Breaking Bud - How I remodeled a travel trailer into a self contained perpetual grow trailer.

 So I have just finished my second travel trailer conversion, and I thought I'd do a how-to on it. I have received both of these trailers I've converted for free, so maybe someone else can get as lucky, and this will help them know what to do with it
 
 To catch you all up to speed, I'll fill you in a bit on my history with growing, and some of the things I've learned along the way. I'll try to steer clear of common knowledge stuff, and stick to things that pertain to growing organically in a travel trailer. 
 
 I started out in a small 8'x8' shed a few years ago. This wasn't a bad way to grow, when I started I figured I'd veg til they where bigger, then switch the whole shed over to flower, and do crops that way. Sure with my short patience it was going to seem like forever in between harvests, but I was figuring on harvesting plenty per crop so I didn't figure it would really matter after the first one.
 
 I was about a month into my first veg cycle when a neighbor expressed his wishes to have a 24' travel trailer removed from his property, it was pretty haggard and depleted looking, inside and out. So I very carefully towed it down the road to my house, and ended up pretty much tearing the thing down to the outer shell and most of the insulation. Most the wood and a small part of the insulation were destroyed from water damage, and I was wanting to insure mold wouldn't be an issue. (You can view my thread involving this procedure, and the concurrent grow HERE.
 
 After my first indoor grow in this trailer, I did one outdoor grow. I was not working and had almost no income awaiting shoulder surgery, so since it was the right time of year, and outdoor requires no electricity, I switched and did an outdoor grow. By the time my card expired that year, I was back working again, and really busy so I didn't renew my card right away. I have connections with other medical growers who treat me very well and when I was working it was cost effective and time saving to just help them with their electric bill and pretty much get my meds for free.
 
 Last November I started getting the itch to grow again, so I went to see my doctor and got my card renewed, I still have really bad degenerative arthritis even after surgery. It wasn't til around February though that I got around to purchasing a new light setup (the old one had been borrowed, and returned). I found a guy on CL who has some very nice white widow clones, I love the way they grow, as well as Incredible Bulk, which to me didn't do very well at all yield wise, though it did turn out to be very good smoke! So I started in the old trailer with a new light (Breaking Bud - The Perpetual Trailer Grow (Aka Season 1) and 4 weeks in, received a NEW trailer, well not new, but in REAL NICE condition inside and out.
 
 So I just this weekend finished the new trailer. It still needs some equipment upgrades, getting a new T5 light setup purchased or at least ordered this weekend, and will need a second flower light setup and another T5 veg setup at some point as I'm going to be taking on a second card here soon for a family member. The trailer has the room easy for two cards worth the plants, so I'm excited to fill her up and be chopping two plants every two weeks instead of just one.
 
 
 THE TEAR DOWN and REBUILD
 
 I'm not going to go into hardly any details and probably won't mention much of the first trailer during this. The new trailer is so much nicer the old trailer is not even worth thinking about at this point. Anything useful I learned remodeling the first trailer I did in the second one, or improved upon.
 
 So I started off with a new trailer, well it's about 20 years old, but no leaks in the roof, no structural weak spots, and from the outside it looks like something you'd easily take camping or hunting for weeks on end, or leave parked beside the house most of the year in hopes of taking out.
 

 
 Someone had recently been living in it, then abandoned it on some family's property. So once again I was gifted a grow room, with some assembly required. Inside though a bit messy it was dry and rather clean.
 


 
 So I took some measurements, and drew up a "plan" using google sketchup. As you'll see from the end results, my plans somewhat changed by the end, but it was nice having a general idea to start. You could as easily use paper and do even a simple drawing to get a visual idea of what you're wanting to do.
 

 
 
So now I have a plan, and I'm ready to get to work and take some action! I already know the bathroom wall needs to come down, as well as everything including cabinets cupboards and fixtures removed. So I "gently" took down the larger part of the bathroom wall in hopes of being able to re-use it again, which I did, you can see it laying on the left against the wall. I also removed the smaller right hand wall as the fridge also had to be removed in order to enlarge the bathroom into the flower room. I also put all the screws and hardware I was pulling down that may be reusable into the silverware drawer, organizing it as I went.
 


 
 Next I moved on to the front half. At first I planned to remove the entire upper bunk. So at first I removed the fold down cupboard face that opened into the overhead bed. I ended up cutting this down and using it as the smaller right hand wall of the flower room. I simply covered over the door openings with some paneling removed from the bathroom cupboard, and secured it into place.
 

 
Then I noticed that the remaining part of the bed had a center support running the width of the trailer that was positioned almost exactly above the built in shelf in the nose of the trailer. My main reason for removing the overhead bed was due to head room, but if it wasn't going to be in the way, why remove the whole thing? Storage space is at a premium!
 

 
 Then the half that I cut out I removed the 2x2 frame and used it to frame in the remaining part of the wall on the right side of the flower room, on top of the wheel well next to the beds fold down face that I used next to the doorway. I also pulled some insulation from around the pipes under the sink since I won't be using it anyways and used it in the hollow spots created by the doors in the bed face frame before covering them up. This just provides better insulation easing in keeping your flower rooms climate more manageable.
 



