Get a harvest every 2 weeks

[HuskyToker]

I've just ready all 8 pages of this thread and I commend you Al B. for all the help you're giving to noobs.

Your op makes me want to set up my own in a few years when I can have a large op for producing amounts of bud to live on hehe

My question is, what pushes the limit as far as wattage usage from lights? I've heard of people getting caught cause they were running tons of lights and stuff. I've also heard of people routing power around the power box haha

I want to double your grow -
8 groups of 20-24 plants with a harvest every week!
that would be 4x1000w hps, another 1000w hps for mothers, and like flourescents for all the clones.
Would this be safe as long as I paid my electricity bill?

[Al B. Fuct]

Originally Posted by HuskyToker

I've just read all 8 pages of this thread and I commend you Al B. for all the help you're giving to noobs.

Thanks.

My question is, what pushes the limit as far as wattage usage from lights? I've heard of people getting caught cause they were running tons of lights and stuff. I've also heard of people routing power around the power box haha

I want to double your grow -
8 groups of 20-24 plants with a harvest every week!
that would be 4x1000w hps, another 1000w hps for mothers, and like flourescents for all the clones.
Would this be safe as long as I paid my electricity bill?

I know of folks who have swimming pools or spas whose electricity bills WAY exceed mine. I think I could safely double my op and have no worries as long as the bill was paid on time.

The functional limit of how much current you can draw into your op is the rating of your main service fuse and the wiring between the op and the breaker box. As an example, I have 240V mains voltage and a 60A main svc fuse. Mr Ohm's Law says 240v x 60A = 14,400W (14.4kW). My water heater draws 4.8kW when it wants to, so quite technically, if every other thing in the house were turned off, I could pull as much as 9600W (9.6kW) into my op. I know my op draws 3500W with everything on, so I could easily run another copy of what I have.

However, to double my op, I would not necessarily have to duplicate absolutely everything. Even with a doubling of the flowering lighting and trays, I'm confident that I could get away with just one 400W HPS for vegging my mums- I'd just want a tray for the mums twice the size of the one I'm using now.

When you're talking about running BIG power to a grow op which requires new cabling be installed, for security reasons, you're not going to be calling in an electrician to pull in the new cabling. You MUST know basic AC wiring techniques and how to calculate the amount of power you're drawing in order to build a safe installation.

I planned my wiring so that I don't draw more than 50% of the capacity of the wiring that supplies the op, but it's reasonable to draw 80% of rated current through your cabling and the breaker that supplies it, i.e. don't draw more than 16A continuously off a 20A circuit.

oh, and- don't EVER bypass a meter. It's not only extremely dangerous but it is THE fastest way to being detected. When the billing dept notices your meter did not spin in the last billing cycle, they'll send out a techie to replace it. When the new meter doesn't spin but the tech measures current flow in the drop from the pole, he knows what's up- and will be coming back with his supervisor and most likely a detective as well.

[Al B. Fuct]

After making a few tweaks and corrections, things are looking up.


Much better plant development- this is tray#1, for plants in wk0-2. These are at about 2 weeks. Nice early bud development.


Mucho improvement in this shot of tray#2, for plants in wks2-4. These are at about 4 wks.


The weight is starting to pile on in this batch in tray#3, wks4-6. Plants shown are in wk6.


A couple of plants from tray 4, wks6-8. These are in wk8, ready to harvest. Nice, dense, hard, clumpy nugs, now yielding about 1oz per plant.

I think that reintroducing aeration probably made the biggest difference, improving vigor across all trays. Correcting the PK13-14 dose to 0.5ml/l in tank2 during wk3 for the plants in that tray has stopped the cooking of leaves in wk4-6. I'm a bit mixed on the Fytocell; it's a bit messy to use. I'm going to run a couple of batches side by side with plain floc and with Fytocell now that I have some other issues sorted.

[HuskyToker]

So you are getting about an ounce per plant. Umm few questions. Im actually planning on having a far scaled down version of this by the end of Feb.

How tall should I expect plants to get using this method of trimming the lower 1/3 and with 12/12 from seed? I know you use indica but with respec to wanting to do this with any weed, how tall is my grow box gonna need to be? Im doing like 3 plants in each stage under a 1kW hps all in one box. I might use soil though. How high do you have your lights?

[Al B. Fuct]

The finishing height of the plants will depend on the size of the HPS light you use. With 1000s, mine finish somewhere between 34-40" tall. The light needs to be about 18-20" from the growing tips.

