1000 watt DE grow light height and spacing with tall ceilings

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michael2487

Member
Been growing for several years 315 cmh, my family just applied for grow license and plan on starting a grow operation in a 40 by 70 shop they have... I’ve sourced out the lights and ballast with a used supplier, I’d like to know about height and spacing in a 40x40 space with 15 foot ceiling using 1000 watt de lights. Could they just be mounted at that height, I’m not sure how the light intensity works with that kind of height and space and I’ve seen nothing on the subject... also going to try out corpse flower seeds from the nature farm, hopefully I find that real deal skunk smell but that’s a different story. Thanks
 
jimihendrix1

jimihendrix1

Well-Known Member
Consider a DE HID is good for a 5 x 5 area at 36-40 inches from top of plant canopy.

You will need 64 of them to properly cover a 40 x 40 area. The should be spaced 5 feet from bulb, to bulb,.
 
M

michael2487

Member
jimihendrix1 said:
Consider a DE HID is good for a 5 x 5 area at 36-40 inches from top of plant canopy.

You will need 64 of them to properly cover a 40 x 40 area. The should be spaced 5 feet from bulb, to bulb,.
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I’ve read the articles but they still don’t explain what I’m asking for for some reason I was thinking about having that many lights covering the kind of area the height and spacing may change especially with a high ceiling
 
Angus Hung

Angus Hung

Well-Known Member
Ive got mine at about 15 feet with the 5X5 foot print and they are working pretty well. a few tables have 3 foot legs and some dont. but every table grows about the same amount. id say mount them to the ceiling
 
F

F80M4

Well-Known Member
If you have 15ft ceilings hang them at 12ft. Make sure it's adjustable. Do not hang them at top (15ft) we just helped someone redo their own grow area similar to your size. Their program was good, plants were okay. Yield sucked. Once we redid the grow room their yield went from 20 to 50 per run. Every little thing matters.
 
mr4tune

mr4tune

Well-Known Member
Yeah idk about the 64 lights man... If your going off a 5x5 pattern and max coverage than yeah, but you need to think about access. There's a pile of variables...

I ran x2 rooms out east in Canada that were a bit smaller. Rooms were about 30x35 each give or take. We only went with x12 1000w DE's in each room, sealed with co2. 5x5 footprint for each. 3 rows of 4 lights. Rooms were about 4' below ground and ceilings were 16-18' which helped with the temps immensely, but I still had x2 32k BTU handlers in each room and that was was overkill as it turned out. You run a room that size your going to have a higher ceiling height so F80M4 is on the money, make sure you have the ability to adjust. Fixed is a no go.

We had some issues early on with arguing over which height to set. The DE's had only started to take off for non-commerical growers at the time. The bro-science completely contradicted the info gavita was offering regarding height. Its been a few years but I think we found what worked best for us was starting at 12' and ending around 5' - 6' canopy to fixture. We let the girls grow up into them and then adjusted once stretch was over. We were not educated in horticulture or lighting. Just a couple scumbags doing scumbag things. Needless to say we had some hard learning curves coming from SE to DE fixtures... PAR meter is an absolute necessity obviously to take the guessing game out. We also had 2 different manufacturers of lights and the adjustable reflectors seemed to put out more than the others.

Give yourself lots of genetic selection from a few different breeders. Nothing worse than pulling big numbers of lack luster bud with rooms that big. You should honestly be going into this with a library of quad moms and the veg room big enough to bush those bitches out and be ready to fill. Even with our x24 lights it was more work than I could have ever imagined.

There's a ton of guys with mondo experience on here that will give better info I'm sure. Just from one guy to another whose made this attempt, I thought I'd kick some info and ideas at you from what we experienced walking into putting together a big show for the first time...

I'll DM you some pics if you want...

Good Luck...
 
M

michael2487

Member
mr4tune said:
Yeah idk about the 64 lights man... If your going off a 5x5 pattern and max coverage than yeah, but you need to think about access. There's a pile of variables...

I ran x2 rooms out east in Canada that were a bit smaller. Rooms were about 30x35 each give or take. We only went with x12 1000w DE's in each room, sealed with co2. 5x5 footprint for each. 3 rows of 4 lights. Rooms were about 4' below ground and ceilings were 16-18' which helped with the temps immensely, but I still had x2 32k BTU handlers in each room and that was was overkill as it turned out. You run a room that size your going to have a higher ceiling height so F80M4 is on the money, make sure you have the ability to adjust. Fixed is a no go.

We had some issues early on with arguing over which height to set. The DE's had only started to take off for non-commerical growers at the time. The bro-science completely contradicted the info gavita was offering regarding height. Its been a few years but I think we found what worked best for us was starting at 12' and ending around 5' - 6' canopy to fixture. We let the girls grow up into them and then adjusted once stretch was over. We were not educated in horticulture or lighting. Just a couple scumbags doing scumbag things. Needless to say we had some hard learning curves coming from SE to DE fixtures... PAR meter is an absolute necessity obviously to take the guessing game out. We also had 2 different manufacturers of lights and the adjustable reflectors seemed to put out more than the others.

Give yourself lots of genetic selection from a few different breeders. Nothing worse than pulling big numbers of lack luster bud with rooms that big. You should honestly be going into this with a library of quad moms and the veg room big enough to bush those bitches out and be ready to fill. Even with our x24 lights it was more work than I could have ever imagined.

