has anyone ever used a small hps for a grow light?

Hello hope this helps i used a 100 watt mh light for my 2 mother plants but just because it looks small it will still put out a lot of heat so keep ventalation in mind i used a 250 hps for 18 plants 175 hps that only 75 watts less and you said one or two plants it should work great for you good luck

 

Box what size box ? and your going to spend 400 to 500 us dollars ? I would invest in a hydro system with an hid light but it doesnt take money to grow so dont think more money better bud or more bud i wished it worked that way good luck with whatever you do

 

If youre willing to spend that much on a grow box, i would definitely get a 100w hps /150w hps and get good fans so temperature wont be a problem,
Flourescents are good, im gonna be growing with em in 2 days time as soon as i finish the grow box, but my box is tiny so its better for temp reasons only ,
Dont think that flouro's are just as good as hps, Hps lights are the best.........
With a grow box that height and width you should be able to handle the temp
easily enough anyway,
At the end of the day its all up to you, but dont say we didnt warn ya......lol
Good luck!
CWL

 

Floros have there uses. They are awsome for veging in small spaces becasuse the lights can be right on top of them. but they suck for flowering. heres a sketch if you want a complete self contained system from clone to bud.

use a 170 wat son agro if you want.

Many people forget to include an area to dry there bud, but its crucial for max anual harvest. For the drying chamber make 3 moveable shelves about 2-3" apart with wood frames and screen shelves to fit all your bud in a small drying chamber. Have a piece of glass as the bottom to collect any hash that falls off.

 

Have you managed to get that working?

I've never seen anyone include a "drying cabinet" in a grow box.

No offense but it seems to go against any notion of "efficiency". That's valuable grow space being used for dead plants.

Further to this I'm not sure how you would cool it down. Particularly being as it sits at the top of the box and over the flowering chamber.

The only way to cool that space would be with air movement, and air movement (directly onto your buds) is a bad thing in the drying curing process IMHO. Too much airflow makes the buds dry too fast and too crispy, it seems harsh but you really want to drag out drying and curing for as long as you can without letting mold set in.

3 days hanging, couple of days in boxs, 3 weeks in mason jars.

If you have a particular odor worry then I can see why a self contained drying unit would be useful but IMHO combining it with a grow space would lead to more problems to be solved than quick win benefits.

Nice diagram though.

The representations of flouro's look like the lights in our kitchen after a mild shroom tea.



SS

 

The area would othewise be unused because with only 170 watts you dont get much penetration. Around 2' plants wouldnt be effecient because no light will get to the bottom. and the veg room is already big enough for 8 clones to pick 4 from for each grow. Then hold a bonza mother or 2 afer the clones are used.

Some insulation could keep most of the heat out the chamber would only be about 85*. Some mylar in the grow box and foam insulation in the drying box should keep the temp increase minimal. Its deffenety more effecient because you wot have to buy another fan or carbon filter. You can just have a changeble orifice going to the fan intake. Just change it throught the drying process altering the airflow.

 

Hmm, nope, still don't get it. It seems to waste perfectly good space. Why not stick a single flo in it and use it for rooting new clones? Plainly it can't be part of the flowering chamber, being as it is above the light, and your cuttings will struggle in the same room as mums because they need different environments so i would call it a cutting box.

I'm not sure of the dimensions but it looks pretty small so I'm thinking that i would probably lose the whole idea and extend the ballast and cooling chamber. Ther top chambers can be a max of 2'wx1'd given that the entire chamber is 2'w x 2'd and I severely doubt the ability to get a ballast, a fan to clear the whole cubic space of that box (from two directions - mum chamber and flower chamber), scrubber, the relavent wiring AND still have room for a COOL drying chamber.

I'm also wondering about it efficiency if you have to use one interchangeable fan. Surely that means all the time your bud is drying the flowering chamber is out of use?

A novelty maybe but of no serious use.

You say it is DEFINATELY more efficient I assume that this means you built one already (the cab) or is this just supposition?

I tell you what, when/if you have built one and have it operating post a pic of a thermometer in the "drying chamber" whilst the rest of the cab is operational.

I'd like to see that.



Good luck.

 

you say growbox is gonna be five feet tall then theres no way your gonna veg for six weeks remember they can double in height once put on 12/12 thats gonna mean very tall plants.

