Powering my growroom

[ripOG]

Hi peeps

I am a complete noob at actual wiring although I do have some theoretical knowledge of voltage and wattage..

All help is appreciated. As far as power is concerned, I am trying to run approximately two pumps for hydroponic systems, co2 controller (with fan, co2 reg), can-fan, and a dual 600W electronic ballast. I want to run the can-fan and ballast on 240V. What do I need to do to avoid any power problems? Buy a power box? Or will it be ok using the outlets? Thanks.

 

[jerrymcginnis]

I'm writing this for a non-med patient. I would suggest you hook a carbon up to your can-fan even if you are a medical patient. It's a relatively cheap investment to having a curious neighbor smash your window and steal your stash.

As a general rule of thumb I always make sure not to run more than 1,000 watts of lighting on a 20 amp breaker.
Here is how I would layout your room electrically..

20AMP - 2x 600 watt ballast
20AMP - can-fan w/filter
20AMP - pumps/co2

You could likely combine the can fan and co2 on one breaker... however you haven't told us how much wattage your co2 generator pulls so its impossible for us to tell you for sure.

The more breakers you have in your grow room design the more fail overs you have. Let's say you're running all your shit on one breaker (BAD idea, don't do this)... chances are you'll burn yr fuckin space down. However, if you don't manage to roast your crib what if your breaker trips? Not only are you out lights but youre also out water/food for plants AND stink filtration. Sound pretty bad? Walkin in on a room full of ooozers rockwool to the sky will make your heart sink.

First go to your grow room and plug a stero into the outlet you wish to run your lights off of.
You're going to have to open the cover and look at your circuit breaker. Let's hope you've got a circuit breaker and not a fuse panel. If you have the later you won't be able to add breakers very easily.

Inside there will be a bunch of switches. Flip the switch you think is running your stereo and listen for it to go off. Using this method you should be able to draw a diagram of all the separate breakers in your room. From there you should be able to tell whether or not you will have to run wires for your grow op.

I can't stress enough... DONT OVERLOAD YOUR BREAKERS. You'll burn your house down.

 

[nUt_jOb]

rip - is it that you have a spare 240v outlet?? and the can fan and whatever else are wired for 120v right?? if so.. EASY fix!

First check to see if your 240v connection is 3 or 4 wire (hopefully 4 wire!!).

The 4 wires connectors are like this:

You can get 4x 15 amp 115v circuits out of this. Let me know if I am going down the right road and I can explain more.

 

[ripOG]

I'm writing this for a non-med patient. I would suggest you hook a carbon up to your can-fan even if you are a medical patient. It's a relatively cheap investment to having a curious neighbor smash your window and steal your stash.

As a general rule of thumb I always make sure not to run more than 1,000 watts of lighting on a 20 amp breaker.
Here is how I would layout your room electrically..

20AMP - 2x 600 watt ballast
20AMP - can-fan w/filter
20AMP - pumps/co2

You could likely combine the can fan and co2 on one breaker... however you haven't told us how much wattage your co2 generator pulls so its impossible for us to tell you for sure.

The more breakers you have in your grow room design the more fail overs you have. Let's say you're running all your shit on one breaker (BAD idea, don't do this)... chances are you'll burn yr fuckin space down. However, if you don't manage to roast your crib what if your breaker trips? Not only are you out lights but youre also out water/food for plants AND stink filtration. Sound pretty bad? Walkin in on a room full of ooozers rockwool to the sky will make your heart sink.

First go to your grow room and plug a stero into the outlet you wish to run your lights off of.
You're going to have to open the cover and look at your circuit breaker. Let's hope you've got a circuit breaker and not a fuse panel. If you have the later you won't be able to add breakers very easily.

Inside there will be a bunch of switches. Flip the switch you think is running your stereo and listen for it to go off. Using this method you should be able to draw a diagram of all the separate breakers in your room. From there you should be able to tell whether or not you will have to run wires for your grow op.

I can't stress enough... DONT OVERLOAD YOUR BREAKERS. You'll burn your house down.

Welcome to IC Well I'm not sure how much I got out of your post or how it should be interpreted, but here goes.... I am not using a co2 generator, just a tank. The co2 controller will run it. I will have carbon. That's the whole point of the fan! It's a can-100. A big one. Commercial style.

my Q was pretty straight-forward. Let's try again. I have X amount of supplies I need hooked up and I want to find out if this will overload my outlets. I don't know the breaker situation yet, and I don't really want to guess and check this thing, it needs to be professional. Yes, I know I shouldn't burn the house down. Thanks, I'll keep that in mind

And yes fwiw I really am a med patient...



