hi all ive been lurking on this site for about a year. and i had a couple of questions. 1. on the indoor/outdoor thermometer im using a 400w hps and the outdoor goes to 97 while the indoor is at 78. when i was using cfl's they stayed close to the same temps 77-82. im just wondering if its too hot or im tripping. 2. re using dirt? i was thinking about starting a compost heap and throwing the used dirt (FFOF) and mixing it with regular dirt. this is my first grow to make it to flowering last one died from using mg organic with no extra nutes.
fresh got ya on question 1. 76-86 is great indoor...i stay 77-78 myself.. question 2... yes it is possible! just flush it first with water..i use a five gallon bucket with holes in the bottom for drainage and fill it up with my old soil first.....get my water hose, and run about 10 gal's of water through it to flush any left over nutes and salt's out....then let it dry for a day.. i then toss it in my compost bin.. turn the bin or composting soil's etc. about once a month.. i add wormcasting's to mine for organic nutes and some dolomite lime, perlite and light mix of bat guano's/seabird guano's.. this is about the best way i know to reuse soil...just keep doing the same proccess till you run out of soil to flush... my soil's done this way usually turn out better than using the expensive shit.. cheer's
What you are really looking for is the ambient temp in the canopy. You would have to position the thermometer right in the canopy, but shield it from radiant heat as best you can using white duct tape or mylar tape. A simple red thermometer bulb will absorb quite a bit of radiant heat and give you a false reading for ambient temp. Make sure you have lots of airflow in the canopy during lights on so the radiant heat cannot build up too high. +1 to reusing soil. I am experimenting with that but I say give it a try. Those who use organic soil often reuse it and they say it gets even better with proper use.
yes sir..after about 6-7 month's i gotta go get cheap shit just to cut it with.lol will burn an oak tree..lol
I don't mean to hijack this thread but I'm about to start a grow and this raises a question on temps myself. I live in the desert where outside temps reach 110 in the summer, my house, I keep around maybe 84 as it is. I guess if I grow I'm gonna want to run the AC more in the summer. But what is the top sort of temps you can look at?
AC adds an enourmous burden to the electrical efficiency of a grow. If you have cool air available at night, it would be very helpful to pull that air in and run lights at night. Also there are some strains that react to heat better than others. Until I got my fan fixed, my chamber was seeing temps of 95f and on a few scorching hot days 102f. The White Widow didn't seem to care but the Thai and New Purple Power stretched out, hermied and started to reveg. Trimming was unreal.
if you're not on a small budget you can get yourself an evaporative cooler to help instead of running the ac more.
I meant do the temps on the thermometer have to be close to each other? i have one of the digital ones with the indoor/outdoor reading. the indoor will be around 78 while the outdoor is 90 something. sorry for the confusion and thanks for the info on re-using dirt id go crazy if i gotta drive out of town all the time when i can re use what i got. ill post a pic of what im talking about when i get a camera & also show off this bagseed thats like 4-5 weeks into flowering when i switched to a 400w hps.
Putting an evap cooler in the same space that is cooled by A/C will put more load on the A/C and could cause it to run even longer!
good advice +rep I had got lazy about a month ago and temps spiked to the mid 90s, during days 10-12 of flower for a hand full of Wreckage clones ..they were about 4 inches tall stretched to almost 20 inches in those 3 days .. talk about heat intolerant..sheesh I think they must of added some Kelp genetics to it , the way those clones hit the ceiling...
think about adding things like worm casting, and guano. also.. but add compost to your soil ..not the other way around .. ( and yes I have reused soil , so I have some experience here) the way to do this is to have a stall for soil and a compost pile.... good luck wharf
Well I will be growing white widow and arjan ultra haze #1 Thats good to know the white widow did good in the heat. I will definitely monitor temps, and see if I need an external AC solution. It does get cold where I'm at at night, being a desert, and I could save all my work for the nighttime. It'd get 3-7 hours of open door next to an open window at night time if I set the setup that way.