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

[Knives]

How would it look to have 2 150wattHPS's sitting side by side, long ways.
I mean heat wise, electric wise...too much for a closet?

 

[ambr0sia]

How would it look to have 2 150wattHPS's sitting side by side, long ways.
I mean heat wise, electric wise...too much for a closet?

Depends on the size of the closet as well as the amount of airflow you're able to provide it wiith. I'm working on a similar 2x150W HPS setup in a 3Wx4Hx2D custom-built cab using a Vortex 4" 172cfm inline fan to keep things nice and cool.

 

[bounty29]

nice looking girls. that 4 of them?

Nope, three of them. One on the right and two on the left. Here's a couple pictures from when they were first transplanted.


cajun79 - Try insulating the ballast, I have a magnetic and it does vibrate, but if it's put together solidly and resting on a couple pieces of rockwool or some kind of cloth then you can't hear a thing.

 

[Cozy Amnesia]

How would it look to have 2 150wattHPS's sitting side by side, long ways.
I mean heat wise, electric wise...too much for a closet?

Two wouldn't be too hard to handle at all, but I don't think it's really needed from your pic unless you wanted to extend the grow space out into the closet further.

 

[Knives]

Two wouldn't be too hard to handle at all, but I don't think it's really needed from your pic unless you wanted to extend the grow space out into the closet further.

Ok cool, Just wondering if it would really help out my yeild and quality..but the light does work pretty good by itself lol. Myabe throw some CFL's in too?
Ive got the power strip and the sockets, just need some bulbs. what do you think about that?

 

[growDaddy]

Ok cool, Just wondering if it would really help out my yeild and quality..but the light does work pretty good by itself lol. Myabe throw some CFL's in too?
Ive got the power strip and the sockets, just need some bulbs. what do you think about that?

I have a smaller space than you (2'x3'x7') and I have 1 150hps, and 6 55/300cfls. That produces lots of light for the space. I plan to add 1 more 150hps as soon as the weather cools off a little bit.
As long as your ventilation is good, you can go as much light as you want.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

IMO, cfl's are really not worth the trouble in the flower room. They create more heat than they are worth, and I doubt if they gain you much at all.
Now, for vegging they are great. I prefer the cfl over all others, but that is because my small grow favors the veg plants taking their time and not exploding with growth. Cfl's make very nice tight veg plants.

I would consider making two separate areas, one for the HPS flower, and another for cfl vegging. Having two areas can greatly increase your yearly produce. It can also allow you to grow a new plant or strain every week or two.

 

[Knives]

alrighty, scratch the CFL's in the flower room lol. I plan on making a small veg cab. something easy and cheap...and smallish . Just so I can grow a mother and keep a few clones goin. Any ideas?

 

[hoosierdaddy]

Now you are on the right track!

There are hundreds of ideas for cabs in here. Find some that fit your fancy and copy them.

 

[Knives]

aaaaalrighty..after some searching, Ive got a few ideas.

Buy a build it yourself cabinet from Walmart
Make a small cab with a pull out bottom tray
rubbermaid veg chamber

gonna look around and see what i can do the cheapest for with the best quality lol.

how much is a sufficient amount of CFL's for a veg chamber?

 

[Quazi]

IMO, cfl's are really not worth the trouble in the flower room. They create more heat than they are worth, and I doubt if they gain you much at all.
Now, for vegging they are great. I prefer the cfl over all others, but that is because my small grow favors the veg plants taking their time and not exploding with growth. Cfl's make very nice tight veg plants.

I would consider making two separate areas, one for the HPS flower, and another for cfl vegging. Having two areas can greatly increase your yearly produce. It can also allow you to grow a new plant or strain every week or two.

I've read the same. Not only does it create heat and cause a bit of a pain in the butt, but the undersides of the leaves are not designed to be exposed to light like that.

 

[growDaddy]

IMO, cfl's are really not worth the trouble in the flower room. They create more heat than they are worth, and I doubt if they gain you much at all.

In my case of 6 sq ft, 42 cu ft the 1 150 hps really gets some good help from my cfls on the side.
The 150w hps has 16000 lumen max at 1 foot. With the additional cfls I get 21600 (at 1 ft but I have them no more than 6", so I think I have more) more for a total of 37600 or 6266 lumen/sq ft.
True there is some extra heat, but that's where the good ventilation comes in.
Without good ventilation it will difficult to get the 150w as close as 1 ft.
I'm just saying for side lights they work for me.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

growDaddy, I have no quarrels with the worth of the cfl's. It is the fact that the heat they create can require more air movement, and at the end of the day, I feel that an investment of comparable funds can net you some more efficient lighting...say like another 150HPS.

