So one of my friends works at a commercial lighting company. They are huge and have everything from grow lights to street lights. He owes me a favor and I happen to be moving at the same time. I've been growing and reading the forums for over a decade but I've never gone bigger than 400 watt closet grows and I havent done one of those in years. So I'm moving and one of the things that really caught my eye when we picked out this house was the perfect growing spot. After building a wall I'll probably end up with about 6' x 9'. Here's were the friend comes in, he says he'll give me whatever lights and digital ballasts I want for free but this is a one time only deal. Since I've only got one shot to do it right on lights to start with what should I ask for? I'm not gonna use the whole area for flowering as that would just be too much for me, probably gonna set up a nice 4' x 6' separated area for flowering and use the other space for cloning.
So I know I need one low-wattage MH for my mums, possibly wanting to do SOG so I'd need to be able to pull a shit ton of healthy clones at once. Is 400 Watts MH overkill? I know my hardest thing to deal with is gonna be heat so If I dont need that much veg light it would probably help in heat.
So now that you know whats up, what would you go with?
I'm thinking 2 x 1000 watt would be pretty sweet but plenty out there prefer 3 x 600. Can someone explain the thinking behind this?
I've always heard 1k's are better due to foliar penetration (sp?), would this be the same for 1500 watters? Would 2 x 1500 be better than 3 x 1000 for this reason?
What about a single 1500 on a light mover, would it compare to three 600's?
Just for you, if you had a chance at free lights but had to pick them today what would you go with? Another thing to think about is its gonna be easier for me to ask for two lights versus five (1500 vs 600) and I'd probably save on hoods, ducting, cool tubes, and blower size if I were just doing two lights instead of five.