In serious need of expert advice from +/-1000watt UK growers

Hi everyone,
I beg you to please take a minute to properly consider my problem, as i've been debating the matter for a month now and i've decided to put my trust completely in the hands of experienced growers in a similar situation to mine. Failure will mean prison, and at 20 years of age (at any age for that matter), with parents in need of support, that is a terrible thing.
I have two complete grow rooms, one at 400watt and one at 600watt HPS, in cooltubes, one vert and one horizontal (just to see what the yield difference is). Between one fuck-up and another (first run with indoor DWC) i shut down one of the two, and am currently only running the 600watt.
My concern is with power usage and raising a red flag. I live with 3 other people, with an independent contract with Scottish Power at a fixed rate, which can/will be modified based on our actual consumption (important to note - so they're keeping an eye on how much power we use).
We've worked out that the whole house uses about 1500watt total, minus my grow op. My concern is that with both rooms running, plus the cloning room at 250watt, i will be literally almost doubling the power usage of our house.
The thing is, before having seen this website I would have thought it crazy to attempt even 400watts because "it's SO MUCH power!! how can you not get caught?", but seeing growers with three, four times my setup has made me reconsider.
I don't want to be lulled into a false sense of security, I want to fully understand the risk I'm taking because I have too much responsibility on my shoulders to end up in prison, and I want my night time sleep to be nice and easy. That said, I hate the thought of my ambitions being held back due to some vague paranoid conception of The Bobby On The Beat aware of everything that's going on around him. The police are just as stupid as the rest of us, so I want to know who is more stupid in this situation.
Do power companies affiliate themselves with the police when "inordinate amounts of power" are used? I remember reading on Overgrow back in the day that they keep an eye out for "power surges" - 1.25kw flipping on and off every 12 hours is a big red flag to anybody watching, but my rooms are separate and thus run on separate schedules.
Guys please, as I already said, my final decision is completely up to the advice I receive. I want to know that I am in no more risk with 1000w than with 600w, and what the police look for, and how to not get caught.
Thank you very much for your help in this, I really don't know what I'd do without your advice.

your all good!
stop being paranoid!!!

My house stereo uses more wattage than your entire grow op's & its left turned on about 12 hours a day,dont sweat 1,000 watts,thats 2 computers.

1500W between 3 ppl seems pretty light to begin with, and I think you could get away with running it all even if you were all wasteful idiots.. Remember you can cutthat wattage calc by 40-50% in flowering since you'd only be running an exhaust fan for 12hrs each day.. So your flowering consumption/day would be roughly the same as a pc running 24/7..

my only concern i have here is do you own the property your living at or does the land lord not care that you are growing because yes their are laws in place about 24 hours notice ect ect. but try arguing that when your in court. the power usuage shouldn't be a problem but not owning the place your growing in ( and being their your self ) esp a grow op bigger then what you could claime as personal isn't the best choice. but I wish ya good luck and if you do own the place or the land lord dosn't care then this is meaningless

well, if I were worried about that i'd make sure there are enough power hungry electronics in the house that ARENT normally turned on, so if anyone does come poking around you'll be able to point to them and say "oh yeah, this amplifier and PC with dual monitors must be using all that energy, my bad"

Just because they can see your power usage, doesnt mean they have a clue what its going towards, especially since you have the rooms split and going at different times.

you're probably good, try and relax.

Breakdancer003 said:

my only concern i have here is do you own the property your living at or does the land lord not care that you are growing because yes their are laws in place about 24 hours notice ect ect. but try arguing that when your in court. the power usuage shouldn't be a problem but not owning the place your growing in ( and being their your self ) esp a grow op bigger then what you could claime as personal isn't the best choice. but I wish ya good luck and if you do own the place or the land lord dosn't care then this is meaningless

Click to expand...

it's rented; but the landlord's an allright guy and a big fat padlock on my door is stopping anyone from barging in unannounced. the grow is contained in two massive wardrobes so flipping off the power will kill the humming/odd shafts of light poking through.

nicely done what strains u got going ?

i've got 3 Master Kush and 3 ReCon (DNA seeds - no comment everyone, the plants are a bit fussy but nobody who's smoked their stuff in the Grey Area seems to complain) in the vert room, and in the Maybe room (horizontal) it's 4 Swazi (the africans are replacing the MK and DNA plants i accidentally killed/intentionally murdered when in my heaviest fit of paranoia)..
the swazis are all mutants ; instead of opening up into 2 cotylodons (sp?) they all have three, as well as three initial fan leaves... Are mutations shown this early a bad sign when choosing future mothers?
I wish i could speak to someone with a medium grow and ask how they got busted, what they're doing differently, etc.
You've helped persuade me but i still have some major concerns. Prison just Ain't the fashion, and to be told "you're not using that much" doesn't reassure me because that was what i'd originally concluded when going through the forums. I'm worried a comparison between houses of power usage will show ours up for suspicious activity...
Does anybody know a safe, cheap way of reducing the power surge? By which I mean having the power going up to the ballasts build up gradually? Besides the police concern, I don't know how old the ciruiting is in the house and the thought of a house fire and the attention it would arouse is a concern of mine.

