Hey guys, done a lot more in the box this morning!
1. Fabricated the light holder (1/4" cabinet backing, then but effective when reinforced)
- mounting my light socket cones to it. See in picture coming in later post. They are fixtures that you could use in a bathroom that feature four screws and two terminals, 2 screws black(hot) 2 screws cold (white) I set out the 10 fixtures, for the ten bulbs as i wanted them to go, 7 in a row, 2 on one side, 1 on the other. My plan, and what i did, was wire three of them together, another three together and finall four of them together using the extra set of terminals. That way they can be linked and ill have three seperate plugs ( better power distribution and can control the amount of wattage im running with the pull of a plug) I had to reinforce the 1/4 board, which was no problem.
2. Install Mylar
- taped it to sides and secured it. did it kind of sloppy though i plan on redoing it later to be a little bit more clean looking.
3. Fans
- working on installing those. need to pick up an adapter because they are 12v not 120.
Other than that, its coming along quite nicely.
Heres something that is pretty important with this particular box.
LIGHTING!!!!
The dimensions of this box are 3ft long 2ft high and 1.5ft deep. So i say thats roughly a 6 sq foot box. So if you were using all 6 sq feet to grow you would need approx. 18,000 lumens on the low end and 30,000 on the high end. I however dont see this as the correct equation because im not technically using all 6sq feet of this box. So i see, and what I think is a more precise measurement, is that the sq footage is more like 4.5sq feet. This would create a low of 13,500 lumens and a high requirement of 22,500 lumens. (based on a low of 3,000 and a high of 5,000)
The lights i am using right now are CFL's and are as follows
QUANTITY WATTAGE LUMENS COLOR TOTAL LUMENS
4 150 2,600 WARM 10,400
6 100 1,300 COLD 7,800
TOTAL 18,200
So in a grow space like mine, im in on the low end of the full 6sq ft. and at the high end of the 4.5sq ft space. I think it should do just fine. The other issue you run into with this set up is HEAT. Plug these guys in for 30 mintues and temperature stabilized at 114 degrees F. CRAZY!!!!
You definitely need fans. Well see how these control the temperature tonight.
Pictures to come tonight.