They are for certain an option, and I am in no way advising folks not to use them as supplemental, or primary lighting for that matter. I just think there are more efficient ways to fatten the buds. IMO T5's are prolly the way to go if flouro is your gig.

 

[Knives]

Just spent about 30min talking to my plants..and they told me something.
They told me that i should hang 2 150 watts with a cool tube so they can get as close as possible. And they also told me a small scrog was necessary... could this be true? Or are my plants deceiving me..?

I either smoked too much weed...or I either smoked too much weed...

 

[green_grow]

knives ... the amount of light needed in your veg chamber depends on what you want out of it . i use 3 x 23w cfl and it does the job just fine for my small personal grow. (this IS the 150 club, so i guess we are all small, personal growers here). in fact, if theres not too much going on in there, i sometimes switch one of them off. just remember that less light is going to equal less (slower) growth; all other things being equal. for just keeping a mother alive and rooting cuttings i would bet that i could use just 1 x 23w cfl.

p.s. scrogging, or low-stress training (which is just scrogging without a screen) is a good way to grow.

 

[Knives]

wow, thanks for the info. now I can start another veg cab after class.
I was thinking alot more then 3, but Ive already got the sockets and power strip to fit 3, just need bulbs lol.

and yes, LST'ing is the shhiiiit!! My Thunk is growing into a nice lookin canopy. probably 15 or so top colas lol. good way to keep short too, its stretching like a mofo

 

[hoosierdaddy]

I have a fixture that holds 3- 26w CFL's (HD $12), and a single 26w that I clamp over top of the shelf.
I hang the fixture vertical, but it comes with hardware to hang it on the wall.

Plenty of light for seeds, cuts, and moms.

 

[greenhead]

One thing that annoys me is sometimes when I come across some grow related chart, some of them neglect 150 HPS growers, as if they don't fucking exist. This 150 HPS forum with a shitload of posts and valuable info proves them wrong. I saw a chart earlier that sparked my interest, and of course there were no values listed for 150 HPS users, so I made one quickly for myself. They even have 3000 fucking watts listed on the original chart, but no 150 watt.

This is the original chart that I saw.

Here is my 150 watt version:

 

[Jaxom]

Hey folks! I've been gone for a long time now. Life kinda got in my way of doing anything in reguards to building my grow box. Right now unemployed, so I'm trying to get all those "little projects" that I've been intending on doing, but never had the time for while working. This includes finally building my scrogg box.

Since it's been a while, I need to review a few particulars about my box and also find out if there's been any tech type advancements that I should be aware of before I begin actual construction.

The first and foremost on my mind is about the balast for my 150w hps. I bought one of those units from the dealer as mentioned at the very beginning of this thread. I also downloaded the wireing schematics for rebuilding it. But before I go through all the extra work building a ballast box and then make my mind up wheither or not I want it in or outside and all those ramifications...when I was last here, there was talk about "new digital" ballasts. At that time there was no option for the 150's, is there one now?

If there isn't. I need to go back over my cooling system once again. Age is creeping up and I just want to make sure I have enough cooling fans to keep clone-mother and scrogg chambers cool.

To get the answers I seek, it would be best to describe the cabinet I'm building and give you all some diamentions to work with.

Over all the cabinet will be 4' wide, 40" tall and 24" deep. Internally, the scrogg chamber will be 36-38" tall and 20" deep, 24" across. The mechanical and mother/clone chamber will be half the total hieght tall, 24" across and 20" deep. (all measurements are in rounded inches I'm not going to go into fractions for simplicities sake).

I put alot of time into the design of this. My first box worked...sorta. The biggest problem being that I used only 1/2" ply and that was ocx. Real pain to work with. This time around I'm going to use 3/4" furniture grade oak veneer plywood. This is going to be a "hide in plain site" type box by mimicing an office credenza.

Air flow will enter from the rear of the unit. Cool air will then rise though a series of 2" round house "sofit" vents around the dwc container. This way air will rise up through the scrog canopy. Then another row of vents will be placed along the inner wall between the mechanical are and the scrog area. As of right now I have 2 100cfm 12VDC fans that will be pulling all this air out.

For personal consumption, I tend to prefer indica strains. And as you all well know these can really kick out the oder of a dead skunk! So I've got an idea on how to make a charcoal filter that I can remove and refresh from time to time. But this would put additional strain on those two fans. I am thinking of using 4 fans instead of just two, with the possiblity of using another fan to help pull air from the scrog chamber into the mechanical area. I'm also concidering placing an additional fan opposite of that one so it blows across the hps bulb towards the inner wall fan as well.

I wish I had a scanner, I could post a picture of my drawings. And this project has waited too long to be built for me to spend extra time now to do a cad drawing for this posting.

Any comments? Suggestions?

Thanks

Jax

 

[Knives]

Lookin good in the 150watt department.