Initial Costs / Planning - Help Please.

[geekusa]

Here are my goals:

30 Female hotties ( 10 OG Kush, 10 Pre 98 Bubbah Kush, 10 The Prophet).

Growing Medium - Hydro - This is what I need help with. I'm new to hydro so I'm looking for help on the startup costs.

I'm thinking ebb & flow, but willing to change. I have a feeling this will be have to be custom made.

Lighting:

1000w & 600w. OR Two 600W?

Any idea what these cost a month to run in California? I am guessing either way it should average around $100 extra on your bill.

Cooling & Filtration

Can 33 Combo

Thanks for any insight, everything can be changed.


Prop 215.

 

[Nicoli]

What type of space do you have? 6'x6' with 2 600's would be superb.

Cant help you with the Hydro medium though

From:
http://www.anapsid.org/electricitycost.html - Calculating The Cost of Electricity section..

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]Calculating Energy Costs[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]Calculating the energy cost of an item is easy once you know the following two bits of information:[/FONT]

• [FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] The total number of watts it takes to run the item[/FONT]
• [FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] The cost per kilowatt hour (Kwh) your power company charges you[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] Every electrical appliance or object that takes electricity to operate will be marked - on the item itself, on its packaging, or in its instruction booklet/information sheet - with either the watts it uses or with amps and volts.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] To Find Watts:[/FONT]

• [FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] Look for the watts on the item, package, or information sheet/booklet that came with it.[/FONT]
• [FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] If there is no watts figure, but there is amps and volts (often appearing as VAC), simply multiply the amps by the volts to get the number of watts.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] On large items, like transformers, power strips, timers, etc., you will find the information molded (embossed) on the object or appearing on a plate or sticker on the object. The power strip I just checked, for example, says[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] 15 A 125 VAC 60 HZ[/FONT]
​

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] To find the watts in this type of situation, I simply multiply 15 (amps) x 125 (volts) to get 1875 watts. In the case of the strip, this is the total load it can carry. (As a couple of engineering folks pointed out to me, empty power strips consume a negligible amount.)[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] Sometimes the information is printed on the item in such a way that it wears off after the item has been used for a while. My older heating pads don't have any embossed information on the back of the switch, nor on the pad, and I've long ago thrown out the packaging and accompanying information. But the new pad I just bought has printed on it something that I can use in most of my "inexpensive human heating pad - regular size" calculations:[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] 50 watts[/FONT]
​

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] Light bulbs are similarly easy: the watts is printed right on them. So, your 100 watt light bulb uses 100 watts. Your 15 watt UVB-fluorescent uses 15 watts. If you are using "energy miser" types of incandescent bulbs, you may need the packaging to remind you what it is. (For example, the 60 watt incandescent bulbs I used to use in my "security lamp" in my living room used only 55 watts. I replaced it several months ago with a screw-in fluorescent that only uses 12 watts.) So, you may need a trip to the store to make some notes if you don't remember or no longer have the information you need at hand.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]To Find Your Power Company's Cost Per Kilowatt Hour
[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]There are a four ways you can find this information or figure it out.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] 1. Look on your bill. In the section where your electrical account detail is spelled out there should be a line that indicates the electric energy charge with figure that shows the amount charged for each kilowatt (Kwh) hour. Use that figure in the formula below.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]2. If your bill doesn't have such a figure, or you have having trouble finding it, can look to see the total number of kilowatts (Kwh) read off your meter for the month. Divide that by the total charge for the electricity for the month, and you will get the per Kwh cost.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]3. If that doesn't work, head to your power company's website (the link should be somewhere on your bill or may be given out as part of the recorded information you get when you call their customer service phone number), and look for information on how to read and understand your bill. (This isn't meant to be facetious - sometimes they can be very confusing to read and understand.)[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]4. If none of that works, or you don't want to take the time, or don't have a[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] copy of your last bill and don't want to wait for the other one, or you are on a different rate schedule than most customers are on, call your power company's customer service number. It will be on your bill, on their website, or you can get it from the yellow pages or telephone Information.[/FONT]
​

