plant grow lights – Hydroponic Economics

You Need a 30 Amp Timer Box

What a Lifesaver and Timesaver this box has been! What does it do you ask, what doesn’t it do? First it lets you plug straight into your 30 Amp Dryer Socket. So instead of trying to plug in your HID lights straight into the wall in your room, your using the higher amperage dryer socket instead! No more tripping your breaker when you plug in your second 1000w light.

Specifics

This particular model allows you to run up to 4 1000w lights and up to 10 amps of accessories from the same timer. The 4 1000w lights are run off of 20 Amp Breaker and 240V receptacles instead of the traditional 120V. The benefit of this configuration is that a 1000W HPS running at 240V (4.3Amps) runs at half the amperage then if plugged into 120V(8.9Amps). Essentially this will run 4 1000W lights for the costs of 2!

I also run my fans that cool my Air Cooled Hoods through this box. Another electricity saver; When my lights turn off, their cooling fans turn off. The box is controlled by a single 120V Trigger cord. I have mine connected to a digital timer which makes it nice and easy to control it and see what is happening. Make sure the timer will carry the load of whatever you have plugged into it, safety is always the most important thing. Never plug more then One 1000w Light into a standard timer.

The Amp Timer box saved me so much time and money. Its costs around $300 and compared to the several hundred dollars more it would have cost to higher an electrician to come in and do the work it was worth every penny. Not to mention how much lighter the electric bill will be in the future.

You can get the 30 Amp Timer Box at Amazon. Click here to read more.

Kevin

Fluorescent Grow Lights: Get Intense Vegetative Growth with Less Space

Indoor gardening tends to revolve around grow lights. grow lights have a very large effect on harvest weight. The more intense the light is, the faster your plants will grow, right? There is no practical light you could use to replicate the sun’s powerful beams. Instead, growers turn to high powered grow lights. High power lights use a lot of power and are usually really hot. They may not be practical for most indoor gardens.

High pressure sodium and metal halide light bulbs are really hot after they have been burning. They also crank up your electric bill. There are a few alternatives to this type of lighting. Metal halide bulbs are meant for vegetative growth. In most indoor gardens, the vegetative phase includes smaller plants. Swapping out your metal halide for a fluorescent grow light may save you space and energy. Fluorescent grow lights do not require large air cooled hoods because the fluorescent tubes stay relatively cool. At least cool enough for most plant growth.

Fluorescent Grow Lamps can be used for grow and bloom phases as long as you use the right bulbs.

A small salad greens garden for the family and your pets could be grown with ease under a few fluorescent grow lights. The grow lights you will want to use are not standard shop lights. Although low power shop lights will work for cloning systems, use indoor grow lights from a hydroponics shop. You can also order grow lights online. They are usually much cheaper online.

There are also fluorescent grow light bulbs for the bloom phase. They feature a red/orange spectrum. They are powerful enough to bloom tomatoes, strawberries, and other plants that do not require tropical light. Fluorescent light fixtures come in different sizes and lengths. Find the grow lights that will best suit your grow room.

Easy Grow Lights — Fluorescent light fixtures are usually outfitted with internal ballasts and a simple three prong cord.

The Hydrofarm 4-Foot T5 Grow Light System is a well respected Grow Light Set Up. Hydrofarm offers affordable grow lights that are cool enough for plant growth. Read over 50 customer reviews at Amazon.com

Green Light Means Go

Plant Green Light — Use a green light bulb to work in your grow room during night cycles. Plants do not photosynthesize green light, therefore their photo period is not disturbed.

Indoor gardens have a day period just like outdoor plants. The length of day is controlled by timers. Indoor gardens are meant to be convenient to the grower, but we can’t always work on our garden when it needs us. If you care about your plants, you don’t want them to suffer due to your neglect. On the other hand you can not neglect your life to tend for your plants. There is a solution for this dilemma!

Install green light bulbs next to your grow lights. If you know some basic wiring, you can wire a switch to the outside of the environment. Turning the green light on from outside of the environment will allow you to enter the environment with light. You don’t want to knock over what you are trying to protect!

The Importance of a Reliable Ballast

Recently when I was away from my house and garden for almost two weeks, I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of a good ballast. The ballast is the box that cord set comes out of for HID lighting. Ballasts usually come with metal halide and high pressure sodium lighting systems so if you are using a high powered lighting system in your hydroponics garden, you most likely have a ballast. As a novice I didn’t realize the importance of a good ballast. I learned my lesson when a large crop of berries was wiped out because of a ballast failure.

I was using a cheap ballast that came with the kit and did not even have casing to cool the outside temperature of the device. It was an old fashioned magnetic ballast. The ballast died while I was gone on vacation and when I came back the berries had been sitting under darkness for days, like a three or four day solar eclipse. To make matters worse the berries weren’t using any energy because there was no sunlight, but the water pump for the nutrient reservoir was still running on schedule. The berries were being pumped with nutrients every day during their bloom phase while they were receiving no light! There was no way for the berries to use the nutrients being fed to them. They were just starting to bloom so they mostly died and there was no fruit for all the work I had put into them.

The lesson here is no matter if you get a magnetic or electronic digital ballast, make sure its GOOD QUALITY. Your crop may depend on the reliability of your ballasts. Hopefully indoor gardeners all over can read this tragic story of loss before they make the same mistake I made.