 
 As for light proofing the trailer, lots of black plastic is used, which is pretty cheap and you don't need a ton of it. Just enough to cover all the vent openings and all the windows, not forgetting vents and windows in the ceiling! Don't throw away the curtains from the trailer if they are in even halfway good condition! Do take down the rods and rod holders, and well as unscrew the handles to open and close the windows, AFTER you close the windows! This allows you to staple the curtains up across the windows, flat to the windows. Leave a little wave to them, don't pull them tight! After you staple them down you then cover them from the inside with black plastic. After that later on will come your mylar or whatever you decide to use. Also on the ceiling vents and windows, I like to stuff some insulation up in there. I didn't take pictures of the window covering process, it's pretty self explanatory, but I did take pics of how to cover up ceiling vents properly!  As you can see I covered half the opening, then stuffed it full of insulation, then covered it the rest of the way.
 

 
I use a box that I built in the lower back corner of the flower room floor that is light proof and allows fresh air to be pulled from ground level below the trailer. I built it for the original trailer, and just pulled it out, cut a new hole in the new trailer, and dropped it through. I don't use a fan on it, though I have a fan placed behind it blowing towards my plants, and my dehumidifier which seems to suck quiet a bit of water out of the air for being a small $60 one. My exhaust fan seems to do a fine job of pulling air through the room all by its self. I made the ducting system out of some cardboard, it leads to an existing ceiling vent.
 



 
The front of the trailer was pretty easy to put together. The benches along the sides were covered with the fiberglass from the showers from both trailers, I still had the other one in the old trailer. Then I covered that with the silver mylar sheets. I still have to get better veg lights, but for now the front is done. You can also see in the first two pics that the windows are blacked out with plastic, after the curtains where stapled up, and then also what the curtains look like from the outside.
 




 
 I ended up tearing out the sink and the kitchen drawers. The main reason being I wanted a sitting area, and the only place to put the bathtub for dirt recycling / composting / earth worms was where I wanted to put my couch and table. As you can see I put in a drain pipe from the bathtub drain and made a funnel out of a tin pie pan that drains into a 1 gallon water jug. This way I can keep things moist and not worry about drainage.
 
 




 
So I moved the table over where the sink had been, and will use a couple of regular chairs instead of a couch. I still have plenty of overhead storage as I left the overhead compartments in the center of the trailer. The ones in the front I took out so I would be able to hang my lights as high as I want, not under the compartments.
 

 
 Now the door to the flower room, I did it a bit different. The last trailer I remodeled I used a stick between a rafter in the ceiling and the top of the door. This time I'm using the air conditioning unit, and placing a stick between it and the top of the door. I stapled black felt to the outside of the door frame and the jams, plus around the edge of the door. The door overhangs both sides, and I added in blocking top and bottom of the doorway. When I hung the walls I hung them out of square on purpose. I made it so the bottom corner and the two corners that are hinged touch before the top left corner does. This way when you slide the stick into place it seals the entire door real good since the other three sides where already touching, and now the entire door is shoved hard into place via just the upper corner.
 


 
 
 So that is basically how I converted a travel trailer into a self contained grow operation. I didn't really show what I did to the floor,  but I covered it in a mirrored laminate, something I got from the last place I worked at for free. It's real tough and durable. Not sure what would work in it's place, or how much the stuff costs to buy, i know it was really expensive, I just used the ends of 4x8 sheets they where going to throw away.
 
  I also haven't purchased a heater for the veg area, so I'm doing my clones down in my bedroom, but soon they'll be put into the trailer also.
 
 As far as electricity is concerned, I don't trust my electrician skills, or that the wiring in any old travel trailer would withstand what's required in a grow operation, so I pull out what I can, tuck back into the walls what I can't, and run heavy duty extension cords through the trailer. This way I know what I'm using, and I can visually inspect all wiring any time I want to.
 
 Any questions just fire away or even PM me. I've learned a lot from GC so this is an attempt to maybe help out some fellow growers who don't have a ton of money to build a real nice room or such. If you're as lucky as me and can get your hands on a trailer, or two, here's a rough guideline on how to make it usable

 

It's not the prettiest, or most high-tech operation around, but it more than gets the job done. I am allowed 15 plants in Washington. If I keep 6 moms that leaves me with 9. Since it takes about 8 weeks to flower, and I'm doing a plant every two weeks into flower, that means 4 plants at a time in flower, leaving me with 5 left to veg, though I might go down to 5 mothers and then be able to veg 6. The reason being is that I'd like to veg for 12 weeks, and one plant into veg every 2 weeks would be 6 total in veg at a time. 
 
 I've already harvested two plants from this trailer, a White Widow and an Incredible Bulk. I have another IB due in 4 days, and another WW due 14 days after that, etc. etc. I haven't gotten more than two ounce a plant yet, but I haven't vegged either of them for more than 6 weeks, the one coming up will have had 8.
 
 Having everything self contained, other than bringing in 5 gallons of water once a week or so really makes growing easier, everything is right there.
 
 I still have a drying rack to build and install, as well as some lighting upgrades and perhaps a plexi glass wall to seal off the veg area. But all in all, this is a very usable, very low cost grow setup!

 

Got a new T5 fixture installed above one of the veg benches. Will get another later when funds become available.

 

UPDATE: Got a couple of metal racks installed into the veg area.

 

Mostly due to available funds, or rather lack of. T5 fixture was $60, MH setups cost around three times that.
I'm running a 600 watt HPS in flower.