150w HPS Club and Resource Guide......

[sugabear_II]

For odor i planned on making that DIY can carbon scrubber that seems to be the standard.

the fans i've got are these http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/items/4WT33 . I got a deal, 5 for $40. hard to beat that price. Plus, each fan is rated 105 cfm, so if i have like 3 of them in the cab, it seems like it should be able to keep the heat under control.

I really do think that red_greenery's box would be the simplest solution to the light encasement, instead of making 2 individually sealed off reflectors and running ducting. also, i wanted to see if i could supplement my lighting with some of these http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=54905 (if they have them at the big lots near me) because i trust pipedream's judgment in this matter. the thing with the coolbox design though, is that i can't adjust the lighting height. so i'd have to install some kind of shelving, but i wonder if that'd become too difficult to adjust when the plants get big.

i looked at the businesslighting place to take a look at venture ballasts. is venture just a brand name or what? and approximately how much power would it save me going that route. also, the quad tap http://www.businesslights.com/150w-venture-quad-tap-hps-hxhpf-ballast-kit-p-36.html , i'm under the assumption that quad tap means i could feasibly hook 4 sockets up to it if i wanted, right? Of course I'd only hook up 2, but i want to make sure that's what that means. And assuming that i can hook 2 sockets up to that one ballast, i'd need that ballast, 2 sockets, 2 lamps, and some extension cord to remote ballast, correct? Is there any benefit of mogul base to medium base or vice versa?

sorry for all the questions, just trying to make sure i've got my stuff down. thanks for taking the time to help out.

quad tap means you can run it on multiple voltages - namely 110 (normal household) or 220 (same as your electric stove and maybe electric dryer - more common in industrial settings) - not sure the other voltages - probably foreign usage. It doesn't mean 4 sockets.

mogul bulbs are bigger and produce slightly more lumens (like 10 maybe) but are much harder to find a 150 in (250, 400, 600, 1000 all are only sold in mogul) - the medium socket is more standard size for the 150 and what I would recommend.

I would not sweat shelving - it's much easier to put things under the plants to raise them - and also if you go scrog - which i would with your height - you'll find you never really move the plants or the lamp.

-suga

 

[sugabear_II]

I was thinking about this, for a vertical grow. The problem I ran into was diameter. You figure with those drums you have at most 23" across. Take out about 3-4" for the space the light occupies immediately, then 4-5" more for air gap. That leaves 16-13" for buds and for a gap to train buds. I think it may be feasible, but it seems like it would be easier to grow flat in one of those rain barrels or drums or whatever. I dunno I'm at the place where I need to choose what light and get it soon. I have money saved and whatnot. It's down to either the "150-in-a-barrel-vertically" grow or a "250-in-a-cab-horizontally" grow. The first is very appealing based on initial investment.

What does the rest of the 150w Club think? I'm trying to yield enough high-quality meds for me and occasionally some friends, so like at least 1.5oz per mo. would be sufficient. I will have a veg cab and hope to set up something perpetual or at least alternating. I'll be in soil using msm and RO water. I will start from seed this time, likely, but have no aversion to clones. Being able to hide the smell and sound is quite important, but it's likely that no one hostile will ever be in the same room, AND it should be really quiet anyway.

Help me, 150w HPS Club, you're my only hope!

As I have said before 3oz per harvest with two plants in a flat scrog under a 150 is pretty much par for yield and with a veg box should easily give you 1.5oz a month if you rotate one plant in and one out every month (8-9 week strain).

Prenda used keg tubs for growing which are not much bigger than the 55 gallon drum. the difference is with two keg tubs stacked on top of the other you can lift the top one off and work on your plants - with a 55 gallon drum you either need to lift out the plants (ouch my back ) or you would have to lean over and train inside - again ouch my back - so it's not the diameter that will be the problem is what I'm saying but the access.

I would consider checking out the keg tub type setup or just getting a cabinet.

-suga


p.s. - nice friggin buds j-roc

 

[tiny_rabid_bird]

okay, so 2 venture ballasts, 2 medium sockets and 2 medium lamps plus shipping comes to just under $105. Overall, that's about $12 more than buying 2 security lights from e-conolight + shipping. not too much of a difference. I'm curious though, where can i read about the benefits of venture ballasts? Will the amount of power they save be significant over the e-conolight lights? How discrete is businesslight.com's shipping?

i've pretty much settled on the cool box idea. it's just a matter of finding a piece of glass big enough and cheap enough. i really do wish that i could get the lights down in there nice and close, but it will just be too much of a hassle with two HPS lamps and probably 4-6 supplemental 30w CFLs.