...it's great.

If there is some way to simply plug a box into a wall outlet and have that make my loads ok, that would be great. Is this what these "power boxes" do? If anyone knows for sure let me know.

 

[nUt_jOb]

So........... you have a 220V connection that you wish to use 120V things on right? yes/no please answer that.

If yes.. how many holes does it have (3 or 4)?
If no.. please explain why you want to run things on 220V that are not wired for it.

Those power boxes plug into 220V and do way more than the average bear would desire. I found a simple extension cord at home depot that converts 220v 30A/30A into 4 x 15A 120V outlets.. it was like 30 bucks.

That power box you linked to WILL NOT plug into a 120V outlet.

purchase @ newegg

If you want to find out whether you will overload your 120V outlet.. go spend $17.99 on a "Kill-a-Watt" meter (excellent tool for all growers IMHO) and find out what your breakers are rated at (open the panel.. read the lowest number you see.. it will be either 15 or 20). Plug in the meter then plug in a power strip and everything you want to run. Switch the meter to read "amps."

If your breaker is 15A then the meter should read 12amps or less under load (slightly possible for what you listed).

If your breaker is 20A then the meter should read 16 amps or less with everything plugged in and running (most likely what you listed is < 16 amps).

If nothing I have said even comes close to answering your question.. I give up!

 

[nUt_jOb]

You know if you start a freak'n tread asking for help the least you could do is check up on it every once and a while! I'm just curious if I ever answered this guys question.. or really what he was asking in the first place... WTF!

 

[DIGITALHIPPY]

You know if you start a freak'n tread asking for help the least you could do is check up on it every once and a while! I'm just curious if I ever answered this guys question.. or really what he was asking in the first place... WTF!

i dont know what other drugs hes doing but he needs to work on communication skills.
i cant figure out what hes saying 2 of 3 sentances.
what does u being a 'medical patiant' have to do with power?
get outa the freakin cloud!!

 

[Guest]

Hi peeps

I am a complete noob at actual wiring although I do have some theoretical knowledge of voltage and wattage..

All help is appreciated. As far as power is concerned, I am trying to run approximately two pumps for hydroponic systems, co2 controller (with fan, co2 reg), can-fan, and a dual 600W electronic ballast. I want to run the can-fan and ballast on 240V. What do I need to do to avoid any power problems? Buy a power box? Or will it be ok using the outlets? Thanks.

You need a 20A double-pole breaker, 12/2 wire, and a NEMA 6-20 Series receptacle.

 

[Guest]

..... or you can do it the 15A way if you want.

 

[ripOG]

i dont know what other drugs hes doing but he needs to work on communication skills.
i cant figure out what hes saying 2 of 3 sentances.
what does u being a 'medical patiant' have to do with power?
get outa the freakin cloud!!

Drrr....? I was responding to the guy's snooty post. Hence the pictures. And if you're not witty enough to interpret it, I can't help you. I mean this guy comes on here and is talking about plugging in a stereo to check connections and stuff. Cloud? Maybe you should try spell-check next time, because you're not making a whole lot of sense yourself.

Anywho.. Nut_Job, I'm a busy person, sorry I couldn't reply to your reply. I always do eventually. Your response helped a lot, especially with the kill-a-watt thing. I will check out my breakers and see what they are rated for.

I still think my original question was pretty simple, but i'll re-phrase it since there is so much confusion. I have a normal house with 120v breakers. My dual ballast can be run 240 or 120, and it is more efficient to run it 240, but I don't really know how to do that. I wanted to know if I can run my whole setup on normal breakers without doing any modifications or calling the electrician. I think this kill-a-watt thing will help find the answer. Thanks.

 

[nUt_jOb]

Ok.. let me first say that it is NOT really more efficient to run anything at 220v vs. 120v. That is a myth. You can search "220 vs. 120" here or anywhere for a good explanation of why that is.

Use the 120v option of your ballast and run everything into the kill-a-watt to check if you are safe in capacity. There is no quick way to turn 120V into 220V as you are suggesting as far as your houses normal 120V outlets.

 

[ripOG]

My understanding is that 220v will drop the amps in half. I could theoretically run more amps per breaker on 220, but yeah I would need a power box.

 

[nUt_jOb]

amps x volts = watts.

The watts (actual power used) stays the same.

You are getting close on your understanding of this. Check it out.. all that is coming into your house is 2 lines at 110 volts each (110-120ish). When either one is compared to ground it will read 110V. When you compare voltage across both of the hot legs.. you get 220v.

