great results from horizontal bulb placement but trying to maximize yield on the lower branches which is what DD's bulb placement seems to do. Also using vented cool tubes(intake and exhaust is from outside the grow chamber) C02 etc

using a small veg room with 400w mh, 1 girl enters flower (at 30 days veg), every 10 days (Didn't mention I'm running perpetual) so the space constraints arent as bad for me cuz the youngest 2 plants in the flower chamber are just starting to bud, also the main reason I can't setup DD's mpb...nute strength differences.

So two 1ks for sure...

much appreciated... but why do you say its not ideal? Isn't DD's approach scale-able down to even just one plant? just wondering :blush

OregonMeds · Jan 8, 2010

Because you can't take advantage of the light sharing aspect where ea light is powering up to 4 plants directly and where many plants have light on all sides directly.

You instead get just one plant getting half that light and two plants getting 1/4 of that light directly. Most of the light in your small setup would be reflected, not direct.

If you then ask well why not just 1 plant with 4 lights around it, that would yield a big dd tree right? Yes it would, maybe bigger, but it would have to have a dry weight of 10lbs to equal the 2.5lbs per light other styles could do with your 12 plants.

You are near the break even point if you cram the 3 trees and two lights into a tight area with excellent reflective pure white flat paint or better. If you can get them to yield 5 lbs between them, which is maybe possible so I'm not trying to say it'll be as horrible as 1 plant with 4 lights but just saying... Not the best use of your power maybe, but sure to be fun either way.

If you ask why not the 400's and mini trees, Well you could try it and it may do well but who knows. I don't think it would fare so well but I have also wondered what would happen. That's a lot of money invested to do it dd style though to only run 400's seems like way overkill waste. It wouldn't put out the most light per watt that's for sure.

Without the recirculating part though I don't think you will see dd level results at all. It's not optional all the ingredients together made his huge trees.

jflo · Jan 8, 2010

i see what youre saying. I am in no way under the illusion that I would be even approaching the 3+lbs per plant dd's achieved with this size setup etc. I think it would be a challenge for anyone to do much better than that even with "elephant" or whatever supersize strains in an identical setup to his, but I'd be very content with 1lb per plant per 10 days, and I think its doable.

Well I'll think I'm gonna try the 2, 1k bulbs as you suggested but instead of 3 plants Im gonna try 6 in this formation

x o x o x
x=2 plants
actual shape will be more oval and the end plants will be more parabolically placed at (10am and 2pm, bottom 2 wil be at 4pm and 8pm) to minimize the dead spaces on the sides of the bulbs if that makes sense. My walls are rebuild-able if extra space is nec.

Since I'm running perpetual, do you have an opinion on what 20 day period (of the roughly 60 day flower) would be the best to have the plants placed in the center position recieving the most light? early middle or late in flower

OregonMeds · Jan 8, 2010

Ok, sounds like a plan.

I would have no idea on giving more light during only part of flowering. That will be another limiting factor for you. 1lb per 10 days no way man, don't set your hopes up so high you can't even use a chiller with no recirc, you can't keep things ideal and you can't even throw in a ton of air krusty style to compensate for no recirc because you can't chill. All that air would heat up the water as well as ambient temps.

Maybe if you find some balance and can draw cold enough air into a large pump and pump even more air than dd's system in them. All that movement and sloshing is needed not just bubbles. Bubbles will only get you average dwc yields.

jflo · Jan 9, 2010

ya I could draw in frigid temps if nec, got knee high snow outside, could drill down into crawl space and suck in from there. what size air pump is minimum? was just gonna use a good size aquarium pump but sounds like thats not enough for 9 grow tubs 18 gallons each? I have an aircompressor, maybe I could hook that up to hoses ...just a thought and it would crank out some liters/hour.

also, you don't think an elbow per plant is do-able? hmm well everyones entitled to their opinion hehe. I just have seen regular dwc growers using 5 gallon buckets and not much more veg time get close to 1lb growing kush. So i figure a dense strain like cheese or bigbud would be no problem. Anything close to that would be fine anyway I'm not greedy.

got a wide variety of clones to choose from here.
We shall see :)

OregonMeds · Jan 9, 2010

1lb per plant is possible, sure, it's just that you have so many limiting factors.

And yes draw that cold outside air into the pump that will help a lot as long as it doesn't go too far the other way and make them too cold, you'll have to keep an eye on it.

How big of an air pump? How much money do you have to spend? Regenerative blowers are what people used to get max yield before high water flow dd style but they cost over 1k. DD's pump would be good, if you can afford it, for just your flowering girls only.

I will just be running one of these for my 4 bins to start:

I couldn't afford the hi-blow yet.

They don't have the power to push crazy long runs under pond deep water like the hi-blow, but in a small shallow setup they will still throw a crapload of air. If you used that just for your flower plants you should be able to froth the water just like it's on a high boil. It should be really rolling hard and if it's not, then you aren't in that range of ideal yet.

It's all up to you man, you get out only what you're willing to put in. Much of what I've said to you, you should take with a grain of salt though. I was coming into this as if you wanted the most productive growth but it sounds like you aren't that concerned and just want to do the best you can with what you can. I get that... I'm in the same boat to some degree.

OregonMeds · Jan 9, 2010

Actually no, now that I'm thinking about it more that pump would only really froth the water for maybe 3 5 gallon buckets, it wouldn't be actually enough to get the full effect for these size bins or for the six you plan when I'm still thinking three, but it's a start I guess. We do what we can...

jflo · Jan 9, 2010

cool thanks...ill have to post up when i get her rolling...

and sorry for hyjacking the post. ;)

Decisive · Jan 10, 2010

Was wondering if anyone could tell me if the plant spacing planned out in this diagram is optimal, or if it could be improved in any way. The yellow rectangles are 27gal home depot buckets, yellow circles are 1000w lights, the big green circles are the estimated diameter of each plant after the stretch in flower.

http://i49.invalid.com/wi8z7t.jpg Thanks in advance.

Sorry for hijacking the thread!

OregonMeds · Jan 11, 2010

oxox
xoxo
oxox

This is way better even with 1 less plant.

Widowmaker · Jan 11, 2010

Just Playing around

OregonMeds said:
oxox
xoxo
oxox

This is way better even with 1 less plant.

How does this look?

View attachment 61735

View attachment 61750

:icon_spin:

OregonMeds · Jan 12, 2010

That's it. I might be tempted to cram another two plants in there if you had the room on the left side of the top pic, where you could fit them next to two 1k's but there's no way to be sure if this number of plants or two more would be best without trying it. Logic and math really only go so far.

I would go this way with a high yield strain, the extra two plants with a lower one but that's really just guessing.

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