I am on the verge of building my grow room. I have done some outdoor growing but I am ready to move indoors. I have bought a couple of books and dvd's and to be honest I am feeling a little overwhelmed. I have my eye on a 12x24 portable building. I am considering putting a wall and door down the middle. Using one half for flowering the other half for veging and cloning. I also need to put a drying closet in here somwhere. I have found a 12 bucket 5 gallon ebb and flow hydro system i really like. I am considering buying two and using them in both the vegging and flowering room. My biggest confusion comes on the lighting. I have tried hard to talk myself into using cfl's but I realize I will have better results with hid's. I need this room to produce at least three pounds per harvest (dried) and the plants are going to need top out at about six feet, especially if i'm using the hid's. My questions are how many lights for each room and how many watts? What should my yeild be? Would I be better off not walling off the building and using tents? My user name is closet or tent but it should be dazed and confused. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
I've always gone 1000w with a standard rectangular horizontal reflector will put an optimum light footprint of 6'x6' at regular ceiling height. It will of course light up a much bigger space than that but the strongest light should be in that 6x6 under the light. Using a light rail is a great way to go for extending the grow space a bit. Constantly moves the light back and forth. Personally I would go with making a light sealed wall for the two rooms. The more open space the plants have the easier it'll be to control temps. I assume you will be air ducting these rooms. Anywho thats my two cents. I'm sure more will follow.
Well as far as lighting goes you can assume 1 gram per watt once you have a few grows under your belt .5 grams per watt until then, so if you need 3 pounds and you are only gonna get .5 grams per watt for your first few grows you need 3 1k watt lights. Keep in mind this is just an estimate many things will effect your yield but lighting is one of the most important, you can achieve more or less depending on your growing techniques, the medium you use and the overall health of your plants.