Indoor plant cultivation and associated savings

The financial demands of indoor growing are a common myth that unnecessarily discourages beginner growers from making full use of the advantages of grow tents and harvesting a luxurious crop several times a year, all in the comfort of home. This article aims to dispel the myth that indoor growing is financially demanding and, instead, highlight the savings and other benefits it brings to growers.

• Let us start straight away with the numbers. In our e-shop, you can buy a complete basic growing set including an odour filter for discreet operation in your home from just CZK 6,790.
• If you are concerned about the electricity bill, the real running costs of such a “magic cabinet”, as we like to call it, amount to only a few hundred crowns per month, which is a negligible sum, especially when compared with the value of the harvest, whether you are growing organic-quality vegetables and fruit or medicinal herbs.
• In addition, most households allow you to use the off-peak tariff hours for the lighting cycle.
• Once you start choosing your first grow box with accessories (lighting, ventilation, etc.), we will be happy to advise you on a solution tailored to your possibilities, so that you have a clear idea of the future costs.

“INVESTING IN QUALITY ALWAYS MEANS THE GREATEST SAVINGS IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT GROWING AT ANY SCALE.”

Beginner growers naturally tend to choose the cheapest products, but the technology used in only slightly more expensive equipment ultimately makes such a significant difference to operating efficiency that your initial investment will pay for itself within the first few growing cycles.

Here are some practical tips on how to reduce the running costs of an indoor growing room:

• Try to choose each piece of equipment and then use it as efficiently as possible, thereby reducing any potential energy losses to an absolute minimum.

LIGHTING

• You can make use of every beam of light, for example thanks to high-quality reflectors or shades, if you choose discharge lamps as your source of artificial lighting.
• The same applies to reflective films. By carefully and regularly cleaning the reflective surfaces alone (both in the case of reflectors and reflective films), you will ensure not only maximum efficiency in the use of light radiation, but also give no chance to the action of pathogens or pests.
• In smaller grow boxes and propagators, you can use energy-saving lamps (CFL) for cultivating young plants.
• If you are serious about indoor growing, in the long term you will save considerable money by using LED grow lights, which significantly outperform classic discharge lamps in overall operating efficiency.
• Plants grown under discharge lamp light should be shaped evenly for maximum light absorption. With modern LED panels, even light distribution is already ensured. In the case of full-spectrum models, this is further developed into a perfect imitation of natural sunlight, so you only need a single light source for all development stages, and you also save on buying a shade, which is unavoidable when using a discharge lamp, while most discharge lamps are suitable only for one specific development stage (growth, flowering). 
• Another advantage of LED lights is the possibility of hanging them very close to the tops of the plants thanks to their low heat emissions, without the risk of burning them. This again increases the overall efficiency of operation.
• To sufficiently highlight the savings achieved by using LED lights instead of HPS lamps, let us give a specific example. If we replace a 250W HPS lamp with full-spectrum LEDs of equivalent output, the investment will pay for itself by the sixth growing cycle at the latest, which, for example, in the case of autoflowering varieties lasts around 2 months, so within a year we have the investment back and at the same time enjoy higher-quality flowers or fruit and higher yields already in the first year.
• And because we are well aware of this fact, precisely tuned LED grow box sets with complete accessories are among the most advantageous products you can buy, saving you additional money at the start of your indoor growing journey. The image below illustrates what such a set contains.
• Below we also provide a link to a separate article on the topic of HPS vs. LED.

VENTILATION

• You can clean the blades of fans with compressed air after each growing cycle, which will result in lower noise during the following growing cycle and, last but not least, a longer service life.
• The fan speed can be regulated in quality devices according to the temperature inside the grow box, which naturally drops when the lights are switched off, and the fan’s electricity consumption also automatically decreases.
• When it comes to fans, if you want savings, choose fans with an EC motor without question, where the real electricity consumption will more closely correspond to the set output.
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