Question on Growing spaces

Hey guys, I just started posting here today, reading through a ton of threads and you've all given me the confidence to want to start my own small little experiement.

My question is about growing space, as I have a pretty limited area to start a grow in my house. Basically what I've narrowed it down to is a spot inside my closet.

What I'm looking to do is use a large piece of Mylar Sheeting to create a curtain of sorts and turn the right part of my closet, which is about 1'x3' in to the growing area. About 6 feet from the floor is a shelf which I'd plan to hang 2 or 3 CFLs from (hopefully on a contraption which will let me lower and raise the height of the lights, not sure how to do that yet). The nice thing is, the walls are painted white, and with the Mylar sheet I'd have a nice small area, and could just push the sheet to the side when I need to get in.

I'd be using CFLs; both cold and warm, pots I'm not sure on but I think grow bags might be best, a small fan on the stems, rockwool for the initial veg, and undecided on soil/nutes.

My question is will this be adequate space for 1 or 2 plants? I'm looking to grow some stuff we can't get around here, maybe White Widow, Black Pearl, or some kind of Pure Indica/Kush(mmmm).

Also, I've seen a lot of debate on soils but nothing conclusive for me. Would a soilless compouned be best with a 15-10-10 fertilizer for vegetation and 5-25-10 for flowering? Or is straight soil with just water a bit more successful?

Thanks for reading my wall of text guys! Wish me luck

You should have 30k lumens for a 1'x3' grow.

That's many many cfl's or two of the $25 econolight 150w hps's.

How much heat would two 150w HPS's put out? That's a concern for me because I don't really have the means to dissipate the heat anywhere.

I do thank you for the response though, I would have not know this!

300w of light is 300w of heat *roughly*. Doesn't matter what kind of lights you use, you will still have to vent that closet no matter what even if you only ran half that much light. There is no way to avoid heat and the whole HPS vs CFL because of heat argument is just wrong. 30k lumens worth of cfl's is going to prodice the same level of heat, and there's no way around it.


I don't know how much heat that really is. Two of them heat up my room about as much as leaving my pc on all day. (not counting monitor) My pc would be low end by todays standards but was high end a year or so ago if that helps at all. core2 quad, 8800gt

I guess you could stick 3 x 100w incandescent light bulbs in your closet and run those for a few hours to see. Heat from 300w of hps would be equal if not less than the 3 incandescents.

Drawing comparisons to the PC is perfect I have a similar setup and know just how much heat it outputs. That's not a TON of heat so I could definitely vent it out by mounting a couple fans to the top of the shelf, which is where the heat rises, and send it out the closet.

And it sounds like this should be adequate space for a pot or two!

OregonMeds said:

300w of light is 300w of heat *roughly*. Doesn't matter what kind of lights you use, you will still have to vent that closet no matter what even if you only ran half that much light. There is no way to avoid heat and the whole HPS vs CFL because of heat argument is just wrong. 30k lumens worth of cfl's is going to prodice the same level of heat, and there's no way around it.

Click to expand...

damn thats alotta cfls..lol

i use 6 26watters in a 2x3x3, heat is a issue with it and its 30 degrees outside the box..lol got 3 fems 2+ weeks flowering and just added 3 more 6 in a small spot 6" round pots using cheap ass MG, pulling 1 o per plant

i recommend you just "experiment" get some bag seed (which grown right is still amazing) and see how it goes.

That's a lot of CFLs, about how many lumens is that? Also, do you want to keep the HPS's as closet to the plants as you would cfls?

Yea it's a lot of cfl's but I didn't make those number up. The grow faq shows ideal is 10k lumens per sf of floor space for flowering.

Almost as close. I run them around 4" away with no cooltube.