Hello once again, Today I'll discuss lighting requirements for setting up a successful grow room. When I design grow rooms for my customers I try to think on the smaller scale. A lot of my customers come in and say "we've got an 8' x 8' room we want to put into use". That size doesn't seem large, but what would it take to produce the 40 to 50 watts per square foot which is necessary for dense heavy yields. You might be surprised to know that the 1000 watt lighting system would not work as you would be only realizing 15.62 watts per square foot! That's a far cry from the 40 to 50 watts required. Now don't get me wrong, 15.62 watts per square foot would be fine for overwintering, or to grow short crops like lettuce or spinach, but tomatoes will require much, much more. To achieve the desired numbers you would need to set up four 600 watt lights to bring your totals up for those large tomatoes. Now that seems like quite an investment doesn't it. But, here is another school of thought. Lets say we were to take the size of the room down to a 5' x 5' room. A 1000 watt system would now be producing at 40 watts per square foot. Obviously when looking at your initial investment a single 1000 watt system would cost considerably less than four 600 watt systems. But now let's go back and look at the 8' x 8' versus a 5' x 5' room and address the final yield. Some would say that even though we have less light in the 8' x 8' room, they could put in more plants and produce a lot of tomatoes. Yes, your right, but only in the sense that you would have more plants. When it comes to growing indoors, it's all about yield. The 5' x 5' room would produce 50% more final weight with less plants than the 8' x 8' room with more plants. It's the size of the fruit, not the amount of plants that will bump up the yield. Next time I'll be discussing ventilation. Although the calculations can be daunting, I'll attempt to make it as understandable as I can and eliminate most of the math from the equation. In this case bigger is better!! Till then, happy growing from: The Grow Store Traverse City, MI 231-421-5191 ...read more
By The Grow Store July 25, 2009
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Obtaining a pest control certification can lend credibility to your services and inspire confidence and respect in your customers. Learn more about pest control certification to determine if procuring this valuable designation would be a positive career measure for you. ...read more