OK... maybe if i retitle the original thread, SOMEONE will help me this time. no-one was helping the first time i posted and skimming other people's grow room threads wasn't helping either. i'm looking to light either a small scrog space or maybe a two shelf unit CFL with minimum power and with as many strains as can be fit in a 4.5' X 4.5' room hindered by an inward swinging door as pictured. sea of green seems out of the question as most of the plants are sativa dominant to pure sativa. i would like a way to grow a MINIMUM of 8 strains in this space using as little power as possible. i need help from more experienced growers with this http://img107.mytextgraphics.com/pho...-47r5y49p8.jpg i'm looking for help designing a grow in this room. my "plan A" is to set the room up as shown, the green area would be 8 moveable SCROG tables that i would rotate daily when tying down to simulate a light mover. my highest priorities are lighting efficiency & heat reduction and getting as many plants in the space as possible. i'm not as concerned with yields as this is just for personal use and giveaways. i DO care about quality though. i had considered a 300W MH X 300W HPS setup with one bulb per side of the room at first. after learning about sickly expensive LEDs, i love their low energy & heat traits and thought about putting less of them on a light mover for maximum lighting bang for the buck, but everyone was trying to talk me out of that in another thread. long ago, everyone talked me out of packing 4' shoplights over the grow area. i thought it's a great idea as i had gotten great smoke pruning under shoplights until the little plants eventually got rootbound & stressed and died after about 4 months in 2 quart containers. the way i see it, shoplights can be put just an inch away from a plant without burning it and at even 6"-8" away, look brighter than a 600w HPS at 3 feet or so. if everyone uses CFLs, why not use tubes for SCROGging where penetration is zero? besides, T-12 (4') tubes come in all sorts of wavelengths from ultraviolet (great for THC production) & blue actinics which can cause bright colors to flouresce to orange tinted "warm" lights and even pink beauty lights. they're so much more flexible. OK the plan i'm considering now is 150w ea. MH & HPS bulbs on a light mover for low energy consumption and the possibility of adding another light to the wasted space just left of the door. that inward swinging door is a major pain. i've thought of unhinging it to claim the whole room or hiring a carpenter to reverse it. (any damage i might do to the plaster would be hard to fix as it's textured) that's about where i'm at now. i'd put a DIY carbon scrubber up on the shelf in back of the closet and depending on how i light the space, possibly link it to the growlights' ventilation ducts. the OTHER possibility i'm thinking of is using a pair of big shelf units in the room and doing a mega CFL grow. 1 shelf unit has four 19.25"H X 31.5"W X 18"D spaces or four 3.9 ft. sq. units for 15.75 ft. sq. total, compared to just 12.9 square feet as pictured in the link at the top of the thread and another unit would fit and double that space. for what it's worth, i need all the space as i have 8 strains at minimum i want to grow out and breed and if possible, keep multiple females of each for pheno testing too. if i can find more space, i'd like to even add more strains to these C99 splash kali mist (A11g X lien huanh) X A11g haze skunk pure power plant mixed sativa SADP skunk (if they pop unlike the 1st batch of freebies) california orange bubblegum & troublemaker freebies heat is a major issue here in the summertime as it gets over 100 degrees which is a big reason i want to go low wattage & heat. one last thing, are 17" X 13.5" SCROG tables big enough to flower out a plant? i don't mind giving yield up, it's giving spots for additional varieties up that would bother me. thanks a million in advance to all of the experienced growers who stop by to share their real world experience with this noob who's procrastinated 20+ freakin' years too many on the homegrown tip!
Wow, a lot to try to respond to. I think your basic floorplan is sound. What about that area to the right of the door, could you put a couple more plants there? Personally I would not mess around with rotating daily and simulating light movers and such. I think you have a good idea about using fluoro tubes down close to the plants. Keep in mind, though, that the length of the fluoro tubes doesn't match your room dimensions well, so you could end up with some dark spots at the edges. Could you switch out that door for a bi-fold? It would be harder to lightproof but would take up less of the room's footprint that way. G'luck.
dang it, pushed a button and lost my reply! i gave it some thought and decided just unhinging the door is a cheap and easy way to recover more closet space and would allow me to use 9 larger vs. 8 smaller scrog tables as pictured http://pokernaut.myphotoalbum.com/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album01&id=0_500w_closet_OUTLINED i like the idea of scrogging because i have back problems and leaning over a big scrog table doesn't sound fun. another grower put the idea in my head when i read his report saying how much easier it is to have full access to a plant. it also allows for eventual staging of seasons too. when an early table finishes, start a new female in her space. the whole "light mover" idea is an added benefit. i like light movers because they make lights cover more area so i can cut my power use. there's an interesting article about using half lighting in greenhouses to cut heat without hurting harvests. as i plan on using red & blue lights, i want to move the plants to assure they get even coverage of both spectrums. i'll likely run both for 12 hours in the winter and maybe stagger them for 6 hours when it's hot. sound like a plan? as to flouros inches from the plants instead of grow lights, i just about got beat down as a heretic at overgrow for suggesting it. maybe no-one there was scrogging. the nice thing about floros is that they're so cheap. a shoplight + bulbs is under $20. as to coverage, i know i'd lose some grow space to the 4' tubes, but i'd gain a cheap and easy setup without a need for intensive light cooling, but there would sure be some heat if i ran 10 or more lights. i'd given up on the idea really. you think it IS possible to do afterall? at one point when i was arguing the case, i wanted to do a flouro grow out of spite just to show it was possible. i just got talked out of LEDs on light movers here recently too. i like THAT idea best because LEDs are soooo much more efficient and putting them on a mover would lower their coverage cost greatly. everyone seems to poopoo on LEDs too. maybe everyone is just stuck in their ways and doesn't like change. i'm starting from scratch.