My original plan was to just grow out some bagseed, but i've recently been granted the opportunity to sprout 5 blue moonshine seeds, so i figure i'll veg out a couple in the speakerbox and choose a female for a mother, then cut off 3-4 clones for the real grow.

I'm very excited, but i still have a lot of structural work to do to the cab, with not a lot of free time to do it, given that i'm a working student with a roommate i'd prefer to keep in the dark (which i know may be frowned upon by some, but i'd rather no one know about my hobby so there's less of a chance of someone undesirable finding out). so, due to said circumstances, the time i have to work on my project is limited. Hopefully i'll get a day sometime soon where i can be really productive and perhaps start a journal to document my progress. again, thanks for all the help.

 

[sugabear_II]

tiny_rabid_bird,

The capacitor is a subject that quickly leads to confusion and sometimes missunderstandings... if you want to find the original OG post it's in this thread, reposted by me, and is originally written by faulty (something or other)....

But to describe the difference in short.... imagine the electricity is a river and it needs to be at a certain flow rate to keep your ballast happy and therefore your light lit. Now your light requires more flow to light the bulb initially and then there are dips and peaks in the flow as well, all this means that the light needs to draw a certain flow rate that is higher than what it uses, which is no problem as all circuits are closed (if wired properly) and the excess flows back to the plug. The ratio of power used to power drawn is called power factor. The closer to one the better. Some of the uncapacitated lights will have a power factor closer to .5 meaning they could be drawing as much as twice the power they actually use.

Not a problem again as you pay for the power used, not the power drawn. However the issue comes in when you're running multiple lamps on the same plug/circuit. Now your low power factor lamps might be drawing enough power (remember still only using and paying for the 150 x 2 that is being used) that they create an overloaded circuit since they could be drawing up to double the watts at startup = tripped breaker.

The capacitor acts like a holding pond or tank which once filled keeps the flow of power at the exact level the lamp needs. The capacitor also absorbs the peaks and dips in the current. Thereby making the power factor very close to 1.

That's all I'm going to get into on the subject.

Do I think you'll have a problem running two non-capacitated lamps? no, probably not but I don't know what else will be on the same circuit and/or how old the wiring is in your place

Do I think people that have non-capacitated lamps running (even multiples) should run out and buy capacitors? No

But if I were shopping for lamps and planning to run two lamps I would buy the capacitated ones.

-suga

 

[tiny_rabid_bird]

Your logic is sound. Thanks for taking the time to write that all out again. I can imagine it must get somewhat irksome to have to rewrite a lot of this as new people come and go, but i appreciate it. $12 seems like a small price to pay to have peace of mind concerning the circuitry.

 

[Lemon]

Nice plants

On a less positive note, my new neighbors (apt) hate me, and I feel too sketched out to grow with neighbors that are out to get me. Goodbye growing for at least a year if not more.. ugh.

 

[VapingBuddha]

Hi folks

Hi folks

Looks like a good thread. Although I tried growing several times in various situations with a small fluorescent, or even an outdoor guerrilla grow, I was never really successful to any degree until I got a 150w HPS about 6 years ago.

Is there any info on posting pictures? I uploaded one to my gallery, and I clicked on the image to "add it to your post" like it says, but then I get a message that says:
"1. Your Post contains one or more URLs, please remove them before submitting your message again."

 

[Guest]

i think you need at least 2 posts before you can add images to them

 

[Siddartha]

As I have said before 3oz per harvest with two plants in a flat scrog under a 150 is pretty much par for yield and with a veg box should easily give you 1.5oz a month if you rotate one plant in and one out every month (8-9 week strain).

Prenda used keg tubs for growing which are not much bigger than the 55 gallon drum. the difference is with two keg tubs stacked on top of the other you can lift the top one off and work on your plants - with a 55 gallon drum you either need to lift out the plants (ouch my back ) or you would have to lean over and train inside - again ouch my back - so it's not the diameter that will be the problem is what I'm saying but the access.

I would consider checking out the keg tub type setup or just getting a cabinet.

-suga


p.s. - nice friggin buds j-roc

Another option would be a side-by-side horizontal grow in a cab with 2 150s. I like the idea of the keg tubs, I just can't really have them out in the open and the closet this is going in likely isn't deep enough at juuuuust under 24.5". I'll find a keg tub, measure it and see though, I really liked Prenda's grow. I guess cutting the barrel in half would be the same thing as the keg tubs, just a little harder to light proof and make sturdy.

Thanks suga!

Yeah, nice ones, J-to-tha-Rizzock! WTG 150!!!

 

[greenhead]

On a less positive note, my new neighbors (apt) hate me, and I feel too sketched out to grow with neighbors that are out to get me. Goodbye growing for at least a year if not more.. ugh.

