DIY-Become a DIY home grower Electrical Engineers

diesel farmer said:
I guess I should have asked why you dont want to use conduit?
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Well basically laziness and also This grow will probably only last 12 months and I dont want to leave much of a footprint. Also I'm gonna be wiring 8 to 10 breaker to multiple boxes. I've only ran romex in my house. Never fished anything though conduit. Im sure it isnt too dificult. This is a one man operation and I am not too concerned about the romex being moved, touched or damaged. I hope Im not comming accross as a guy who doesnt respect electricity or safety. I do. BX armored cable sound like a pretty good alternative. It would have to be reasonably priced for me to consider it:peacetwo:
 
If you are going with 8 different circuits you may be better off to just pull One wire to a small sub panel. That is how I would do it professionally.
 
@ SIMON
Well, the ? is do you rent, own? how many watts do you need? if its only temp. (12 months) do you really need 8-10 15 or 20 amp circuts thats (11520 watts @ 80% load on 8 15 amp breakers) to (19200 watts @ 80% load on 10 20 amp breakers) sorry if thats getting too personal, but 20,000 watts would definitely be a heat score.
 
drewapicture said:
@ SIMON
Well, the ? is do you rent, own? how many watts do you need? if its only temp. (12 months) do you really need 8-10 15 or 20 amp circuts thats (11520 watts @ 80% load on 8 15 amp breakers) to (19200 watts @ 80% load on 10 20 amp breakers) sorry if thats getting too personal, but 20,000 watts would definitely be a heat score.
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Hey Drew, Well let me put it this way. SOmeone cut every wire that is coming out of the panel (right above the panel) So I need to have outlets in both the veg and flower rooms. Not to mention the bathroom and storage area. The plan is this:

5 sets of 2 1000 watt lights on a light rail 3.5 movers in the flower room. So 10,000 watts and 5 light movers. Plus a veg room with a 600 watt metal halide and two 8 bulb t5 units (i thinkk they are 432 watts each.) I am initially gonna start eith 3 of these 2 light setups un the flower room (6k watts). :peacetwo:
 
drewapicture said:
@ SIMON
Well, the ? is do you rent, own? how many watts do you need? if its only temp. (12 months) do you really need 8-10 15 or 20 amp circuts thats (11520 watts @ 80% load on 8 15 amp breakers) to (19200 watts @ 80% load on 10 20 amp breakers) sorry if thats getting too personal, but 20,000 watts would definitely be a heat score.
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And 20 feet? Is the load in the same room at the main panel?

I have my ideas how I would do it, but that is an awful lot of power.
 
WOW, thats huge. 10,000 watts of hps if you can get anywhere near 1 gram/ watt thats an insane 20 LBS 2 or 3 times a year. $80,000 to $120,000/year @ $2000/LB. Well i wish you the best of luck, and keep in mind if it is not a legal grow (and you do steal power) the power company knows that the power your using is going missing, so they look for the leak. IMHO not worth the risk
don't get me wrong i'm not trying to pry, and i'm not saying that you will break the law, but i just wanted to put that out there.
 
This is a 100% legal grow by 2 caregivers who are legally able to grow 140 plants under state law. (Yes I am aware of Federal law) The plants will not be put into flower until they are over a couple feet tall. I would never steal electricity. It appears as long as your bill gets paid and you and everyone you deal with keeps their noses clean your "pretty safe" LOL. And yes, The panel is 20 to 25 feet from the run I want to make with the Romex. It is also in the same room. Plus this is just a hypathetical question to begin with.
 
It is just odd that someone cut the lines going into the panel. I read and read your post and it just brings up some kind of weirdness. I am not questioning the legality of the grow, just the weirdness of cut lines. At first I thought you were stealing power, but you did say they cut ALL the wires.

I do not care one bit about the power companies, but stealing power is one of the top reasons people get busted. It is too bad you do not have enough slack to just reconnect the lines, but all the slack would be contained within the panel, not outside. You may be able to put a junction box above the panel, but then you would not have all those dedicated circuits where you want them.

Good luck.
 
G-Dog said:
It is just odd that someone cut the lines going into the panel. I read and read your post and it just brings up some kind of weirdness. I am not questioning the legality of the grow, just the weirdness of cut lines. At first I thought you were stealing power, but you did say they cut ALL the wires.

I do not care one bit about the power companies, but stealing power is one of the top reasons people get busted. It is too bad you do not have enough slack to just reconnect the lines, but all the slack would be contained within the panel, not outside. You may be able to put a junction box above the panel, but then you would not have all those dedicated circuits where you want them.

