I need to know exactly how much watts can I safely use in my grow room. I have three prong outlets. I already have at least 1700 watts running in the room maybe more. @Donaldj I see in your thread you know about electricity. Thanks!
Also can you plug led lights into extension cords?
It really depends a bit on a 15 amp circuit or 20 amp circuit on how much you can actually pull safely
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Yes where were your breaker boxes and depending how old the houses back in the day they used to put a lot of stuff on one circuit so you’ll want to shut that breaker off to see what all is on it
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Your best bet for piece of mind is to run a separate line for your grow room if possible. If you have the room in your panel then install a 20 amp breaker and run 12-2 wire into your room. The 12-2 is harder to work with than the 14-2 but bigger is better. Now you don’t have to worry about popping the breaker if starting a vacuum or something which is why I decided to do it. Running off the 20 amp in my grow room I have two 1000 watt HPS lights, two 6" carbon filters with inline fans and two more 6" inline fans cooling the lights plus another small fan for air circulation running off the circuit and never popped the breaker yet.
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It’s very easy to do you can shut the entire power off to the house from the main switch if you’re afraid to get into the panel
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I’d recommend getting on YouTube how to make a 20 amp circuit or how to make a dedicated 20 amp circuit
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It will also depend on what if anything else is on that circuit. The typical household circuit is 15 amp, while a few are typically required by code to be 20 amp.
Most 15 amp circuits will power more than just the receptacles in a single room. It may be the lights and receptacles from the room, or the receptacles from multiple rooms, or any combination of such.
Also, it’s not a great practice to load household circuits to 100% for something like a grow room that will be running up to 18+ a day. So to say volts x amps = Watts and you’ll be good to 1800 watts isn’t exactly good practice, and may not even work at all. Light ballasts, drivers, and fans all pull up to 300% of their rated current upon start up. It’s commonly referred to as inrush current. It’s usually only for a short period of time, and manageable. But if you’re already pushing a circuit with lights, a fan starting could indeed trip a circuit that within rated capacity under running conditions.
Hopefully that helps.
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I have a 1060 watt air conditioner in the room and ever since I put it in the lights in the house flicker Everytime it comes on. Is that bad? @Hogmaster @dbrn32
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@Macadon it’s hard to say something is bad just because your lights flicker. But you could be around the point of overloading that circuit if there’s other stuff on it as well. That’s a pretty good example of the inrush current I was talking about.
Something to check would be to see if your load center is balanced well. When you go down the side of your breaker panel, every other breaker top to bottom will be on the same bus. Try to take a look and see if all of your heavy loads are on one leg or the other. You can disregard the double pole 240v breakers as those are on both legs.
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