ThatDamnedPanda
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quote:
ORIGINAL: WolfyMontgomery
Holy cow!
Thank you all for your help.
Yes, some of the stuff they're growing is technically less than legal, but they have permits for it and all that jazz because the Father has a very bad back and is in a lot of pain. They also have some normal herbs (I think I spotted some thyme last I was able to have a peek - I'm not allowed back there when the parents are home though because they think I'd flip out... even though my mother was a regular smoker too lmao).
The lamps have to be high wattage to imitate sunlight, I have no idea if you can find lower wattage sun lamps o.O
You can, but lower wattage means less light for the plants, so it will have a direct effect on both the yield and the potency. Considering that most indoor grows need to get maximum yield per square foot to make themselves worth the effort, that's not a tradeoff most growers are willing to make. Most people design their system from the top down - they start with the brightest light their grow space can handle, and everything they add from that point is custom-tailored to complement the lights.
Since you say he's got a medical certification, he's not breaking the law. Right? So I'm not breaking the law by answering your question. If the grow room is the source of the electrical problems (and it sounds as though it is), there are things that can be done to manage the power usage. Trouble is, it sounds as though your options are limited, because it's not your grow. Some people use low-wattage fluorescent tubes to start off their seedlings or their clones, and that's a workable option for really young plants. The tubes give you the same spectrum as a metal halide bulb, at a fraction of the wattage, but at a much lower intensity. As the young plants mature, they need the brighter lights, so most growers switch to the brighter (and power-hungry) metal halide bulbs for most of the vegetative stage. There's really no other way to do it. They're making a lot of progress with CFLs and LED lights, and in a few years they may be practical options for home grows, but right now people are pretty much stuck with the brute force approach of high intensity bulbs.
An average home grow can easily suck 2000 or 2500 watts at 20 or even 25 amps. If memory serves, the ballast for a 1000W HPS lamp draws around 9 or 9.5 amps, a 600W about 5 amps, and a 400W about 3.3 or 3.5. Many grow operations run one 400W for small plants and one 1000W for mature plants, so you're looking at 13 amps there right off the bat. Add some pumps and a couple of fans, and you can easily be looking at 20 amps just for the grow room. That's why most growers install a dedicated circuit for their grows.
Your people evidently didn't do that, so my suggestion would be to distribute the load to other circuits in the house. Identify other circuits in nearby areas of the house that do not draw a lot of power (storerooms or whatever, any part of the house where there aren't many lights or in which the lights are seldom used), and run a cord to the grow area. Use that cord to power the fans and the pumps. It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than just flipping breakers every time the lights go out.
I think you should definitely talk to the father about this, because it sounds as though the mother has no idea what she's doing here. Any time a breaker is tripping that often, it's sending you a clear message - you have way too much load on that circuit. If she keeps monkeying with the breakers instead of fixing the underlying problem, this is a potentially very serious safety issue - especially if any of the equipment in the grow room is jerry-rigged, which is common with home grows. You could all wake up dead some morning.
If the father isn't persuaded by the safety concerns, I suggest pointing out to him that frequent interruptions in the light cycle of the plants can have a serious effect on the potency of the product. These plants are very sensitive to their light cycles - in simplest terms, the number of hours of light they get each day is what causes them to move from the vegetative (growing) stage, and start producing the alkaloid compounds that make them so special. If the light cycle is interrupted for long, the plants can become confused and either move into that mature stage too early, or not at all. Some of the equipment can also be damaged by power outages and surges, and that gear can be pricy.
Good luck. If you have any specific questions, feel free to PM me. I don't check in here very often anymore, but I'll try to make an effort to watch my inbox.
Edit: Oh, I'm surprised I forgot about this trick. You can sometimes take a significant amount of load off of a circuit by switching out the incandescent bulbs on the circuit with CFL bulbs. Depending on how that part of the house is lighted, you can sometimes save several amps by making the switch. A 100W incandescent draws close to a full amp, a comparable CFL pulls about 1/10 of that (if memory serves.)
< Message edited by ThatDamnedPanda -- 11/21/2010 7:23:13 PM >
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RE: Old Houses and Electricity - 
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