Run 2 lights all the time or 3 alternating?

[phattybudz]

So here's the situation: I've got a 6 light room shared with my roommates, essentially I can use 3/6 of the lights. But, because we're both noobs and jumped into this without planning adequately, we've got a 24,500BTU A/C just sitting there idle... we didn't have a big enough fan to exhaust the box and we had to soundproof the walls first, long story short our A/C won't be going for a few months when we get some $ together... I know it would benefit us in the long run to do it now but we just don't have the money, especially since the A/C and extra lights are probably going to kick up our electric bill (Yikes! It's $1100 already!)

Temps are reaching ~87F tops with 4 lights running. I'm doing 2 lights over a 3X6 scrog. In a couple weeks I'll have plenty of vegges to start my 3rd light but I'm not excited about bumping up the temperature even more, so I'm not sure if I should just start it and alternate lights each day or if I should just keep things the way they are until we can get the A/C up&running...

Anybody alternate lights like this with good results? Or will it not be worth it?

Thanks!

 

[Norrath]

any other modifications you can do besides waiting for the ac? working on better exhaust, if any. better intake, all that jazz? absolutely doesnt answer your question, but i just see 87F and want to help

as for alternating lights, it would act as a lightmover right? i dont know about alternating lights, but that's what i gather. bump for that!

 

[phattybudz]

Well the lights are aircooled now and I have an intake, but it doesn't really help when the air outside is just as hot

What I meant by alternating was having 2/3 of them on one night, then turning one of those off and having the 3rd one on...so 2 on 1 off rotating each night...

I am leaning towards just running the 3x6 and alternating the lights the last couple of weeks so I can get a crop 3 weeks in on the 4x4 before I switch them to the 3x6 and put em under a screen...

 

[HeD333]

I assume these are on 12/12? are you running your light cycle at night?

 

[JohnnyHolland]

regarding what HED333 was inferring.

Optimizing the times these are on is going to make more sense...

you could ensure that the extra light was only on for the cooler parts of the cycle. You should have already done this, but its fairly obvious the 12 hour flower or 18 hour veg should be during the coolest parts of the night. Im assuming your not runnning 24 hours if you are, giving your system even 2-4 hours rest would greatly drop the overall temps.

To refine it further, and implement a supplimental light style setup.

have 2 lights spread a bit more out, the gap in intensity is covered by the supplimental light which only comes on for 8-10 hours of the 12 hour illumination during the coolest part.

This could be two 4 hour bursts , the gap between allows the residual effects of the heat to dissipate so another 4-5 hours is possible.

What i mean by that is that there is a massive effect to the heat of your growroom by the residual heat of everything.. ie you might only reach critical heat levels 6-8'th hour of third light being on which is why the 4-5 on then a couple of hours of would make sense it might give everything enought time to cool down to blast it again.



ill draw it on keyboard
on 5-2-5 on

/HPS\ /HPS\ /HPS\


|||||||||||||||||||||


5-2-5 = 5 hours on, 2 hour break, 5 hours on again, then all lights off for dark.

JH

 

[phattybudz]

Yeah they are on 12/12 at night right now..

 

[JohnnyHolland]

Phatty ive read your post again when im not ripped, and im convinced unless you deal with temps via venting your only option is the timed supplimental light.

JH

 

[grapeman]

I alternate lights sometimes. But I have enough lights for lapping coverage. In veg, I get by with 2 per table for 18 hours. In the middle of the veg day, I have a 3rd kick in for 4 to 6 hours when I want or need to. I can do the same for flower but when the buds are forming and growing, I use all 3 and lower them as much as the plants can take.

 

[LlamaSchool]

Just general advice - I know how it is to get in over your head. It's tempting to try to run maximum lumens at slightly-higher-than-acceptable temperatures but you're going to save a lot of headaches and probably get better yield if you cut back on the lighting and keep temperatures optimized.

I recently set something up that was designed to be used Sept-May (where it's cool in my neck of the woods) and I decided to try to get it going at 100% in August. Bad idea. I ended up with some hermies, stress, etc, etc. I should have just cut back a few thousand watts.