Lights On At:- Day/night

Going into flowering 12/12 in the next couple of weeks but can't make up my mind wether to have the lights 'on cycle ' through the night or during the day.
Figured at night its cooler plus the electric is cheaper but theres the noise factor plus less time to spend with the plants.
What do you guys do. Any more pros and cons for night versus day?

 

Think you hit the major pros and cons there already, B-man. You just hafta decide on what's most convenient for you, or "least inconvenient" if you want to look at it that way. Myself, the lights go out at 7AM, and back on at 7PM. Let's me check 'em before I go to work in the morning, and right after the news at night. The ladies sit quietly flowering away in the dark while I'm too busy at the shop to worry about them. There's also plenty of time to putter with the plants in the evening if it's needed, too. It can be a pain in the ass on the weekends, when I prefer to sleep in, since I try to have a 'morning check' before it's lights out in the grow area. But it's all a matter of personal preferences, IMHO.

 

Think I will have to follow suit having a lot of trouble keeping the temperature down. Cant close the door of the growroom without hitting 95f. Installing a bigger extractor fan tommorow. Plus the weathers only going to get hotter.

 

Hey buff, I grow like herb only 6pm-6am

 

During the flowering stage, is the plant odour stronger when the lights are on or when the lights are off?

 

Its near enough the same unless you switch your extractor fan off during the dark period. Then the humidity and the odour will increase.

 

LOL, geez B-man, you're really racking up the posts quick . On my own girls, the fan is on continuously, but I still find the aroma is stronger during the grow cab day cycle. How's the new extractor fan working out for ya, B-man? Has it solved the temp probs?

 

Cheers herbal, temp and humidity have both leveled out perfectly. During lights on temp is 75, humidity is 40% lights out temp is 61 and humidity 65%. Found out my air purifier with a hepa filter was removing moisture from the air. I removed the filter to check it only to find out it was soggy. Since removing the purifier the humidity has gone right up. It didn't really rmove any odour any way.

 

to me a big factor is price of electricity, and the red flags that can arise with huge jumps in energy consumption. Mine are on at night, cause its cooler, and its cheaper. Plus everything in my house is electric, stove, hot water heater, even electric base board heat. So anything to keep the bills down ya know!

 

Flower at night as ambient air temps will be lower.

 

Thanks meangreen swaped to 12/12 two weeks ago . Went for 6pm untill 6am lights on. As you say the lower night temp leaves the perfect conditions in the room, plus door to grow room always shut when receiving daytime visitors.

 

How does turnign the lights on at night lower energy cost?? i mean..if i use my stove and lights are on in the day i am still using the same amount of energy as using the stove in the day and the lights at night??????

 

Well one way is if it's hot outside,daytime,lights and fans running one's AC would have to run hard to keep grow room temp down to median temp.
On the other hand cold outside, night, lights off; some kind of heater would be needed to keep plants from getting too cold.
And combinations of the above.
As to running Stoves and lights at the same time, there is a point of diminishing return; The more elctricity a curcuit (in this case a home) requires the less each component has to use for itself, so if the washer, dryer, water heater, and oven are going and a 20,000 lumen light is turned on it might be emitting 13,000 16,000lms the harvest would take weeks longer. For those who run from crop to crop this wouldn't be a prob. unless the rent needs to paid.
IT'S all relative

 

so are you saying that a grow light gets more power if nothin else is on??

 

Think of 1" pipe only x amount of water can be moved through at any given time, now connect it to a manifold with 4 - 1/2" pipes, hopefully you can see how the flow would be cut drastically.
Electricity works the same way, there's plenty of juice out at the pole, but at the box on your house it is throttled down to say 100 amps, ovens run at 50amps, waterheaters at 50amps, dryers at 30amps, hps and mhs lights 30 - 40 amps, etc.
now the appliances don't run at max all the time, but I hope I've explained how the flow of elctricity can be insufficient at times. I've rewired several growers rooms to get more "bandwidth" to shorten their grow time by a 2 - 3 weeks sometimes, but they think it's just to keep from throwing breakers.

 

i c!!!

 

darthhelmut was referring to the cost of electricity, which is cheaper to use at night.
Daytime is peak usage times. Just like your telephone long distance charges.

I don't beleive that you can shorten grow times by increasing the lumen output.
You can shorten veg times maybe, but a plant will still take a certain amount of time to sex and to flower, regardless of how intense the light is. It's genetic.

It would be better to say that you can increase the yield over the same amount of time. Given the logic that more lumens = shorter grow time, why not just put 50,000 lumens on a plant and have it ready for harvest in 2 weeks from sexing?

 

are you sayin it is cheaper to run electric at night than in the day?? that is what i am mainly confused about.

 

In the UK we used to have something called Economy seven which you had to pay a small fee for to the electicity company. Basically it meant that you paid a cheaper rate for electricity at night. This has now been scraped and the rate is the same day and night.

 

Some places even have peak time levy's that they charge on top of the regular rates.
So if you want to run your washing machine and your dishwasher at dinner time, when everyone else in the country is also using their stoves, you have to pay the price.

It's a way to manage the load on the power stations, to reduce the potential for brownouts. I don't think it's very effective though. Likely why they abandoned the program in UK.