DIY - It's Cheaper!

[Osho]

Growers know that any successful grow operation takes time, money, and good planning. Unfortunately, we all know that this is FAR from being inexpensive. The great thing about it is the outlets available to us online to help us advance our greater knowledge of HOW our systems work, our plants grow and react, and how they consume. Depending on your ideal criteria on how you would like to GROW or your medium of choice, any good system was designed to serve a single purpose, to feed your plants. There are many different types of grow operations and the manner for which they are arranged. What I am prepared to do is help you and give you the tools necessary to creating a home made operation, while cutting your overhead costs to a minimum. Great stuff right? Of course its great stuff, your saving money for that new vaporizer you saw on a side ad on a website and now you can get it.

I have worked in many different grow ops ranging from small to enormous (200 plants +) and I have learned many things, but the most beneficial is "if you can do it yourself, do it yourself." You will know how your creation works, problems to look for, where you might be able to improve, things to do better next time, and where you can upgrade.

Hydroponics:

Perhaps my favorite way to grow, and most successful final product deliverer. It requires a lot of good planning to creating your own hydro system. You will need to consider:

What type of system I will make (Ebb & Flow, Bucket system, drip system, etc)
How much water I will require
How I can access my tank easily to check Nutrient levels and pH on a daily basis
How can I bring light exposure and temperature variations with my water to a MINIMAL
How many plants will I grow
How can I create a good exchange system for water(very important)

Those are some great starter questions to ask yourself. I run a Bubble Tub home made system that allows for a HUGE amount of bubbles, with my roots constantly immersed in Nutrient Enriched Water and a 24 hour drip feed. I spent 200 dollars getting everything together and setting it up. Thats NOTHING for an 8 planter Hydro setup.

I use ten gallons of water in my system. Its a good amount for my plants seeing as how in mid veg they drink about 6-7 gallons of water every 7-10 days. Makes changing my water easy.

The trickiest part for me was figuring out how the hell im going to gaze at my beautiful roots when I want, and to check all my levels on a daily basis. I have a drain hose that comes from the bottom of my tank to a drain with a midway valve to hold off the water. Near where the drain is at the bottom of my tub (plastic storage bin, I wish I could fill my tub with hydroton is a T joint to allow one tube to branch into 3. Off one of the outputs on my splitter is a clear plastic hose going straight up. This gives me exactly what I need to see where my water level is at, but I never test from that hose. The water sits in the tube until drain time being exposed to light. Not a good sample site. Also I didn't want to have to turn my valve and drain some to test every day, wastes to much cumulative water. Inevitably I found it best to branch off from the resevoir with another drain site that allows water to evenly flow in and out and is easily acessable. For me to describe in words would be extremly confusing and elongated, I will spare you for now.


I could go on for PAGES on concepts and designs that I have put into progress, but I find it easier to ask you what YOU NEED, WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW, and WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. I can blueprint a design for you that would best fit your buget and area.

If you have any DIY desires, this is the perfect place to inquire. Just ask me to design something for you (I create hydro systems for a living) and I will blueprint you and cost list you on everything, no charge to you, my treat. Seriously, try me. I will have you Homemade in notime ;0)

[Osho]

Need advice on making your own HYDROPONICS SYSTEM????

[jcj77d]

i have everything i need (i think) for a ebb & flow setup.
details:
4x4x7 grow tent, 600w digital/eletronic mh/hps & 2 150w hps, radiant ac 8" hood, 8" 500cfm exaust, 26w 10.0 uvb, & 2 clip fans.

items i have:
36x24x8 flood tray
18gal rubbermaid tote for res
150gph pump
fittings
15ft of black pvc hose
silicon
zip ties
hydroton - 50ltr
RW cubes, both 1" & 4"
ph/ppm meter

^this is for my tent, mainly flowering

need a super simple & cheap hydro setup for my closet, mainly for seedlings & short vegging periods.
its about 4x10x8, but the shelf is 18"w X 48"l, w/ 1 2ft 4 bulb t5, & 1 2ft 2bulb t5 baix. was also thinking ebb & flow.

[Osho]

Great, sounds like you have all your essentials, now all you need is a design. Give me a day to put something together for you. If your planning on having a separate unit to veg and flower, ebb&flow would be very easy to work with. It allows for the easy transfer of plants if your working with a flood tray. Also if your going to have a germination station that resides close to your vegging area, I am sure you want simplicity with a capital S. Just need to know a few things b4 I draw something up for you.

Do you have an exhaust outlet for your closet
Can you get Mylar
You mentioned short Veg cycle, how short
How many plants are you going to try to veg, perpetual harvest or no

Osho

Thanks for taking an interest

[Dummyc4]

Hydroponics or Soil Don't know yet

i have read alot watched alot, and have a basic plan lined out.

