Where are you getting your intake air from, and venting your room heat to? Are you running a sealed room with only an AC for cooling? Are your lights air cooled?
I'm assuming the new lights your saving up for are LEDs?
I totally get being poor man, I am too. I've built my grow piece by piece harvest by harvest, and its still not where I really want it because of space limitations. But your gonna spend HUGE amounts of money to change lights, but can't spend $50-$100 to run an experiment yourself? Someday I would love to switch to LED because they are always getting better, but its WAAAY cheaper for me to run my 1kHPS in the mean time.
yea man same boat, been slowly getting things for years!
and yes looking at leds, thing is, remember how I said it's dead winter and heat is killing me, well that's when it's around 35° outside, imagine when it's 80 or 90! if I don't get these lights I'll have no choice but to shut down! if I shut down, I don't eat! well I'll eat, but it will be Ramen, and cereal with water and a fork!
so yes I can afford the lights but not the experiment stuff lol, I'm sure you can understand that! if you have ever ate cereal with water and fork! then you get what the struggle is, granted I'm still probably better off than like 60% of the world, but that's still not OK with me!
in the past cooling 1k hps, has been a challenge, but I've been saving to expand, and now with 3, there just isn't no way in hell to cool them all during the summer! so it's go leds or shut down, granted I'm still going to have 1, 1k hps running, but I don't wanna slow down, if you seen that video I posted, then u get why this is all finally starting to pay off!
like you I have gotten Lil by lil, harvest by harvest, and I'm finally at the point where im not just breaking even! at least this harvest will be the first!