New grower, new space, lots of questions. All input and suggestions welcome.

Hey guys.

I'll keep the intro short. New Member, long time lurker on some other forums. I'm a long time cannabis user/enthusiast for both medicinal benefits and recreational purposes, but mostly I just love weed haha. Things have finally aligned and I'm starting my long awaited adventure into growing my own. I'll be building out my grow space in the next coming months. Although I have a pretty decent outline of how I want to tackle it, I'm still left with some questions and concerns and I figured the more opinions the better.

Grow Space:

This area is in a basement, and will have 2 exterior walls which are split walls(foundation for 4ft then studs the rest). The area I'll be using is roughly 24' x with 8' ceilings and concrete floors. I'll be splitting the area up into three areas, two 8' x 10'(roughly) areas, one for Veg and one for Flower. The third area will just be a hallway/storage area between the two separate rooms with whatever space is left. I'll be insulating and putting anti mold drywall up. This area will be "sealed" from the rest of the basement.

Each 8'x10' space has a window that ill be taking out, sealing up and using these areas to install the new ventilation holes etc. The weather outside is very cold in winter, very hot in the summer, I'm close to the coast to so outside humidity levels can be extreme on both ends.

Grow Medium:

I have decided that I want to go to the Organic, no till, living soil route. My plan is to have smart pots on bases with wheels so I can move them from veg to flower with ease and keep the cycle in motion. I'm not really set on what size pots and how many plants I want to run, but im not looking to run a big number of plants, would rather grow fewer, bigger plants, quantity is no where near my main goal in this. Soil mix is one thing I'm fairly confident on, so I wont waste time here with details but basically it'll be a 1:1:1 base mix with the usual amendments and a nice mulch layer and cover crop.

Lighting:

This is the area I'm having trouble with. My end goal is somewhere around 50watts per sqft. I cant decide weather to go LED or HID. Given the ceiling height, outside weather and energy costs, I'm leaning towards LED. I think I would end up paying a lot more in the long run for cooling to keep temps proper in the summer time, especially two separate areas if I went HID(I think?).

I said each grow space would be 8'x10' but the plants will be arranged in a 8'x8' area, leaving a bit of working room, so my light coverage will really only be concentrated on that 8x8 area. That gives 64sqft that im trying to cover, and if I want to hit my goal I'll need about 3,200 watts of LED lighting. I'm pretty interested in the Quantum Boards from HLG as I see there name pop up a lot in lighting discussions and seem to be very good, any chance anyone could suggest a lighting config that would hit my goal and give a nice even spread on my 8x8 area? Any suggestions are welcome here as I said, my LED knowledge is zero haha.

Ventilation & Environment Control:

My plan for ventilation and environment control are based around the fact that I'll more than likely go LED lighting, so this should make controlling temps a bit easier for me. My plan is for 8"(or 6" if anyone thinks that's more appropriate) ducting with a inline fan pulling air through a carbon filter and exhausted outside. This will be mounted closer to the ceiling. As for air intake I plan on just using passive air intake vents and use negative pressure to keep cool, fresh air coming in from the bottom, these will be located near the bottom of the walls. I'll also be installing a few wall mounted oscillating fans to keep air circulating. Portable Air conditioners and heaters in each area to help with temps and humidity. As for Co2, I have no clue yet and still reading on that aspect, if anyone could offer some guidance on how I can achieve this is my grow space or if its needed. Thanks in advanced.

Mind you, this is all in attempt to avoid using HID and having to install split AC/heat pumps etc and paying $$$ in energy costs trying to cool the area.

Sorry for the long post, and thank you in advanced if you took the time to read and give some input.

Thanks,
Who-Haa.

What are the temps in the basement you have to deal with?

BostonBuds said:

What are the temps in the basement you have to deal with?

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To be honest that is a detail I have over looked. The space isn't my main living spot and right now the basement is completely unfinished. If I had to give a rough estimate, 30-40 F in the winter and probably 60 F ish in the summer, closer to 70 if were getting hotter than reg temps outside. Once insulation and drywall are up it should become pretty stable. Also heating is being installed in the basement other than the grow room itself too. If it helps give you a better idea of the type of weather I deal with, think of Maine's coastline.

Thank you for asking this question as I will now be monitoring the temps of the basement as is to get a better idea of what to expect.

Don't drywall. Use wood or OSB.

Who-Haa said:

paying a lot more in the long run for cooling.... if I went HID

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CMH really don't need much in the way of cooling, a 315w CMH ballast & bulb are cooler than a 400w MH bulb, so no need for hoods or cool tubes.

Who-Haa said:

To be honest that is a detail I have over looked. The space isn't my main living spot and right now the basement is completely unfinished. If I had to give a rough estimate, 30-40 F in the winter and probably 60 F ish in the summer, closer to 70 if were getting hotter than reg temps outside. Once insulation and drywall are up it should become pretty stable. Also heating is being installed in the basement other than the grow room itself too. If it helps give you a better idea of the type of weather I deal with, think of Maine's coastline.

