Supercloset secret society (s.s.s)

OK, so its been 48 hours since I changed the water using GRbudstar's nute recipe for veg.

pH is at 5.7...PPM is at 540...water temp at 74, air temp at 78, RH at 58, light still at 18/6.

I see a lot of new growth on top, but the bottoms still look real thin. Leaf color is still pale. No sign of flowering yet...so I suppose I'll stick with the 18/6 light for another couple weeks...yes?

as a sidebar, I had to chop down two plants as they were obviously males - now have only 14. I thought I was going to be able to pull them up by their roots for transplant to outdoors, but the roots were so tangled into the others that I gave up pulling on them. I had read somewhere that males are OK for use with a bubble bag...but I guess I'll never know.

So far so good...but sure would like to see them turn a deeper green...comments?

 

OK, OK...I'll flower now! In fact, just did. And you are right...just in the last 24 hrs, they have exploded...guess your recipe was spot on...still kinda pale colored, but lots more leaves. Heres a couple of pics I just took...

 

Hey i'm glad that everything is going well, and sorry i wasn't much of a help earlier. Do you think the key to making things better was raising the ppm or do you think it might be something else? How is your nute soup recipe different now than it was before? Thanks.

 

Can anyone owning a super closet take a picture of how the fans are mounted in the front? Where are the intake holes? Thank you

 

Just wanted to let you know that each model of the superclosets have slightly different setups with their fans and their airflow so it will depend on the model. I'll try to explain mine. sorry i don't have my camera at the moment so just bear with me.

I personally have the supercube, which is a less complex system than some of the others. Right on the inside of the door, on each corner of the front walls, there is a sort of hollow, squared out steel cylinder running flush up and down alongside each corner of the walls. This tube (basically bent up, spare steel cabinet material) is soldered on to the frame of the cabinet itself and then it is perforated every 1.5 inches with about a 2 or 3 millimeter in diameter hole. The holes are just large enough for the "S" hooks that they provide you with in order to mount the cabinet circulation fan at your desired height on either the left side or the right side, just inside the door. It's up to you which side you want the fan. My next grow, i'm going to put my fan on the right side, just for shits and giggles.

However, the back of the cabinet is a different story. Back there, there's no hollow spaces for anything to be drilled, so instead of holes for "S" hooks, they give you magnets instead with hooks attached. These magnets can only be used to hold the net trellis in place. It cannot hold your fan. So one limitation is that you can only have your fan in the front, but honestly, i can't see any benefit to having your fan all the way in the back.

As far as airflow, the best way to describe it is to imagine yourself in a 2 story house. The 1st floor is the basement, and the 2nd floor is the actual house itself. The house is shaped exactly like a cube. You're in the basement and you go to the back and you open the windows. Then you go to the front of the basement and you drill holes into the ceiling so that air can be pulled from the outside into the main floor of the house.

Now, go to the main floor and go to the back wall of this floor too. Near the top of the ceiling, on the corners of the back wall, there are fans on each corner. One is an intake and one is an exhaust. They are both connected by 6 inch ducting to the cooltube in the center of the ceiling, from opposite ends. None of this air used to cool the HPS light ever interacts with any of the air in the grow cabinet. It's just in through one fan, down a short duct, quickly pass by and cool the light, go through the short duct down the other end, and boom right back out to the outside atmosphere.

Next to the cooltube exhaust fan is the airflow exhaust fan (Next to the intake fan on the other side, is a big hole where a pvc elbow goes to handle all your electrical cords. Below this elbow is a power strip with a bank of 10 outlets. All the cords of the entire systems are plugged into this one power strip and the power strip itself is plugged into the GFCI surge protector which is the only thing that actually gets plugged into a wall socket). Anyway, mounted on the airflow exhaust fan is the Odorsok carbon filter. This fan pulls air out of the box both to filter out smell and also to create the negative vacuum pressure that will draw air in through the holes cut at the back of the basement.

