Cheeky topic title but very sincere!

My first post here(just reg'd), but a reader for a time. I have a few grows under my belt(guerilla style) from when I was a resident of Thailand, now I've upped roots and moved to a climate that is less forgiving so I've decided on growing indoors.

I've constructed my box out of ply and 2x2 the internal area I have is 1ft deep and 4ft wide, an area of 4ft square but elongated.. I've got myself a 400watt HPS and what I was wondering was; will this give me 100w per sq ft? or does it work out different?

I know the intesity of light in the centre will be greater than the outer and will be setting up a scrog net with a dip to compensate.

How tall is it ?

With a horizontal reflector, the coverage of a 400 watt HPS is probably roughly 2 feet by 3 feet with the wide dimension being either side of the lamp - so your space is a bit of a challenge ...

Any chance of making it a bit deeper ?

Plenty of head space(6FT)!

Unfortunately due to space restrictions I can only get a depth of a foot..

I had been thinking of creating a segment for cloning/vegging so I could make the area 3FT wide and have the extra 1FT for the segment

This is your dilemma.

I have a 4 foot wide space and light it well with 2 x 250 watt lamps, but the depth is enough to take the lamp ...

Click to view attachment

Any reason why the lamp can't be hung parallel to the width of the cabinet?

I didn't draw my diagram very accurately :-

Click to view attachment

I suppose the light will get there one way or another - after all, cooltubes have less than optimal reflectors ...

Sorry mate I meant positioning the lamp the other way to your diagram, [ -- ] like so

Also I have a cool star, not tube as I've read they aren't the best of shades for light spread

Thanks for your help so far mate

What I meant was that more light comes out the lamp sideways - so you'll end up with a 2 foot by 1 foot space with more lumens than the plant can use.

Perhaps some sort of vertical arrangement. ?

I'm following you now mate! (started on the blunts a bit too early today)

I had thought about a vertical set-up but a parabolic shade is too big to fit in my space, the walls are lined with diamond reflective mylar but I guess that wont compensate for a vertically hung bulb without a shade

1 foot wide I'd consider 3 150 watt HPS's if you can find them cheap enough or 2 250w's.

You can hang it vertically with no reflector just drop the bulb down under the canopy and it'll light the sides.



..xx
x L x
..xx

x's being plants and L light, almost certainly not enough depth.

Although I loath to say this I would also consider a couple of shelves and growing under fluro tubes to maximise space usage.

Thanks for the input Tutu mate, upon having a good smoke last night and some internet browsing I'm going to jump in the deep end(indoor cultivation-wise) and try a vertical scrog as I have the wallspace rather than floorspace giving me 6ft by 4ft to play with... just hope i can control the temps with the light being only a foot away(thank god I have an air cooled reflector)

Put a shelf in the middle to get 2 3 foot grow areas and light it with 8 3 foot tubes per level and I think you'd get more bud. It's rare I would recommend fluros over HPS but in your case I honestly believe you'd get more bud.

I would stagger the tube arrangement to cover the 4 foot in total. If only you could have got 2 foot or even 1.5foot of depth. 1 foot with a reflector will still be closer than 7 inchs from the bulb a bit to close if hung vertically I think.

I did see a grow on OG where they got 1g a watt from tubes they used dexion shelving and had 4 levels of plants in an 8 foot space.

The beautiful thing about fluros is you can get within 2 inch of the plants without burning, hell you could put tubes on the rear wall for supplimental lighting

If it's a generous 4 foot, perhaps there's room for cheapo 4 foot units ?

If he lived in my town, I could perhaps "flytip" my vast collection so Tokey_Stoker could discover them ?

...last resort though ...

If there was only 3 inches more depth it would be my present facility ...

My biggest regret when I built a veg chamber was I made it 4 foot, if only I made it a little wider I could have used 4 foot tubes obviously a better choice if he can get away with it.

Thanks for gettin back guys, I honestly hadn't thought of tubes though I had looked at the ecolights.

I'm not very sparky savvy though I can follow diagrams to the T, any chance you guys could provide some links for what I'd need? I'm assuming it's just the tubes+fittings and ballast/ignitor?

Once again your advice is invaluable, ta very much

E2A; It's a tight 4FT but a very generous 3FT

Avoid ecolights like the plague they're utter shite.

For lighting you need fittings, starters & tubes (Preferably warm white & daylight tubes (The red and blue equivs of MH/HPS)) some sort of ventilation if you do do two levels (I would due to poor light penetration a scrog and short plants is order of the day) some sort of tray and pipe system to make sure the water from the 2nd level plants doesn't go into the first level of plants.

I just measured one of my 250s and it comes in at just under 12 inches including the socket.

I imagine 400s are significantly longer ?

If I recall correctly(at work at the minute) it's not much bigger mate

Just to let you fella's know I took my light back to my local hydro shop and exhanged my 400+grostar for 2 250's straight swop

I don't think you'll regret it - I've had great fun with mine over 14 years.

Two lamps makes for a very flexible grow

Thanks again compostverte and Tutu, you've made me feel very welcome here