Wow that sucks. But if you have carbon filters and the odor under control, how could they ever know ? And didn't you have a stealth setup ? Hopefully things will work out for you. Here's to hoping that your neighbors pack up & leave for some reason.

 

[tiny_rabid_bird]

Okay, so due to my ignorance about electrical stuff, I did not realize that these fans i bought were going to be such a pain in the butt. They're 230vAC... meaning i can't just connect them to a cord like regular 115vAC. I did not realize this. Now i do, and i have 5 powerful fans that i cannot use. alas, alack, i'll sell 'em on ebay.

So now I'm wondering, do you think that a stanley blower would be overkill for me? It'll be two 150w HPS and about 150w supplemental CFLs in a 16.6 cubic foot cab (44"h x 42"w x 16"d) Home Depot still has an internet special, $40 bucks for a stanley ( http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs...=10000003+90401&marketID=401&locStoreNum=8125 just wish i would have thought of it earlier). Do you think with the use of bungies I'd be able to silence it enough for it to be kept in my room? I have a flatmate and i don't want him to hear strange vibrating noises coming from my armoire.

 

[Lemon]

Wow that sucks. But if you have carbon filters and the odor under control, how could they ever know ? And didn't you have a stealth setup ? Hopefully things will work out for you. Here's to hoping that your neighbors pack up & leave for some reason.

Yeah, i sucks bigtime. It is super stealth, and odor is not a problem, but I'm just a really paranoid guy with these things, haha. Then again, most people would turn you in whether they like you or not. I think I'll just wait a few months for things to blow over before I get started.


On a completely different topic, I have a plant outside that autotopped and grew some random mutant 2 finger leaves. I know its not much to do with the 150 club, but it feels like home. Show and tell time!:

 

[Lemon]

Okay, so due to my ignorance about electrical stuff, I did not realize that these fans i bought were going to be such a pain in the butt. They're 230vAC... meaning i can't just connect them to a cord like regular 115vAC. I did not realize this. Now i do, and i have 5 powerful fans that i cannot use. alas, alack, i'll sell 'em on ebay.

So now I'm wondering, do you think that a stanley blower would be overkill for me? It'll be two 150w HPS and about 150w supplemental CFLs in a 16.6 cubic foot cab (44"h x 42"w x 16"d) Home Depot still has an internet special, $40 bucks for a stanley ( http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs...=10000003+90401&marketID=401&locStoreNum=8125 just wish i would have thought of it earlier). Do you think with the use of bungies I'd be able to silence it enough for it to be kept in my room? I have a flatmate and i don't want him to hear strange vibrating noises coming from my armoire.

I own a stanley. That thing is POWERFUL. Far beyond what I imagined. It's also relatively quiet considering how much air it moves (but it does still make some noise, entirely from the woosh from the moving air). It's too loud to be 100% stealth on its own, but the sound can be easily eliminated with a simple muffler since its all air noise. There is ZERO motor or vibrational noise, I don't think bungees would make a difference. On the lowest setting, its as much or less noise than one or two of those high speed computer fans (and also a different kind of noise, a much less noticable/annoying kind).


On the lowest setting, it kept my 150 cab prety much at room temperature in the middle of the summer with no AC in the place (but note I was using a cooltube). It created enough suction after 10 feet of stretched out duct to hold a magazine firmly attached to the end of the duct, haha. People use them to cool 1000 watters.

 

[tiny_rabid_bird]

really? no motor noise whatsoever? that's intriguing. it's so much cheaper than an inline fan.. and i can buy it locally... i think i'll give it a shot before i buy an inline, and if i find it makes too much noise for my purposes, then i'll simply return it. thanks a lot, lemon.

 

[tiny_rabid_bird]

Also, i'm just now starting to realize i'm going to have to partition off about 8 inches of the width to house the ballasts, powerstrip, timer, scrubber, blower, and most likely a muffler. That, along with the glass partition for the cool box setup leaves me with about 38"h x 36"w x 15.5"d of workable growing room. do you think that's still enough room for dual 150w HPS?

 

[VapingBuddha]

There was some one asking about digital ballasts a couple of pages back. If you can afford the extra expense, they sound pretty good - 20-30% more lumens, longer bulb life, quieter, cooler, etc.

