Quote Originally Posted by PharmaCan

I'm not sure what kind of system I'm going to use. Right now I'm using coco, which has it's ups and downs. But I'm limited by law as to the number of plants - so I'm thinking I'd be better off with fewer, bigger plants. I have 9' ceilings, so I've got plenty of height. The growroom will be approx. 12' x 10'. I just need to decide on the most efficient use of the space. I'm figuring on 2/3 of the room being for plants that are in their final 30 days of flower and 1/3 for plants in their first 30 days.
man... the plant count thing is both blessing and bummer. If it's anything reasonable (wot is it, 6 in veg, 6 in flower in Cowlifornia? pretty reasonable) you can keep yourself and probably a good bit of your neighbourhood stoned if you plan well.

Even powerful HID lighting can only penetrate foliage so deeply, so tall plants are not the friend of the indoor grower, even if you have the blessing of 9ft vertical to work with. You won't find any HID lighting (short of that found on your local football stadium, perhaps ) that will give you solid buds 9 ft below- at least not without cooking the tops.

Maxing the yield for just 6 in flower under artificial lighting begs for flattish, wide plants, meaning mainstem pruning early in the piece, or even a SCRoG op. SCRoG can be a lottttta work and time is spent on vegging plants which you will later flower. Takes away space one might normally use for flowering. Nothing is more light efficient than SCRoG due to training the plants to a screen- but light efficiency is not your top concern if you have kilowatts of MH & HPS hanging around, is it?