Goal: Make marijuana growing a hobby with a delicious satisfying reward, not profit driven just enjoying different strains and something to do. What do i have right now, nothing, but what I am planning on getting is a complete grow kit from HTG supply with or without soil (because i don't know which one to do, maybe you could tell me what would be best.)

Not looking for much marijuana, but the space will either be a closet much like this

• http://forum.grasscity.com/advanced-...preciated.html or
• http://forum.grasscity.com/grow-room...pic-heavy.html
• A normal non walk in closet.

the HTG supply complete grow kit has

• 400 watt Grow Light with Four Sided Horizontal Reflector
• High Output High Pressure Sodium Bulb
• High Output Metal Halide Conversion Bulb
• Heavy Duty Timer
• Pair of High Low Reflector Hangers
• 100% ORGANIC FOXFARM 3 PACK of NUTRIENTS - GrowBig, BigBloom and TigerBloom Quarts!
• Advanced Nutrients OVERDRIVE Ultra Premium Liquid Flower Enhancer
• 12 THREE GALLON Grow Bags
• 12 Super Starter Plugs
• 50' Roll of Reflective Mylar
• Thermometer / Hygrometer

On a side note you think the 400watt would produce too much heat?

I would like to have as many plants as possible each plant being a different strain, but i dont want to sacrifice quality. So given that space and goal what do you think would be better, a DWC bubble bucket or soil. If soil i plan to stick with Fox Farm soil.

So what you can answer:
hydro or soil?
Is it too much heat for such a small space, if yes how big of a space would i need?
If i had to use that space: what would you recomend for lighting, both HID and CFL
How many plants can i grow with that?

I don't know if your able to answer all my questions but answer what you can.

Thanks

[Osho]

Well it depends. Most growers are completely satisfied by what soil gives them. Personally I make Hydro kits so you already know what I think, but this is just me.

Soil gives you less maintenance, but requires extra to give you the Dank Nug I am sure you want. You can grow in organic soil and produce heavy yields, but its not going to be as potent. I don't care what anyone says, the FACT is that Hydro = Danker Nuggs.

Hydro is a complicated medium which requires you, the grower and owner, to monitor nutrient levels and check the pH daily. You have to change your water every 7-10 days, not a big deal, but something extra you have to do. DWC bubble buckets are costly, but you can CUT overhead in half by building your own Hydrofarm. Whatever the system type you want, Hydro will greatly please you not only in how FAST your plants grow, but how healthy and strong they will become, in addition to their productivity during flowering.

What takes plants in soil to do in weeks will take you days in Hydro. The fact that your roots will be immersed in nutrient formula takes away the plants necessity to work harder in the roots to pull the nutrients it needs. In Hydro, your root systems will be 10x the size as in soil. Soil is also more prone to bacterial infections and ploblematic situations such as nutrient lockout and/or the inability to absorb certain nutrients.

My answer to you is go Hydro, try it and see how happy you will be. If you have the money, save your self a little work and buy a turn-key system, but if you like doing it yourself, its not hard, and its MUCH MUCH MUCH cheaper. There are NUMEROUSE places you can look to when building your own setup, most I can help you with seeing as how this is how I make a living; building Hydroponics systems. For a closet, I would reccomend you build a bucket system of some sort. For the space you can grow four at a time without worrying about distancing and light consumtion if you mylar the walls. Dont be fooled, GET THICK MYLAR, spend the money on that, thick mylar is GOD when it comes to light reflection and the amount your plants will absorb.

No space is too big or small, but your right in considering what your heat levels will be. Make sure you can get your hands on some proper ventilation, and in a grow cab, you will need to have a air circulation system that takes the lamps heat emission into the exhaust rather than downward onto your plants. Heat emission from grow lamps is heavy and cumulative. The longer the lamp is on, the hotter it WILL get, it will not raise to a certain temp and stop, it will keep heating up, so you need to circulate. Place a hole in the bottom of your cab to give some heavy induction, and if you can have that fan inducting air connected to an air conditioning system with a thermostat to automatically regulate when to cool and when to just blow air, EVEN BETTER. Your ehaust should be a CFM fan that is properly suited for your cubic space. Its worth spending the extra 90 dollars for one of these squirrel-cage fans. Trust me on this.

For lighting, if your going to have 2 separate grow spaces within one cab, one for flowering, and one for Veg, your going in the right direction. If you have all in one, thats ok also, and will save you some money. Separate areas creates more control, and better growth cycles for your plants, but you risk shock and accidents in the transfer. Not a problem if your good at paying attention, and I dont mean to sound disrespectful or rude.

