Sup guys glad to finally make it here. Just bought a beautiful large house, and my options are open. Because I'm gona have people over that I don't want them to see what I am doing, I cannot do it in a basement or a closet. I want to grow 2 plants using Coco in one of these large office lockers Pretty much looks like this but larger and with door handles that have locks. Only problem is ventilation. Do you think if i drill two holes; one intake and one for exhaust it would have good enough ventilation? Also with the holes, how much light would emit out of them? I was thinking about putting the giant locker cabinet in the garage, but if theres some heavy powered purple lights coming out of it, i think some people are gona have questions :| also if i kept only 2 plants in it in a 2 door garage, would the smell be really obvious? if not i can keep it in my office. Anyways, glad to be here, looking forward to sharing my progress. any advice you guys could give a first grower, i would love to hear :]
Congrats man on the house! On the grow I feel for you because I was in a similar situation. I lurked here for almost a year before posting following stealth grows from users such as Budslinger and recently MidWest. Good ideas for attic grow or a cabinet/dresser grow (which is what I did with an amoire). I have two exhaust fans in my grow and I am rushing some ladies through veg in my flowering chamber with the two fans. I sweat its hot and not getting god ventilation. I would at least do two intake and two exhaust unless you do an inline fan on your exhaust for a carbon scrubber. And DO a carbon scrubber. Its the worst feeling in the world having people over knowing you smell the bud smell and hope your neighbor guest that your kids are in the same class with never smelled fresh herb or smoked pot. Safe and stealth is where it all is. Good luck and let us know how it goes
Thanks man, i'll definitely look into a carbon scrubber. does a carbon scrubber have to vented outside? Or does it just replace the exhaust, except eliminate the smell? already feeling the love
Congrats on your house! As for the intake/outtake, as long as the air in the cabinet gets replaced every 5 minutes, you're good. That doesn't account for heat though, just fresh air. There is some formula on here somewhere for what size fan you need to replace X amount of cubic feet in the space. A 4-6 inch fan should easily do the trick, just guessing though, I have no experience, just research. Good luck!
Check out some info on ventilation on my thread http://forum.grasscity.com/absolute...-list-beginners-other-useful-information.html you are gonna need some type of carbon filter regardless of you lighting and if you use high power lighting you will need ventilation.
man to hell with that box! you own the house put a pad lock on ur basement door and go for some big time growing! but thats just me.
The OP mentioned that he would still like to maintain a social life and I can completely understand where he's coming from. And to that end I'd like to interject something. Cannabis stinks. Quite a bit. And water filled with nutrients, along with the extra humidity can be a leathal smell combination that is not easily removed. It is true that one can remove the smell quite easily with just a carbon scrubber, so that once one is in the house, you loose touch with the smell being in the house, however, it is my experiance that if you don't take extra precautions then just using a scrubber, you will pretty much always smell the weed as soon as you come in the house. Your ability to detect where the smell is coming from is pretty much gone, as long as you got a scrubber, but all the same, it still can give your house a strange smell on entrance. And this in my opinion is not a good idea. In order to combat this I have found that a multi-stage approach is required. 1. Ventilation to cycle inside air. Controls, humidity, temperature and smell. some people don't vent outside because of various issues. but my experience is that this is a must. The difference between having a grow in your basement with no venting, and even having a window open in your basement, is huge. If you want to do it right, get an HRV with humidity control. They are not cheap, but they solve a lot of problems. Up to you but that's what I'm planning. 2. Odor Neutralizers I feel that this is a nessisary precaution in growing cannabis, and believe that you should mask your grow smell by placing a bucket with odor neutralizing solution in your grow room such as ONA. I purchased a product that gives a cherry smell. But these days you can find all sorts of smells. I have pine, and cherry. So even if I don't vent at all and just had my plants open in the basement, you would just smell (quite strongly) the smell of either cherry or pine. If you want to see how to make a home made applicator for odor neutralizers, look for something called a Smelly bucket, or ONA bucket or somethign to that effect. I don't feel that it is anywhere near enough to just have odor neutralizing, and nothing else. But I think it is a cheap and effective step that shouldn't be overlooked. 3. Carbon filtration After the air is properly cycling, so that any air in the basement will not come up stairs, and you have your humidity in check, and your smell masked. The next step is to clean the air, so that it doesn't still when you vent it, and so that your house doesn't smell like neutralizer, or anything at all for that matter. 4. Ozone ozone is both harmful to you, and harmful to your plants, using ozone indoors is risky. You can do it, and it works like magic, but if you aren't careful and let the ppms go to high. You can cause yourself or your plants damage. I still intend on encorporating an ozone generator into my grow, because of how effective they are and using it to 'steralize' all exhaust that i pump out of my house. There are also CFL lights that emit ozone when they are on. From my understanding I haven't heard of anyone burning their plants with these lights, so the ppms must be relatively low. So it wouldn't be a bad idea to switch out some entrance lights, to some of these CFL's just to tackle the issue at the entrance. use your discression. But these are some things to think about... I've found the one thing that I always have over looked the most in the past is smell and ventillation; and I have learnt that this should be a top priority. you can go with cheap bulbs and have a killer odor control system, and you will never get busted, and grow for the rest of your life. Or you can have the most amazing equipment but if you stink. People will find out.