As I'm running a flood system, the reservoir tanks sit below the trays. The tanks are about 24" tall and the tray level is about 28" off the floor.

[HuskyToker]

ok thanks man, and do you move your lights up and down at all or is it always like 60 inches over the tray?

[Al B. Fuct]

I don't move the lights much these days. When I was having some development problems, I got plants only about 12-14" tall- this necessitated dropping the lights down, but that's a past problem.

One problem with running a single 1000 over each pair of flowering trays is that the plants in tray2 (wks 2-4) will always be taller than the new plants in tray1 (wks1-2). The light can drop no lower than the necessary clearance height over the taller plants in tray2, making the clearance over tray1 a bit excessive, but it seems to work OK nonetheless.

[calicartel]

Originally Posted by Al B. Fuct

No worries, happy to help.

You can set your timer to flood the tray anyway during the first week, despite your hand watering. Fytocell is rather hard to overwater due to the air content.

Pre-soaking the material and then loading it into pots really would be a sloppy mess. Don't know why they suggest doing it that way. It is much easier to soak the material once it has been packed in pots, while still dry.

I do like the results that I'm getting with Fytocell, but I'm not a total fan due to some of the handling issues. If Fytogreen could make the Fc material clump up like floc, it'd be so much nicer to use, but it would also probably compromise the air-holding capacity of the stuff.

Before I left for the holidays, I found a new product for my next 25 clone batch... it's a pot that is made of coco-fiber. Somewhat expensive ($2/per 8"pot compared to plastic ones with drain holes that are $0.79 here) but they're amazing. Rather than having the water come through drainholes in the bottom, it soaks through the walls of the 8" pot. It ensures even distribution of water and also solved my floating problem, albeit I still need to manually water them the first week or so.

This is the idea:
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2001082680

I'll let you guys know which works better after harvest in a few weeks... I still have some plants that are rockwool cubes, some that are floc and fytocell, and some that are fytocell in coco-pots.

[nueb]

Hi Al Cali gurl here, Been sorta follng your thread here and wot can I say nicely written and very informtional. Well I have been getting a bit of help form a few ppl on here and had a small cab grow going, basically waiting til escrow closed so I could relly do up a nice set up. My question is approximately how much did it cost for your set up... and I am assuming you built it yourself? do you have a thread on the construction of it? I pretty much want to mimic your op there, wot can I say great ideas get copied . Theroom that I have dedicated tothis is a 10x11 and I also have a standard closet like a 6x3 I figured that would maybe make a nice little area for my clones? or maybe store crap in there. could you be a little specific with your setup, like room dimesions and do you have your trays on tables (appears so, but wanted to double check) and I also notice you aid you use 2 different tanks, do you keep your clones(0-2 week tray?) on one tank and the other 3 ont he other tank? what res do u use for ur mums? ok, well that was alot said, and I am sure I will be back with many more questions but any advice and help is much appreciated

[Al B. Fuct]

Originally Posted by calicartel

Before I left for the holidays, I found a new product for my next 25 clone batch... it's a pot that is made of coco-fiber. Somewhat expensive ($2/per 8"pot compared to plastic ones with drain holes that are $0.79 here) but they're amazing. Rather than having the water come through drainholes in the bottom, it soaks through the walls of the 8" pot. It ensures even distribution of water and also solved my floating problem, albeit I still need to manually water them the first week or so.

This is the idea:
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2001082680

I'll let you guys know which works better after harvest in a few weeks... I still have some plants that are rockwool cubes, some that are floc and fytocell, and some that are fytocell in coco-pots.

A pot's job is to hold media, keep light away from roots and keep roots from growing into the rootmass of neighbouring plants. If the fibre pots will do that, cool.

However, I am concerned that fibre pots will break into bits or may support mould growth in a flood hydro system. These are actually intended for raising seedlings and then direct planting into soil, pot and all. Roots will grow through the walls of the fibre pots.

I'm not sure these are the best solution for use in a flood hydro op.

[Al B. Fuct]

Originally Posted by nueb

Hi Al Cali gurl here, Been sorta follng your thread here and wot can I say nicely written and very informtional.

Thanks.

My question is approximately how much did it cost for your set up... and I am assuming you built it yourself? do you have a thread on the construction of it? I pretty much want to mimic your op there, wot can I say great ideas get copied .

