So I'm ready to start my first grow organic of course. I need the low down on electricity and how to stay out of suspicion. Also can i just plug a 1000 watt light into the wall and good to go?
a contactor for the high voltage start up on your ballast . or you will just burn your timers out. search and you will find
O yea, I mean can i just plug the Ballast into the wall of any room? or do I have to run copper wire from the breaker? is 1000 watts suspicious? Can you point me in the direction of some good information on this subject? thanks
dont know about it being suspicious but if your in the u.s your light will be pulling just over 9 amp on whatever circuit it is on. it is made to plug into a general socket but you will have to think about what else is on that circuit. and what the current rating of the protective device is i.e circuit breaker at your distribution board. and make sure you dont overload it. if your on a 16 amp circuit you will be using over 50% of the capacity make sure you dont have high powered appliances on it like toasters and microwaves lol you get my point
could I plug a 600 watt into a wall and not worry about all that? All this stuff doesnt really make sense to me at all. So I am trying to keep it as simple as possible but I dont want to fuck up everything.
As for the suspicious part, the winter in most areas of the country is a good time to jump up on your power consumption without raising suspicion. Most people's electric consumption go up during the winter because of running the furnace, space heaters, no going out, staying home watching TV instead. Plus the power company doesn't want to come between paying customers and the law. They like you using more power. More $$$ for them. As for the amperage thing, what you may have happen is that when you turn the lights on, it'll trip the circuit breaker. Or you may find that when your lights are on, if your bathroom is on the same circuit, a hairdryer will trip the circuit breaker, or your microwave, etc. If it's in a room where there aren't high amp draw appliances and your circuits are split up by room, then you should be OK. Worse case scenario, you trip the breaker and have to get more creative in where you draw your power from...
Makes sense, so its not that big of a deal if I trip the breaker? and thats worst case scenario? so i think ill just plug everything in and hope for the best, limit electricity use of course and call it good?
but it will burn a normal timer out without a contactor relay or you switch it on and off at the right times every day
Good rule of thumb in the USA is 1 1000w light per bedroom. If you have 2 bedrooms u can get away with 2 1000w 3 u can get 3 you get my drift. Although i do not follow this rule i got 2bedroom and i use a 400w with cfls on the sides and I've yielded more than some with 1000w's, i dont like the electric bill!!! When you exceed this rule you will become a target of suspiscion lawl i cant spell right now i wonder why lol. NEVER exceed this rule and try to stay beneath it if you want to be safe.
I ran into a electrical problem when I set up my room at my new place. All of my plugins were on two 15 amp breakers so I could not use very much light without tripping a breaker. I wanted to use 1000 watts which is 9 amps so I had a friend run me a seperate 20 amp service and a heavy duty 20 amp plugin to my grow space. Now the only thing I have running from my original breakers is just my fans and exhaust fans. I spent about $100 but I can sleep alot better at night knowing I will not burn the house down growing my favorite herbs. It helped that I had a friend that had did some electrical work before, I gave him $50 and told him I needed to run a heater this winter so he would not know what I was doing and spent $50 on materials. In most houses you could get away with using a 400 watt or poss a 600 watt without tripping a breaker but you have to remember you will be using fans and other stuff besides your lights. It is better to be safe than sorry for sure! Good Luck!