Back in action after long rest.

[Don Piano]

I know I said that i was not going to post pics or grows, but I changed my mind. I have a very shitty digi camera and can not find it at the moment. Doesn't really matter because I am not started yet in the actual grow. (well my mom chamber has catnip, cat grasses, cherry tomatos, beefsteak tomatos, basil, chives, and parsley for the time being) But Here is how it starts. There will be PICS when we are up and running.

SOIL MIX

Got a 35 gallon tub to make my soil in. MIX consists of:
60lbs worm castings. (I have a hookup on wiggle worm castings, $14.50 for 2 30lb bags!!!)
1-bag 8qt bag of perlite
1-40lb bag of top soil (pasturized in my oven)
1-40lb bag of hyponex potting soil (pasturized in my oven)
2-8qt bags of sphagnum moss
a 2.5gallon bucket full of styrofoam beads
1-40lb bag of washed play sand
Some lime
some sulpher
some bonemeal
some bloodmeal
and a 5lb bag of horticultural charcoal
PH is near 7 and perfect. Watered about two weeks ago and have been turning it every day since, monitoring the PH. We want a good start now.



Going to use a 72 cell prop tray with heat mat and a 6 or 7 inch humidity dome for starting my seeds and for cloning. We are going to do a rotation of 60 (can you say SEA OF GREEN)

I know that I read and still hear people knocking peat pellets for cloning but they have never failed me (well maybe the first few times I used them but there are some tricks to them)

NUTES
Going to go organic I believe. I do know that I will use my fail safe maxicrop (4 drops) and superthrive (1 drop) per gallon of water everytime I water. And nute everyother watering.

THE MOM/CLONE ROOM.

Consists of 16"W x 35"L x 40"H floor space in a closet. Lit by 5-26watt daylight 6500K CFLs and 3-27watt 2700k ODOR KILLING CFLs. Venting is a 60mm fan (Don't knock it, the room stays at 80-86 degrees and 40% or less RH, besides it is just the mom room and the fan runs 15min on 15min off) very quiet. Intake is a 3" pvc elbow with a small filter on the intake. The walls are fugicide painted flat white. The ceiling for the box is melamine. It is all covered up by a shoe cubbyhole thing/shelving unit that I built in a closet. Very stealth. (again, I will have pics in a few days) Circulating the air is another PC fan hanging by cord from the melamine ceiling.


THE FLOWER ROOM.

Consists of 35"W x 47"L x 48"H Grow space. It has a seperate chamber above for the air-cooled light hood (that I made and and then had to get a custom cut 24"x18" piece of tempered glass for it) for the MH/HPS switchable 400 watt ballast. The cold air is drawn in from another room that is always cold, and blown out into another seperate chamber in the closet, that then vents out of the closet into the main room its located in, but looks like a regular HVAC vent on the wall and has no noise coming from it. My wife (don't worry, She's cool) did not even notice it until I told her, and we've been living here a while! The fresh air for the actual chamber is drawn in from the same cold room as the light's air is. The actual chamber is then vented out via broans bathroom fan, through a charcoal filter box (again made by me) and vented into yet another seperate room where the dehumidifier runs constantly and an ozium time mister is set up to go every 25 minutes. So noise is covered, and IF any sweet smell leaves the room and makes it past the charcoal we are covered. The main room where the closet is has an ionizer in it and keeps that room fresh and free of bacteria, mold, shit like that. Temp and humidity is controlled by a greenhouse controller and co2 is bottled in a 20lb cyl and regulated by my homemade cyclestat, in connection with the greenhouse controller. The cylinder is located in the cold room and run through a co2 dispersion system I installed in the room (and again, there will be pics)
The walls are lined with reflective material and healthy doses of aluminum foil tape. I am going to be using 1/2 gallon growbags for my flowering plants. I know there are naysayers but I see DRBUDGREENGENES knows what Im saying, Pack em in. We are light tight and ready to rock and roll. soon.

Note: the reason for the switchable ballast in the flower chamber is that I am planning to do my initial veg in there, and flower some clones in the mom room to sex my plants early, and get a good MH start to my mom/moms.