 

erm just a small point about heat, a fluro with balast will lume 4 lume put out more heat than a hps, in fact thinking about even watt 4 watt a hps puts out less heat than compact fluros.

IMHO the only reason ppl think fluros run cooler is cus u often have less watts of light in any given area and the tubes seem cooler becuse the heat is spread over a much larger area. in a grow box the heat is trapped and will build up unless removed by a ex fan. unless u just want to clone i dont c any good reason to use fluros insted of a hps.

if u think im fibbing then try touching the balast on a fluro after its bin on 4 a few hours or spend a bit of time under a sun bed.

 

Yep CF's run hotter than Hps and Flouro's,
But Low temp CF's are available if u look for em,
Normal flouros are cooler than Cf's but barnaby is probably right about the area idea,
170w hps is just a small bulb but 170w worth of flouros is a bigger area for the heat to disipate into the air.
But at the end of the day, if the ventilation is powerful enough it could cope with anything.
Its simple, as the wattage of light goes up so must the wattage of ventilation in proportion to the air volume in the box.
CWL

 

cf's hotter that hps i dont know about that, all i use in my house is cf and tubes i can take them out at any time try taking out a 170 watt hps after its been on for one hour i have a 100 watt mh and it gets hotter than my 400 watt mh not tryin to be a prick just voicing what i think good luck

 

Shureshot, dont get all offensive like that.
You only need space to root 8 clones and thats in the veg room 1x1x2, you pick the best 4 out of 8 halfway through veg and toss teh reunts then allow them to continue veging for a week or so. Any more then that and it would be a waste because you can only fit 4 in the chamber.

I dont see why you cant hook up the fan with passages to both the flowering camber veg chamber and have the regulating orifice to allow some flow for the drying box. Its all in engineering man. I could do it if i tried and if i drew you a pic you would see but i dont fell like playing with paint again, i keep on entering comands thinking its CAD

 

I think celtic is tryong to say 70 watts of hps is cooler then a bank of CFs making teh same lumens and i bet ist srue becasue the cfs haev teh ballast inside and a HPS has the ballast outside the box.

 

ok ok i was tryin to compare how much light and heat u get from fluros and hps lights.

hps turns more of the watts it uses into light than fluros do.
fluros turn more of the watts into heat.

ive never seen a 5w hps light, and ive never seen a 400w compact fluro so its a bit hard to explain unless u use ur imagination. i have bit veggin under 320w of fluros tho and i had more of a heat build up with that than the 400w hps i flowerd with.

the whole point of wot i was tryin to point out was if heat build up is a prob in a small flowering grow box then fluros aint the answa, a small hps might b tho.

 

ditto

 

320 watts of floros how is that working for you are they growing fast i tried a 400 watt mh and didn't think it was good enough so i'm building a vegging/clone box with 12 4' tubes 40 watts each 4 on each side and 4 on top that can be lowered hope this works better i'm tryin i got 6 tubes in the box so far oh box is 5' long 4' tall and 32'' wide

 

Offensive?? No offense but, for crying out loud dude, that's called constructive criticism. If you're going to get your panties in a knot then next I'll not bother. No skin off my nose dude.

AllI was saying is that to claim it is DEFINATELY more efficient without actually having built it. How can you say DEFINATE with no proof?

But I only see two spaces in your cab (other than the drying part and back office)...a flowering space and a single veging space. This must therefore be used for mums AND clones.

Of course you can, the point being is that in order to get the right ambient temperature and relative humidities in order to clone, veg, flower, store mums AND dry bud with ONE device will be hard being as one part of the chamber may be demanding airflow when another is not etc etc etc,

The conditions required to dry bud well are so vastly different to the ones needed to grow it just seems pointless to try and combine the two.

Like I said before, build it and show it works otherwise I have every right to comment on it as I like.

BUT, I stand by the fact that it would be a task to do, and even if done the means wouldn't justify the ends at all.

But that's my opinion.

WE ARE ALLOWED TO HAVE THEM YOU KNOW

Some people in here need to smoke more weed, less angst and paranoia hey.... I mean in the other thread people are getting all antsy over the word plonker!

Chill out. Have a joint.