NewbieQuestions - Lighting and design

I'm the sort of guy that don't do ANYTHING without a detailed plan, and some problems came up while designing my future growroom(s). Any help and advice would be greatly appriciated!
First of all I'll briefly explain how I want my growroom.

After much thought I decided to go with a DWC system over soil, it seems like the better choice for me. Easy to maintain, cheap and easy to build, great yields.
My vegging room will probably be 100x100cm/almost 3,5' x 3,5' with a 400w MH.
My flowering room will be 120x120cm/4' x 4' with a 600w HPS.
Here's how I want my flowering room to be like:


(Btw, the square around the pots are not the walls of the room, they only demonstrate how everything is lined up.)
May put up to 9 plants there if the ones in the back are possible to maintain/reach.


1. Will my plants be okay with the transition from 400w vegging to 600w flowering?
Probably the noobiest question since the first caveman asked the sabletiger if he wanted to become friends, but I really have no clue.

2. With 9 plants in there, will they get enough room/light? (if not, is 7 okay? 5?)
a. ~ 65cm indica
b. ~ 110cm sativa/indica

3. If I combine the 600w HPS with some CFL lights concentrated at the lower parts of the plants, will the smaller buds and yield overall be bigger??

4. I'll probably grow mostly indica or indica dominant plants since they're shorter and "easier". Are the 10L/2,6gallon buckets big enough?
And if I later decides to grow some bigger (max 120cm in height) sativa plants, will they be big enough for them?


Sadly, this won't become reality for a while. It's close to impossible to get good weed (it's hard to get weed at all) over here and with $25 for 1 gram of mediocre hash, I'm motivated as fuck to get started on some growing.
SOON, SOOON!


Peace guys

i would change your flowering to a 1000w and maybe your veg. to a 600w but light changes wont hurt the plants. With hights you can kinda regulate the plants and cut them young to keep young and as they grow. I have one in a 2.5gallon i beleive and its doing just fine so no problem there. Hope this helps

1: yes. They will be fine.
2: I would probably stick with 5, but that's just my personal opinion as I'm an LED guy myself.
3: the more light the merrier. Do you plan on training these plants at all?
4: same as the lights. More the merrier, but those will do fine.

Also, nice avatar. Is that Pardee?

NMgreen said:

i would change your flowering to a 1000w and maybe your veg. to a 600w but light changes wont hurt the plants. With hights you can kinda regulate the plants and cut them young to keep young and as they grow. I have one in a 2.5gallon i beleive and its doing just fine so no problem there. Hope this helps

Click to expand...

Both my power bill and fuses would suffer greatly from a upgrade like that. Considering 600w in both rooms, have to see how many amps all the fans drain from the fuses first.

trevronious said:

1: yes. They will be fine.
2: I would probably stick with 5, but that's just my personal opinion as I'm an LED guy myself.
3: the more light the merrier. Do you plan on training these plants at all?
4: same as the lights. More the merrier, but those will do fine.

Also, nice avatar. Is that Pardee?

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'll probably stick with 4-5 or even just 3 plants when it's one of the bigger strains. But I'm still curious if 9 smaller indica plants would have a nice home in there.
I will at least do some topping or fimming, maybe supercropping on the bigger ones.

Yeah, Pardee. Love his artwork!

in dwc they are all bigger strains
you are gonna be mortified at the growth you are about to experience
if you put 5 dwc plants in a 4x4 room.....hope you can change your res from outside the room, cuz....ummm.....
after day 22-30ish of flower i BET you can't get in there
how high is your ceiling?
how tall is your res?
minimum clearance for 600?

everywhere in america a 1000 watter in flower plus a 400 watter in veg will cost you approximately 50-60 extra per month, not including ac if you have it(minimul increase)
i would not grow bushes in a 4x4 with 1k watts
i would sog in that space with 5 days from transplant 2 -3 node clones i would i would
with the 600, in a 4x4... 9 3gallon pots with 10-14 day rooted clones in soil at 5 nodes bent in half day of flower...just me though
if i was gonna dwc in there.... thst's a tight space man

shagalicious said:

in dwc they are all bigger strains
you are gonna be mortified at the growth you are about to experience
if you put 5 dwc plants in a 4x4 room.....hope you can change your res from outside the room, cuz....ummm.....
after day 22-30ish of flower i BET you can't get in there
how high is your ceiling?
how tall is your res?
minimum clearance for 600?

Click to expand...

How much bigger can I expect plants to grow? Like, if I get a strain that's supposed to be ~35" and don't do any training at all, how big will it become in my dwc? Or does it mostly grow more bushy and not so much in height?

4x4 room is the minimun I want. If I can work out some more space, I'll use the same strenght in lamps and the same number of plants, just a little wider apart from eachother.
I don't think height will be much of a problem. I'm going to build it myself, so I will make it about 2m/6,5' high. Biggest problem with my planning right now, is that I need to move first, so I don't know how much space I'll have. Just trying to have a plan for the bare minimum space I want to use.

Not getting in my room ain't that much of a problem. Worst case scenario, I'll build or buy some kind of "chinese eating table"-ish device so I can just turn it around to get to the plants in the back.

shagalicious said:

everywhere in america a 1000 watter in flower plus a 400 watter in veg will cost you approximately 50-60 extra per month, not including ac if you have it(minimul increase)
i would not grow bushes in a 4x4 with 1k watts
i would sog in that space with 5 days from transplant 2 -3 node clones i would i would
with the 600, in a 4x4... 9 3gallon pots with 10-14 day rooted clones in soil at 5 nodes bent in half day of flower...just me though
if i was gonna dwc in there.... thst's a tight space man

Click to expand...

I'm not going to go for a 1000w before I've done this for a while at least.
Thanks for some helpful advice man. Appriciated

I got another question.


The lumen pr square feet is confusing me.

600w hps lamp - 5 plants - 4x4 room
600w hps lamp - 5 plants - 6x6 room

Would those two setups be just as efficient? The lumen pr square feet is lower in the last room, but with the same light and same amount of plants, it shouldn't be much of a problem, or?