Power Bill

[The Claw]

I have been trying the short light cycle for the last 2 weeks on my veg. 14hrs under CFL. It looks like better growth, it has not had any negative effect that I can see. these 2 clones have doubled in in size with plenty of allover growth.

 

I have another cupboard for veg running a 400w, it has been on the 12on-5.5off-1on-5.5off. These also appear to be doing extremely well with on sign of flowering.

My budding room is still 12/12, if all goes well with the veg I will try the reducing light cycle.

 

 

How to reduce the cost of growing cannabis saving 30-50% on your electricty bill using the 12-1 lighting schedule.

 

The biggest innovator in the history of cannabis in my generation is Reinhard Delp. Not only did he invent and is the holder of the patent for ice water extraction, he has been building flower forcers since 1992. His new solar powered Sun-gate is the leader of the industry. He was the first to feminize seeds and sell them in Europe in the late 90’s. His process was done naturally, without the use of any chemicals.

 

No one is more copied but seldom matched than Mr. Delp, who to me is the top grower of our generation. The first time he impressed me he showed me 2 plants, planted next to one another, 1 completely covered in powdery mildew, the other completely clean and beautiful. He was developing mildew and mold resistant genetics.

 

In the late 90’s Reinhard brought back the gas lantern routine that you find in any college grade horticulture book, and applied it to cannabis. Cannabis needs only 13 hours to stay in the vegetative growth stage. The 18-6 lighting schedule in vegetation, actually stress your plants, that never get that much light in one-day outdoors. Cannabis is an outdoor plant. Growing indoors you should copy how it grows outdoors. No Cannabis growing in Afghanistan gets 18 hours of light in growth pattern. Most strains today have some part Indica in their genetic pool. Even equatorial strains don’t get 18 hours of sun a day.

 

The 12-1 lighting schedule is as follows 12 hours lights on, 5.5 lights off, 1-hour lights on, 5.5 lights off, and repeat schedule. The 1 hour on in between off period fools the plants that stay in vegetative growth state! Your immediate savings are 5 hours in energy costs daily, as well as your bulbs and equipment lasting longer. But how do the plants react to this lighting schedule?

 

You see immediate growth response from your plants, they are happy from the added rest time. By day 14 the plants tripled in size. The plants are bushy with twice as many bud sites without topping or bending, In fact when you top and stretch your plants out, you get many more bud sites than you would have had under 18-6 using same procedure of topping and stretching plant, your growing bigger and better and faster.

 

So your saving 5 hours daily in energy costs, as well as your excellerated growth pattern which also saves you time and energy and equipment use.

 

In the flowering stage, never use 12-12, start your flowering period at 11 hours on 13 hours off. When your are growing outdoors each day you get less and less sun light, you should copy the way the sun acts naturally in your indoor grow. So first 2 weeks of flower you go 11 on 13 off, the next 2 weeks you go down to 10.5 on 13.5 off, next 2 weeks 10 on 14 off, next two weeks 9.5 on 14.5 off and the last weeks of flower you should be at 9 hours on and 15 hours off. You’ll get bigger and better buds by copying the way the sun light works on cannabis outdoors.

 

Cannabis is an outdoor plant and you should copy the way it grows outdoors indoors. The only thing that 18-6, and then 12-12 lighting schedule's do is make the energy companies rich as well as the people who sell lights and equipment, the more you use the more you spend. 12-1 lighting schedule is a more natural way to grow indoors and you well have the best results you have ever had and save as much as 50% in energy costs

[wayno86]

All sounds good, bit of food for thought and trial and error...one question though, how do your lamps hold up to being turned on and off a bit more often, I would think that that would cut the operating life of a lamp down by a fair bit?? Also power spikes which might arouse a bit of suspicion with the power co?

[Frazz]

unbelievable .. leaves me speechless

 

[StreetninjaP]

Hey Vrod,

 

I like what your saying and it all seems to be logical, but I'm a noob to this whole indoor growing thing, and I am not criticising your input, but I have to ask myself if this is the simplest way of producing greater yields, and actually makes significant savings as far as power consumption, then why doesn't everyone grow that way? I mean, we got some pedantic, knowledgable, passionate growers on this forum and I have yet to read anything about this lighting regime, I might go and do so research myself. It's an interesting idea, and just because noone is doing it doesn't make it wrong, I'd just want a bit more info before I went ahead with it. If you could post a link to any particularly useful sites azbout this, I would be very grateful.

[pisspotgrower]

This was posted up by vrod a few days ago in another thread, im really glad he decided to try it out for us so will be keeping a close eye on em before i try it but cheers for the effort

[El Gato]

wonder if this would cause stretching at all? I will be following this to see the outcome of it all.... Have often thought about giving my girls a 9hr light on in flower but just stick to 12/12 cos it works. In the end I want what we all want. Max yield and max potency @ min $.

[TheTreeBoundRat]

Hey V-rod .

 

Been thinking about changiing my vegging hours from 18 down to 16 for a while now and after reading this It kinda got me off my arse to finnaly do it. I've got other motives for doing this in conjunction with "the theory" however.

 

Gotta say I'm taking this with a pinch of salt atm because where's the proof ? Hearing someone say they look like theyre growing faster dosnt get close too cutting it for me but kudos to you for thinking outside the box and going with it. Will be interesting....

 

Just be good too see a controlled experiment with at leat 10 odd plants in a "side by side battle of the light hours" to give it some weight....

 

 

Good thread mate thanks

[brick]

The only arguement I would have about this sort of set up is.

Whilst the sun's hours are not as long as a controlled enviroment. The suns light/radiation will always be far more intense than any amount of lighting you could have. So maybe the lights stay on longer to make up for the lost intensity of the sunlight.

[StreetninjaP]

I don't know about for making up for lost intensity, but following that logic, would it be feasable to run new continous spectrum (plasma) lighting for less hours? And when we talk about intensity, are we talking lumens or spectal emissions?

 

I did get to have a quick search on the net for any examples where this lighting regime has been used, and cannot find any. Going broader with the search, I found only two other references on the entire net to this lighting regime, both of which were exactly the same text as the original post on this topic, I mean exact. Looks like this post and the posts on the other sites, were all just cut and paste jobs.

 

Doesn't prove anything, I'm sure there is plenty of really great info out there that is not accessable on the net (I heard people sometimes still read books, but that's just an unconfirmed rumour), and while I still agree that the theory seems sound, and I guess I'm just a big chicken, but I think I will wait and see what the results from an actual grow looks like before I give it a go myself.

 

 

[brick]

Fuck me Street, you are getting to technical for me mate. I just have lateral thoughts sometimes.