Why not just grow vertical? Even less wasted space, LED doent care about gravity.
A few reasons.
1: From what I have seen HPS would far outperform LED on a vertical grow as you can do a vertical bulb hitting all plants without a reflector while LED would require far more actual lights to grow equal to the HPS. LED is directional while HPS with a single bulb can hit to the left, right and bottom.
2: From everything I have seen a vertical grow looks to be a nightmare to keep up. It seems like you have 2 options, big ass plants meaning you lose a huge amount of time or have to have massive veg rooms.
3:Watering if you actually are planting vertically not just training a big plant to grow up a few feet more seems like a huge investment of time with possibilities of big problem.
4: Training/cleaning.
If a room is tall, like 12-20 feet lets just say, the best vertical that I know of would be to actually plant the plants going up, training in a vertical scrog. If you just grow big plants it would only help in a small are IMO, like 8 foot or less ceiling height. It's simply a measurement of sqft, if I can grow in a 4x8 and run 10 beds in a row, then stack them 1x I double my grow space (generally) compared to a normal HPS grow. On a vertical grow the only way to keep up is to go really tall... In the end it might be more on a yield but at this point I don't want to figure out something like that. a 12 foot ceiling means I COULD do 3 grows stacked. I will start with a single stack and if I can keep my strains in a 4 foot area I'll look at adding a third grow. Even at that i'd need to fill the space with a double grow before caring about a triple. 1k sqft grow room is now 2k, and another level would be 3k... That's huge for a smaller grower.
Again this is all just my opinion and the direction I'm willing to take. I'll see if it even works =)
I'm not opposed to trying new things, obviously as I build my own lights and grow with diy led lights. We can only do so much at one time tho =)
Thanks for the idea tho! Who knows, maybe a vertical grow is in my future!
last thing. I think the space saved by a vertical grow is false. I could say a room is 1k sqft and say I'm growing in 1k sqft but reality is the canopy space would be more like 700sqft or you can't even get to plants or walk around your room. Same goes for growing in racks, but I can put racks on wheels and move them side to side just giving me 4 foot work space then move them back giving me 2 foot aisles. When I see vertical grows it's much the same, you have to have work space or problems will destroy you before you even know they exist. Growing in a tent is different than a whole room whatever the size of the room is.
Still I believe that 2 levels, even in a small tent would be much faster turnover and easier to work on than a U shaped vertical grow. If you measure canopy space I believe that U shape is far less than people think while 2 levels of lets say 4x4 is a 4x8. a U shape would require big plants to grow that high up the sides (massive time loss) and you would have to go all the way to the ceiling to really beat stacking IMO.
This is again all my guess from hat I have seen, I'll base more off reality when I finish my first grow in racks. =)