Gonna be fun! Stay tuned/stoned

[Don Piano]

flower Room Pics

This shows the light hood I made along with the intake ducting, exhaust ducting and the light ducting.
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The interior and circulation fan
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400watt MH and glass cover along with the CO2 distribution ring
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Under the duct is a box that houses the bathroom fan. The box is made slightly larger and the gap is filled with expanding foam to kill all vibration noise. Also in the pic is my 15 minute on-delay relay for my lighting, to protect from hot starts.
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And finally the WIDE RANGE co2 recycle timer (not its final home, it will be boxed)
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Of course not totally finished but coming along. Pictures will be in groups of 5 cuz I am 2 cheap to buy a memory card for my cheap crappy digital cam

[doob3r]

odor killing cfl`s?

[Don Piano]

They are coated with titainium dioxide and when air passes over the bulb, it is freshened. It does not produce O3. Search it out on reviews online. Figured it was worth a shot (being that its just going to be in the mom room odor should not be a real big issue) and they produce a nice added red spectrum to my 6500K's

[doob3r]

thats wild dude, good luck on the grow

[Don Piano]

Appreciated. Thank you. I was just looking into yours.

[Don Piano]

Well from the looks of things (the cat grass, basil, chives, parsley, and tomatos) they love the soil mix I am using. Can't wait to start the Real Herbs. But patience is a must. I have been building up power consumption in the new place for the past 4 months (been here about 18mo), then when we start the op, we are switching all of our lighting in the place to cfl and keeping the computer off. It should actually look like we are using less power to the elec company than we have been. I have some seeds from when I used to play breeder with bag seed weed. I've been holding them for around 4 1/2 years now, so no promises there, but they should be fine having been stored dry and cold. I have 4 different mystery strains I am going to grow and select a mother/mothers for SOG. I do plan on getting some Proven genetics later on in the op, when everything is fine tuned and efficient. First stealth/closet grow SOG style.

And we did decide to go with Earth Juice for our Organic Nutrient line.
Grow, Bloom, Catalyst, meta-k, and Microblast. Along with maxicrop and superthrive.

Pic1 of mom room
Pic2 of door to flower room
Pic3 of interior of flower (light blocking sheet on lower half of entrance)
Pic4 is another of the flower room from further back

[Don Piano]

Ok. Here are the Ferts I just picked up. Earth Juice Grow, Alaska 5-1-1 fish emulsion, Earth Juice Catalyst, Earth Juice Meta-K, Alaska 0-10-10 MorBloom, and Earth Juice Bloom. Pretty sure I am starting by next weekend. I had to use some of my soil mix for the tomatos and such so I am going to mix in a bag of Fox Farm Ocean Forest, and a Bag of the regular Fox Farm Soil into my soil mix to make up for what I took out. Never used fox farm soil and I guess it can only help out my mix further.

[doob3r]

sweet man, looks like youve put some work into that room, i likes what im seeing.

good luck on the grow man

i also like how you have your cfl`s up

[Don Piano]

I just got some Brer Rabbit blackstrap molasses. I was looking for that but decided to see what I could find in the health food section. Turns out I found a brand of molasses that will work but has far less of the good stuff that Brer Rabbit has, oddly enough its brand name was Plantation.

Thank you for the props on the room. Yes I have put a bit of my free time into this. Been stretching it all out for over 4 months now. Looking into my CO2 tank options and I am set.

Did a dry run on my greenhouse controller lastnight to see if it came on when it was supposed to and turn off my Co2 timer and all that good shit. It is all up to par. I had a slight problem shedding heat from my room in a timely manner, but that is being rectified with either a stronger fan or less restriction on my exhaust/intake ducts, (both of which are filtered to the max thus making the fan's job alot harder) We'll see. The Ballast was going to go in seperate room, but it runs way cooler than expected so it will sit in the upper chamber of my cab.