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]Doing the Calculation
Once you have the watts for each and every item and your power company's charge per kilowatt hour (Kwh), just run the numbers:[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]To find the cost to run one item:[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] 1. Total up the watts per day for the item to get total watts/day.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] 2. Divide total watts/day by 1000 to get the total kilowatt hours (Kwh) per day.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] 3. Multiply the Kwh/day times the cost per Kwh* to get cost/day.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] 4. To find out the average cost per month, multiply the cost/day by 30. (Power company monthly billing cycles vary from 28-33 days)[/FONT]
​

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] If you want to find the cost of all items:[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] 1. Total up all the watts per day for each item to get total watts/day.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] 2. Divide total watts/day by 1000 to get the total kilowatt hours (Kwh) per day.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] 3. Multiply the Kwh/day times the cost per Kwh to get your total cost/day.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] 4. To find out the average total cost per month, multiply the total cost/day by 30. (Power company monthly billing cycles vary from 28-33 days)[/FONT]
​

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] Example: 1 inexpensive regular-sized human heating pad = 50 watts, calculated at PG&Es standard rate, averaged:[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] 50 x 24 hours/day = 1200 watts
1200 divided by 1000 = 1.2 Kwh
1.2 x 0.12 = $0.144/day
$0.144/day x 30 = $4.32/month[/FONT]
​

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif] Pretty cool...and maybe pretty scary. In the PG&E region of California, the average cost per Kwh is $0.12. In actuality, if you are on the regular rate schedule, you are paying $0.115 for your Basic Kwh allowance and $0.133 for every Kwh in excess of your Basic allowance.[/FONT]

 

[dagnabit]

there are alot of variables...


putting aside maintenance costs...

just to start up right you need to spend ALOT!!!!

you can go ghetto but for a first time hydro grower i would go prefab on everything!!!

buy homebox chambers...

http://www.homebox.net/dhtml/product_family_homebox_xl.php

floros for the moms and clones in the "clonebox"
and flowering in the homebox xxl

use a growzilla air cooled hood in your flowering chamber

id go with the waterfarm or ebb and grow systems and lyca stones..

get yourself a hana pen (3way)

not to mention nutes fans timers co2 ballasts bulbs and all the miscellaneous shit you need to do this right!!!

when you start gearing up pm me and ill be more than happy to help you get it all figured

 

[erwingruber]

Grow Room construction

Wood for frames
B/W sheeting
R.O filter
A/C
Heaters
Cleaning stuf
Misc (Silicones,duct tapes......etc)

Fans

light cooling fan 225m3/h
exaust fan > 425 m3/h
carbon filter > 600 m3/h (bigger from exaust fan or match)
ducting for fans (or Accoustic ducting)
misc (hose clips ,reducers ......)

Lights

Aircoled reflectors
1000 hps lamp
1000 ballast
400 hps
400 ballast
timers
easy rollers or chains

Grow tables etc

market ebb & flow tables or construction
air pumps if you make the tables
water timers
grow medium (match your pots capacity)
ph/ec meter
thermometers
water heaters (hope not need water chillers they are pricy)
nutrients(i.e GH,H2O2,Ataclean,CALMAG+)


I try to write down some or more of your needs , maybe you will not need A/C or Heater , search prices on grow shops and i am sure that they will be posts to add what i was forgetting

 

[High Country]

For the grow method I would do ebb/flow, simple and reliable.

I've tried soil, DIY DWC and aeroponics, can get a bit complicated.

Stick to the KISS method, ebb/flow.

36 plant, 3x3 table, ebb/flow, single cola SOG style, 600W HPS.

 

[blazingtimes]

Pricing out a new system is hard to do. Lots of good advice here, but it's going to vary from system to system.

IMHO, it's best to spend as much as you can afford in order to get the best system possible. That way, you have a system that's top notch from the start. Of course, if you're not sure you're going to stick with it, then you might want to go cheap, but high quality at first.

Seriously, save your money up and do things right. Take some time to get really good lights, really good grow containers, etc. And good nutes. Really high quality nutes will help to get your plants growing and to prevent pest problems that you might have with less than good nutrients.

Spend the money - growing good weed takes money. It can't be a cheap effort from the start.