There's a ton of guys with mondo experience on here that will give better info I'm sure. Just from one guy to another whose made this attempt, I thought I'd kick some info and ideas at you from what we experienced walking into putting together a big show for the first time...

I'll DM you some pics if you want...

Good Luck...
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Thank you so much, yeah if you don’t mind send some... I know the whole area I’m not going to need that kind of light my big thing is his ceiling height comes into play... this is in Oklahoma for a winter grow I think I can get away by not using the ac going to run ducting from outside with a valve wired to a thermostat to control heat and wouldn’t figure I would need to run any c02 that way
 
mr4tune

mr4tune

Well-Known Member
If your going to do this setup properly especially to the magnitude your talking about, its best to plan and build for the harshest enviro conditions you could face (eg summer temps) and then have the systems in place to juggle everything in between. Passive ventilation setups will work fine but with the intensity of the DE's you can grab 5th gear and push the plants to the max. In order to do that your going to need to implement co2 injection. I had one burner in each room and it was more than sufficient. Bottles are for us basement guys, and the mondo facilities are using liquid co2 for the most part. You will want to have ventilation in place regardless to expel the co2 for lights off regardless...

You'll never truly know until you've got lights fired up and seen how each season impacts your environment. Obviously winter will greatly help counteract with the heat created in a sealed setup. With our ceiling height we had a huge area for the heat to rise rather than sitting on top of the canopy compared to say an 8-10' ceiling height. I believe the handlers were around $2500 each and then to install and charge the lines with coolant was another $500 each. Prices in CAD so half for that for you Americans lol. Nowadays the proper way is a good commercial unit with venting plums.

I have no experience with the commercial #-ton AC units so idk how they work for dehumidifying, but I loved having the handlers in that aspect. I had the condensation lines plumbed into the nutrient room going into 55 gallon drums to reclaim all that water which comes out the same as RO.

Bringing in cold air during the winter also creates problems with condensation issues from the massive flux in temps as well as humidity fluctuations.

I'm not saying that there isn't guys running big boy setups and doing passive. It's definitely doable, but if your going to invest in a Ferrari, you gotta buy the expensive tires. There's nothing better than having the systems in place to adjust your temps and humidity with the press of a button.3

When your talking about pulling massive weight, what's the extra $10k-$15k to dial in your environment controls...

Sorry for the novel. Im baked and have too much time on my hands.
 
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M

michael2487

Member
mr4tune said:
If your going to do this setup properly especially to the magnitude your talking about, its best to plan and build for the harshest enviro conditions you could face (eg summer temps) and then have the systems in place to juggle everything in between. Passive ventilation setups will work fine but with the intensity of the DE's you can grab 5th gear and push the plants to the max. In order to do that your going to need to implement co2 injection. I had one burner in each room and it was more than sufficient. Bottles are for us basement guys, and the mondo facilities are using liquid co2 for the most part. You will want to have ventilation in place regardless to expel the co2 for lights off regardless...

You'll never truly know until you've got lights fired up and seen how each season impacts your environment. Obviously winter will greatly help counteract with the heat created in a sealed setup. With our ceiling height we had a huge area for the heat to rise rather than sitting on top of the canopy compared to say an 8-10' ceiling height. I believe the handlers were around $2500 each and then to install and charge the lines with coolant was another $500 each. Prices in CAD so half for that for you Americans lol. Nowadays the proper way is a good commercial unit with venting plums.

I have no experience with the commercial #-ton AC units so idk how they work for dehumidifying, but I loved having the handlers in that aspect. I had the condensation lines plumbed into the nutrient room going into 55 gallon drums to reclaim all that water which comes out the same as RO.

Bringing in cold air during the winter also creates problems with condensation issues from the massive flux in temps as well as humidity fluctuations.

I'm not saying that there isn't guys running big boy setups and doing passive. It's definitely doable, but if your going to invest in a Ferrari, you gotta buy the expensive tires. There's nothing better than having the systems in place to adjust your temps and humidity with the press of a button.3

When your talking about pulling massive weight, what's the extra $10k-$15k to dial in your environment controls...

Sorry for the novel. Im baked and have too much time on my hands.
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No problem at all man I appreciate all the information I can get... my partner is a whiz on running A/C’s, electrical and plumbing work so we’ve got that part going atleast... and the room that’s going to be used for flower is essential going to be a green house. It’s a cider block building that was used for diary cows, the ceiling needs replaced so we’re putting the green house panels on to give natural light
 
mr4tune

mr4tune

Well-Known Member
So your going to have light dep capabilities on the windows and DE for supplemental? Interesting design regardless... I've always wondered how these greenhouses with windowed ceilings do in the winter...
 
M

michael2487

Member
mr4tune said:
So your going to have light dep capabilities on the windows and DE for supplemental? Interesting design regardless... I've always wondered how these greenhouses with windowed ceilings do in the winter...
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This will be the flower room for the winter grows, a veg room without the natural light with DE... then when spring comes around more plants can be put in the room with the glass...
 
M

michael2487

Member
michael2487 said:
This will be the flower room for the winter grows, a veg room without the natural light with DE... then when spring comes around more plants can be put in the room with the glass...
Click to expand...
They do good my wife’s grandpa has two greenhouses and he’s able to flower just fine in the winter, he also runs autos year round with it
 
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