Help: not blowing a fuse

Hello, i live in an apartment and want to use one of the 12'x12' rooms for a large grow of 30ish plants (sound right ya think?) and want to know how i can tell how much my outlets can handle before they will blow a fuse. i am thinking of running 9000W in the room with 3 rows of 3 1000W bulbs. Do you think this is too serious for this amount of space? also, would i need a 1000W ballast for each and every bulb??

Watts is the product of amps times volts. If you are asking how many watts can be put on a 15 amp circuit breaker then 15 x 120 = 1800. This will probably trip the breaker because it is close to the breaker threshold. So lets say 1600 watts.


EDIT:
I would contact a qualified Electrician...

Most rooms run off 1 circuit and may even share with another room. You will most likely only be able to put 1 1000W in that room unless you do major electrical work, being in an apartment kind of makes that impossible. I would advise a SOG or SCROG for 1 light if you want that many plants.

l0gikz said:

Hello, i live in an apartment and want to use one of the 12'x12' rooms for a large grow of 30ish plants (sound right ya think?) and want to know how i can tell how much my outlets can handle before they will blow a fuse. i am thinking of running 9000W in the room with 3 rows of 3 1000W bulbs. Do you think this is too serious for this amount of space? also, would i need a 1000W ballast for each and every bulb??

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This just sounds like a bad idea being in an apartment. Do you have access to the circuit panel? You really don't know how many circuits are dedicated to your unit or even if your unit is running dedicated circuits for that matter. Most likely all of your circuits are only going to be 15 AMPs except for your kitchen and bathroom which will be 20 Amps. Simply plugging in two 1000 watters is too much for a 15 amp even if nothing else is drawing current from the circuit. Bob is right, 1800 watts is max draw on a 15 amp but you should not pull more than 80% to be safe.

If you can afford (9) 1000 watters and are this ambitious, you gotta move to a house!

Will bot happen room is way overloaded most rooms only have 1 15amp circuit as stated aboved.. 1 1000 watt is I think like 9 amps depeding on ballast and on 110v on 220 volt ots.like 6 I think tben add a few fans and thats another roughly 3 amps or so. If you wanna do an operation that big you need to run a minimum of 200 amp 220volt line to that room.

Even if he had access to the panel I doubt he has more then 60 amps there(apartment)

Note that you should not go above 80% of the rating on a breaker/fuse. So for a 15A circuit, that's only 12A usable.

A 1000w lamp is 8.34A at 120v. Then calculate your fan(s), (de)humidifiers, pumps etc etc. Then note that a 1000w lamp draws a lot of current when it first starts up. Fans can as well.

A typical bedroom is wired on a single circuit (as mentioned above). Maybe two at most.

You are best suited to keep the grow small, unless you can run new cable from the panel. In this case, living in an apartment, that's not feasible.

Oh, and please, for the love of all things good, don't run your lamps on extension cords run into other parts of the house.

-spek

Lots of good advice above. Tapping into the thirty amp dryer outlet is very likely as good as you'll get in your apartment- unless the laundry is common and not in your apartment, in which case you're screwed.

Even thirty amps x .8 = 24A, or about five thouies max. Wall of your room into two halves, and then run the two spaces on a flip schedule.

You will really want to get an electrician in to see what your options are, FIRST.