I use 3 600w HID lights, two HPS on the sides and a 600w MH in the middle. All horizontal.
yes! ideally that's the correct setup.
I'm more than a little bummed at where I am now compared to where I was using hoods. The room is cooled with a thermostat controlled window unit with a small air inlet for outside air. Removing heat isn't a biggie and RH is 45-50%. Sticking a thermocouple through the buds towards the lights measured 73-76 @ 15". Soil temp in those 5 gal fabric pots is 66-67 which seems too cool. The 3 gal plastic ones soil temp is 72-73. The plants aren't digging it either, their droopy and just sitting there looking like shit, kinda like me trying too hard to make this work for the last week. This is like trying to make an ugly weld pretty, it just gets worse the more you try. I'm leaving this whole bitch alone for 3-4 days and see if they come around. I wanna break something
Ahh don't worry my man,, you are close.
you have the correct equipment but are going about it the wrong way, it's all good, we've all done it in some fashion.
The best way to do this is to turn ONE light on, pay attention to it's "footprint" , where it's the brightest, and where it isn't, if you can find something to read the intensity of the light, that's the best way.
You want to use it sorta like a flashlight, and you want the brightest intensity, while covering the most square footage.
After you see the footprint of one light, do another, and adjust it to where the footprint is the brightest, yet not too "directed"
Just think of the lamps as flashlights, you want them pointing on the plants obviously.
A vert grow with multiple lights is sorta weird man, considering the whle premise is to completely cover the light footprint with varying sizes of plants, but with mutiple lights, you'll be wasting a lot of light