That’s why i linked to the source post but then i realize there were no other posts after that, so maybe i should do it here. Thanks for the opportunity!
This is a cultivation space segmented as 4 separate schedules synchonized in order to balance the overall electrical consumption. It won’t remove the steady “pedestal” resulting from this activity but at least the grower would no longer advertize what phase it’s in (veg vs flo), for example.
The 3 first cultivation spaces are on an hypothetical 12-4 schedule while each is time-shifted relatively to the other 2, in a way which creates a 4th continuous 12 hours slot which can be used to divert available electricity to that last cultivation space so there are no timing “holes” left anymore. Hence no externally visible transition events for all practical purposes - in theory…
Anyway that’s why the 4th row (in grey) below has it’s 12 h period under the 3 other “night” shifts, actually.
Maybe, just maybe (…), if a regular “photo” genetic can endure the Gas Lantern Routine then i’d be curious to see it put under some equivalent load-balancing scheme as well. But it might need to be combined with “AutoFems” anyway, or in complementary with some window-sill session, i wonder. Other members may manage to work it out, personally applying this to non “autos” is too much of a challenge for my swelling brain at this hour…
Ooh, do tell. It hurts my wallet to think about how much money we’ve spent on everclear when it’s cheaper than dirt to produce.
$18usd for 750ml. Pfft. Might be time to throw a few dozen cases in Boston Harbor!
And we don’t even drink it, (anymore) it’s strictly a matter of food grade materials.
This is referred to as the Gas Lamp Routine and I know people who have had great crops using this method. It totally confused me when I first heard about it but it’s actually quite logical and saves a lot on power
that’s a catchier name than 12-1 for sure but i’m not sure i understand the connection lol glad to hear some positive feedback may have to try it at some point
That was simply assuming -IF- it’s got to be a “photoperiodic” then at least the genetic should be able to undergo a 12/4 (16h artificial day) schedule without too much stress, otherwise that needs to be an “auto”.
Hence the “GLR” tolerance used as a selection criteria, thinking this might happen to be a good place to start.
That is just very hard to believe… I guess that if this was scientifically proved method, why wouldn’t professional greenhouses be using this method and saving lot of energy…
For the same reason nobody will do that here i figure. Not to mention these are “greenhouses”, with a transparent roof, right?..
In any case what i’m suggesting is to provide the plants with 3 periods of 12h light within 2 days, while normal terrestrial days of 24h only allow 2… Which is MORE light, not less.
The reason i refered to the GLR technique was only because some plants are more prone to develop hermies when stressed compared to others. Yet i still don’t suppose that would be a challenge using “autos” instead, not even being sure “photoperiodics” can manage with such alien treatment at all…
But the reason why it’s never been done before stands, nonetheless… so who’s going to be 1st??
After all nobody ever cared to customize the VG pipe before it did and yet here i am, enjoying every minute of it. Which is the privilege of pioneers!
@Egzoset why don’t you try some of these lighting schemes yourself before suggesting others do? You’d realize immediately that none of these wacky cycles will work.
While you might achieve you seemingly over-arching goal to hide your electrical footprint (btw, a 24/7 continuous 4 kw/hr use pattern is a footprint too…) you’ll never grow a single non-auto bud on a 12/4 light/dark cycle. You might be able to hack out some autos, not because it’s better, but because autos don’t care about light cycles, you can finish them on 24 hour light, and probably should.
Photoperiodic cannabis requires 10-12 hours of uninterrupted DARKNESS to bloom and mature. It’s not about squeezing in more light cycles. It’s about squeezing in more 10-12 hour dark cycles, while maintaining the maximum DLI required by the plant to produce flowers at the peak potential. Since all plants have a maximum amount of photons/hour they can absorb, that means that a certain minimum light cycle is required even under the best lighting.
