electricity needed in tree house

hey so me and a friend have a pretty good sized tree house with a roof on it about 25 ft up in an oak tree. It is at the top of a hill about 500 ft away from the nearest house. We would like to be able to start indoor growing this winter but am having troubles in how to get electricity up there! does anybody know of a portable way to have electricity up there to power the lights and maybe a fan? Thanks for any help and happy growing!

extension cord... a very long one at that!!

haha we have looked into it and the current would not last all the way to the house.

How about a Propane fuelled generator?

yeah either a generator or get something comin from the nearest house.... generator might be dodgy specially on 18/6 gonna be noisy for 18hrs a day...... someone might go lookin, mates have used generators for soundsystems at free-partys and they do kick out some noise...
Grade

the current will not last all the way to the house?

rofl

dude... your extension cord will work fine

If you have not done power before then find a mate who has, tell him/her you want power to the treehut because you want to install security cameras for whatever bullshit reason you can make up.

After he terminates the cables, install a dummy camera anyways just in case he does a drive by one day to see how you progressed. Or think of another reason why u need power to that treehut without giving away that u will have a grow in there.

Pre dig the cable in for them, and leave a coil of it at either end that your mate can terminate. Theres nothing worse than turning up to do a favor for a friend to find you have to do menial work they could have done anyways.

Youre going to need a few shovels, a spade, and you and your friend you mentioned. 152m or 500 feet dig will take you about 8 hours. You dont need to dig the cable to the regulation depth, just over a foot deep is enough, and for protection put the underground cable inside a duct pipe. For double protection you can lay 3 x 1 boards on top if you have them so that if someone else is digging there in a few years time they will hit the board before they hit the ducting.

Dig at nighttime if you have nosey neighbors.

Worst case senario if you cannot dig for whatever reason, lay the conduit ducting along the side of the fence all the way to the treehut. Feed a copper wire through it as a draw wire.

What you dont want is animals chewing on the ducting and cooking themselves.

So as added protection, you can 'spade' in the duct pipe into the ground, which means using your spade to cut a slit, push the spade back to open up the crack and push the duct down into the gap. Its not the best senario but better than leaving it on top of the ground.

Car batterys. You can buy a converter any where now, Even walmart has them.When they get low take a generator up there an a battery charger an charge them. The more you have the longer it will last. Even a big 12 volt bull dozer battery will work an last a long time. This will work I know.You can even get a solar panel to charge the batterys.

I'd sure like to see you pull this off, brother. All the best to you.

Yep the last case senario is either solar or if you have a river nearby, microhydro.

If none of that above is possible for whatever reason, and, and this is a big AND, and if money is not a barrier, cause this would be costly....

Solar Grow

Solar:
- 3 x 130 watt panels
- 1 x 40amp regulator
- 1 x 500 watt power invertor
- 3 x 100amp deep cycle batteries
- 1 x Procyon LED light (see: http://www.homegrownlights.com/100W.html) OR 130 watts worth of CFLs

The Procyon is the best LED on the market at the moment, and costs an arm and a leg. But again, this is a case of, 'where money is not an issue'.

The procyon will use about 130 watts per hour even though it says its a 100 watt light. Your light intake in watts is 390 watts an hour. Your usage is 130, so for every hour of light you use, youre also saving 2 hours in the batteries for later useage when the sun goes down.

So on a typical 9 hours of good sunlight day your batteries will be taking in 200 amp charge giving you a possible 18 hours of extra light after the sun goes down even though you would be only using 10 of that. But you need the buffer for bad light days and there are heaps of days like that.

Once it comes time to switch to 12/12 you will have more watts to spend. Instead of wasting them you will need to add in CFLs to make up the lumens needed to grow bigger bud.

The Procyon while being the best on the market still does not have the lumens per square foot to produce big bud and lots of resin on your plants. So this is where you get to spend those extra amps. Youve just gained another 65amps a day in battery storage because you switched to 12/12. On an average day you will now have 265 amps spare in the batteries which you need your CFLs to spend 3/4 of.

Remembering you still need a buffer for bad days. So that means you can add an extra 130 watts of warm white CFLs to your grow to give it more lumens per square foot.

Micro Hydro Grow
Micro Hydro is even better if you have a river close by. Hydro generation is 24/7 and not restricted by lack of sunlight. Pick up a 500watt generator and run the cable to your hut, using the same battery bank set up except with the following differences:

- 1 x 500 watt generator (12 or 24v)
- 400 watts of CFLs, cool whites for veg and warm whites for budding
- 1 x 500 watt invertor
- fans using up the other 100 watts spare
- 1 x 100amp deep cycle battery

Why use a 12v or 24v over a 110v microhydro generator? Well its about consistency in voltage. The 110v 500watt generators tend to have a variable output which can cause lights to dim and brighten thus shortening the life span of the bulbs. Whereas inverting power from a 12v supply, that supply being a battery, will condition the power to a smooth 110v output (much the same way a computer UPS works).

