Help Me Design My Perpetual Harvest...

hey all. im currently on my first grow, and its going GREAT! no major problems at all, and im 99.9% positive i will yield more then a pound of some strait FIRE!

after this harvest, i will be setting up a multi-tent perpetual so i can get some serious weight going. i will have 3 large tents (4x8x7). one for veg, and two for flower. the veg tent will either have 2 or 3 1000w MH in it. and the flower tents will have 3 or 4 1000w HPS in them. all the lights will be air cooled, and i will have dual hose 14,000 btu AC's in each tent to keep the temps in check. this will maintain a closed environment in all of the tents as well for co2 supplementation (more on that in a second). i will have around 20-25 plants in each flower tent, in square 5 gallon pots. that means i will need to veg between 40 to 50 plants in the veg tent. i plan to harvest once every month. in the veg tent, i will introduce 25 new plants every month. that means each plant should receive 2 months of veg time (they will be heavily LST). i plan on using a light relay (flipper) for the flower tents. i already have a co2 generator, so instead of buying several of these, i plant on having ducting connecting all of the tents with in-line fans circulating the atmospheres constantly. that way, i can have the gen in only one tent, but all of the tents receive the same amount of co2 and will all remain the same temperature.

i guess my only question right now is, supposing i can keep temps in check no matter what, is it smart (efficient) to use 4000 watts in a 4 by 8 space? will the plants use all that light or is it too much and it wont make a difference over just 3000 watts?

if you guys have any suggestions or comments they would be appreciated. granted, this isnt all going to happen over night, but i already have most of the stuff for the second tent, and i will most likely just have one veg tent and one flower tent until my second harvest, then i will get the third one.

here is a picture of 1 of my 10 plants that are currently 9 days into flower. they were vegged for a total of 39 days (1 month 9 days or 5 weeks 2 days)

well heres my take... first of all yes thats too much light for that space.. not gonna be efficient. practically speaking the most efficient use is going to be 1k per 4x4.. now you CAN use more light and get more bud but we are speaking efficiency.. there is a reason that the big ebb and flows that are 4x4 are meant for 1kw bulbs, 4x8 2 1kw bulbs...

i have personally run 2kw on a 4x4 ebb and flo and got about 1.8 lb in a sog, when i would usually get about 1.5 with the strain i was using and 20 plants. woulda had a hell of a lot more doubling up on the plant numbers and space..

that being said, if i were you this is how i would use your space.. in one of these two ways...

personally i would put 2 4x8 ebb n flow tables in each of the tents with 2kw vented hoods running a sog with about 50 plants on each table.. should easily get 3-4 lbs per table running that number of plants and that wattage.. p

for the veg tent i would have 1k mh for the mothers and a 2 t5s for clones with 2 aerocloners.

the other way i would do, if i had the temps under control and proper ventalation would be to have the veg tent with 2 1k MH, vegging plants out for 6-8 weeks in 5 gallon buckets, and a small cloner outside the tent under a t5 or floros..

in the flower room i would run bare bulbs, 2k maybe 3k watts and grow some trees, about 10 per tent, would hang the bulbs vertically between the plants which had been vegged out for 6-8 weeks, keep em bushy and flower accordingly. heath robinson did a grow with 2 critical mass plants in DWC vegged for 6 wks flowerd with vertical 3 bare 600w bulbs.. ended up getting i think about 5 lbs off those two plants.. but he is truly a master...with 2k and 10 plants LSD properly i would figure a decent grower could get about 4-6 lbs per tent

just some ideas hope it sends you in the right direction

FLo

yea i saw that grow. i was amazed! Robinson really is something else...i have been doing tons of research on hydro vs. dirt, and i think im going to stick with dirt. mostly because im a fan of organics. so the idea about the tables wont work. i do like your idea of a vertical grow. iv been considering something like that, but ill have to read up more on the pros and cons before i make up my mind.

can i ask you a quick question though? when you had 2k's running in a 4x4 space, did you use co2?

iv read that plants can only grow as big or as fast as the most limiting factor will allow them. for instance, most gardens limiting factor is light. even if people with only 35 watts per square foot use co2 and the best nutes, the plants wont increase too much in size because the light is insufficient to utilize all those extra nutes and co2. now someone with the best nutes and say, 100 watts per square foot, but no co2, their limiting factor is the co2. the plants wont grow too much bigger or faster because they cant use all the light without extra co2. and fianlly you have someone with shitty mircal grow nutes, 100 watts per square foot, and co2. the plants wont grow too big because it needs more and better food.

i hope all that makes sense....

so did you use co2 when you had all that light in 4x4? thanks flo. +rep.

no i didnt use co2 but i also didnt have the proper ventilation to make it worthwhile.

when i say proper ventilation i mean a totally sealed off room with a co2 emitter running on a timer that ran in conjunction with the scruber and exhaust so that it was on when they were off. unless you have this kind of setup co2 is not going to make a huge diff imo. co2 is the last thing that you need to add to your system because nothing will substitute for good air exchange,good lights, good nutes, and proper feeding regimine

now that said, take your example of the 4x4. yes if you introduced the c02 you could get more than without it, no doubt. but with all things being equal, a 4x4 with 2kwatts and a 4x8 with 2kwatts, same plants, same nutes etc... the 4x8 will outperform because it has a larger canopy area. plants need space to grow and no matter how healthy and fast they are growing they cant outgrow eachother, they gotta sprawl out.

if you really wanna use that much power then id say go ahead and run at max 3k in each 4x8 but as soon as you can free up some space take the 2 extra lights and create another flowering space.

I am a fan of cool tubed 600HPS...

I keep mine 10" from my plants... in a 36x20x60 tent...

I would choose 2x 600 vs 1x 1,000 any day...

My 2 cents