whats a safe amount of power to use on my first grow?

i have heard of people getting busted by their power bill
whats a safe amount of power to use?
and what lights should i use?
im thinking 1 4 foot flourestent and 2 plants
im a noob so if i said sumthing stupid give me a break =]
thx

Don't trip if that's all ur doin. But for the light ur suggested using I can already tell u will not be enough. Ur plants will end up lanky with very few leaves on little tiny stems. get more lights before u even start, and no worries about the bill.

If you are using a computer to get on the internet then you are currently using 300-500w of power, just from your computer.. not even your monitor. By the way, if you're using a laptop I was just trying to make a point lol. I have a 250w and a can honestly say i've never worried about it.. when you start getting up to 1,000w thats when you need to be a bit more safe.

ohh
that makes alot of sense
thanx

what kind of lights do u suggest??

Depens on how much $ ur willin tospend on the lights and all the other stuff. shit gets expensive reall quick

eh, i'd say go for the 400w HPS, you can veg tho not as well as MH, but they have conversion bulbs, and you can flower the shit outta them babies. you can get one for 150 at HTGSupply, but i've just seen a thread about buying a 150w HPS for 20 bucks, can't find the link maybe somebody else can. WAY better deal than working with CFLs

thanx alot
=]

If you pay for the electricity you use and don't steal it you can use all you like in most any part of the world and it will never be the cause of getting you busted. By the time you raised someones eyebrows to look at your power usage you were already screwed some other way.

Tell nobody, never, ever, and don't steal power. And don't do blatantly obviously dumb stuff.

yea man ha i wouldnt worry about
it.. im running 4 1000s watts and im not even flinching.. around 45kwh a day or soo..
\

i have a 400w hps it raises my bill like 15 dollars

It's definately worth the extra on the bill

power companies dont care how much power you use. in fact, so long as you pay the bill on time, they love you using up as much juice as you can. like someone else already said, before they look at your power consumption, your as good as busted already, because they had something much bigger to tip them off to your op in the first place.

i was running a 600W HPS and a 1000W MH at the same time for months and no probs whatsoever. just pay your bill on time and dont try to steal the electricity.

start with a 1000w screw all the cfls. you can do 1000w easily

hid hut has killer deals on digital ballasts look at their brand.

eastoaksav6500 said:

start with a 1000w screw all the cfls. you can do 1000w easily

Click to expand...

1000 watts on 2 plants= wasted light,energy you only need 5-7000 lumens per sq foot any more is pointless its just a waste

yea, if your going to use 1000 watts, you better be growing at least 6 or 8 plants...otherwise it would be very inefficient. the spread of light on those things is much large then two plants could ever grow indoors. for two plants, get a 400 or maybe a 600 if you plan on upgrading your setup later. always buy with the future in mind is what iv learned when purchasing for your grows...

A good rule of thumb is that you can run 1000 watts per a room in your house. So if you have a 3 bedroom house. You can run 3000. I myself keep it under that. But not by much. Good luck bro

Dont know if you bought a light already but i got a sweet 250 watt hps with 2 bulbs one is HPS for flowering and the other is a Metal Hallide for vegitative growth, it has a batwing reflector and 8 feet of cord on either side of the aluminum ballast box. The box has vents on it and is aluminum. I did 6 plants off this setup to a height of 3 1/2 feet and got a little over a half pound i didnt even notice a difference on the bill maybe $6 a month.