Good luck.
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Well the place used to be a fish store. The walls were once lined with outlet boxes. That would have been awesome. Well at one time the landlord decided to cut all of the wires coming out of the panel about 10 feet out. He just cut right through the conduit! To me it seemed like a difficult task to hook things back up to the existing wires. I figured it would be less time consuming to just start over and not run everything through conduit? I promise I'm not stealing power...LOL To me it's money well spent. And I like to keep thins as legal as possible:peacetwo:
 
I still think for the amount of power you need you may want to run a sub panel. One other thing to buy, but a lot less copper and manpower. You could wire your lights with 240v if you did that, and the aggregate amperage and therefore wire size being lower would offset that cost of a small sub panel. Lots of options in a case like this. Maybe if you put all the parts for each installation on paper and then submitted it to your electrical supplier you could figure out which way is more cost effective and weigh that against manpower requirements and make a logical decision. Since your original plan was to just use all the existing breakers that would mean a new two pole breaker to supply the sub panel. The size of the breaker and the wire needed would have to be weighed against your running your lights and cooling at 240v vs 120. For an operation this size I would think your copper savings would be substantial if you ran those two things on 240v.
 
G-Dog said:
I still think for the amount of power you need you may want to run a sub panel. One other thing to buy, but a lot less copper and manpower. You could wire your lights with 240v if you did that, and the aggregate amperage and therefore wire size being lower would offset that cost of a small sub panel. Lots of options in a case like this. Maybe if you put all the parts for each installation on paper and then submitted it to your electrical supplier you could figure out which way is more cost effective and weigh that against manpower requirements and make a logical decision. Since your original plan was to just use all the existing breakers that would mean a new two pole breaker to supply the sub panel. The size of the breaker and the wire needed would have to be weighed against your running your lights and cooling at 240v vs 120. For an operation this size I would think your copper savings would be substantial if you ran those two things on 240v.
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Thanks for taking the time G Dogg. I've considered 240v. All of my ballasts are Lumatek Switchables. However they are all currently set up for 120. Thanks alot for the input
 
G-Dog said:
I still think for the amount of power you need you may want to run a sub panel. One other thing to buy, but a lot less copper and manpower. You could wire your lights with 240v if you did that, and the aggregate amperage and therefore wire size being lower would offset that cost of a small sub panel. Lots of options in a case like this. Maybe if you put all the parts for each installation on paper and then submitted it to your electrical supplier you could figure out which way is more cost effective and weigh that against manpower requirements and make a logical decision. Since your original plan was to just use all the existing breakers that would mean a new two pole breaker to supply the sub panel. The size of the breaker and the wire needed would have to be weighed against your running your lights and cooling at 240v vs 120. For an operation this size I would think your copper savings would be substantial if you ran those two things on 240v.
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Hey G, This will show you a little better about what I was talking about. This spot whrer the electric was cut is actually only about 10 feet from where I actually need it. So what would I do? Test each wire and trace it back to the box?
electric2.jpg

photoelectric2.jpg

You can see the outline on the wall where the outlets used to be. There are actually 25 total spots where the outlets were.:tokin:
 
this is a commercial site and should be handled by a electrician, anyone who gives advice to this post is doing so in very poor judgement, I dont mean to be a kill joy but you should call the right peeps for the job on this one. Just my opinion as an electrician " the guy who does the work".
 
diesel farmer said:
this is a commercial site and should be handled by a electrician, anyone who gives advice to this post is doing so in very poor judgement, I dont mean to be a kill joy but you should call the right peeps for the job on this one. Just my opinion as an electrician " the guy who does the work".
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Sure Diesel, being commercial makes it the wild blue yonder right?

It would almost be like an electrician doing something before an engineer had his say on it.

Most anything and everything in this thread could some how fall into the category of needing an electrician. With the unemployment rate as high as it is now I am surprised this thread has gone this far without that statement.

I have been playing with electricity professionally for 30 years and it all seems like a piece of cake with a little bit of grunt work. What we have to remember is that people are going to do stuff no matter what we say here and try to convince them to take the safest route. Having an electrician in my grow room is not always my first choice because one person tells another so on. And even though I have been designing very complex integrated electrical systems for many years, I have hired electricians to run sub panels for me so that it was supported correctly per code and looked nice.

At work I had to call an electrician just to change a light bulb. Union rules.
 
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