Hello! I'm a caregiver, I can legally grow for myself and 4 patients, in my state that is 30 plants. I'm moving into a new place in the future solely for growing. It'll have a full 10x10 bedroom for veg and a similar 10x10, or hopefully bigger, room for flowering. I'll be running two 1,000 watts in the flower room, roughly 600 in veg, a 1,000 watt air conditioner will kick on to cool both rooms in the summers, and probably 1,000 watts in fans, hydro water pumps, air pumps, etc. So I'm guessing i'll be running around a max 5,000 watts between the two rooms. My question is, how should I deal with power? I don't know a lot about it, but I'm willing to learn and follow a DIY tutorial or something. Cheap and simple is better, as I can improve on this in the future. Could I get away with running an heavy duty extension cord from parts of the house on different circuits that are not being used, with power strips on the ends? Or would it be simple to re-dedicate my circuit breaker? Like if the living room has its own circuit, but I don't use that living room for anything, can i throw the living room onto the kitchen circuit, and use the old living room circuit for the grow room? I'm sure it's clear how confused I am about the power setup...haha. In the past others have set this up for me. Thanks for any help! I'll be making a detailed log of this grow room when it's actually being built.
up to you... always nice to have a dedicated power source... if your ballast can run at 240... run some lines..... you'll save on power if you do
Yes, both 1,000 watts can run on 240. I'll splice the 120 outlet, convert it to 240, and use that just for ballasts...But I won't be able to plug a regular 120v heavy duty timer into the 240 outlet then, will i?
I am running a similar system but only a single 10x10 and a restroom as the veg/mothers room. How much does it cost to convert to 240 and how much electricity is saved? Can this be done on an old house? I think this house was built in the 1940's....
Saving power on 240v is a common misconception. It will still pull the same amount of watts as when running on 120v. What you save on is the amperage. Look at the ballast and you will see what I mean. Breakers will trip when the amperage gets too high. So if you run them on 240v you could have more lights on one circuit. They sell power boxes just for this. You can plug in multiple 240v lights into it and the main chord plugs into say the dryer socket and the trigger chord which is 120v plugs into a timer and when turned on turns all the lights on at the same time. I just found this 240v Timer. It would be perfect for you flower room.
Okay, cool. Thanks for the product link! I guess I'm not overly concerned about the 120/240v since the kiliwatt hours I'm getting charged for will be relatively the same. I'm just trying to come up with the easiest and cheapest way to safely supply power to these two rooms...Since it's going to be a rental I'd prefer to not lay out a subpanel. Should I just look at how the circuit breaker is layed out, use the rooms existing circuits for the fans and smaller things, and then run a heavy duty extension cord from the kitchen or a circuit not getting use to run the lights on?
Alright, here's my plan. Test every outlet in the new house to determine where everything is on the circuit board. Then I'll just run heavy duty extension cords through the ceiling from the unused circuits. Question: if, for example, I have a 20 amp circuit, can I use right up to the 20 amps and be safe? Like load each circuit to 2 amps below its maximum?
General rule of thumb would be not to load the circuit more than 75% of it's capacity. It might be easier to run the high power equipment from the room it is in and run the lighter load equipment from the extension chord. If you don't use the correct gauge extension chord you could be putting more load on the circuit than you think. If you run the lights at 240v you could find power for them more easily since they will only be using a little over 1/2 the amps then being ran on 240v. I guess you would just need to see how the house is laid out when you get it.
Okay, thanks Yote. Great advice. I'll need to see if there is a 240v wire or can I convert a 120 to 240 at the outlet?
You would need to run another wire from the panel to the outlet, then change the outlet out with a 240v one.