How to build a professional grow room. All help appreciated.

John Stevens said:

Will keep you all posted. Haven\'t started the construction yet because I need to be 100% sure how I\'m going to get rid of all this heat and how I want to design the room. Looks like all the inner walls are going to have to be insulated due to noise and me living semi-detached!

I paid £500 for 2x400w HPS with bulbs and ballasts (need replacing for Lumatek digitals and 600w coolshades), 2 carbon filters, 2 ruck fans, iws 12 pot system, fan controller and nutrients so was a really good deal.

Haven\'t got the room for two IWS systems so going to have to veg in there because im going to add more pots and grow 15-20 6ft trees. Thinking 4 weeks veg at least. Anyone growing any trees? Haha how long you vegging them for. I want 6-10 ounce a plant!!

If your gonna do it lets do big and lets do it right!!

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you\'ll also need a lot more light to do that much with 15-20 plants. Even 6 oz/plant with 15 plants you\'re talking about pulling 2500 grams. If you do it right you\'ll need about 5 more of those 400 watt lights, about one light for every two plants. Also doubtful that a 400 watt HPS is going to penetrate a 6\' canopy, are you planning on using them vertically?

theClosetGrower said:

Water cooled lights, as bright as the sun (or as close as possible). I'd have the ceiling buckling from the weight of the 1000 watters. I'd use LEDs around the perimeter along with a scattering of 6500k CFLs. Air conditioning to keep the room extra cool. A water conditioning system like reverse osmosis. A complete storage area for all the crap - pots, nutrients, soil (for some), etc. Its all about the light given all other things are equal...I've seen yields triple with a doubling of the usable light. That's a good size space, the height makes a huge difference in controlling heat - obviously. Take advantage of the room to handle ventilation and temperatures - since you probably don't have an unlimited budget
If I could, my perfect room would be split (3/4, 1/4) into two floors separated by thick water clear pyrex glass, the top would have the lights and the bottom the plants. The top is completely sealed from the plants and is ventilated separately. Under this configuration your could drown the plants in light and not have to worry about temperatures = how about 1000 watts for every 2-3 sqft? Nice.
In reality, you should use 600s as they are the most efficient HID light in terms of lumen/watt - use Son Agro or similar bulbs - big difference!
Flowering straight from rooted clones is fine, you get one little cola. I prefer growing them out a bit first AND including a fair amount of blue spectrum in the flowering room (Son Agro bulbs) to help with the stretch. Unless you are looking to sell (and even then) it is generally better to grow the plants out a couple weeks beyond rooting.
Good luck with the room. Lemme know if you go with the pyrex idea

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Just what I've been looking for. Someone with a bit of innovation and ambition for a professional grow room. I like this idea yet putting 4 600W AirCooled lights in a 1/4 Height of the room covered by pyrex or something similar would mean that I cannot lower the lights for when the canopy is say 2-4ft? Surely the lights won't penetrate and this will make my yields suck. Im trying to harvest 6-10 ounce a plant, whatever it takes!

If this means I grow 20 plants, 10 in flower and 10 in veg using two IWS systems then so be it! Say I veg for 8 Weeks, then I move to flowering. I need the lights and ventilation to be able to grow these huge trees. What do you think I'll need?

BTW I love the pyrex idea with seperate ventilation but I'm just worried about the penetration. Maybe vertical hung HPS too?

Give me your views!

People get hung up on moving lights up and down, the reality for me is that every plant is a different size so I use milk crates to adjust height. Unless you are growing a single strain at a time you'll find that adjusting the plant height is more necessary than adjusting the light height. The milk crates allow air to come up from the bottom of the room - very important. I don't like vertical HPS lighting - much gets wasted, better off using directional lighting to augment - like the newer LEDs. Anything over 4' in a house is a waste, penetrating that far down the canopy requires more light than you can practically deliver. Shoot for plants that are ~1 meter.

I built exactly the room I described but instead of glass I used wood and cut opening for the lights, this allows me to pack twice as much light with half as much heat! My flowering room is able to run 2x430 watt HPS lights in a 2x4x7' room - this produces buds as big (or bigger) that many of the larger systems I've seen. Food and genetics certainly matter but light is the key, especially light without heat! The nice thing about the pyrex approach is the ease of injecting CO2 since you could control ventilation pretty easily without all the heat buildup.

Air cooled lights are critical but don't expect too much from them, HID lights are still heaters that produce a little light (way more heat). Water cooled is the best way to go if you can manage it in your space. I wish I had confidence and experience with the LED systems, I do believe that the 5 and 10w varieties will work well and of course very little heat. Keep in mind that LED lights lose 20% of their brightness within the first 10% of their lives - this is a fact that none of the LED vendors mention. Also, LEDs (especially the 1,5 and 10w) generate a fair amount of heat - if fact if they are not excreting heat it means the bulbs are overheated and will die in less than 5k hours of use. Heat is more of a problem for the LEDs then the grow room - again none of the LED vendors mention this. LEDs are still not worth the ridiculous amount of money they charge especially given the factors I mentioned.

Again, good luck - I loved designing and building the rooms, it was as much fun actually growing the herb.

In my opinion the biggest lights anyone should buy is 600watts, these are so much more efficient than every other HID variation that you save about 20% on your ebill - that's a lot over the course of a long series of grows.

Yeah definitely going with the 600w HPS, question is how many? Think it is going to be two seperate systems one for veg one for flower.

You talk about these water-cooled lights any idea where I can find them and which would you recommend?

Nah, they weren't around when I bought my stuff. I have looked at them from a couple companies, they are pretty expensive when you consider the stuff you need (water chiller, etc). I prefer having over 100 watts per sqft (I have 117 now) so get as many 600s as you can fit and manage the heat. You don't need as much in vegetation - I have 78 watts per sqft of MH (2x250) and CFL (125 blue) combined. The HPS lights are Son Agro, I recommend the same or similar for your bulbs. I have a propagation chamber that is 200 watts of flouros, but I only use this chamber when starting new seeds up each year, otherwise it gets tuned off and I use the lower part of my veg chamber for clones and any new seedlings.
The Son Agros run a little hotter and don't last as long as regular HPS BUT the buds are massive because of the additional spectrum. 600s are hugely more efficient than 400s or 1000s - so a good choice there. Why not start with 3 lights and add a fourth later if needed - 3 600s will generate lots of big, dense buds. Building and managing the environment is definitely a big part of the fun, I've tweaked my rooms every year for the last 10 - always making them a little better, quieter, efficient, cooler, more reflective, whatever...Enjoy the build.