I live in the UK and there are regularly police helicopters flying over and circling my area. I want to start a small stealth grow in a cabinet a bit bigger than a large PC tower case, growing only 1 easy ryder plant, with say a 125w cfl bulb. I know im being very paranoid, but is this likely to get detected by air? Also, if I did get caught, what would realistically happen?
while i don't have first hand experience with the situation in the UK, i don't think you need to worry, if you're growing on such a small scale. choppers and unmanned drones (as are being used more and more against citizens in the US and elsewhere) can theoretically see anything they want (depends on the hardware) but the heat signature of your small grow should be the same as a 'regular' pc, so i don't think they'll recognize it. also - such expensive resources are usually used to get 'bigger fish'. hope this helps
I wouldn't worry about any amount of cfls. Ive seen on tv that they(police) saw a basement grow bc of its heat signature. It was a full scale hps grow. Im sure that a lot of houses have small heat pockets that can be seen with ir. I have about 400w of cfls in a walk in closet and its only 5 degrees celcius higher than the rest of the house. And for 12 hrs at night now it is the same temp as the rest of the house.
As pointed out before, depending on how well your house is insulated and what technology the police have they could see almost anything. But most likely they are looking for a room of your house that is much warmer than the others. IE: your grow room is probably 80degrees while the rest of your house is maybe 65degrees. Either way i would imagine a computer or a refrigerator has a higher temp signature than a small grow enclosure.
Firstly, Flir cameras(heat seeking) only see heat, theres no way there going to pick up and suspect your growing from just 1 plant just by using Flir, unless you have alot of heat build up. Just keep a fan on it and you'll be fine.
Go to BBC iPlayer - Home and search for "Cannabis: Britain's Secret Farms". This video shows exactly what the police see while airbourne and will explain all. The best bit about the video is it was recorded in the end of 2009, so its more or less going to be upto date in terms of the technology used. They could tell people had grows in the house by using Google Street View and looking for houses with excessive condensation on the windows to detect the heat from inside the house too. Always remember that everyone in the video that got caught were using loads of HPS lamps and also most of them stole the electricity supply too lol ! Also note none of the properties that were raided had any CFL or LED lamps.
if your growing 1 or 2 plants the cops wont even bother i would think. Now if you had 8 huge plants with intent to sell, then things differ. Im from cali, so i dont know about the laws in the UK. Also just think. You have 125watts. That is NOTHING... my electric grill uses 1800watts, Im sure your oven, and general house lights are putting out more power then a small grow. Just relax man. your bigger enemy is smell or trying to keep a secret. Evil
Im from the uk too and was thinking of the same thing, did you go ahead in the end? if so what was the heat like?
My space heater uses 1300w and puts off a ton of heat. Ive used it for years and no one has knocked down my door yet. They arent going to see the heat from a 125w cfl.
This thread has really helped, I'm in the same position and just slightly worried about the helicopters, but now I think I'll invest in some lighting that doesn't really conduct heat. Thanks all!
You really think with the cost of flying one of those helicopters and infrared radar, police give a Damn about your single plant grow with a $15 bulb? It would be not only a waste of time and money but to get a search warrant would just be too much work when the guy next door to you may be supplying the whole state with fresh green. You'll be fine as far as air patrol goes
Wth a small cfl set up you will be fine. Fuck the Uk btw some of the worst propaganda on MJ comes out of that shit hole. For people in america, FLIR was mandated unconstitutional in 2005. They use helicopters for visual conformation of an outdoor grow
They look for heat being expelled from the house in odd places. Flir can not see through walls they just see the heat escaping. My rooms lights run during the day when flit doesn't work and also my room is seventy f all the time and my house is like right around there. I use a fan and filter the hot air is expelled into the cellar rather than outside. It's kinda hard for them to use a heli to catch a small house grow. They're looking for entire large buildings lit up and growth patterns in the landscape that they identify mj from the air with
But they do have a new microwave camera that CAN see through walls but it will knock out all sorts of electronics if its pointed at your house. So just be aware of your surroundings. But you'll be fine with a small stealth grow. On YouTube there is an ex dea guy he makes videos called how not to get raided You should absolutely check it out. They're pretty pissed at him for giving away all their sheisty little tricks. Even an obvious flit hit is not enough to get a warrant. Then they'd have to sneak through your yard and trash to find grow shit like buckets or old trash from the grow I grow a large garden every year outside so if they saw the gigantic pile of old used promix they'd think it's a compost heap. Watch the vid definitely