Opinions on 15x15 grow room

I would split a room that size into two seperate rooms. One for vegging and one for flowering. that way you can keep plants going at different stages of growth all the time. Have one or two plants ready to harvest every week. Will cost you anywhere between $500 to $50,000 and no I am not kidding. Asking how much a grow room will cost is like asking how much a car costs. What kinda car? You can get to work in a Kia just as well as you can a Bentley

 

Seriously though lights are your single biggest expense. If you go with say a modest 40 watts per foot and lets say you use 90% of your floor space as true growing space you are lookin at... lets see 15 x 15=225 225 x .9 = 202.5 x 40w = 8000 watts of light. A nice 1000w setup with hood, bulb and all the trimmings is gonna be around $250 each, so you are looking at $2000 just in lights. That seems like an awful lot of space for a personal grow to be honest. My grow room is 12 x 7 and I struggle to keep my 15 plants from crowding out each other. Not to mention the power bill that goes with that 8000w of light... around $600.00 per month (assuming you had half of them on 24/7 and the other half 12/12) And then the heat they would create.... But having a space that big does you no good unless you fill it with light. Space is not the limiting factor, its how much light you can have. To fully use a 15 x 15 room i am guessing you would be looking at a minimum of a $5000 initial investment and easily $700.00 to $800.00 a month in electricity.

 

I'm just saying that if a guy wanted he could go nuts. There are special enchanced spectrum bulbs that can run $300 a piece. A room the size you are talking about with the amount of heat generated by 8000w of light would require some pretty beefy exhaust fans. Hydroponic setups can be really pricey. Airconditioning units can run into the thousands. Dehumdifiers... Timers... $50,000 was probably a stretch. But I guaranttee you $20,000 is not out of the question.

 

The best grow room I ever had was actually a room split down the middle. I had a veg. room and a flowering room, it's a pretty typical setup really, lots of growers do it. You keep a few mothers going in the veg room and are always taking cuttings from them. In your flower room you might have say half of your 36 plants, so 18 at any one time. Of those 18 all of them would be in differnt stages of bloom, some just starting and some almost finished. The main benefit to this is that if you have ever tried to trim and manicure 36 plants all at once you would know what a pain in the ass it is. The idea is you almost create an assembly line of plants, turniong out one or two every week.

 

I set my grow room up for around $1500.00. I had to build the room in my garage so that included the expense of building and insulating the walls. I managed to get 3400 watts of light for under $250.00 I bought old high bay 400W MH lights and 250 HPS lights from craigslist and stripped out the ballasts and made my own enclosers for them. You can do it on the cheap if you have the time and some skills. Buying stuff at a grow shop off the shelf can get real pricey.

 

I mean I guess the bottom line is the room will cost what you are willing to spend. Come up with a dollar amount that if everything goes to shit and the guy turns out to be a flake you can stomach writing off. That would be another advantage IMO to splitting the room in half.... you could set up a smaller room initially and see how things go. If they are working well you could then decide to set up the other half of the room. This way you are limiting your initial risk.

 

I see old 1000W and 400W high-bay lights on craigslist all the time for $25-$50 i actually got 8, 400W MH for $200 turned around and sold 2 of them for $100 which paid for all the crap I needed to assemble the lights. For a room your size, even if you decide to go with half of the 15 x 15 stick with HID light (MH or HPS are both HID) Some people swear all you need are HPSs'. I like a mixture of the two together personally. I run 2400W of MH and 1000W of HPS.

 

I have to admit I am a bit jealous... Setting up my grow rooms was always my favorite part. After they are set up tending the plants gets to be just work sometimes... good luck with your room and have fun with it.

 

Anytime. Thats what these forums are all about.

 

can't really dispute anything they said in that video. They spent way more time and energy on security than I did. I am legal to grow in my state and make sure I stay within all guidlines. most of my neighbors know I grow (I have my plants outside on my back deck during the days right now, in plain sight) My main source of security is a 100lb German Shepard/Akita mix and a Mosseberg 930 autoloading 12 gauge.

 

They are 110% correct about keeping things clean. i wash my room down with bleach water between every grow, top to bottom. I filter my air intake to make sure I am not drawing in any pests and I wash my hands before entering my room and handling my plants every time. Keeping things clean is paramount.

 

Spidermites are deffinatley most growers main nemisis. I luckily (knock on wood) have never had a real problem with them. But I have seen friends gardens destroyed by them. Here in the Pacific Northwest mold, mildew and fungus is a real problem too. I have struggled with these before but found that a $200 de-humidifier and a sulur pot fixed those problems. I use 1 cup of bleach in a 5 gallon bucket of water, works great, super cheap.