Yeah I'm thinking their not going to be enough light/lumens for what I'm wanting to do. I think I'm going to be upgrading to a 1000watt HID system but worried about electric bill changes, and running the extra ventilation. Oh and the main factor costs... Right now I'm growing 2 mothers in my grow closet(their clones so i know their female) I want to veg them for another month or two and then cut 25 clones and root them and throw right into flower. So I'm thinking for 25 plants I need at least a 1000watts. My grow area 8ft x 2.8ft and the height is less than 8 feet so would hope the HID light could be hung high enough away from the plant canopies.
Next question do you think 1-200 watt or 250 CFL would keep 2 mothers alive for years? (I will have all walls white poly or mylar for both the mothers and flowering closet.)
Also would a 600Watt or 1000Watt HPS handle 25 plants in my grow area. I guess in other words would it be worth my time to do it with 1-600watt or 1-1000watt HPS. Also what do you think increase in electric bill per month would be I guess It would only be for flowering so 12/12 I will be using CFL's for vegging and rooting the clones.
I cant help you with the mother or clones question mate cos i have no experience with doing either, ive only ever grown from seed.
As far as cost goes, a HID set up is much cheaper than buying cfls. I bought 2 red spec bulbs and 2 blue spec bulbs, paid £30 each for 2 of em (ebay) and £42 each for the true envirolights, then the reflectors which were £90 for the pair. My HID kit was £90 including bulb, ballast and reflector - quite a difference.
As for electricity cost, my 400w uses nearer 600w ( the ballast draws power as well as the bulb). My KWH charge is 12p - so at 12hrs per day its its 12 x 600 ( kwh used per day), mutiplied by 12p - 7.2kw used, its about 94p per day, which sounds reasonable, or just over £28 per month. its not much more expensive than running the 500w of cfls and i expect better yields with the HID. Add to that the difference in cost between the 2 different set ups and i should never have bothered with the cfls!! My space is .76w x .76l x 1.8h, the 400w is fine for this and temps are good with just a 138 cubic metres per hour extraction fan, and a 6 inch oscillating fan, it is cool here at the minute though. I am grow 4 plants, which will need at around 1 square foot each so they fill my tent nicely, you can fit plenty more plants in the same space if you keeping them small .Ideally for light output u should get as close to the suns output as you can, around 10,000 lumens per square foot of area you are using, dont forget the further away the light is from the plant the less lumens reach the plant. If i were you i would work out the area you are going to use, multiply that by 10k and then use a bulb that provides the required output ( dont forget you can use supplementary cfls for additional light if needed.
Hope that helps you mate, choice of light is crucial to your grow
