Home depot lighting

I am going to grow 2-4 plants inside a cabinet I am building. I'm going to make the cabinet about 30 inches deep or so and 5 1/2 feet tall and 4 feet wide. I was at Home Depot and saw some 240watt and 450watt lights. They were about 35$ a piece. I think they were MH or something like that. Is one of those enough? Do you think I could add a couple more types of lights that I could buy from Home Depot? Fluorescent maybe? Ideas?
Second question...Can anyone recommend a good high potency plant that isn't to difficult to raise? This is my first time.

One was a 400W single bulb with reflector for about 130$ new in box. Do I need that much wattage with 2-4 plants? Is a 150watt high pressure sodium enough? Thanks everybody....jerky's on me...lol

HID in a cabinet is going to createa lot of heat; you're going to need tons of ventilation. i'm not sure what HID's home depot has, but HPS is popular around here, especially for flowering. if you want a cooler cabinet solution you can do flourescent, if you used maybe 6 T5 HO (high output) 54watt flouro tubes in a fixture at the top of your cabinet that could work. HID isn't out of the question, just know you'll need excellent cooling

if you're thinking you can put this cabinet in your livingroom and no one will know you're mistaken. you're going to need fans moving a ton of air for HID, and even with flourescent you'll need good ventilation


basically here's the basics on lights

MH and HPS (metal halide, high pressure sodium) are called HID's (high intensity discharge); they are the best lights to use IF POSSIBLE. HPS is slightly more efficient. a common thing these days is to use flourescent (either tube or cfl-compact flourescent) for vegetative, and hps for flowering. for your cabinet, IF you can cool it well, some CFL's for early growth, with say a 250w HPS you start using later (probably still during veg though) might do well


have you considered doing two cabinets: one for veg and one for flower? i hope this cabinet is going in a locked room

First, its imperative that you determine what exactly type of light it is. Is it Mercury, Halide, HPS etc. You must know that first in order to make any kind of informed decision. Places like the Depot usually do carry both halide and HPS lights which is what you want. No mercurys, no quartz or any other types are worth your trouble.

The ones sold at the depot are going to be security lights, not growing lights. They will be extremely heavy and usually mounted vertically instead of horizontal. In order to utilize those to their fullest potential, you will need to take them apart, seperate the light bulb fixture part from the ballast, re-wire / extend the wiring and either buy or make a reflector to mount the light bulb part in. It's a fair amount of time and work but it is possible and the end result will be the same as a bought grow light if you do it right.

The one and only possible advantage to this approach, is if you do not want to have your name associated with an on-line order of a grow light or you do not want to go to a grow store. It's a PIA, but I did exactly this years ago when I had an indoor op for exactly those reasons. Be sure to pay in cash without any type of prefered customer card or the entire process is a waste of time as associating your name with an HPS security light is not much different than associating it with a grow light. The DEA and cops are on to this approach too. Be sure to use real heavy guage like 12 guage or heavier wiring and have a circuit breaker in the line. Solder all connections with a high wattage (60 W or above) soldering iron. Tape them thouroghly after soldering. There are plans out their for creatng your own reflector from sheet metal with common tools.

good luck

Well 400 watt models are historically the most energy efficient model (and differences can be dramatic) I think 400W is good size even for two very healthy plants.

Shovelhandle

I agree shovel. I use 1KW for vegging and used to use them for flowering too but had more area to cover so I went with 3 400's and am having excellent results! Nice large and dense flowers covered with trichomes...I see no difference with this harvest compared with many 1KW harvests from the past. But for a cabinet I'm afraid I'd have to suggest this person use nothing larger than a 250 with supplimental lighting from a couple banks of flouro's in the top corners of the cab to create a half hexagon effect (if you can picture it...or picture a box with the top edges rounded off using a bank of 2 tubes on each side, long enough to fill the length of the interior edge). I would also recommend you get one with a remote ballast. You're going to have enough battles with the heat, especially once the heat of summer arrives and a remote ballast will help distribute it better than one that is attached to the bulb/reflector.

A couple more suggestions for you before you go further:
If your going to go through all of this work and all this effort to build this cabinet and then purchase and set up all this stuff and take all this risk, then make it worth the trouble. I suggest the following:

1 - Make it taller than 5 feet. By the time you take away the space at the bottom for the containers, and then take away the space at the top to hang the lights, and take away the space between the light and the plants for heat dissipation, you will have very, very little room left for flowering plant size. Believe me if you make a cab with 5 ft of total vertical space, you will forever wish you had just made it a little taller. 6 feet min, 7 or more better.

2 - Don't wast your time and money on a 150 watt HID light for flowering. The amount of flower that you will produce will not even be enough to keep yourself in stash. You will run out long before the next set finishes. It's really not worth all this trouble and risk for anything less than a 400 watt halide for your flowering cabinet / space. A 400 HPS would be slightly better, and a 600Watt or higher HPS better yet. I realize someone may disagree, but this is just an honest opinion based on experience. Why go through all this and still not even have a steady supply for personal use.

3. With a cab of that size you describe, you really need a separate veg area. That's barely big enough for a decent flower spot for a couple of plants. Build a second small cab with FLs for a veg spot. On this one you can go with a smaller size cab and high output FLs.

I made my very first light from a security set up from Lowes/HomeDepot. I would never do that again as it was so freaking expensive. I use Econolight.com. They only supply up 400's, a great floro place, but IMHO, you cant beat their prices on kits.
I usually buy like 5 mh kits, and 5 hps kits. I have been using 2 seperate boxes for years now, box 1 has a pair of 150hps's and a 70 mh, for 370 blended watts.
The other box is a 150hps and a 70 mh. I think a kit and a pair of bulbs hps/150's cost $80.00 or so. They are electric supply house not a shop, so it's way safer IMHO.

I did that one time by converting a security light from the Depot. What a lot of work and expense to make a light. Also, creating a good reflector with sheet metal is not as easy as it might seem. Honestly, your much better off buying a grow light and I think that you will be happier. Get a gift card and send it to somebody elses address if you feel the need. Or have a non-growing friend get you a PO box at a mail type store in their name.