So I'm designing a grow room, a thread to come for suggestions on building, lighting, etc... The jist of it is I plan on 3 chambers. 2 600W HPs in a flowering chamber with some MJ (saliva plants) and vegetables . (maybe 2 1kw). A small 4X4 or 5X5 chamber (6 WW's LST'd or a more induce strain) with a 400w HPS, and a begging chamber for clones (the WW and sativas) mothers (thinking 4) and vegging tomatoes, beans, etc , whatever plays nice with MJ. I'm guessing my 4 outlets and current CB won't handle this. What am I looking at having to do to power this? I live in the desert so am Looking at ac solutions also (ac unit in each room, swamp cooler through feed Room etc...)
It all depends on if you can run your ballasts at 120 Volts or 240 Volts. If you can run your ballasts 240v, that would be best so that you can run your a/c and everything off of the 110 power. I run into maxing out the power in my room too....I find myself timing my heaters and exaust and A/C to come on ten minutes after the other goes off so as not to trip the breaker. They make a couple different gadgets to test how many amps you are drawing from a specific breaker in your CB.
I'm going with all lumitek ballast which I believe are top of the line. Just bought the 400w one today to start as it's all the right price and I plan on still using it in future plans. It's a 120/240 I'll have to see how that works. How it advantageous? I'm guessing 240 involves running it's own separate line (which I can do if needed)
Yeah, a 240 volt cord from your ballast requires a 240 plug on the wall...The prongs will be different. (one will be turned sideways) A 240 volt plug requires 220 AMP power to be ran seperatley. You draw less amps with the ballast when running it with 220, its more effecient. There should be a sticker or something somewhere on the ballast or maybe the box that says how many amps it draws using 120 or 240.
Ok there we go, for some reason 240v was throwing me off. Was thinking of 220 as the sideways plug. It sounds like I'd be best off running a line for the ballast to ease the burden on my standard 115 outlets (if they would even be able to handle it.
Here is a picture of the Leviton plugs that I have my 220 AMP power wired to. The cord plugs into the outlet and the other end plugs into the 240 volt plug on the ballast.