I made my Tea Bucket today (bubbler, stones, you know the routine)
I tested my RO water today (I have been buying this until we install our RO unit in home) and it tests around ph5.5

I made a 1/4 strength dose of nutes in a gallon and tested it at around ph4, I am bubbling this for 24hours to see if the ph will rise. I have never used any of the nutrients I have listed, with exception to the Superthrive, Maxicrop, Roottech clone gel(which I don't even think I have mentioned since I am not that far into this op), Alaska MorBloom 0-10-10 and Alaska Fish Fert 5-1-1. Nothing with Earth Juice. We'll see how the ph is in the morning, adjust if needed, and I'm gonna feed that dose to my Tomato babys.

I am still constantly turning the soil mix and keeping a nice steady ph of around 6.5 now.

The new air intake and exhaust are installed in the mom chamber.
I guess I never really explained, nor did i think i need to, but the mom chamber and flower room are in two seperate areas of the dwelling.

Anyway, just a few more days (less than a week and it's showtime)

[WiZ Kid]

Looks like your all set with the room. Excited to see how the plants enjoy their home

[Don Piano]

You and I both.

[Don Piano]

Well I can tell you this. Bathroom fans suck horse cock.
Not happy right now, but better to find out with tomato plants before I do the final op.
I can not keep the temps below 87F for the life of me. The temps I get are 87F-96F. This is the first stealth/mini operation for me, not used to it. Didn't think I'd need a Dayton for this, but i am about to say screw it and get a 465cfm. I don't understand, The Light is air cooled and the glass is tolerable to the hand on 80% of its surface (will be different when I use the sodium bulb, that halide fatty is pretty close to the glass at its widest point). The output of the fan is 3" and supposedly 96cfm (2x my room's space), the intake is 2-3" ducts and a 4" intake about 2 inches from the ground. All come from a cold room (55F-60F) WTF???!!!!!
It's being vented to a 3rd room to top it all off!!!

Humidity is fine, no problems there and I have 16 ( out of 24) tomato plants, 5 catnip plants and my cooking herbs, all freshly watered in there. All of these plants usually get a start in the window (obviously not 16 tomato plants) and put outdoors but I figured since I am setting up some closets, why not grow more tomato plants and use them to test the addition of moisture, I figured that would be my main concern but I was wrong there.

My mom closet is A1 perfect so no complaints there, the other 8 tomato plants are in happy in there.

So am I really going overboard with a huge blower? Any suggestions on how to shed this heat better?

[Don Piano]

Alright. I am rested and thinking more clearly. I am looking at a 6'' vortex inline fan. I don't need a Dayton for this.

[Don Piano]

OHH DON PIANO!!! I have to change everything now! We get warm, Humidity rises and I find out my cold room is at 60%RH. This means that when my greenhouse controller kicks on at 87 degrees and cools it down to 81, the RH goes from 35% to 50% and keeps me greenhouse controller running. Sorry if I am missing info but here is the new plan.


Relocate to different part of house for Flower room, The EFFIN Attic!!!!
Not going to exhaust. Going with the Air Conditioner, and a possible dehumidifier. The benefits are, not losing CO2, Not having odor issues, and I am already using an infrared blocking insulation (99% blocking) under my reflective material (which also claims to block 98% of infrared) so chopper coppers can stick that in their bong and toke it!! and I can leave my mom room alone!

The bad news is that I have to wire into my attic. SHIT!
Relocate EVERYTHING!
Repair all the holes in all of the drywall that I had to cut!
Make the closet look like a closet again.
I have to haul wood into the house without the nosey neighbors watching (usually done a couple pieces at a time at night) But now my wood transporter is broke down and I trust no one with this secret (outside here and my wife) so getting wood to construct my new flower room is gonna be tough to get.
DOES ANYONE ELSE FEEL LIKE CRYING YET?????

Anyway, all was supposed to be timed for the first SOG harvest to be by fall (due to selection and all that goes with it) before my vacation. I hate setbacks, but I remain strong and push forward anyway!

I will include building pics this time on growroom construction. New room is 40"wide 66"deep and 48"tall.
Everything in the pic is to scale.