Yes, I built it myself. However, it's hard to give you much useful information with any costings even close to accurate. Grow rooms are really quite specific to the building which houses them. I find that disused bathrooms, basements, garages and other areas with durable flooring (bare concrete or tiled)- and hopefully a floor drain- are ideal. A spare bedroom or closet will work but is much harder to properly ventilate (you may have to cut a hole in the ceiling to vent into an attic) and also requires that non-durable floors (wood, carpet) must be protected from spills.

Theroom that I have dedicated tothis is a 10x11 and I also have a standard closet like a 6x3 I figured that would maybe make a nice little area for my clones? or maybe store crap in there.

That's more than enough space to work with, as long as you can vent the space, protect the floor and supply adequate electrical wiring capacity to suit your demand.

could you be a little specific with your setup, like room dimesions

My entire op fits in a space 8'W x 9'L x 7'H. The mothers are in a roughly 1' x 2.5' tray on one side of the room, cordoned off to the edges of the tray with a lightproof curtain made from a double layer of panda film.

The clonebox will fit in the remaining space, but at this moment, I have it outside the grow space. Because I have had numerous growrooms in the past, I designed this one to be as absolutely small as possible. It does make it harder to work in the room, but less light is wasted than if the room were bigger. The plants are quite close to the panda film walls, bouncing otherwise wasted light back to the plants.

and do you have your trays on tables (appears so, but wanted to double check)

Each flood tray is on a stand made from 1" square aluminum tubing and joined with plastic 'Qubelok' fittings. This allows the tanks to sit directly beneath the tray they feed.

and I also notice you aid you use 2 different tanks, do you keep your clones(0-2 week tray?) on one tank and the other 3 on the other tank? what res do u use for ur mums?

There actually are 5 tanks, one 125L for each of the four 820mm x 820mm flowering trays and one ~50L tank for the smaller mother plant tray.

My clones live in a purpose-built clonebox with its own fluoro lighting, heat mat and thermostatically controlled exhaust fan. Clones are hand watered 2x/day by dipping only a corner of the rockwool cubes in a bucket of pH adjusted water (5.5-5.8), no pump or flood tray for the clones.

Most any space can be made into a grow room by making a rectangular frame out of 2x4 timber which is the same size as the floorspace you want to light. Throw a sheet of panda film over the top to make a ceiling, raise the frame to the ceiling of the space you're working in (with the help of a very close friend or two), fix it in place with screws and small "L" brackets into the ceiling joists and then wrap the edge of the frame with panda film to create hanging curtain "walls." Overlap the ends of the room wrap by several feet to create a light-trapped entry flap which you can easily open and close.

The ceiling joists of the space I am using for my op are much higher off the floor than they need to be for a grow room ceiling, so I actually built a full timber frame for this most recent incarnation of my op. I framed up the walls and ceiling from 2x4s, with studs spaced at the typical 16" and lined the whole mess with panda film, white side inward, of course.

If I had to fully rebuild my op from scratch with entirely new materials, lighting, reflectors, pumps, exhaust blowers, dehumidifier, ducting, general electrics, trays, etc. I don't think I'd see much change from $3500-4000. Sounds like a lot of dough until you figure that the first harvest covers that cost- and then some.

If you buy only what you need when you need it, you can spread out the construction cost over about 8 weeks, but it's functionally easier work in the op if you build it all in one go before you put a single plant in it.

[calicartel]

Originally Posted by Al B. Fuct

A pot's job is to hold media, keep light away from roots and keep roots from growing into the rootmass of neighbouring plants. If the fibre pots will do that, cool.

However, I am concerned that fibre pots will break into bits or may support mould growth in a flood hydro system. These are actually intended for raising seedlings and then direct planting into soil, pot and all. Roots will grow through the walls of the fibre pots.

I'm not sure these are the best solution for use in a flood hydro op.

I'll keep the thread updated on that, but so far so good. I'll be able to compare/contrast results when it's all done, since I'm using regular pots and coco pots, for different sets of girls. I like the fact that I can water multiple times per day though, delivering larger quantities of oxygenated water. The plants that have rockwool in them do not dry as much as desired between waterings, and thus only get one watering per day.

Couple more weeks and we'll find out!

[Al B. Fuct]

I certainly explored different sorts of media as I was never happy with the level of root oxygenation going on in floc. A pot of floc does remain too wet for too long- at least until the plant gets really rather large and can suck up around a litre or so a day. Smaller plants in floc can act like they are being overwatered.

