Why Not Just Buy A Grow Lamp Kit From The Internet Or Catalog?
To put it simple. It is the much greater cost of purchasing a prefabricated lighting unit and with many people out of work and left with a much lower source of income it's not time to run up your credit card or deplete some of your well earned savings. I have provided you with easy to follow drawings that tell you what you need to construct your own proffessional growing lamp. The table you will have to provide yourself. A small kitchen table would work out perfectly. Sometimes a local yard sale can turn out to be a goldmine. I have provided a photo of my own lamp assembly, hoping to clarify my drawings.
Next: Refer to Figure 1 & 2. Figure 1 shows the final assembly and Figure 2 shows how to mount the porcelain or plastic lamp mounting sockets. I placed mine 7" apart to fit my 4 lamps evenly across the top span. The lamps are wired in parallel as shown in Figure 3. You can now mount the two verticle side pieces that will move up and down to adjust the lamp assembly height to accomodate your growing plants. These side pieces will tie the whole lighting assembly to your growing table.
The lamp assembly wiring is simple and straight forward. The 4 lamps are wired in parallel and then tied to the lamp timer which I purchased for $ 6.00 at a local hardware store. The next item to tie in is the 4 1/2 inch computer cooling fan which draws 14 Watts so that's no big drain on your electric bill. I only run the fan for about 2-hours a day and that is to pollinate the flowers that produce the vegetables. The ongoing cost to run the CFL lamps which are turned on for 12 hours a day comes to $ 4.00 a month and that is based on $ .15 per killowatt/hour in southern New Hampshire. Anyhow, the math brings this to a buck a week. Skipping a cup of coffee for one day will more than cover this cost.