Originally Posted by
syde00
I kinda like option 2... though i do have comments about all of them... i'll just run through them quickly:
first off, a general comment that applies to all of the options... how tall do you intend on letting the plants get? I;m not sure how far away you need to keep an air cooled HPS/MH light from the plants, but I know they kick out a ton of heat, just make sure the box is tall enough for the strains you want to grow that you can keep the light far enough back to not burn them. I have heard that ~20" is generally where HPS lands (though I know its all about the comfortable hand tecnique and could be closer), but using 20" as a guideline, that means you can have plants that are going to have a maximum height of 6 feet, minus the 20 inch light distance, minus the height of your pots (3gal pots are what? 10-12 inchs tall maybe?), and lastly, minus the space the bulb/reflector/cooler/etc. takes up at the top of the box (say 4-6"?) giving you a max plant height of 34-38", so about 3.5 feet. Not a bad size at all really, but certain strains could be cramped.
option 2:
- this is my favorite option of all of them, you could use the smaller area as a seedling/cloning area, or a mother veg area, etc. it also gives you great light intensity on the main chamber
option 3:
- would you run the MH and HPS at the same time? I am not real familiar with them like i said, but I think you would run into heat problems without some very very serious ventaliatoin for the box and the air-cooled tube as well... i'd probably go for a setup where you could just run MH for veg and switch to HPS for flower... not to mention, 800watts of 12-24 hours per day usage is going to = $$$ on your electrical bill
option 4: this is kinda similiar to option 2, but IMO, flower chamber should be larger than veg chamber... as you need extra space in flowering for when the plants stretch... and some strains stretch alot
option 5: i agree with you, its basically the same as option 4... i do kinda like this option better than 4 as it just seems a little more flexible, if you needed to re-locate the boxes for whatever reason it would be aloter easier than moving one big clunky one
option 6: this is really the exact same as 5, and really just deals with different planting schedules... i don;t think one is any more effecient than the other, its just a question of what you want... to put it in math terms...
a) do you want to harvest X yield every Y months
or
b) do you want to harvest X / 2 yield every Y / 2 months
both ways give you the same yield over the same amount of time, so its really all preference. Personally, i could go for option (b), mainly because its faster turn over and lets you work on multiple things at the same time... i have a bit of a nasty habbit of getting bored with things if i find myself just diong the same thing over and over again, so splitting my focus a bit would help keep me interested.
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