sufficient lighting inside veg. space

good morning RIU! i'm in the process of setting up a production and i've got a space that is 5'x7' designated for the vegetative cycle. i'm open to any pointers. originally i was going to use one 400w MH bulb but after talking to people it would appear that i should be using at least 2 400's if not 2 600's. any experience on the matter? i want them to be very heartily vegged and ready to explode when they come time to flip. thanks!

The general consensus is 50 Watts per sq/ft. My personal opinion is that if you have all other aspects going well (Temps, Diet, etc) that you can get away with as little as 35.

@50 Watts per sq/ft
1750 Watts

@35 Watts per sq/ft
1225 Watts

This is also assuming you are using every bit of that 35 sq/ft.

Hope that helps

a 5' x 7' area is a little funky in how you would arrange lights. What equipment do you already have? What is your budget? Will you be flowering in the same space with the same equipment?
How many plants and what technique are you using? How much, if any, of the 35 sq/ft will not be used?

Isn't 50W/sq ft a recommendation for flowering? I was always under the impression veg didn't need as much, not that more hurts, it's just not needed as much. Many people on here veg under 200-400W of fluorescent lighting and have great results. Hot Diggity has some good questions you should answer.

Hot Diggity Sog said:

a 5' x 7' area is a little funky in how you would arrange lights. What equipment do you already have? What is your budget? Will you be flowering in the same space with the same equipment?
How many plants and what technique are you using? How much, if any, of the 35 sq/ft will not be used?

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between 25-30 plants with irrigation. prolly top them sort of hard to make them bushier... i'm going to be flowering in a separate space under 6-1000 watt bulbs. the budget is pretty flexible and i would like to go with the equipment that has generated the best results for other fellow farmers. i can try to concentrate the plants/lights off to one side of the 5' space but the door is on the end of the longer wall.

thanks!

Your starting out with a large grow,it sounds like you need a 100 amp circuit & a 5 ton ac unit to cool all those lights.a nice cloning area would be needed to supply all those clones.

eddy600 said:

Your starting out with a large grow,it sounds like you need a 100 amp circuit & a 5 ton ac unit to cool all those lights.a nice cloning area would be needed to supply all those clones.

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yeah i've been waiting on it and more is more. the cloning area is going to be an after thought because after the first run starts i'll be set to keep on building out spaces.. the electric is fine i'll have my sub panel centrally located to be easily feeding the whole system and the ac is actually not going to be 5 ton it's probably going to max out at 2.5 ton if that. from everything i've read that will be sufficient although i don't know from experience

If budget isn't an issue check this out.

http://www.growell.co.uk/dimlux-expert-series-cdm-light-systems.html

WeedFreak78 said:

Isn't 50W/sq ft a recommendation for flowering? I was always under the impression veg didn't need as much, not that more hurts, it's just not needed as much. Many people on here veg under 200-400W of fluorescent lighting and have great results. Hot Diggity has some good questions you should answer.

Click to expand...

my grow is a 4foot by 4 foot U scrog. I have 2 400 watt mh lamps for veg. They are set so that they are at aprox 50 degrees to the out side so that there is a slight overlap in the middle and the light hits all the way to the edge. Total saturation of light and then for flower I switch to 1000watt hps same angle

Honestly, a 400W MH is probably enough for a 5'x7' for plants under 1ft. The problem is getting good light distribution.

Maybe a 400W with some 5000K 70cri leds. (like vero 29) to even out the light spread.

I get away with only ~10W/sqft in my veg box using DIY vero 18 veg lamps, but that's really pushing efficiency. (high startup cost, but veg is low hanging fruit being on 18-24 hours a day)




Those 2 lamps together dissipate about 40W.