So that in a nutshell is how the airflow works on my model. I'm sorry i couldn't supply a diagram. It would have been more helpful. But I've never even used photoshop LoL. Sorry for being so long winded, but i figured it was safer to give you more details rather than not enough, especially if you are in the process of evaluating one of these boxes for purchase.

So to summarize. Air comes in through the rear basement window and up through the front basement ceiling which leads up to the main floor's floor. Then air gets circulated all around by the internal circulation fan that's posted on either the left or right corner of the front of the room. As air moves towards the back and tippity top of your box, it is expelled out through a carbon filter mounted fan that is neatly tucked in between your HPS light's cooling exhaust and intake fans. In reality, the "basement" is only about and inch or so high, and the rest of the cubic volume of the Supercube is the "main room". The "basement" is just a little hollowed out space in between the steel sheets that make up the "floor" of the box.

The air flow design is simple and elegant if you can see it visually. A lot of people bash superclosets before they even bother researching this sort of stuff, but when you look at these things up close, you realize that they are not simple pieces of junk that just anybody can slap together with a few simple tools.

If you really want pictures, i'll try to put something together. Meanwhile, i believe the company website has a couple a pics of the back of the boxes.

 

Thanks. Just keeping the karma wheel rolling along my friend.

I would have never gotten my grow off the ground if it wasn't for the many, many kind ppl here at GC. The least i can do is provide info that may be helpful to others.

 

Thank you so much for the thorough explanation. But, most importantly, thank you for doing so in such a professional manner. Unlike many others, you don't discriminate against newbies looking for more information. All members of this forum should be taking your example.

 

Why are there pcv pipes on the back? Are they sealed? I'm trying to picture how the air flow works lol

 

the pvc pipes are to help with light leaks.. pretty smart i must say.. instead of the light shining straight out.. you can direct the pvc pipe where you like.. preferrabbly up or inwards..

 

They put the pvc pipe in the back because it looks cleaner and nicer. Here, let me just show you now. I brought some pictures today.

Here's the back of the unit.


So you can see the bank of fans i described in the earlier post (LoL i wonder how closely this matches what you visualized after reading my longwinded description). That wire on the left that's going up and out of the picture is connected to a reservoir chiller i bought separately. It's my own personal choice and plenty of other people seem to be growing just fine without one so it's totally optional.

The grey rectangular box is a belkin 10 slot power strip. Here's a view from above.



The single socket timer on the left controls your feeding and connects to the water pump. The dual socket timer on the right controls lighting. The orange splitter goes in the right socket and connects to intake and the exhaust. The socket on the left connects to the ballast and light, which is the purple box resting on the floor. All other electrical components (like the carbon filter fan, the air pump and the res. chiller) are on 24/7. Notice that i have a carpeted floor. This is not ideal. Carpet retains a lot of heat and i figure that it is responsible for raising my temps 3 or 4 degrees, which drives up my air conditioning costs a lot. Wood or tile floor would be a lot better. And remember, the more air circulation there is around your box, the cooler it will be.

Here's the airflow holes drilled at the base of the front of the cabinet.


You can see that the "floor" of the grow chamber is slightly raised from actual floor height. There is another set of holes drilled at "the back of the basement" so to speak. This way, air comes in and out, but no light escapes or comes in. Basically it's a steel air tunnel underneath everything, out of sight and out of the way and no moving parts. Nice clean design. I approve of this.

Oh, here's my girls. Pic was taken today. 12 days in flowering.


Notice the wires. They lead to that single, black PVC elbow tube you saw earlier which leads directly out to that big power strip. Notice the placement of the hooks in the front which hold the net in place. The same kind of hook is very simply attached to the internal circulation fan. I have adjusted the height of the fan twice since initiating flowering. Those dark rectangle magnets you see do not come with the unit and i bought them separately at Lowes. They're strong as hell and nice'n small. I bought 10 of'em. They're only like a dollar.

You see the white walls? You can peel those right off, even the ones on the door. They have a magnetic rubber backing, so it's super convenient for when i have to break everything down after harvest for cleaning. No messing with wrinkly ass mylar or other clumsy sheets of reflective material.