I copied the following from the ukcultivator site:

digital ballasts represent a revolution in the grow room that is long overdue.
the magnetic ballast is the vhs video of the growing world; it does its job but looks old and crap next to its successor, the dvd player.
more and more growers across the atlantic have been switching over and feeling the benefits of digital ballasts and now they are finally available in the uk.

traditional coil and core or magnetic ballasts have been the industry standard since growrooms begun all those years ago and up until now they have been the only viable options for creating enough light in the right spectrum for growing and flowering crops indoors.the new digital ballasts work in the same way that they fire both high pressure sodium and metal halide lamps and available in 250w,400w,600w and a 1000w model to follow shortly;in other words they can be swapped with all existing hid ballasts.

any grower knows that magnetic ballasts are heavy, generate a lot of heat and get noisier with age; all serious considerations when using more than a few lights in a room. they gradually degrade over time producing less usable light and using up more eletricity. the digital ballast is an improvement on all of these areas. they weigh less than a magnetic ballast, produce 25-30% more lumens, run silently, produce much less heat and use less electricity.

the reason for the dramatic increase in lumen output (nearly a 1/3 more) whilst using the same hid lamp is that digital ballasts operate at a higher frequency. this is imperceptible to the naked eye but the higher frequency makes it easier to excite the gases inside the lamp. this means a digital ballast is running at its full potential within a minute of starting up whereas with a coil and core ballast this is more like twenty minutes. once running, a digital ballast will flicker many more times per second than its magnetic counterpart.

in comparison test after running for 8000 hours (roughly equivalent to 10 9 week flowering periods), a magnetic ballast produces 64% of its initial lumen output whereas a digital ballast is running at 86% efficiency. whats more, after 18000 hours the magnetic ballast is down to just 44% compared to 78% from the digital.

obviously this is dramatically lengthens the life span of the lamp as well as delivering much more usable light to the plant. more tests have shown that a 600w hid lamp powered by a digital ballast produces only 5% less lumens
than a 1000w magnetic ballast powered light, with only a fraction of the heat.

the better digital ballast on the market feature an aluminium heat-sync casing to disperse the heat they generate. there are some that are fan cooled by small computer style fans built into the casing. the problem with these is the product is only as strong as its weakest components and the fans have a high failure rate.

digital ballasts may cost a little more than their magnetic equivalents but with the extra light they give out and the longer lifespan of the lamps the cost is minimal for the benefits involved and the advantages really do speak for themselves.

 

[sugabear_II]

Also, i'm just now starting to realize i'm going to have to partition off about 8 inches of the width to house the ballasts, powerstrip, timer, scrubber, blower, and most likely a muffler. That, along with the glass partition for the cool box setup leaves me with about 38"h x 36"w x 15.5"d of workable growing room. do you think that's still enough room for dual 150w HPS?

36"w x 15.5"d = 3.875 square feet - with 300 watts = 77 watts/square foot - which is very nice IMHO. 50 watts per square is considered minimum by many. I ran a single 150 in around 22" x 15" = 2 square feet - 75 watts/square foot always gave me very nice dense buds.

With the 36" hieght I would again suggest scrog as you figure 8-10" for plant container, 8-10" above that is your screen leaves you with 16-20" for bud growth above the screen - just about perfect IMHO. Again my cabinet had 30" of height inside and I was able to scrog well - I would have liked a few more inches of height as I was forced to keep the screen about 5" above the container which doesn't give you much room to get underneath for training.

-suga

 

[abirdintheair]

you can always check out the nu-tone vent fans at the depot, i just grabbed a 50cfm one for 12 for my 150hps cab, all you need to do is wire it up to a grounded ext cord.

 

[greenhead]

and available in 250w,400w,600w and a 1000w model to follow shortly;in other words they can be swapped with all existing hid ballasts.

I don't believe that anybody makes 150watt HPS digital ballasts, which makes the information not that relevant to a 150 HPS topic.

I've also read a few posts on this forum from people that have digital ballasts and a few of them seem to have interference issues.

 

[tiny_rabid_bird]

36"w x 15.5"d = 3.875 square feet - with 300 watts = 77 watts/square foot - which is very nice IMHO. 50 watts per square is considered minimum by many. I ran a single 150 in around 22" x 15" = 2 square feet - 75 watts/square foot always gave me very nice dense buds.

With the 36" hieght I would again suggest scrog as you figure 8-10" for plant container, 8-10" above that is your screen leaves you with 16-20" for bud growth above the screen - just about perfect IMHO. Again my cabinet had 30" of height inside and I was able to scrog well - I would have liked a few more inches of height as I was forced to keep the screen about 5" above the container which doesn't give you much room to get underneath for training.

-suga

excellent. thanks again sugabear. I think i'll try putting 2 cool 15w CFLs in there too, to fill out the spectrum more. That'd put me at about 87w/sqft... too much? i'll just be testing the water with that though, it may prove too much for the cab to handle, in which case i'll simply remove them.

and i do plan to scrog, although not the first time around because i'll be growing out from seeds and will have to sex them. I think the first run i'll just do heavy LSTing so i don't have to worry about unraveling a male from the screen. after the first run, i'll pick out the best female and reveg her into a mother, then start scrogging with the clones.