I decided to do soil instead of hydro because of simplicity and price. i plan on making a dresser say 4x2. This can be flexible because im going to make it, i just dont want it to be painfully obvious that i will be growing because of a giant dresser. my main problem is, i dont know how many plants i could fit. and i want to be able to get as much yield as i can. and since i dont know how many plants i could fit i dont know what wattage hps i should buy. if anyone could give me some suggestions it would help ALOT. also i want to do scrog but im not sure if that would be the best for a dresser. any help at all would be very helpful. thanks
so 4'x2'x4' Tall? Well with 1 room you're stuck doing a single harvest. You could do multiple small plants, do side trimming to focus growth on the main stem, and bloom when they're young. This way, you could accomplish a micro SoG. The other option is a bonsai plant. Use the space to grow one plant, training it to fit to the cabinet specs. This will take longer, but probably yield the most for the space. HPS eh...probably too much heat for that small space, without having some turbine roaring from behind your dresser. I'd definately look into LED or CFL for that sized stealth. You can do it on the cheap with some high wattage CFLs and Clamp sockets from the hardware store. Remove the clamps (or mount a pole they can clamp to i guess). Use some small pieces of chain screwed into the ceiling as flexible staples in the roof. This will allow you to set up a grid on your roof of as many CFLs as you can fit, and makes them each adjustable to the height of that portion of the plant/plants. An excellent way to avoid hitting a hot ceiling, and even in an insulated box, the heat from the CFLs (at a safe distance from the plants) won't go above 120F. This is high, but with ventilation, much more controllable than an HPS bulb + the ballast. Both get very hot, and with the bulb, it's very dependent on distance.
How many plants you can fit will be determined by the size of the conatiners you use to grow in. I can see 4 5 gallon buckets or 12 1 gallon buckets 26 2 liter buckets. When choosing a container, measure the top rim diameter and do the math.