Sure, there's little things here and there that could be better, and it'll never be perfect in my eyes, but i love my box, can't deny it! I can't ever imagine throwing this thing away. Even if i ever go big with a multi chamber perpetual down the road, i'll always keep her around to grow mommies or veg. clones.

Two months ago, this was all still just a dream for me, with not a single seed yet planted. And look at me now dude. 2 months away from harvest and the guy who sold me the system on the phone said that a noob like me should get at least half a pound (little over half gram per watt). I get excited just thinking about the next grow and how much better it'll be when i get things dialed in, and i start chasing after that magical gram per watt unicorn. (That's just over 14 ounces for this box just FYI)

Btw, i would not get the Superbox. It's just too small. My Cube is like triple the size and i still wish i have more space, especially vertically. Hope this info helped!

 

Is it for intake? Or to run wires through. I was reading another thread on a deluxe and the guy said there is no intake holes. Just exhaust and a fan. How would you get fresh air inside then?

 

To run wires through. There has to be some sort of holes drilled for intake somewhere. Plants can't live without air.

 

I think the biggest thing was that I waited way too long to change the water...I figured if the PPM and pH were on target, who cares how low the water was. When I pumped it down, I only got about 4 gal out...and I added eleven when I put it back. The grow guide says to change the water every week, but I figured that was their way of selling more nutes by getting me to do it more frequently. I wonder if I really should be changing it once a week? Thoughts?

The nute soup I did initially was to promote root growth...that too may have been contributing to my problem.

 

If you're using the Technaflora kit, the Thrive alive B-1 stuff is great, especially to help the plants handle stress. Hydrogen peroxide will kill bad stuff in your soup, but be careful if you use beneficial bacteria supplements, cuz the hydrogen peroxide kills that stuff too. Changing nutes once a week is a good idea. It's practically impossible to tell which nutes they ate and which ones are still left in the soup and how much of each is there. You may lose 100ppm over a few days to eating, but also water evaporates, so that could push the ppm back up by 100 and the ppm will look the same as before, but it's possible that although the ppm is the same, all the nitrogen might be depleted and they hardly ate any potassium or phosphorus. These plants don't seem to eat the same all the time. Sometimes they eat a lot, sometimes only a little. I haven't had any nute trouble lately, but i recall most of my past nute deficiencies always seemed to crop up near the end of the week.

Also, some strains like to eat more (magnesium, for example) than other strains. Feels like dialing stuff in never ends, huh?

So yeah, just change ur rez because you really don't need the headaches.

 

Buddha1127/GRbudstar, Thanks much for not scolding me too bad. I really did think the rez change thing was to get me to buy more product...guess I was wrong. That rez was in use for a good 3 weeks...so I suppose I got what I deserved by cheaping out. At least now, I know what was causing my problems.

I'm using the technaflora stuff that came with the closet. The batch they send really is just a sampler tho' eh? Didn't last long at all. AND the stuff ain't cheap...my replacement order cost me almost $100 for pH up/dn, thrive alive & grow daddy (1L/qt size of each). I bought it through igrowhydro.com. What happened to 'everything you need to grow'? I guess they should say 'everything you need to START growing.

Anyway...thanks again for the advice and for helping me through my first grow.

 

FJ's bought the bigger bottles that's why. 1 liter general hydroponics ph up and down set from amazon.com is 30 bucks all by itself. The Recipe for Success kit is cheap but only because it uses the smallest bottles possible. When i see prices for ph up and down, i'm glad i don't use the stuff anymore. But my new nutes are expensive too so i'm not one to talk, lest i be branded a hypocrite.

About the boosting bud growth, the nute company i use suggests actually decreasing the amount of bloom base, and increasing the amount of bloom booster additive to a slight overdose. Although it's a different nute brand, every major brand still carries a bloom booster (i believe Technaflora's is Awesome Blossoms) and it's possible this little trick might apply to the Technaflora brand too. But don't trust me. I'd get confirmation from another Technaflora user first to make sure. Or better yet, just call or email Technaflora. Hopefully they know how to use their own stuff!