generator question

ok so me and a few other people are looking to get a house together. its a rent to own type of deal. the ones we are looking at is a four or five bedroom 3 bath with a basement. so a real house. everyone is cool with the idea of growing weed but one of my buddies wants to use a generator for the lights cuz he says "running gas is cheaper than running lights". hes afraid of getting caught cuz of the electric bill. i know there are a bunch of threads about light usage and i remember reading one saying how computers and space heaters and such use more power than a 1000 hps. the lights well probably end up using is a t5 and some cfls for veg in one room and most likely no more than 800-1000w hps in the flower room. is he right or just plain stupid?


i thought i read something on here a while back about generators. if this question is asked alot im sorry. the search button never works for me.

thank you

a generator in your yard will draw more attention then a few dollars on your light bill and the cost would be extreme

thats what i thought. he was kinda fucked up on pills alcohol and he smoked a little too when i tried explaining it to him. arent those things pretty loud too? he wanted it IN the house running an exhaust fan out the window...

fan breaks down everyone wakes up dead the next morning

hahaha yeah who wants that.

A 4 or 5 bedroom house with 3 or 4 adults living in it would use a high amount of electricity just running the basic pc's, tv's, and normal house lighting. If you wanted to be extra careful you could just limit the amount of time the tv's, pc's. and any ac/heaters are running and use low watt cfls for the house lighting. Be mindful of turning appliances and lights off when not needed. It would probably equal everything out when compared to a normal 5 bed house with a less energy effiecent family in it. The generator idea is just not good on many different levels. Having it inside the house will almost definetly end bad. The risk of fire when filling or fumes is just to great. The price of refilling it would take all of your profit money and then some or you end spending more for your own personal grown weed then just buying it off the street lol. The quieter ones cost a fortune too and thats if ya can call them quiet.

wakes up dead. ok.

anyway, yeah, bad idea.

what is a 400, 600, or 1000 watt hps equivlent to in terms of energy used?

with only 1 lamp the power bill will never be in question, generators are good but if your only running 1-2 lights then its a waste of time doing the generator, now if you were going to fill the whole house up then it would be a good idea

I live in a 3 bedroom house and have (6) 600 watt bulbs going and Im still here typing this so you would definetly be ok with a 1000 watt.

well thats very reassuring... we actually found a place that includes utilities!!! so we dont even have to pay for electric bills

thanks guys!

CreepyStevie69 said:

well thats very reassuring... we actually found a place that includes utilities!!! so we dont even have to pay for electric bills

thanks guys!

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Might want to be careful with that. There's a chance the land owner will use past tenants usage as an average of how much that house should cost a month and if you and your friends are running up double the past yrs average bills, that might look bad and just piss the land owner off. I dunno though never been in your situation, best of luck and just be carefu,l be smart, and you'll be ok.

CreepyStevie69 said:

what is a 400, 600, or 1000 watt hps equivlent to in terms of energy used?

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Take the (Wattage of bulb) X (Hours light is on) / 1000 = the KWH

so a 600w bulb on for 12 hours a day for 30 days is a total of 360 hours. So 600 X 360 = 216000 divide that by 1000 and you get 216 KWH

Now find the price you pay per KWH an average average cost is about 15 cents per KWH. 216 X .15 = $32.40.

Thats the math anyways..

^^ thanks for the equation. im pretty stoked about all this cuz ive only done a couple closet grows with floros and plants under 2 feet. i cant wait to actually have a system going. clones, seperate veg and flower rooms...

CreepyStevie69 said:

^^ thanks for the equation. im pretty stoked about all this cuz ive only done a couple closet grows with floros and plants under 2 feet. i cant wait to actually have a system going. clones, seperate veg and flower rooms...

Click to expand...

Yeah that will let you figure out estimates yourself. If you have multiple bulbs just add up the total wattage and plug that into the formula. Send me some rep if this was helpfull and if you have any other electric sort of questions feel free to drop me a message.

haha yeah for sure how stupid of me to forget!

and the electronics part is what confuses me the most. i can understand everything else. so yeah man thanks for the offer to help. ill probably take you up on that sometime again.

Yeah, I wouldnt worrie too much about the $30 to $50 extra you maybe spending on electric. IF you are worried then take a walk arround the house and take steps to reduce your useage by not leaving lights, tv sets, tv, or whatever else on if your not useing them. Replace all the houses incadescent bulbs with CFL's to save energy. If you make a vidulant effort to save electric all over the house it can completly make up for all the wattage the HID is burning.

You can also have excuses ready to go if your ever asked about an increase in electric useage. Like "More people live her now" or "the use of portable heaters/airconditioning, but honestly if you do your best to conserve electric everywhere else you can it shouldnt really be an issue at all.

yeah im not too worried about my energy usage cuz im pretty good about it but my gf is HORRIBLE! haha her and her whole family probably has the worst carbon footprint lol. at any given time no matter what time of day noon or 3 in the morning 4 out of 5 tvs are on (supposedly their dogs watch tv) and almost every light in the house is on. even when we leave her room to go out she leaves her tv and light on...