First, I want to give thanks for everyone who gives their knowledge to people like I who are lucky enough to find it. The entirety of gardenweb has been invaluable throughout my gardening.

This winter I've had a bit stressful run of work and my sensitivity to anxiety surfaced a bit more severely than I wanted. After a lot of thought I considered the possibility that I'm not receiving enough good light and started looking at full spectrum, high temperature lighting.

I also ran out of our beloved salsa just a few days ago.

I'm sure you can figure out the rest. So! After picking up a copy of How-To Hydroponics and reading it through, I decided I'd like to give it a try!

For lighting, I pieced together a 400 watt solution from parts based upon the above book and other Internet recommendations, and I ended up somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 for the ballast, bulb, reflector, a small timer... I think that's it. I then saw the Sun System II kit for $250 from the same retailer, plus the bulb. It puts me at a little cheaper overall. At this point I saw enough to run here to ask the advice of wiser people!

If you don't mind, here's my laundry list of questions. Given the calculations for my space, I've determined a 400W lighting system is a good place for me to start:

1. Sun System 2; recommended? Price is of no object to me to get quality parts. This seems like it's nice and compact.

2. Does anyone rig their lights to a pulley to allow for easy height adjustments?

3. Timers. What should I get? I'm hesitant to use the dial-based timers as I've had a few spells of bad luck with them in the past. Also, we could assume for the moment that I will double this growing system to attempt tomatoes next winter; a timer that might accommodate two lights would interest me.

3. Submerged water pump. What should I get? I'm intending to make a PVC pipe garden based upon the design in the book with a little more beautiful reservoir system. The options I had at a local retailer surprised me; I thought this component would be more expensive.

4. Slightly off-topic, but of the utmost importance: meters. What do you recommend for measuring your nutrient solution? Is there a system I can invest in that I might use to measure the soil for my outdoor gardens as well as the water for the hydro/aero gardens? I'd also be tickled if there was something that integrated with software out there for automatic logging and analysis.

I have a few more questions but these are the most important to me and I don't want to wear out my welcome :) Thanks very much for your replies!

-Matt

2. Plenty of people do this. You should plan some way to adjust the height, especially until you get the hang of how much light is too little and how much is too much.

3. Many timers will not be rated for high power and may fail to switch your system reliably. Look for a heavy duty one rated well in excess of 400W, particularly since you might want to add more equipment to it. Also, you need a timer that can handle inductive loads. You don't have to know what that means but if you don't get one it won't work, or it will damage itself or the lights. You need a timer which operates manually, like a dial timer, or one which operates on a relay, it will click when it switches even if it is electronic. The dial timers are OK if they are rated to handle the power and if you don't mind the limited accuracy of the time switching.

3/4 Don't know, I grow in soil :)

For a system where you are likely to spend quite a bit of time nearby, pay close attention to safety. Make sure you get open-rated bulbs or use enclosed fixtures and choose bulbs which are designed to operate in the orientation of your reflector. Lastly, remember to swap out the bulbs after their rated lifetime, don't just run them to failure. You may read advice to replace the bulbs every six months or twelve months because they lose light, but you really wouldn't need to do this with HPS, pulse start, or ceramic metal halides.

Inductive load means things that have a motor, choke, or transformer in them.

dcarch

I suspected as much regarding pricing.. but I figured the relative prices were applicable with regards to measuring the constitution of the components. Such broad pricing variances between this retailer, other local retailers, and web shops makes me suspicious of consumer rape, which I usually figure a way to avoid by the time I make a purchase.

That said, does anyone have a recommended mail order retailer?