New Grower - Needs lights advice

Hi all, new to the forums here and new to growing.
I am planning a medical crop and am trying to pull things together in advance of 'building the grow rooms'.
For seedlings/cloning, I have a pair of 65W/500W 4U CFL floodlights (man these are bright), for the moment I am happy with these.
For veg/flowering... hmm....
I live in farm area and can get 600W high bay MH units (ballast/reflector/bulb) for $25 second hand, and 400W HPS units for $15 each. These have been pulled out of old barns/stables.
I have read that the advice is to go to new as soon as you can so that you dont have failures during crop time, etc. But.... Limited cash at the moment.
Would these lights do? I have access to 10 HPS and 6 MH.

The 'rooms' will be small, with a growing area about 4ft sq. My thoughts were to use one MH and one HPS in the veg room and two HPS in the flowering room. This wouls leave me lots of 'spares' if anything happens. I was also going to extend the cord between ballast and lamp so that i can position the ballasts outside of the room.

Any advice??

Thanks
C

 

Get fire insurance.

 

Thats a lot of wattage for the MH lights, for a 4x4 area, and adding another 400w hps adds even more. You may get some stretch having to keep the lights further away from the younger plants. I'd probably air cool those lights in order to minimize stretch.

4x4 w/ 2 400w hps is fine. You'll be drawing 8amps when the lights are running, almost double that when they initially strike to light up. Unless you've got the lights on a 20amp or higher circuit, i'd not strike them both on at the same time.

Best of luck.

P.S. Thats DIRT cheap for lights, hope they arent in bad shape. I'd probably invest in new bulbs right away.

 

I've used halide lamps and they get very hot. And they draw a lot of electricity. So seriously, get fire insurance. ninfan77 is right about the wiring. But that might be impossible to change if you rent. Also, I'd be leery of changing the wiring if I owned. You can't really trust some people to not form ideas about why you are re-wiring to a higher load capacity. If you know someone who is a certified electrician and trustworthy then you're in luck.

Anyway, 4 square feet is way too small for plants. They need some space so that the air can circulate freely and so that heat and humidity can escape. There are sources of high quality MH and HPS lamps for around $200. Maybe you should save up some cash first. Most of these lamps can light up 10 square feet. But again special wiring, circuits are needed and they get really hot. A 4 square foot room wouldn't be enough for safety.

 

you can grow a plant in 4 square feet, people grow plants in areas even smaller then that, as lont as you have an intake fan and an exaust fan tino and out of your grow room to keep temperatures down and circulate fresh air you should be fine... also the intake fan should be on a faster setting then the exaust fan to give the air a chance to sirculate around your plants before it leave your grow area

 

tino=into sry im too high to type right now

 

One 400 HPS will be fine for a 4x4 area IF you have a decent reflector.

Yeah more light = more yield but it depends on how big you want to go.

Depending on how airtight the room is (and where) a good circulating fan will serve you fine.

 

It sounds like Corinthian is talking about 4 square feet (2 feet by 2 feet) not 4 feet by 4 feet which would equal 16 square feet. 4 square feet is not large enough but 16 square feet is a safe size for standard HPS and MH lamps. Even an area that large will need good ventalation to keep the heat from building up to levels dangerous for the the plants. A 2 foot by 2 foot room will get stuffy and too hot. The plants will die.