Together, you have a minimum day cycle requirement and a minimum night cycle requirement to produce cannabis blossoms at their highest potential (weight, potency, smell/flavor). And that implies an optimum day/night cycle of…wait for it…
About 12/12, give or take a little on the margins…
If you really are so paranoid about electric company narcs noticing your usage peaks, try this:
1 veg room, light on 24 hours.
1st flower room, lights on 00:00 hrs to 12:00 hrs.
2nd flower room, lights on 12:00 hrs to 24:00 hrs.
1st of all what i do, who i am and what’s my life alike behind a virtual set of electrons & photons named Egzoset just ain’t your business, hence calling for further justifications after moving the spotlights on the poster instead of a topic only serves cheap/lazy topic obstruction unworthy of YOUR approval, trying to shine under my shadow…
My reading (homework) was performed long long ago, too bad you’re some 5 years too late to even contemplate any eventual/civilized dialog to continue such discussion.
Indeed, but i don’t suppose it would be useful to reply that this is NOT the context i have in mind, so would you like to forge that as well? You, you, you???
Stating the obvious, more forging ahead i’m sure!
There’s no problem doing with 13 hours of light, why not this too if one is prepared for the trade-offs?!
And you thought i didn’t know? Fine. Probably 24h is fine too, but this yet has to be put into a comparative test instead of making theories which sound just like statements. For all i thought i knew, even “auto” plants still behave differently during the night, and yet doubts make me wish there were concrete evidence on this, but then it would no longer be a simple theory and hence i wouldn’t be here in an attempt to debate it with cold temper after stranger rudeness… Of did we battle elsewhere before?..
Please re-read the thread for proper contextualization (or read it for the 1st time!..), i won’t do it for you.
True. Or at least i’m prepared to accept that as true, without a demonstration…
FALSE. More forging here again, like it’s a virus everywhere i dare to set foot! It must be my own fault and/or fate i guess. Pleas ask questions instead of making wild statements.
Thanks a bunch for the “if” precaution.
Now we’re talking, except i don’t believe i’m the guy you want to talk to!
Obviously 24h leaves no time-coherent signature but it still causes a “pedestal” rise in the overall consumption rate. No problem agreeing with that, but i don’t like 24h, though i used to love my “autofems”.
As for having twin 12/12 sessions synchronized that’s not really innovative as that was part of my reading a long time ago. Which in fact is where i got my inspiration, equally helped by “GLR” related ideas… In any case it’s not about a magic set of numbers, what i tried to illustrate which eluded your attention somehow is the suggestion that combining multiple independent sessions it must be possible to balance load in hope at least no temporal signature is left. Because it’s one thing to look at a raw Watt vs Time graph, it’s another understanding that superposition of daily records will tend to cause random reading to cancel while leaving a strong 12/12 or 16/8 signal as strong and clear as that of a metronome.
Now if my own personal experience matters to you this much then i suppose i must relate to an old story of my own, actually extracting a near-perfect 24h sine wave while trying to evaluate the noise floor (which occured many years ago in another life): long wiring behaved like an astronomical antenna picking up the earth’s terrestrial influence on noise… Although 1 single day worth of records didn’t raise suspicion the analysis of many daily samples proved to be an eye opener.
But i’m glad we agree that the elevated “pedestal” alike rise would be sufficient to attract attention as that’s no more complicated than to extract time-coherent signals buried in noise from outer space, knowing what frequency to tune-in in advance!..
That’s all the fair play i’m capable of at this moment considering these adverse circumstances.
I am close to the above mentioned to maximize my consumption and to balance my load. I personally don’t worry about the electric company, however I do worry about power transmission and load on my lines. If my power transformer is 150kva, 240v I have a limit of ballasts that I can run. lets forget about a.c fans etc and just talk about ballasts. For my application I have 400amps per phase, 3 phases for a total of 1200amps.
Each ballast can draw 1150watts at 240v. Doing the math this comes out to 4.79 or 4.8 amps. We will round to 5amps per ballast. So, on paper I can run 240 ballasts. (not factoring % for constant load) BUT, as Baudelaire says, if I divide the day in two 12 hour cycles, I can now run twice as many ballasts on two, 12 hour cycles.