If your using that space as a ONE room operation, no separation between where they Veg and Flower, then just get a 400 watt HPS lamp. Dont worry about the Flourescents and CFL if your doing it this way, theres no need, and why use extra electricity when you honestly dont need it. Plus with proper Mylaring, you wont have any issues.

If your running two separate rooms, dont get CFL, get tube flourescents. The lifespan IS longer on Flours than CFL, I have both at my current operation, and find that the lights are more reliable and cover area better. Use flourescents for your entire veg phase. Keep the tops only 8 inches from the bulbs as compared to 18 inches with a HPS. Flours wont burn your plants and emit MINIMAL heat, which is fantastic for your space. CFL's are like regular ligh bulbs with phosphor coating and throw light EVERY which way, not a reliable and efficient use of light and power if you ask me, but like I said, this is just me!

If you have the money, the most effective system would be going Flours for the first few weeks from sprouting, then switch to Metal Halide for the remainder of the Veg until you tranfer them to the HPS flowering room. Its expensive, well worth it, well well worth the yield, MH makes a big difference in Hydro, don't care what anyone says.

You might want to just keep it simple for now, you NEED A HPS TO FLOWER WELL, let me reiterate, YOU NEED A HPS TO FLOWER PROPERLY and maximize your yield, and if your ina complex medium like HYDRO, you want to get the most out of those babies, and with a HPS, you will be amazed on how much you get from each plant.

In a space such as yours, I reccomend you start with 4 garunteed females (clones), or plant 8, 6 will most likely Veg well, 4 will be females. Anything over 4 in a closet will give you overcrowdedness, and stunt the plants growth preventing some plants from growing to their full potential. If you dont have clones, learn to clone and you can create a perpetual harvest (buds every 2 months). With 4 plants your looking at about 1/4 lb per 2 months in Hydro. Hope this was good!!!

[Osho]

BY THE WAY, Conversion bulbs are no good. They don't give the full spectrum of light, I have tried this so many times with a conversion ballast and 2 separate units and have found that I get more blues with my separate HPS ballast in comparison to getting less blue and more red with a MH bulb in a HPS ballast that's convertible. Just remember that Ballasts are build to produce a specific frequency and are designed specifically to deliver better frequencies to what they were intended, in conversion ballasts, the MAIN frequency is that for a HPS, the secondary is MH. Its all determined by how fast an electric charge taps a piece of metal in the ballast to give off a specific amperage and frequency of current.

If you want to use MH, get a MH ballast, dont get converstion ballasts, they burn out faster, become less reliable due to frequency conversions, and dont give you 100% of what you need for your MH bulb, you would get lucky if you got 60% full MH spectrum with a system even as good as Sun Systems, how do I know? I have the convertible ballast sitting in my garage. I throw rocks at it on the weekend.

[Osho]

YOUR NUTRIENT CHOICE is the SAME as mine man, fantastic juice. Big Bud, Humic Acid, SensiCal and Zen plus part a+b sensi grow and flower in ADDITION to using a product like Liquid karma (for the high levels of potash and enzymes) = AMAZING STUFF when used in Hydro. Their soil products are pretty weak though, I have tested them on a 20 plant crop in soil, and found that I got the same yield as other products, but in HYDRO, AN is unbeatable.

[Osho]

Here is my ventilation system for my grow cab. Took some pictures for you

AC unit with ducting




Extension on thermostat from AC unit



HOME MADE carbon filter with 180 CFM fan for $90

[stangco]

Hey Osho, I'm planning on creating my first grow area and start picking up this wonderful practice of botany into a hobby of mind. Here are my parameters:

Grow area: Height:3ft Width:2ft Length:2ft
As stealthy as possible
Money is definitely an issue so planning on using CFL's
Not sure whether to go soil or hydro. but would eventually like to learn both
I would like to start growing at what you would say are the bare minimums, in order to learn the basics and to see if I really want to start getting advanced with this (im sure i will=)
Just planning on maintaining 1 plant, but with a lot of care!

A little confused with the training techniques between LST and SCroG. But I have a height limitation so I would like to go shorter and wider.

Thanks

[Osho]

Stango, sounds to me like your growing in your sink cabinet or something . I will tell you that I say all the time that size contingencies are never a problem, but your talking only 4 feet of grow height, minus 2 feet for your medium and light. That means you will have a 2 ft plant. No problem in that, but the only thing this system will offer you in experience, not alot of bud. CFL lighting is good for vegging plants, but flowering will be difficult because CFL released more blue than red. Plants require red in order to yield up. If your growing in this space, and you only have one plant, you must understand that you are NOT garunteed sucess. If you are planning on growing just to see what happens, you will have a plant, but it might be female and it might be male. My advice to you would be to bump up your space to at least 3 plants. If you cannot grow elsewhere, just stick to one to hobbyist the plant. Since it is only one plant, grow in soil. Organic soil works best, but its one plant, and you might not know what sex it is, so dont go wasting money on amazing nutrients cause you might dissapoint yourself.