Each 110V outlet in your house has only one hot leg, a neutral, and hopefully a ground. No "power box" is going to change this at the outlet. It is impossible! You are correct to understand that, if the same gauge wire is run at a higher voltage then less amps would be required for the same wattage (see first equation).

The problem, is that unless you feel like calling the power company and asking them to "crank it up a little" (sorry.. i couldn't resist).. Anyways, you cant send more than 110v down any wire in your house because thats all that comes from the power company. 220V is achieved by sending both 110V hot legs down to an outlet with a third neutral wire and a ground (4 wires total). See the pic of the drier socket in my earlier post.

Your outlets only have 2 or 3 wires (2 + ground) so now I hope you understand.. not possible. Please let me know if you have any other ?s on this subject..

P.S. - checked out your gro thread.. nice job. I started in an old PC case a little while back.. before CFLs existed

 

[ripOG]

Thanks dude. I think know what you're saying. I understand that wattage is conserved. I didn't mean more efficient in term of wattage, but in terms of running more amps on a given system. My ballasts can be modified to run on 220 or 120, and the reason for this is that it would allow me to drop the amps I'm running in half for a given load. So lets say I'm running 2000 watts and my breakers can only handle 15 amps. To stay under the 15 Amps I can run a lot more wattage on 220 volts...

Lets say I'm running two 120 outlets with a 1000watt lamp on each. Thats 1000/120 = 8.33 amps per socket. So I'm using 16.5 amps.

But, with 2000 watts spread over 220 volts on one dryer outlet, I am running only 9.09 amps total. I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter if the socket is really just two 120 volt wires because the ballast still has access to 220 volts either way.

Not sure if that makes sense, but I'm fairly sure of the science. Unfortunately I don't think I have a dryer outlet that would allow me to adapt to 220 anyway. lol

I am still a little confused about breakers.... Is there one breaker for each outlet, or each room, and is each rated for a certain amount of current? So is it basically better to spread my load over more breakers?

 

[nUt_jOb]

You are correct now on 220v. Let me just add that *any* two 120v hot lines wont yield 220v. They must be different phases.

As far as how many breakers per room, I have seen it every way under the sun you can imagine. The way to figure out how many circuits (individual breakers capable of handling 15A or 20A) powering the different outlets in any given room has already been suggested by jerrymcginnis above.

To put it a little differently.. Make sure your vital equipment is turned off.. Find a clock radio or even a night light (anything) and plug it into an outlet in the room. Go to your circuit breaker, open the panel and read the labels to find what looks like the possible breaker (ex: "bedroom 2") and place the breaker in the "off" position. Go see if the light/radio is off. If its still on, close the breaker you operated (turn it back on) and try the next most possible looking one. Only open one breaker at a time.

When you find the winner.. go take your night light or whatever and plug it into all the other outlets in the room if the light ever comes on when plugged in, BINGO you have a separate circuit coming into the room.

You should also survey the other side of common walls to the room for knowledge of total circuit loading.. If you have a 60" plasma plugged into the other side of a common wall its quite possible that additional load could overload a single breaker. Just FYI.

This is the common method for answering your question. It is a necessary process to determine the physical wiring structure and everybody has to do it. If its still a little confusing just reread the above steps a couple of times.. it will begin to make sense. Nothing dangerous about this procedure, just operating switches and gathering information.

Now.. just FYI because this is probably your next question.. yes there is a possibility if you have two circuits in one room, they may be different phases. Yes you can figure this out... it requires a simple (deep breath) "multimeter." The multimeters are not expensive (less than 20 bucks) and not really that hard to figure out.

Now to answer the next future question you will surely ask.. yes, I have seen bastard boxes with two 120V plugs going into it that will convert two different outlets (if they are dissimilar phases) to one 220v, however, I would not recommend this route. You cant buy this anywhere (that I know of) and its a pretty bad idea on many levels. It's easy to make but I really don't want to explain how (and be responsible for getting people cooked).

 

[ripOG]

Ok sweet. I think I'll be fine just tinkering around with it. Thanks

 

[hoosierdaddy]

Rip, that power box that you showed would be used if you have an existing dryer type socket available in close proximity to the grow.
You could also use the same box by running romex from the main breaker panel, you will just need to have exactly what a dryer outlet would require. I would tell my electrician that is what I'm wanting to run...a new dryer, or a 240vac welder perhaps.

 

[nUt_jOb]

No problem, hope I helped.