Ok so I've got a place in sunny Cali to grow some medical in but I'm VERY inexperienced when it comes to setting up a grow room electrically. This is mostly because I've never really ran a grow of the size I'm going to be doing here, i.e. 8-10kw with about 60 or so plants. NO this is not all for me, obviously. I will be running this with a few other people, as a sort of patient collective, so we can all get our meds plus a little surplus. That said we are only using one home, and it is actually a lease, hence the dilemma. As of right now I'm not sure on a lot of things - I'm not sure on what the house can handle electrically, I'm not sure whether the circuits are 110v or 240v, I'm not sure who to call for electrical help, and hell I'm not even sure if I'm ALLOWED to be changing things electrically in the home anyway. Although I'm sure it would be seen as an upgrade to give the home more electrical capacity on the main panel, and worse case scenario I could just change everything back to normal when the lease ends. I've got the place for about a year, so there's plenty of time to grow before I'd have to return the place back to normal, electrically, if that has to be done. So my questions here are 1. Is it all right for me to be making electrical changes to the household? and 2. What changes specifically should I make to the place electrically in order for it to be able to handle the wattage (not to mention fans/ a/c units) of a grow of this size? I was thinking of having an electrician change the circuits in the rooms I'm going to be using to 240v and then have a 50 amp subpanel in each room, so each room could safely handle up to 6x 1000w lights (30a on a 240v circuit) plus fans, while still having the 25% safety gap. The way I'd be doing this would be 2 6000w flower rooms, and one 1000w veg room. So I'd have the 50a subpanels in the flower rooms, and I'd just use the regular circuit in the veg room since it would be able to handle a 1000w light plus fans. Also assuming that the house probably has the standard 100 amp main panel, I'd have to switch that out to a 150 or a 200. Of course this will be costly, but really it's no problem so long as I can get the place properly set up to work like a charm for the next year. Let me know your opinions on this.
Where are you in California? To answer your questions - 1. It is not ok to change or re-wire anything in the house without written permission from te owner. 2. You obviously will not be able to do all the changes without experienced electritian and not burn the house down a bit... Depending on where you are, I can suggest one or two who did this type of job..