Dontscrewup
New Member
I thought this would be an interesting thread to start. As I am now on my third grow, I have made some changes in the way I operate to save money. There are many ways to save money from making your own equipment, to working efficiently, to save money on supplies and electricity. Being an inside grower who is retired and living on a strict budget, I have had to economize in every way. I'm going to start it with a way to cut your electricity usage.
There are so many ways to waste money growing weed. When thinking of saving electricity many people first think of their lights. Using LED's vs MH/HPS is one discussion, but the area I want to discuss is Fan/Blower Motors. I think if I discuss the thought process of improvement it might help new growers avoid the mistakes I made. And maybe some other experienced growers can relay their own stories of how their grows evolved that saved them money.
Exhaust Fans:
When I first started I read about how you need fresh air for your plants, I was reading about CFM and air exchange rates. So I just figured more fans the better, and run them all the time. So I ordered the 2 Ebay CF/Fan kits. I was worried about heat also from the lights so I wanted 2 fans and having an extra CF would come in handy in the future. I hooked up one fan to the light and ran outside air through it to cool it. I had another fan for the CF. Unfortunate for me I had no easy way to get the hot air out of the room I had my tent in. By the time I realized what was going on, I was going to have a serious heat problem and needed to fix it quickly. And I did it in the most uneconomical way possible.
I went out and spent $200 on a small room AC unit designed to be installed in a window to help cool down the room the tent was in. Unfortunately I did not have a window like the one you need to install this so I devised a ducting system to move the hot air exhaust of the AC unit out of the room. But the cheap unit did not like all the backpressure on its exhaust and shut down and did little to cool the room.
Phase two, I now decided that I needed to cool the tent only. So I went out and spent $500 on a portable room AC unit that came with a long exhaust duct. I had to cut a hole in the side of my tent to install the unit so that it would blow directly into the tent. I was able to get the exhaust duct to work with the type of windows I have which open from the side so it now the hot air went outside. This worked to keep the temps down in the tent but barely. I was seeing temps in the 78F-85F ranges and the second grow went into the summer and where I live summers are hot, so everything was running at the same time. My power bill had gone from $150 for two months to over $800. I was growing to save money, but I wasn't doing it smart and it was costing me more than it should have. So for my third grow I needed to improve the process.
Phase 3. Fortunately for me the first two grows provided enough that I could take a break and figure out the process. I learned many things thanks to this site between the 1st and 2nd grow, but I was concentrating on the grow process itself rather than the operation of that process, which is where the operating expense is. So for grow three I decided on making some changes, which has substantially reduced my electricity cost.
1. Grow in the main tent only in the winter months. There is a 30-40 degree difference in temp from the summer.
2. Eliminate one exhaust fan, use the one remaining to draw air through the CF then the light and exhaust outside the room using the exhaust setup that I had for the portable AC unit. My fans use 95W of power so eliminating one of them was like turning off a 100W light that I left on all the time. I knew this was a common setup but in my novice desire to max the airflow, I made a mistake. And running the hot air out of the room outside, kept it from heating up the room and brought temps down considerably.
3. Installed a variable fan controller for the remaining fan. Running the fan at 80% uses less energy, and reduces the noise produced by a large factor.
4. Put the remaining fan on a timer. Runs all the time when the light is on, but for 12 hours a day I have it run for only 15m an hour, which is sufficient for air exchange.
By doing these steps my recent electrical bill equivalent time period as in the first two grows and the bill is down to $425. Primarily due to not having to run an AC this time at all. A good return on my efforts.
What missteps did you make when first starting out?
What did you do to correct them?
Maybe you've been growing so long you don't remember your mistakes, but you have fantastic tips on things you do to reduce costs. 10 tips that save $1 are as good as one that save $10, so the more the merrier.
Let's see if we can get a discussion going on how to save money and grow efficiently.
There are so many ways to waste money growing weed. When thinking of saving electricity many people first think of their lights. Using LED's vs MH/HPS is one discussion, but the area I want to discuss is Fan/Blower Motors. I think if I discuss the thought process of improvement it might help new growers avoid the mistakes I made. And maybe some other experienced growers can relay their own stories of how their grows evolved that saved them money.
Exhaust Fans:
When I first started I read about how you need fresh air for your plants, I was reading about CFM and air exchange rates. So I just figured more fans the better, and run them all the time. So I ordered the 2 Ebay CF/Fan kits. I was worried about heat also from the lights so I wanted 2 fans and having an extra CF would come in handy in the future. I hooked up one fan to the light and ran outside air through it to cool it. I had another fan for the CF. Unfortunate for me I had no easy way to get the hot air out of the room I had my tent in. By the time I realized what was going on, I was going to have a serious heat problem and needed to fix it quickly. And I did it in the most uneconomical way possible.
I went out and spent $200 on a small room AC unit designed to be installed in a window to help cool down the room the tent was in. Unfortunately I did not have a window like the one you need to install this so I devised a ducting system to move the hot air exhaust of the AC unit out of the room. But the cheap unit did not like all the backpressure on its exhaust and shut down and did little to cool the room.
Phase two, I now decided that I needed to cool the tent only. So I went out and spent $500 on a portable room AC unit that came with a long exhaust duct. I had to cut a hole in the side of my tent to install the unit so that it would blow directly into the tent. I was able to get the exhaust duct to work with the type of windows I have which open from the side so it now the hot air went outside. This worked to keep the temps down in the tent but barely. I was seeing temps in the 78F-85F ranges and the second grow went into the summer and where I live summers are hot, so everything was running at the same time. My power bill had gone from $150 for two months to over $800. I was growing to save money, but I wasn't doing it smart and it was costing me more than it should have. So for my third grow I needed to improve the process.
Phase 3. Fortunately for me the first two grows provided enough that I could take a break and figure out the process. I learned many things thanks to this site between the 1st and 2nd grow, but I was concentrating on the grow process itself rather than the operation of that process, which is where the operating expense is. So for grow three I decided on making some changes, which has substantially reduced my electricity cost.
1. Grow in the main tent only in the winter months. There is a 30-40 degree difference in temp from the summer.
2. Eliminate one exhaust fan, use the one remaining to draw air through the CF then the light and exhaust outside the room using the exhaust setup that I had for the portable AC unit. My fans use 95W of power so eliminating one of them was like turning off a 100W light that I left on all the time. I knew this was a common setup but in my novice desire to max the airflow, I made a mistake. And running the hot air out of the room outside, kept it from heating up the room and brought temps down considerably.
3. Installed a variable fan controller for the remaining fan. Running the fan at 80% uses less energy, and reduces the noise produced by a large factor.
4. Put the remaining fan on a timer. Runs all the time when the light is on, but for 12 hours a day I have it run for only 15m an hour, which is sufficient for air exchange.
By doing these steps my recent electrical bill equivalent time period as in the first two grows and the bill is down to $425. Primarily due to not having to run an AC this time at all. A good return on my efforts.
What missteps did you make when first starting out?
What did you do to correct them?
Maybe you've been growing so long you don't remember your mistakes, but you have fantastic tips on things you do to reduce costs. 10 tips that save $1 are as good as one that save $10, so the more the merrier.
Let's see if we can get a discussion going on how to save money and grow efficiently.
