upstairs / downstairs 2 room grow. soil to ebb and grow. Need advice.

Discussion in 'Grow Room Design/Setup' started by cyanidecotdpnut, May 15, 2015.

  1. Hello everybody, long time lurker first time poster. Trying to expand / reinvent 2 separate grow areas that my friend currently has going but that has been underperforming. He's more of a "of the earth" approach and I'm more of a scientific approach (even though I would never consider myself a scientist lol), so that's why I offered to help in terms of research and planning. We're both pretty new to hydro however.

    The Problem
     
    Currently, the grow areas suffer from a variety of problems. First, they are oddly shaped. The upstairs (VEG) room is a 6x8 closet (not really odd, but there's a huge circuit breaker on the wall) and the downstairs room (FLOWER) is actually a large room, probably 20x10 or 20x15 but can only realistically use about a 7x7 area of that room according to the owner because it's an L shape with a large counter and industrial sink.

    Since my friend was previously using soil and not really sealing off his rooms, pest infestations became a problem on his last crop (white flies) and the natural plant life around the area attracts additional pests. I am aiming to curtail this with tents or similar.

    The Proposed Solution
     
    First, I will be moving him away from using soil to using a ebb and grow setup similar to "TheCapn"s perpetual grow seen in this link with slight alteration to the setup. Instead of 2 large plants with their own resevoirs in flower, I will be using a 6-bucket ebb and grow system in the flower room. I will maintain his method of using a flood table for the veg room though. I want to keep the veg upstairs because since heat rises and plants are able to accept co2 better in vegatitve state than flowering it only makes sense to have them upstairs instead of downstairs so that I can run that tent slightly hotter unless I am wrong in this thinking? I want the downstairs flower room to be a froom within the 20x10 room, probably with a wall built to separate it. I will be manifolding these plants then transferring them to scrog.

    New Veg Room Setup
     
    Ok so here is the layout I created for the upstairs veg room.
    layout1,jpg.jpg
     
    Basically, in the 6x8 closet I want to run a 4x4 tent with x2 4' t5 light fixtures for around ~436W on a 4x4 ebb and grow table. Going to punch a  I didn't opt for a scrubber because I don't personally notice plants smelling too much in veg, plus noone lives close for miles...I'll have x2 8'-10" side-mounted fans for moving the air around in the tent. I am playing with the idea of starting in 1 gal nursery pots and moving them up to 3.5 gal before transfer to flower, but I don't know if this is overkill and I can just start them safely in the 3.5 gal? Then a 16-18 gal resevoir for the flood table, and the whole tent in a kind of "safety" box...think like a raised gardening bed with pond lining that will prevent ANY leak out of  the 4x4 or maybe 5x5 space because on the wall to the right is a large circuit breaker. Granted it's about 3'-4' off the ground, not probably a problem but I'm just a paranoid safety guy. So I only have these questions:
    1. Since the t5s run cooler than MH, is my ventiliation / air moving system adequate? especially if I later plan to introduce some sort of co2 injector? I wanted to provide alot of space on either side of the tent to allow air to move nicely in and around. For exhaust, I was just going to leave the door to the closet itself open, would that be enough airflow intake from outside of the tent?\t
    2. for a 4x4 table, is a 16-18 gal reservoir the correct choice? I've had trouble discerning that but I know lxwxh=volume and I'm probably not going to need a flood tray deeper than 8"-10".\t
    3. How long have you vegged your plants to get a diameter of around 20"? I will be manifolding these plants for probably 8-16 colas each for the scrog.
      \t 
    New Flower Room Setup
     
    Work in Progress. Will update later this week.

    Conclusion
    Hopefully this was enough info (but also not overwhelming). I would consider myself a beginner-novice grower, only having a few soil grows under the belt with my friend. So any advice would be helpful.
     

     
  2. Hi cyanidecotdpnut, sounds like you're wanting to do a pretty large setup?
     
  3. Well I'm not really creating a new setup just modifying the current rooms. Also, I only have one 1000W light for the downstairs 7x7 so I really am most likely going to use some of that space (5x5) and the rest for reservoir or other storage until I can get another light. Or if I can include some supplementary CFLs for fill light, that could be another option. There is a permanent exhaust vent that sticks down into the room from near the corner that also complicates things because I'll have to ventilation around that. Mainly just looking to get feedback on the upstairs veg room for now as I haven't completely fleshed out the flower room plans yet. Idk, is that large? [​IMG]
     
  4. Well it's larger and pricier than something like a grow bucket that you could just hide in a closet or something.
     
  5. I am aware of that but I didn't touch on those points because they're not an issue. Also, OP statesI am indeed using a 6 bucket ebb and grow system, most likely with a 55-gal drum reservoir [​IMG] . As stated, I am mostly looking for feedback on my current design and the ventilation needs for the room. Thank you for your input.
     
  6. Bump...anyone got anything? I was looking to get this together relatively soon as the mothers are ready to be cloned.
     
  7. I for see a lot of carrying plants up and down stairs in your future
     

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