4k watt flower room

In the process of building my 4k flower.. Getting down to the home stretch than throwing 30 trainwreck clones under the lights and dimming the lumas to 400 while they are small , eventually to super lumen when they are flowering.

still need to paint the walls a flat white, install the linoleum floor I purchased so i can hot bleach mop and keep clean easily, and install a new more air tight door. Once opening the door to the room I will frame a small anti chamber to ensure bugs don't get through the last line of defense.. will build 2 x 4 frame that is about 10 SQ FT with black / white plastic wrapped around and zipper installed.

some pics of whats going on

I got 2 500 CFM 6" exhaust fans pulling to a Y junction off each 2 hoods.. 4 luma 1000s, an 18500 BTU GE energy efficient window unit that i installed in a horizontal window opening with 3/4 " plywood.. The back side of the plywood i painted white.

getting there

your room looks nice. subbed

sweet setup bro. good luck with it.

one question. if you don't mind me asking? seems like your 2 rows of lights are spaced about 3' apart. i think you are runnig 1000w lights. why so close?

i was gonna ask the same too

You guys bring up a good point, basically i set it up so close because I wanted room to be able to walk around .. I"m gonna build a custom table under the footprint and i wanted enough space to not feel cramped when im working in the garden. The room itself is 9x11 so its relatively small , but as long as i can maintain a good climate i dont see a problem with alot of light in a small area.. Also, since i'm running the same strain under 4k, I feel like the light can over lap and be beneficial in having such a tight footprint.

Fortunately the lumateks are great because you can dim a 1000 watt bulb to 400 and not waste too much energy while the plants are small

Sneakyleeg said:

You guys bring up a good point, basically i set it up so close because I wanted room to be able to walk around .. I"m gonna build a custom table under the footprint and i wanted enough space to not feel cramped when im working in the garden. The room itself is 9x11 so its relatively small , but as long as i can maintain a good climate i dont see a problem with alot of light in a small area.. Also, since i'm running the same strain under 4k, I feel like the light can over lap and be beneficial in having such a tight footprint.

Fortunately the lumateks are great because you can dim a 1000 watt bulb to 400 and not waste too much energy while the plants are small

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sounds like a hell of a plan sneaky. i love the setup. cool thing is that if you find out later on you want more plants or bigger ones you have plenty of room to widen the lights out 6" each. i like having lots of space in my rooms as well. i think you get better plants when you can get right in there with them and they have plenty of space to breathe.

if you keep your plants close to your lights (less than 14" on a 1000w) then just keep an eye on light bleaching; especially later in flower. having that many lights that close together can create footcandle hotspots. basically you get light for 4 sources on 1 point and the footcandles shoots over 12,000fc. can create problems.

something else to think about. if you talk to lumatek, hortilux, or pretty much any of the other ballast and bulb manufacturers they'll all tell you not to run a bulb dimmed. only the ballast. so basically you should run 400w or 600w bulbs if you are going to dim the ballast. there are 2 reasons for this. when you dim a bulb you actually change the spectrum of light and it also shortens the bulbs life. i don't care about bulb life cause i change them every 2 harvests basically but changing the spectrum worried me. i just changed from 1000's to 600's at one of my grows and i was running some 1000w bulbs dimmed to 600w. after talking to lumatek and hortilux i ended up pulling them out and putting 600w bulbs in there.

sending good vibes your way man...hope all works out for ya.

here's a little bud porn to get you motivated...

day 55. sour diesel. just got done drying her out actually. jarred up and curing right now.






the other side of the flower room. these guys were day 10 of 12/12. still under MH bulb and getting veg nutes. little perpetual i got going here at the house.

That is amazing man ... uniform jungle in their. I like how your plants can breathe also , clean enough to allow the fans to push a current through their.

As for the dimming, I was planning on throwing the trainwreck under an old 1k HPS bulb for 3 days until i transplant to 1 gallon smart pots. At that point when they are well established in their 1 gallon smart pot what kind of bulb would you recommend going with.. We are doing it simple this time and planning on finishing with 3 -5 gallon containers.. My partner is wanting to go with the HPS spec in veg so the nodes space a little more since we are using tomato cages for every plant .. Does this sound like a good plan or would you recomend going another route..Myself I plan on building a PVC SCROG for the next round once we get the perpetual in motion..

Definately no sense in damaging the 80 dollar hort bulbs, i'm thinking 4 600 Bulbs for Veg for my footprint? I've honestly never tried veging with HPS bulbs in the past, but my partner is adament about wanting to run them.. What is your take on this?

Sneakyleeg said:

That is amazing man ... uniform jungle in their. I like how your plants can breathe also , clean enough to allow the fans to push a current through their.

As for the dimming, I was planning on throwing the trainwreck under an old 1k HPS bulb for 3 days until i transplant to 1 gallon smart pots. At that point when they are well established in their 1 gallon smart pot what kind of bulb would you recommend going with.. We are doing it simple this time and planning on finishing with 3 -5 gallon containers.. My partner is wanting to go with the HPS spec in veg so the nodes space a little more since we are using tomato cages for every plant .. Does this sound like a good plan or would you recomend going another route..Myself I plan on building a PVC SCROG for the next round once we get the perpetual in motion..

Definately no sense in damaging the 80 dollar hort bulbs, i'm thinking 4 600 Bulbs for Veg for my footprint? I've honestly never tried veging with HPS bulbs in the past, but my partner is adament about wanting to run them.. What is your take on this?