Thank you for asking this question as I will now be monitoring the temps of the basement as is to get a better idea of what to expect.

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If your hottest summer days are 70-80 degrees, I'd recommend going with HID for sure. Keep the lights off during the hottest parts of the day so you aren't competing with the hottest parts of the day, and so you aren't paying for peak hours on your electric bill.

LED is great, but you'll spend an arm and a leg trying to light such a big space. If you're just starting out, go with the HID until you get a grow or two under your belt. Vent the hot air from the HID out of the basement and your temps shouldn't go over 80 degrees. You also won't need a heater with HID. Grab yourself a temp controller and have the inline fan come on when your room gets hotter than 70-75 degrees. No need to pay the electric on a heater.

My 1000w DE HPS covers a 4x7 area with ease, if I were trying to light an 8x10 area then I'd go with 2 1000w DE lights. It'll leave you with room to move around and work in there, trust me when I say you want room to move around. You never know what kinds of issues you'll have to troubleshoot and trying to troubleshoot something without room is an absolute nightmare.

You can snag a 1000w DE HPS setup for ~$180 on Amazon, so you're looking at ~$360. It'll run you ~$1200-$1400 for enough LEDs to light up that space, and you'll have to DIY. Not the biggest deal, but time is money. On top of that, since LEDs run cooler than HIDs you will likely have to run a heater during the months that it's 40-60 degrees, and running the heater will negate any savings the LEDs will give you. In fact, a heater+LEDs will cost you more monthly than running 2 DE lights. Not sure how much juice your heater takes, but I know mine takes 1500w.

The people that reap the benefits of LED lighting are those that have to deal with 80+ degree temps constantly. LED does in fact have the best light spectrum, however DE HPS and CMH lights come pretty damn close. If you're just starting off, I'd recommend saving the $1000 and go with DE or CMH. It'd be easier to justify the cost of the LEDs if you weren't dealing with such low temps.

Food for thought though for when you get a bit more experience under your belt. What you could do is run CMH or DE MH in your veg room and run LEDs in flower to take advantage of the LED's superior spectrum. Rather than using a heater for your LED flower room, you can simply vent the hot air from the HID lights in the veg room into your flower room to keep things warm.

Everything else looks/sounds good though IMO. Hope you get a journal or something going when you get things up and running.

From an overall life cycle/replacement cost perspective:
HID with a life span of say 12,000 hours and LED with 70,000 hours
LED will last 70,000/12,000 = 5.8 times longer

Efficiency of LED is you will save 40% on electricity.

So to normalize the two cases for direct comparison lets compare both at 70,000 hours. Lets say it takes an avg of 4.75 monthsx12 hrs/day = 1710 hours of lighting per grow (discounted veg and made it equivalent to 12hrs/day because power use isn't as high) so per month it would take an average of 1710/4.75 = 360 hours/month. Take 70,000 hours/360 hours/month = 194 months.

So at 70,000 hours

HID:
Light Equipment: $123 x 4 = $492
HID bulb costs: $24 x 4 x 5.8 factor = $672
Electricity cost: $13,968 (used 2000W)
Note you said coverage was important so 4x600W
Total = $15,132 or $78/month

LED:
Light Equipment: $200 x 6 = $1200
Electricity cost: 13,968 x 0.6 = $8,380
Total = $9,581 or $49/month

It would take you exactly two years to pay back the higher up front costs of LED with lower electricity costs. I used cheapo but decent rated light equipment.

For heating with LED setup, no extra electricity costs needed, basement is currently unfinished so its pretty easy to run an extra heat run or two to redirect heat into the area in question. Also can run a duct to outside to circulate outside/inside depending on outside/inside temp.

You get better control on spectrum with LED but up front costs are higher. You can get some pretty even coverage with LED's if you DIY for about a $1/W using linear PCB's or with chilled cobs about $0.80/W, or 3590 cobs at $1/W. I would build an adjustable mounting array out of 2x4's in the ceiling and thermally insulate them from attached cobs.

Who-Haa said:

Things have finally aligned and I'm starting my long awaited adventure into growing my own.

My end goal is somewhere around 50watts per sqft. I cant decide weather to go LED or HID.

I said each grow space would be 8'x10' but the plants will be arranged in a 8'x8' area

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How did you come up with 50w/ft when you don't know what lights you're going to run?

128 square feet seems very ambitious for a 1st grow! I'd start small, get some experience, then expand.

Who-Haa said:

The space isn't my main living spot and right now the basement is completely unfinished. If I had to give a rough estimate, 30-40 F in the winter and probably 60 F ish in the summer, closer to 70 if were getting hotter than reg temps outside.

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I find 30-40F very hard to believe for basement temps!

1212ham said:

I find 30-40F very hard to believe for basement temps!

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I agree, it can be -35C here and my basement never gets more than 3C below of what it is upstairs. Albeit yours isn't insulated I would guess maybe down to 12C/54F unfinished at worst and even that is a stretch.