Hey so I finally got down to it and began growing! Here is my first indoor grow. At the moment I have 18 plants-about 2-3 feet each inside a 10X6 room with 3 1000w lights. HPS MH HPS. Still a work in progress though..
This brings back memories to my first grow. Plants were like yours, freakin huge, 10 3-4 footers under a 1000w. Even that was a lot to handle for a first grow. Shit's work. Mind sharing how you dealt with the electricity? Obviously 3000w is too much for the average US household bedroom.
the plants don't look that healthy because most of the leaves are droopy, if you are letting the soil dry to the bone between watering I'd water more. Also, buy a fan (preferably oscillating) and get some bamboo to stake them (I can see they are stating to fall over already). Good luck
When does it become hard work? So far everything has been enjoyably easy lol... Mostly. I am going to bend all the plants and get 3 reflectors so I can put the plants right underneath the lights and have them all the same height.. THAT will be a few hours of work but looking forward to it. Ill post pix when I do it.. probably in 2 days. As for the electricity.. You would not believe my luck I rented this duplex to live in.. the place used to be commercial. Now it is residential. Which means lots of outlets everwhere.. the grow room is where huge machinery used to be so there was literally no work for electricity. Normally though, I would just have to make the outlets able to take 1000w and then run extention plugs to other outlets right? So each outlet would have 1 1000w light? Anyways, it should be exciting for you guys especially haha.. because I just flipped on the lights two weeks ago and my landlord doesnt know about it. Winter is starting and the duplex's utility bill is all on one bill (I think) so the landlord might not even realize.. Though a $200-$300 jump a month is a good bit of money.. We'll see how it plays out haha...
Droopy yes, but not because of the water. I think the temperature is off- mostly at 13-18c. I do not let them ever get bone dry. Just triggered them so I know they have to stay watered.. Also this are pictures from 4 ish days ago- not how things are currently.. so as I said above, Ill upload new photos soon. And the plants do not need stakes yet.. not sure which plants you are looking at but none are close to needing help being held up yet. They will when they flower though, for sure. Going to bend them all so make an even canopy soon. Pictures to come soon. * ah also, I have 3 osco fans in the room right now(which you can see in one of the pictures, did you not look at them? -.- ). One at each end and 1 big one blowing in the line of lights, to blow away the heat from the plants. (allowing me to get a bit closer to the tops).
must be a paralax thing because one looked like it was falling over, didn't see the fans, sorry. Also yeah that's too cold, I keep mine at 26c all the time and the leaves are pointing straight up. Why is it that cold? With 3 1000w lights I'd figure it would be toasty in there.
Ya... I need a smaller fan -.- Haha right now I am running a 10" exhaust blower right from outside... Way too big, way too cold... Hard to perfectly climatize a room when its so small with a fan that blows temps from right outside.. Sometimes its hot sometimes is cold... Ugh...
there are control boards or something like that (forget the name) that have outlets that will turn on at certain temperatures, you should get one and set it to turn on the exhaust when the room gets above 27c and turn off when the room gets below 25c. They are around $125 from grow stores but it'll be worth it because the temps are way too low right now. Atleast you've identified the problem, now you just have to come up with a solution. 10'' is pretty big too, I'm sure you'll figure it out, if it's that cold when they start to flower though you'll get some mangy looking buds.
Damn I wish I had that kind of luck in my place. Maybe one of these days I'll get a little warehouse or something...one can dream. Anyway I think how it would work is you want to get a subpanel large enough to cover the total amount of amps for the room, i.e. lights, fans, portable a/c units, whatever. The amps are determined by what kind of circuit you've got, whether it's 110v or 240v. On a 110v (average American household bedroom), 1000w is 10 amps, on 240v a 1000w is 5 amps. The average bedroom circuit, I believe, holds 15-20 amps, so max you're looking at 1 1000w and a couple fans, to stay within the 25% safety range. You get the room wired with a nice 50 or 60 amp subpanel though, even with a 110v circuit it could be doing 4 lights plus everything else (still in safety range). Of course this is more costly, though, and you have to make sure you're not using a ton of electricity elsewhere because the average household is only equipped with a 100 amp main panel. And upgrading this to a 150 or 200 is quite costly, probably 1000s. I remember during that 1000w grow I was talking about I had the light, a 435cfm inline, and I think maybe an additional standing fan blowing on the plants. Even so, when the vacuum went on, everything went off. Weird though I didn't think a vacuum took up THAT much electricity. You've always got to be careful though. People are always talking to me about the wires, too, like you were. Though I don't know why that's always the first thought. I mean what really matters is the circuit, no? The wire is just a secondary mechanism to move electricity to wherever the fuck it's going. Not to mention I couldn't really see where special wiring (the kind that can handle larger amounts of electricity) would be necessary, unless you're talking about the subpanel.
Ahh.. Ya, the reason you hear wires mentioned first is probably because (like me) people do not understand how it works and therefore mention wires- which really do not matter... Except in my case, each wire is capable of at least 1000w and I have 12 wires hanging from the ceiling haha.. Even so, I do not know how everythign in there really works.. Only that two lights did cause the breaker to go off.. Just opened the panel and flicked 2 switches to turn them back on. So that means each plug I have has its own breaker? Agh- really uneducated in the world of electricity...
IMO your temps are way too low and they are getting too much or too little water (the slight leaf droop) When healthy and happy the top leaves should be pointing straight up and they all should be a darker green
Here are the most updated pictures, taken last night Plants are doing well, showed a lot of growth once I raised the temp from what it was before... Also added a picture of the bottom of my clone tray. One of the clones has roots 2 feet long! Insane... All of them doing super well. Transplanted 2 clones last night. Will do rest when roots are a bit longer.
damn, you literally went all out for your first time. lots of risk, especially with that electric bill.