I'll be interested to see what happens with the fibre pots; I hope they don't go to bits on you in wk4... would make quite a mess.

Fytocell seems to be a decent compromise, holding enough water to get a plant through a day when a pump has failed but not keeping the roots saturated in stagnating water. As you note though, Fytocell can be watered more than 1x day, conducting more O2 to the roots.

Plugging up the bottom of each plastic pot with a couple inches of floc is certainly doing the job here for stopping buoyancy as well as keeping the Fytocell crumbs in the pots. The plants I've harvested recently still have most of their rootmasses attracted to the bottom of the pots, regardless of whether they have 50mm of floc packed in the bottoms or are fully filled with Fytocell and the drain holes covered with a knee-hi stocking.

[nueb]

Originally Posted by Al B. Fuct

Thanks.



Yes, I built it myself. However, it's hard to give you much useful information with any costings even close to accurate. Grow rooms are really quite specific to the building which houses them. I find that disused bathrooms, basements, garages and other areas with durable flooring (bare concrete or tiled)- and hopefully a floor drain- are ideal. A spare bedroom or closet will work but is much harder to properly ventilate (you may have to cut a hole in the ceiling to vent into an attic) and also requires that non-durable floors (wood, carpet) must be protected from spills.



That's more than enough space to work with, as long as you can vent the space, protect the floor and supply adequate electrical wiring capacity to suit your demand.



My entire op fits in a space 8'W x 9'L x 7'H. The mothers are in a roughly 1' x 2.5' tray on one side of the room, cordoned off to the edges of the tray with a lightproof curtain made from a double layer of panda film.

The clonebox will fit in the remaining space, but at this moment, I have it outside the grow space. Because I have had numerous growrooms in the past, I designed this one to be as absolutely small as possible. It does make it harder to work in the room, but less light is wasted than if the room were bigger. The plants are quite close to the panda film walls, bouncing otherwise wasted light back to the plants.



Each flood tray is on a stand made from 1" square aluminum tubing and joined with plastic 'Qubelok' fittings. This allows the tanks to sit directly beneath the tray they feed.



There actually are 5 tanks, one 125L for each of the four 820mm x 820mm flowering trays and one ~50L tank for the smaller mother plant tray.

My clones live in a purpose-built clonebox with its own fluoro lighting, heat mat and thermostatically controlled exhaust fan. Clones are hand watered 2x/day by dipping only a corner of the rockwool cubes in a bucket of pH adjusted water (5.5-5.8), no pump or flood tray for the clones.

Most any space can be made into a grow room by making a rectangular frame out of 2x4 timber which is the same size as the floorspace you want to light. Throw a sheet of panda film over the top to make a ceiling, raise the frame to the ceiling of the space you're working in (with the help of a very close friend or two), fix it in place with screws and small "L" brackets into the ceiling joists and then wrap the edge of the frame with panda film to create hanging curtain "walls." Overlap the ends of the room wrap by several feet to create a light-trapped entry flap which you can easily open and close.

The ceiling joists of the space I am using for my op are much higher off the floor than they need to be for a grow room ceiling, so I actually built a full timber frame for this most recent incarnation of my op. I framed up the walls and ceiling from 2x4s, with studs spaced at the typical 16" and lined the whole mess with panda film, white side inward, of course.

If I had to fully rebuild my op from scratch with entirely new materials, lighting, reflectors, pumps, exhaust blowers, dehumidifier, ducting, general electrics, trays, etc. I don't think I'd see much change from $3500-4000. Sounds like a lot of dough until you figure that the first harvest covers that cost- and then some.

If you buy only what you need when you need it, you can spread out the construction cost over about 8 weeks, but it's functionally easier work in the op if you build it all in one go before you put a single plant in it.

This is whyI luv this thread, thanks for the info, since its my own home modifying is not an issue. I do have tile, so that makes it a bit easier. I was figuring in the $3000 mark somewhere anyways, have about $2700 now to get started. I figured I would build first and get everything ready to go even if it takes a month or two ( finace reasons) Im a patient person ... nice grow btw the new set up must be workign well. you can see the difference in the plants very healthy! I have only done hydro in a very small set up 9 a plant or two) and mainly have used soil, so this should be interesting. Also wto do you keep ur humidity at, I was keepign mine about 42% I wanted high resin buds, you think this is too much? or too less? thanks for all the help


~cali Gurl~

[nueb]

any chance you have a pic of your curtain wall?