Hey, my bf and I are planning on growing two northern lights. Our original plans were to have two boxes (made of wood) one for veg. (dimensions 2x1x1) the other for flowering (dimensions 4x2.5x1.5). what we are stuck on is lighting. we want to keep it as cheap as possible, but we are willing to invest more if necessary (we rather spend more to get better quality). After reading online for days, we still can't decide what would be the best (and cheapest) method for lighting. We read that we should have 6000k lighting for the veg box and 2700k for the flowering, but if we are to go with fluorescent, exactly HOW MANY lights should we get? and how many watts should they be?
Since you don't have any current plants yet, you will need a few for the veg chamber. To give you a perspective: I am using a 2x2x3 space with 6 24w CFLs. Those are 100w equivelants. My plants are doing fine. So I think you would be fine with about 3 or 4 lights. Get more in there if you can control the temps. You are right that you want 6500k for veg and 2700k for flower. You will want more lights in your flowering box if possible. No one can tell you exactly how many lights to get. It is up to you to figure that out based on your ventilation and space available. Watts are again up to you. You can find 42w at Home Depot and Walmart and such. You can find 85w+ from ebay.
We have been doing some research and we found... For the flowering room (4x2.5x1.5): 250watt HPS light 2100k HPS ballast Econo gro reflector For the veg room (2x1x1): 4 - 30 watt full spectrum 6400k cfl's. What do you think?
That sounds good. I want to upgrade to a 250w HPS as well. You should get great results with that setup.