A carbon filter removes all of my MJ odors. To the OP, you will need to light-trap your intake and exhaust holes. To do that, you need for the light to have to take at least 2 turns of at least 90 through non-reflective surfaces. An easy way to do this is to get two PVC elbows for each hole (plus a bit of PVC pipe the same diameter to fit the two elbows together), and spray paint the insides of the PVC with flat black paint. I also will caution you about a garage grow, that's where mine is as I also have no really good stealthy spot inside my house -- in a garage your grow will be subject to wider swings in ambient temps that you will have to deal with. I basically cannot grow in the summer, the garage is just too hot, and in the winter I have to add heat most of the time. Also, you can use a metal cabinet but you may have an easier time cutting holes in a wooden one. You can find them at Home Depot, Walmart, etc in the section that sells Closet Maid shelving.
Thanks for all the suggestions toastybiz would it look something like this? (except two of them) just tryin to get an idea
perfect.... pvc works great... i used a square tubing dryer vent... much more expensive though... like 15 bucks.. and if you needed two... stick with the pvc
Exactly. It can be the shape of the letter "C" or the letter "S", doesn't matter which way the bends are in relation to each other. The connecting pipe could be just a couple of inches, just enough to hold the two elbows together. If need be, the light traps can be mounted on the inside of the cab, doesn't have to be the outside. Or, one bend outside and one inside. And you'll need two in total -- one down low for intake, one high up for exhaust. There are other ways of building light traps, but they all involve having the air navigate turns that the light cannot.
OP use a grow tent. I got a cheap one on ebay for like $100. it's 2x4x7feet. It'll already have all the holes you need, and be lightproof, plus it's waterproof in the bottom which might save your carpet someday. It'd be just like what you were gonna do w/ that cabinet, just w/ alot less work required. NEW HYDROPONICS GROW TENT 4x4x6.5 FT GROW BOX CABINET - eBay (item 150498806974 end time Sep-29-10 07:44:33 PDT) REFLECTIVE 48 Check out the grow in my sig to see how it works. I wouldn't go 7 feet tall if I had to do it again. The 5 footer would be perfect. I had a single plant grow and got 5.5oz scrogging it, and I'm running 2 and hoping for 10 this time.
Ok i'll do this. Bending them inside is a good idea By the way toastbiz, how many plants do you have that a carbon filter gets rid of all its smell? mrgoodsmoke: I don't see anywhere I can put that tent and people not being like; "What the fuck is this?"
Ohhhh yeah. I put mine in a walk in closet, in the back bedroom. No one ever goes there. I guess the box is a bit more stealth, but by the time you put all those fans and ducts on there I dunno.....I'm sure you'll figure it out.
Toasty by the way I'm going to take your suggestion and get a wooden one instead to make the drilling easier. I've got my eye on this: Amazon.com: 2-Door Floor Cabinet - Honey Oak: Kitchen & Dining What do you guys think? What kind of holes do you think something of this size needs? 4-6 inch holes? ALso, just to get this straight; You need to attach carbon filters to both the intake and exhaust fans? Will this device be inside the cabinet or does it have to be on the exterior?
Grow tent is a good thing because how easy it would be to just make disappear. My armoire I could tear it apart; but you still have a big wooden thing to hide (with holes and such cut into it). Mine does work very well and is stealthy enough to put in my brew room next to some aquariums and other non-weed hydro gardens and such. Give you an idea on what I did: Full body shot. Light proof and still perfecting my carbon scrubber. Top flowering area with diy light system & reflector. Down stairs. Top area is power systems and snips, knives, pH chems, and such. Bottom left is vegging and bottom right is storage/future home of a mommies and CLONES.
Very cool, thanks for sharing. Do you mind going into more detail at what kind of ventilation you're using? Are you using a negative pressure system?
2 bottoms fans in the bottom chamber and 1 exhaust fan going up into flowering chamber which has 2 intake fans and two exhaust fans going into a carbon scrubber with anther exhaust fan going out from there. All fans are large PC grow fans. It keeps the temp down and plenty of movable air in there.
Cool man All there is left for me to figure out is how to set up an air hood. I want to use CFL's during the vegetative cycle and HPS during flowering. Is it possible both these lightbulbs can be supported on the same ballast so I can easily swap them when I need to? I'm really not sure how this part works What is a light bulb that will work in the same socket as the HPS except that is good for the vegetative phase? Also , is there an FAQ or guide on how to work with air hoods on this forum somewhere? :[