So,
I have 1 room that runs 18/6. The off time or dark cycle is during the peak electrical tariff.
2 flower rooms that will be on alternating 12 hour cycles.
I have better pictures on a disk somewhere but here is a link of my greenhouse.
I don’t use transparent, or clear roof/plastic, there are many options available. With or without UV protection, breathable or no, etc etc. I had to import mine from Israel. Depending on your frame type or structure, I used metal wire parallel to the ground as a guide to slide the thick black plastic on to block out sunlight or as not to let artificial light escape at night. In some of the pictures you can see the black plastic. One person can physically open or close one section of plastic to black out, or, to allow light in and takes about 15 min. With two people you can open or close a section of 2500m2 in about 5 min.
That’s a nice informative way to add creative perspective, just for that one i’d suggest our moderator LemonadeJoe that he considers the addition of a new [ Like ] type of button for his members, specially for valuable efforts such as that! Not to mention the unexpected suspense that was added in a constructive and civilized manner, while there was an opportunity.
No pun intended!
Although i certainly do not possess related experience myself i’d like to contribute with more feedback!
When i look at the numbers it occurs to me that 18/6 divided by 2 becomes 9/3 and now 3 x 4 =12 which may prove to close the gap with 12/12, hence i got to wonder if using a 3h shift there wouldn’t be a way to stick in a few 18/6 sessions, perhaps 3 x 18/6 shifted 3h appart + 1 x 12/12. Just wild guessing LEGO-style again, i’m not even trying to verify.
So my usefulness greatly diminishes at this point, i was hoping you’d receive better cooperation from your peers! just wanted to let you know.
Sincerely.
…
If i may, i’d like to see leafs with 11 fingers or even 13, which may not be common when working at these scales.
Been running my veg room for a few months with:
7.5/4.5…7.5/4.5 …(On/Off) at 70F
Plant growth is slower than 18/6 but definitely remains in vegetative state. It also allows me to keep temps and humidity more stable with less extreme swings.
I believe I got the idea from @Baudelaire:+1:, but I can’t find the original post in here.
I think this topic was discussed on weedbase, laughing moon, cannabis.com, cannabisworld and overgrow back in the day. Never saw anyone show anything that has proven some of the silly claims made by those running unconventional light cycles.
Some limited experiments with adding an additional 300 watts of HPS for 4 hours to my 1000 watt MH flowering room showed some promise. I plan to do some more experimenting in this area.
I grew under a 1000 watt MH because I was able to trade an electrician a case of beer to get it. I planned to eventually switch to a HPS light. I was told MH bulbs put out UV’s which could be beneficial for my sativa dominant garden.
Later after trading clones and getting to sample some of the final product from growers who I gave clones to. I was convinced my buds were a little more stonier than what they produced. However we all grow in different micro climates and sometimes more importantly dry and cure differently.
I’m in no way trying to say MH is better in any way regardless of the strain you are growing, Basically got the light for next to nothing and it never gave me a reason to switch. Later I supplemented with 300 watts of HPS during flowering.
I tried an experiment once after hearing that battery hens are given 2 light cycles every day so they would produce 2 eggs daily, i thought if it works with chickens why not try with weed plants.
I put 4 different strains from seed under a 400w HPS and set the timer to 9-3-9-3 daily and the result was that for every node the plants grew it split in two ‘naturally’.
ie: the first growth on all four plants was 2 sets of true leaves then 4 then 8, 16 etc. etc.
When it came to trying the experiment for budding (6-6-6-6 daily) I was disrupted by moving house and the ex stealing my equipment.
This all happened around 20 years ago but soon I hope to be able to finish my lighting experiments.
interesting on the vegetation growth, however if you were to try flowering under 6-6-6-6 it would never begin flowering - it needs ~10 hours at least of continuous darkness for it to switch
