- Spacing Lights Out
- Hanging Lights
Properly hanging commercial grow lights in your grow room is imperative to maximizing the efficiency of your room’s production or yield, not including other factors such as the number of plants, the strains being flowered, and the environment of the grow room. Spacing your lights out from one another and from your plant’s canopy is essential to producing cannabis buds efficiently. Besides reasons concerning production, hanging your grow light fixtures is necessary to be compliant and safe. Commercial grow lamps can weigh between 4-26lbs depending on the type of grow light fixture being used. Some commercial grow facilities may prefer to hire an electrician to hang up their grow lights, but this blog post is for growers who prefer to do this task themselves.
Spacing Lights Out
Depending on the dimensions of a grow room, there are going to be slight differences in the spacing between lights in order to maximize their efficiency. Commercial growers should consider measuring light intensity (PPFD) at the top of plant canopies if the testing equipment is available for use. Cannabis plants with uneven plant canopies can create hotspots and can diminish the light intensity on a number of plants in a room. How you space your lights is what will determine your light layout. Since grow rooms can vary, it is important to also consider how high the ceiling is and the number of plants in your grow room. As the number of cannabis plants increases, the further your light fixtures should be from the plant canopies to optimize the spread of the light. In general, a 1000W DE HPS lamp should be 36” or more from the plant canopies and they can optimally cover a 5ft2 spread.
Hanging Lights
There are several different methods to hanging your grow light fixtures, my preferred method to hanging grow light fixtures is to utilize strut channels (or uni-struts which is a popular brand name) or steel slotted angles. Strut channels are used to mount and support lightweight structural loads such as pipes, ventilation equipment, and grow light fixtures. Steel slotted angles are commonly used in bicycle racks, motor mounts, and bed frames. The type of grow room ceiling will determine which solution is best for hanging your grow light fixtures. In general, you will be installing your strut channels or steel slotted angle to the ceiling joists or studs in the ceiling for optimal weight support. Using a stud finder is the easiest way to find the ceiling joists which can be marked for future reference.
After installing the strut channels or steel slotted angles to the ceiling, lights can easily be attached to the ceiling using ratchet rope clip hangers. These clip hangers can easily adjust in height after being installed and they have a 150lb weight capacity. Growers can adjust the distance of the light from the plant canopies as they see fit. Last but not least, there should be a small chain attached to every ballast connecting them to the strut channel or steel slotted angle in addition to using the ratchet rope clip hangers.
Comments powered by Talkyard.