Not sure where your from, but have you even thought about the temps up there? I'm in the UK and am struggling to keep my plants warm enough this time of year and that's in the house, just a thought.

I made a very long extension cord just got some wire that would with stand being outside and wired to an extension i have an extension that is easy 10 metres long so i don't see why an extension wouldn't work, might just struggle to find one long enough though!

To run a 15 amp circuit 500 feet, you would need #4 wire, according to this wire size calculator http://www.jhlarson.com/ind_tables/volt/calc_wiresize.htm.

The other option is to run the wire at a higher voltage and use a step down transformer the same way the utility company does. Definitely not a cheap option.

The bottom line is that there is no cost-effective way to accomplish this.

Solar, wind and hyrdroelectric generation all have high barriers to entry and all require cooperating environmental factors before you produce any light.

The length of the run makes running a wire impractical.

Gasoline generators are expensive to purchase and even more expensive to operate each day.

I do like the idea of having the grow house way up in a tree though. The cop would have to be pretty motivated before he goes snooping around that far up in a tree. Too bad there seems to be no practical way to get power up there. Hey, you could always grow with the sun.

thanks very much for the help everybody it is much appreciated. now that you mention it, the temperature up here might be a problem. I was thinking of making some type of greenhouse or protection for it to keep warm. The car battery idea and running a wire seem to be my only feasible options.

How long would a car battery power a 300W light for? Any ideas on how I could keep them warm? And I will definitely look into that #4 wire, cleef.

300 watts divided by 12volts = 25 amps per hour

Average car battery is 80 amps, average truck battery around 200 amps

Car battery = 3.2 hours before going flat
Truck battery = 8 hours before going flat

Those number work the same if you invert the 12v to 110v.

Which is why I commented with those senarios earlier. Otherwise with that idea above you will be up that treehut recharging every day. Plus using plain old starter batteries and running them flat means you will be replacing them fairly regularly. Which is why you use deep cycle or marine batteries because they can be run flat 1000s of times without fucking them.

The temps problem. Fill your space full of plants to keep them warmer. Line the walls with Milar. Run your lights overnight during winter to use the warmer day temps for heating when the lights are off.

Added: unless of course, in winter you have snow. In that case, shut the grow down and start again in summer...

i gotta say...

i laughed for about an hour non stop after reading:

outdooguy24 said:

hey so me and a friend have a pretty good sized tree house with a roof on it about 25 ft up in an oak tree. It is at the top of a hill about 500 ft away from the nearest house.

Click to expand...

first off, unless your 12...WTF ARE YOU DOING CLIMBING TREES?

and if youre 12...WTF YOU DOING GROWING WEED? (where are parents these days?)

give up the Peter Pan-esque tree house grow idea and climb on down here to the real world

anyone seen the tree house scene from Step-Brothers?

"Its like masterbating in a time machine..."

yeah it seems a little extreme and flat out shade... why not just find some fucking woods somewhere.... i cant believe it a fucking tree fort.. u could burry the line but what about going up the tree?

funkdocKT said:

i gotta say...

i laughed for about an hour non stop after reading:





first off, unless your 12...WTF ARE YOU DOING CLIMBING TREES?

and if youre 12...WTF YOU DOING GROWING WEED? (where are parents these days?)

give up the Peter Pan-esque tree house grow idea and climb on down here to the real world

anyone seen the tree house scene from Step-Brothers?

"Its like masterbating in a time machine..."

Click to expand...

Well first off, I am 20 years old and I never get tired of using my hands to construct something, whether it be a chair or a tree house. You think building a tree house is an adolescent activity, but I think it can be enjoyed by anybody of any age and I'm sure their are many people who can attest to that. If you have something to add to my idea and something positive like the other nice people on here then please share. If not, keep your simple minded and juvenile remarks to yourself.

I am going to a college near my house and do not want to risk my parents finding out. There is no snow in my area at all I am only at 300 feet elevation. The tree house is a very remote location with an extremely low chance of people walking by and in no way could someone drive to it.

I was thinking of a treehouse grow, but then dismmissed the idea cuz it would be a little suspicious seeing an adult climbing in and out of a treehouse alone on a regular basis. But if you were able to put a clear roof on it and run some solar panels for fans and auto watering, that could maybe work. Id worry about a little kid finding it though.

The solar idea sounds the best. Otherwise Jonas has the plan. You can get a book. Its not that hard to tap into your power as long as you are sure its off when you start the project. You run hard wire inside pcv or metal tubing designed for the job. You bury it up to the tree and then run it up to the house. Make sure to use that stuff on the ceiling that blocks the heat signature from your growing room since you are on a hill! Good Luck! Its gonna work!

When I brought up the car battery ideal , it was just for lights to see with in the dark. Not a grow room. You can how ever do this with deep cycle batteries. But dam it will be expensive. The tree house is a dam good ideal. But like Jonus said very expensive