Bare MINUMUMS: and I mean BARE

pH Test kit - keeps them alive
Nutrients - its one plant so get only what you need, dont go crazy
Ventilation - Get a computer fan for the space and make sure you can take as much air out as you can put in. For this spall space, get yourself one fan for the bottom of your box to take air from outside the box in, and one at the top of your box to take the air out (heat rises).
Lighting- Get a nice CFL light, and run it on 18 hours light, 6 hours dark. Make sure you can stick to that schedule without variations. You dont want your plant to have both sexes, and bad lights = Hermaphrodites. With CFL, keep the light 8 inches fromt he tops of your plants at all times.
Pruning- you want to keep them small, and with CFL, they will keep going up because there is no heat threat from the lamp to tell the plant to "hold on!" Try some topping methods and pruning methods that will allow you to bush, such as SuperCropping which involves a little know how. I could tell you how, but look around online, there are some amazing super croppers that would laugh at me if I tried sounding like I knew what I was talking about with this. I FIM my plants, not supercrop, but supercropping stops upward growth and initializes brach production.
Watering- Make sure you can water them properly and mix your nutrients properly. You might give your plant some nute burn and fix it, but any errors on the grower that the plant shows, permanatly alters the growth.

Thats pretty much all I can give you for now. If you want to know more, please feel free to ask, I do this for a living so I love helping.

GIVE ME REP!!

[jcj77d]

Originally Posted by Osho

Great, sounds like you have all your essentials, now all you need is a design. Give me a day to put something together for you. If your planning on having a separate unit to veg and flower, ebb&flow would be very easy to work with. It allows for the easy transfer of plants if your working with a flood tray. Also if your going to have a germination station that resides close to your vegging area, I am sure you want simplicity with a capital S. Just need to know a few things b4 I draw something up for you.

Do you have an exhaust outlet for your closet
Can you get Mylar
You mentioned short Veg cycle, how short
How many plants are you going to try to veg, perpetual harvest or no

Osho

Thanks for taking an interest

no exaust in closet, temps never get over 78 in there, just a clip fan. yes i can & am going to put up mylar. ill prob veg for a few wks in closet, b/c of space & light limitation, & a wk or 2 in tent. i plan to do between 6-10, & yes a continious cycle.

[Osho]

I sent you a design in your private messages. Check it out, see what you think

[jcj77d]

Originally Posted by Osho

I sent you a design in your private messages. Check it out, see what you think

yea i say it, thanks, pretty much the same as i was thinking, but nice to have a 2nd opinion

[winkyweed]

I have some questions for you Osho. I have a 4x4x7 tent on the way. Initially, this will become either a veg tent or flowering tent but for now will have to do both. I plan on growing the Lowryder #2 x AK-47 = EasyRyder because it will autoflower and is supposed to be fairly easy to grow. I need an Indica for medicinal pain management. I will get my card to grow/posses very soon.

Question #1
Should I buy a hydroponic system such as the hydrofarm or eurogrower or just go for it and try to build my own?

I have never grown before but have watched 3 dvds and read some stuff here. I plan on just using half the set-up in a veg tent and half in the flower tent later on. That is why I am looking into the hydrofarm system. I know they need different nutrients for different phases so maybe not the best idea.
Another thought was to use a rainforest 66 in each one.
I have no experience building a system so that might be tough because you need grommets and so forth at different areas and other things I might not be able to get easily.
I have one grow shop near but it is very expensive since the shipping to our place is crazy.

Question #2
Lighting in each. What should I go with? I have a 120w LED and a 90w UFO that should be here today. I got them very cheap! I was thinking HPS in one and MH in the other maybe 600W in each. To start though, what about just the HPS? Also, can I supplement with the LEDs as well? Would they do any good at all?
What is your take on the LEDs in general? The lady at this shop says they are crap. (she doesn't sell any and tried to sell me other lights right after that.)
I have seen pix of good grows with LEDs but she said they are fakes from sellers of LEDs. Also, if I go with HPS and or MH in my tent(s), I will increase heat and therefore cost with electricity and then equipment to cool the tent(s).


Question # 3
Do you have easy to make designs for hydro systems?
I forgot to mention that a lot of the videos I watched talked about moving smaller plants to the middle etc. but with a smaller tent, that won't be a problem. If you go with a hydrofarm, is it possible to move the pots around or do they have to stay in the same spot?

I know that is a lot and I thank you in advance for any help.