If you can, check out other ppl's meters who live similarily.. 1.5kW legit doesn't seem like enough for 4 ppl almost.. A better thing to calculate on is the number of kWh you use in a single month.. Also consistency is golden.. Anybody who's landlord pays the bill doesn't want drastic changes up or down that they can't explain in a casual conversation should the question pop up..
If the bill comes directly to you, then changes need to be drastic before flags trigger in a 4bdrm place.. Figure each of those rooms gets about a kW of play at the very minimum..
There is no way to eliminate the power surge.. Inductive loads are harder on a circuit than resistive loads like incandescents.. As an example I have a timer sitting right beside me that is rated for 15A resistive load (like a space heater) but only 4A inductive load (like a ballast)..
I know you guys use 240V over there, but how many amps does a typical household circuit support, and how much load on the breakers you use for lights?

born2killspam said:

There is no way to eliminate the power surge.. Inductive loads are harder on a circuit than resistive loads like incandescents.. As an example I have a timer sitting right beside me that is rated for 15A resistive load (like a space heater) but only 4A inductive load (like a ballast)..
I know you guys use 240V over there, but how many amps does a typical household circuit support, and how much load on the breakers you use for lights?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the concise information man. As far as your last two questions go, this is something I have been planning to do reading into for a while but have been stupid enough to leave it off. What causes more confusion is the fact that one of the ballasts was purchased in Holland, where they run 220v (specifically, the 400watter); at the moment i'm running the 600w constantly to avoid the harm a surge might do to household circuitry (blew two 3A timers the second day and quickly learned my lesson) but when (and yes, thanks a lot guys, it's a When) both will be running i'll be on 18/6 to save power, and 1000watts on 12/12 + 250 constant off two mains sounds like a strain.
Right at the moment I don't have the time to spare to google the information, and on the off chance that the internet doesn't tell me anything useful, can anybody in the UK who Has done the relevant reading spare the time for a quick breakdown before the thread drops out of discussion?
And thanks again guys, I know it might seem like i'm spinning out but the thought of prison makes the small risk of getting caught seem disproportionately huge...

[edit] You said there are no ways of protecting from inductive surges, does this mean that multi-socket "surge protectors" found in hardware stores, ebay etc. are useless for our purposes?

You're worries about consumption flags may be paranoia, but something is wrong with your wiring or ballasts.. Are your ballasts linear reactor ballasts? These draw signifigantly higher current at startup then while running, and that needs to be taken into account on the breaker, but what you're describing sounds beyond extreme.. If you don't know what type they are, post any markings you can from them.. Also try giving them a test run on a different empty breaker to see if the problem follows the ballasts..
Do you know if the house is wired with aluminum wiring? Houses built in the 70's often are because copper prices were soaring back then.. Aluminum wiring can end up with bad connections that can be a danger even without intense inductive loads.. If you do have aluminum wiring you can pigtail copper ends onto the wiring.. Its explained on various internet sites, but just to let you know, atleast in Canada it is technically illegal to do home wiring work that you do not own if you aren't a licensed electrician..
Normally that much ballast on a 120V 15A (1875W resistive) breaker, the other lights just dim for a moment at startup.. Granted those were CWI ballasts that draw a steadier load.. (We can't use linear reactor ballasts here on 120V)..

Edit: It just occurred to me that if you blew your 3A timers then the ballast is definately drawing more than 3A at startup.. (Is there a fuse in the timer that you can replace?) That makes sense actually, I didn't exactly think about that math.. I'd dedicate 5A for that 600W during startup, and 4A for the 400W.. (Maybe even more).. Set your timers a little bit apart for startup/shutdown if you aren't already..

Can any UK ppl give a rundown on typical home breaker current ratings?

Sockets - 30A
Cooker - 32A
Lights - 6A
Shower - 45A
Main - 100A

I mean how much load is each std breaker rated for.. For instance in Canada most ppl have 200A service going into their homes.. A few breakers get combined for heavy duty appliances and 220V outlets, then most of the rest are 15A breakers/fuses, and are spread/shared around parts of the home.. The room I'm in for instance has 3 outlets, 2 of them are on one breaker, the third is on another breaker.. If I plug a load into the third outlet I don't have to worry about how much load is on the other 2 outlets, but if I was running a 1000W load on outlet 1 then I wouldn't want to run anything more than 500-600W on outlet 2..
I can't imagine that is the way load is actually distributed.. To wire safely you'd need giant, overly expensive line everywhere..