1000w HPS/MH, 4x4 Gorilla, purple lemonade auto

Little background, I’ve grown indoors and outdoors since the mid-1990s. I have never grown legally, until now. As a medical patient I can officially grow up to 5 plants. Ive never posted about my grows here, since its always been illegal for me. Now that thats changed I’m willing to share a little more.

As the title says, I’m working with a 1000w Sun Systems hardcore switchable magnetic ballast, 1000w HPS and MH lamps, hood with integrated cool tube, and Gorilla Lite 4x4 tent with 1ft extension. Ventilation is via an AC Infinity S8 fan and Infinity 8” Carbon Filter. We’ll get into install and pics as we go.

Originally the plan was to SCROG some GDP, but in the interest of faster product the first harvest I decided to do an autoflower grow. I have some Fastbuds Purple Lemonade AutoFems on the way, that’ll go first.

I’ve always been a FFOF guy and its not changing this time, lol. Ill be using FFOF with about 20-25% perlite added. I also add a few cups of diatomaceous earth in the soil when i mix and dust the surface. Then after the plants get about 8” tall I dust the surface again. No fungus gnats, no bugs of any kind, for me at least. I also have the tradional FF trio and some calmag.

Thats the rough basics. In the posts below I’ll detail the install of some of the geat and the setbacks we’ve already encountered, which have been more than enough. My brother Groot-420 is helping me with this shitshow, so if it turns out bad, its his fault.

 

So this is how things started. Brand new ballast arrived damaged on both ends, grrrrr. Came from Amazon. Five minutes on the app and a new one is on the way, I have a month to return this one with prepaid shipping tag they sent me. This one runs fine, but I paid for an undamage one so that's what I want. I’ll go ahead and address my ballast choice, i know these arent popular anymore, everyone wants digital ballasts. I trust magnetic ballasts and the perceived drawbacks dont bother me a bit.

 

As I said, we’ve already ran into some issues, the Gorilla Tent was another. It came out of the box with a popped zipper and the zipper not sewn completely.

This came from Growers House. They promised to ship me a new one Monday with a shipping label to return this one in the box with it. We will see i suppose.

 

In order to get enough power for this setup i ran two dedicated curcuits to the closet in the bedroom. A two gang 110 box and a single 220, both 20A circuits. Groot-420 thoroughly enjoyed himself doing this. They really aren't crooked i swear, we used a level and everything, lol.

 

Since I want to run a 4x4 with 1000w of HPS in it i need a LOT of air. I spent the coin on a Gro1 Hood with a built in 8” Cool Tube. This will be coupled to the 8” AC Infinity fan and 8” AC Infinity Carbon filter. This will move enough air, even with the filter installed to exchange the air in the tent up to 5x a MINUTE.

In order to get rid of this amount of hot air we need to exhaust it from the room. In this case we are lucky because the bedroom closet we installed the power in also houses the air intake for the house HVAC. We tapped into the box and put an 8” collar on it. Its sealed with 3m flange tape, sheet metal screws and hi-temp duct tape.

In the summer the air can be cooled by the AC that runs non-stop anyway and in the winter it can help heat the house. Win-Win. Yes that a pot lid on top. Dont want anything falling in before we hook up the duct .

 

My big brother is an electrician and he hammered into me circuit limits when i rewired my auto repair shop. I figured just do it right and it wont be that much. Buying new wire and breakers i couldve done this for $100. Luckily i had the romex and breakers so it cost about me about $25.

 

Some pics of the seed packaging

 

Lol, no the closet is being used to tap into my home HVAC and run the power. I’ll also be housing my ballast in there. The tent will be in the open part of the bedroom.

I’m legal to grow as of 1/1/20 so ill be on it at the stroke of midnight hopefully. As long as this replacement tent makes it here. Not pleased with Gorilla in anyway. Quality of product or customer service.

 

Ive had my med card for awhile but ive been waiting for the opportunity to grow legally. It’ll be a whole new world to not worry about my door being kicked in at night.

 

Cool! Ill be getting more pictures as things go together. I can say this after my experiences this week, I’ll NEVER own another Gorilla product, ever. I’ll post the whole story after resolution.

 

Update on the Gorilla saga:

Gorilla Tent may be the best, unless your tent comes in with a broken zipper that wasn’t sewn properly. Then Jessica in customer service will talk over you, be rude, and purposely not ship the replacement.

We have had to get the vendor, Growers House, involved. Yesterday Jessica lied to them also, said it would ship yesterday. It DID NOT.

Don’t waste your money. The tent was sub par and the customer service is the WORST IN THE INDUSTRY.

I promised I would post on every forum and every post in every group Jessica, you laughed. Here we go.

Dec 21– tent arrives, defective. Growers House arranges us to talk with Gorilla on Monday the 23rd.

Dec 23- talk to Gorilla rep Jessica. She is rude from the beginning. We explain and ask that they ship a new canvas and we can ship the other back in the same box. She flat refuses. She says they have no way to ensure they get it back and we could steal it. That’s right, steal a defective canvas. Thats where it goes downhill. When we tried to get her to ship it, so we wouldn’t be set back another week(Christmas week, remember?) she talked over my wife not letting her talk, very much on purpose. At this point i had to repeat FOUR TIMES “I will speak now” before she ALLOWED us to say anything. She finally agreed, at the end of the day, to send us the replacement if we sent them proof ours was shipped. Thats the first lie. Never happened. We raced and couldnt make the shipment by the end of the day.


Dec 24- shipment made back to Gorilla, of course, just like we argued they are closed. So now our tent showed up defective on Saturday the 21 and its the 26th before it will ship, right? NOT SO FAST!


Dec 26- call Jessica again. She says that she wont ship it because the tracking number says dropped off but its not left the fedex facility. I like in a small town, my fedex is a Walgreens. Duh. She argues more with us, them agrees to ship it. Sends me a tracking number about 9AM THEIR time. Second Lie, never shipped.


Dec 27- tracking number isnt live because package hasn’t shipped. Call jessica again, she ADMITS she lied. Says package is in the warehouse, she put in order to be pulled TODAY. Today. Not the 23rd when they said. Not the 26th when they said. Then she told us “of course they are busy so it might not get pulled until Monday.” Of course she said this in her sweetest “I just beat you” voice. She’s so friendly, a real asset to any company.


At this point we called Growers House. I let them know that if this cannot be resolved TODAY I will be returning the product to them for a refund. They called and argued and dealt with Jeff at Gorilla because Jessica is incredibly rude to vendors as well as customers. They assured us that everything was taken care of, tent would ship yesterday.


Dec 28. Tent still has not shipped. Gorilla grow tent “won” the battle. My canvas will be there Monday and they did not ship my new one. They screwed a medical patient just for the heck of it. I’m in a state with a massive medical shortage and I’ve been pushed further out now.


I will never buy a gorilla product and I will share this everywhere.