Greetings from Canada where we * son Mick and I * successfully grow mostly paphs, phrags and some phals indoors under a combination of fluorescent and HPS lights in an "indoor greenhouse" as you describe it, and mostly cattleya, schomburkia and vandaceous plants in an attached greenhouse, supplemented with HPS lighting during winter. Based on our own experience I have a few suggestions to pass on.
First, if you are installing track lighting, install a series of 400 watt HPS lights rather than a single 1000 watt fixture. You can instal them so there is overlap at the edges, with the net result being far better and more effective coverage than a single 1000 watt fixture. Our personal experience favours HPS because it provides better spectrum, we believe, for flowering. I would recommend either two or three 400 watt HPS lights as opposed to the 1000 watt fixture. Use multi-tier plant light units with two or four bulb setups for plants demanding lower light. If you position them right they will also benefit from additional light from the edges of your HPS units. Second, have an electrician check to be sure you can carry the load on the circuits you have n your basement. We had new additional wiring put in to carry the load of our lights and ensure they did not run on circuits used by any other households lights or appliances. Devise a system where all your plants are stored on lightweight portable (liftable) racks. These racks will keep your plants together in groups on your staging, or under your lights, and gives you flexibility for watering as I describe in a moment. In our case, we had access to a large number of discarded stackable plastic bread trays * the sort used by bakery delivery companies to bring multiple loafs of bread to a store. You have probably seen them in brown, red or blue versions, where you live: they carry a couple of dozen loafs and have holes at two ends to hold the unit. We group our plants on those, making it possible to carry, very easily, a good number of plants. This is especially useful for smaller plants such as paphs, and phals and means you may have several dozen plants grouped together on one easy to carry unit. Third, don't spend a fortune on a watering system. Here is what we did. We purchased a 150 gallon water reservoir at a hydroponics store, a reservoir large enough to be able to hold one of the bread trays mentioned above comfortably. We stood the reservoir hip high on a simple frame stand we built locating it in a corner of the room convenient for watering. The height is useful because you can then water at waist high level, a mercy for anyone with arthritis in their hips or knees. We leave one tray inverted in the reservoir, and at watering time we bring each tray full of plants from their site in the room, one by one to the reservoir for watering. We have a hose connected to our laundry room faucet, which we stack beside the laundry tub when not in use, and we have a simple submersible pump which we put into the water reservoir, with a waterline back into the laundry tub, which we run when the reservoir starts to fill up after watering a dozen or so trays. The pump was also purchased at the hydroponic store and has proven its value: it can empty the reservoir efficiently in five to 10 minutes. This watering method with the bread trays and with the reservoir is a vast improvement over the situation we started with initially, where we first watered plants individually at the sink, a time consuming process when you have 1000 plants needing watering. And it is even a vast improvement over our first system used with the bread trays where the trays of plants were carried upstairs to the bathtub, draped across the edges of the tub and watered by the shower head. Two sets of seven steps, around three corners, with heavy trays of plants and pet dogs potentially under foot, led us to our current system, which is, simply put, perfect. Hope these ideas help. Lanny Morry _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids