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thanks bro...yea, i like to keep it nice and organized.

since you are in soil and not hydro i wouldn't even worry about getting dimmed bulbs. those 1000's will be fine. just use less of them when the plants are smaller. you could probably get away with 2 lights going when they are in smaller pots. when you first put them under the 1000's just keep the bulbs like 30" from the canopy. move it down 2" a day for a week till you get to about 16-18" from the canopy. that's the sweet spot in my opinion.

you can veg with hps or mh. doesn't really matter. most guys go with mh cause they want that tighter spacing. you can save some money on bulbs by just going with hps the whole way through. i veg with mh cause i like tight nodes. that's how you get big colas. plus, mh is a better veg spectrum and actually grows plants faster in my opinion. if you want to get a little extra spacing then i would just go with mh bulbs for veg but keep them a little higher; like 24" off the plants. light distance will stretch the nodes out a little. every strain is different. i use mh for the first 14 days of 12/12 as well. plus i feed my plants veg nutes during this time too. those first weeks of 12/12 the plant is still in veg and mh bulbs and veg nutes will help you avoid some problems later on. plus mh limits that flower stretch that all plants get when you switch to 12/12. since they are growing and beefing up they like that high N diet in veg nutes.

doesn't matter if you use tomato cages or not. you want to control the heights of your plants. i grow in tomato cages a lot too. just figure how many plants you want to grow and how big you want them to be. plan on them doubling in size when you switch to flower. especially if you use mh for those first 2 weeks. always leave yourself about a foot of room to move your hoods up just in case. then figure how much space each plant takes up. 4-5' plant at the end of flower in a tomato cage probably takes up about 2sq.ft. you got about an 8x10 footprint at 18" from the canopy with the way you have the lights set up. so figure 20 plants. 4 rows of 5. maybe start with 3 rows of 5 and see how they spread out. that's what i would do.

hey scooby what do you think of canna coco? any good? there nute line up for it seems really simple as well

Digging the set up. Are you going to paint the walls or even hang some panda film? Just curious.... I have a room almost exactly that size running 4k as well but recently in the desert I had to crank those girls down to 750w. Can't wait to see some girls in there.

kamie said:

hey scooby what do you think of canna coco? any good? there nute line up for it seems really simple as well

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hey kamie, i've never run canna but a friend of mine who is one of the more experienced and quality growers that i know runs them in soil with a tea brew. his plants speak volumes to his knowlege and ability to grow. i know they are a very high quality product; just don't have any experience with them. i would put them on the same level as AN and H&G

ScoobyDoobyDoo said:

hey kamie, i've never run canna but a friend of mine who is one of the more experienced and quality growers that i know runs them in soil with a tea brew. his plants speak volumes to his knowlege and ability to grow. i know they are a very high quality product; just don't have any experience with them. i would put them on the same level as AN and H&G

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iam planning on doing a run with coco and using their A+B .

If i may make a suggestion, not sure if its plausible in your scenario, but i was recently reading something that made a lot of sense, so i tried it, and lowered the temp in my grow room 2F for free,.. just by mounting my ballasts outside of my grow room. They get hot,.. you got an AC there to keep things cool. It'll save you money if you can pull it off, just my .02 cents.

my understanding on dimmable ballasts is if you have a 1000 and dim it down it still uses 1000w. so your not saving money on electric.

superstoner1 said:

my understanding on dimmable ballasts is if you have a 1000 and dim it down it still uses 1000w. so your not saving money on electric.

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ok, where does the other unused wattage go? its energy, it cant just disappear. Is it released as heat?
I have to say I think your wrong here. But I could be as well

rocknratm said:

ok, where does the other unused wattage go? its energy, it cant just disappear. Is it released as heat?
I have to say I think your wrong here. But I could be as well

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you are right. it doesn't consume the same amount at a dimmed setting.

Thanks for everyone's tips .. they are much appreciated.. One thing i'm not sure about is an AC intake vent thats going into the room. I don't think its a BAD thing considering i'm pulling so much exhaust, but could someone link me to a filter than I can put over the drywall and seal around the opening that will prevent mites, ect from coming into my room? Not sure if a standard walmart filter will serve the purpose.. says dust mites, but i'm more worried about spider mites.. Also would you guys recomend caping one of my exhaust fans when I have all 4 lights on blast ?

You cant prevent spider mites from coming into your grow with a filter. You can get it from going to a different grow and then goin back into your room, from maybe going outside, or maybe getting clones from someone else that has mites on them. It happens when least expected. What i always do is i change out of my clothes or shower when i work on my room. I also have a set of work clothes that i wear when i do work. Even tho i have a small tent i dont have my friends over looking at it just in case they have mite on them. I had mites my first grow and it sucked so im very cautious now.

ScoobyDoobyDoo said:

you are right. it doesn't consume the same amount at a dimmed setting.

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actually we are both right. i was going off old info but some of the first dimmables still used the full wattage when dimmed, now most dont. and from rereading a bunch of stuff last night i found that some require the full wattage bulb to be used at all times,ie not to use a smaller wattage bulb.

superstoner1 said:

actually we are both right. i was going off old info but some of the first dimmables still used the full wattage when dimmed, now most dont. and from rereading a bunch of stuff last night i found that some require the full wattage bulb to be used at all times,ie not to use a smaller wattage bulb.

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really? i wasn't aware of the older dimmable ballasts being like that. a while back i did the research on it as i started using my lumatek dimmed to 600w. i called most of the major ballast manufacturers (lumatek, quantumn, and phantom) and bulb maufacturers (hortilux, digilux, and sunmaster). they all said the same thing. use a smaller bulb when dimming the wattage. what ballasts still require you to use a full wattage bulb? they all told me that changing the wattage of a bulb changes the spectrum. that's not a good thing cause most of these bulbs are manufactured for that specific spectrum in mind.