I am currently under construction on a detatched closed growing environment and would like some input on the climate control aspect of things. Any and all knowledge of this style of growing will be greatly appreciated! Attatched is a drawing of the room layout. More pix and updates to follow. What I will be using: Two 215 card holders will grow 6 flowering plants ea. (state of Ca) Perpetual grow. Bubble buckets/scrog. four 600w hps/cool tubes. Three plants per light. Lucas formula. C02 enrichment by way of bottle/regulator. Electrical, water line and leach pit drain are ran under ground. What is your advice on climate control? On the wattage of the MH bulb for vegging? On the clone and mother flouros? Thanks and I look forward to hearing what GC has to say!................................Sorry the diagram is kinda hard to see..........
Started construction on Jan. 5th 2010. Here are some pix of the forming for slab (notice the electrical conduit-pic 3 and the J hook bolts for securing walls to slab-pic 2), leach pit-pix 4-8, and forming of the drain basen-pix 9-10 (notice the water line next to the drain basen-pix 5 and 8). The string you see in pix 5 and 6 is where the center interier wall will be and it's set at the height of where the top of the slab will be. The leach pit is 3 ft. long x 2 ft. wide x 1 ft. deep (area under pipe-approx. 45 gal. capacity) Notice the last pic- the outside form of the drain basen before being placed in the ground. It is cut at an angle on the bottom so when water is later poured into it, the water drains toward the pipe.
1st pic we are bending the rebar to fit inside the walls of the drain basen for strength and to tie the slab to it. 2nd pic is rebar set in place and hole cut for drain pipe. 3rd pic is the inside basen form set in place after the floor of the basen was poured and drain pipe shoved through the hole we cut in the outside form. 5th pic is of poured basen walls and finished on top. 6th is concrete caulking on outside of drain pipe. 7th and 8th pix: all filled in, graded and wet down.......Ready to pour slab! Concrete truck backed up ready to pour. gettin er done...............
Finished off slab and beginning of framing.........3 of us are doing all the work from start to completion.
btw i can really see the diff between the foundations and slabs between canada and socali, here(i built foundations for 6 yrs) they are on avrge 12" thick, ill be watching this seems interesting
This is what I've got so far. The storm that's coming through stopped us for a minute. Hopefully we can resume this Monday morning..............Pic 5 is looking down on the room/s from the side where the entry doors will be (doors will be on the right side). Pic 6 is from entry side looking at the doorway into the future flower room. pic 7 is of an anchor that we hammered into the concrete for center wall support (same purpose as the J hook bolts). Oops, tore my jeans and doin' a little jig! LOL...... pic 9 is looking at entryway from inside. Pic 10 is looking from flower room. Stay tuned for more!
Wow, 12" on average? Geez.....Those are pricey slabs! The concrete including tax and delivery was $305.00. A good price if you ask me. The slab is 18'x16 1/2'. I ordered 3.75 yards and we had just a little bit left over.
Dude that is smoking deal for concrete. In Canada they have heeving. Might have missed spelled. Basically hard freezes. In Cali we hardly freeze below 6 inches. I'm sure your slab is plenty. Especially if you are just supporting 12 plants.
Dude I wish I wasn't slammed with work. I would blaze down and help you guys out. I love this shit. We're getting pounded with rain up North. I would look into plumbing propane. Hauling CO2 will get old. You you will have temp issues anyhow and given the surrounding houses you probably want to go fully sealed. Legal or not. What's the saying no smell, no tell, no sell, no problems. Anyhow. I think the 600's are great if you keep them as close as possible to the plants and don't grow trees. Doesn't sound like you plan on trees. I like T-5 for early veg. Then switch to 400's. I also keep my mama's under 400's they actually have the best light spectrum. I will shoot you over a picture of my cloning room. Back to the heat issue. 4x600=2400 x 4 = 9600 BTU plus some for ballast, fans, and CO2 burner a 15000 BTU wall unit would work depending how hot it get's where you live. Don't forget to insulate. I have set similar room with 6000k of lights and ran a 5 ton A/C. When it was a 105 was still able to get the temps to 68. Some strains like that during the final 2 weeks. Remember enviroment and water are really understated and probably the most important. Plan an area for airing out your water and you might want to plumb the walls with spickets for your nutes. Just some thoughts. Looks awesome. Send me a PM if you have any other questions. I hope I answered your question. Oh.. one more thing I get the lumatek 400's for under 120.00 and 600's for around 180.00.
whats the total size of your finished room? how big is the veg room, how big is the flowering room? personally i would go with 1k watt lights, im not a fan of the 600, ive seen a few of my friends use them and personally i dont like them, a 600 would be ok to veg a mom under, and floros are good for the clones, heres a thaught, i havent seen anyone use it yet, but i do want to try it EYE Hortilux SUPER BLUE , its a dual arc bulb with basically a 600hps and a 400 mh all in the same bulb, and they work on s52 ballasts(1kw hps ballast), the only downfall i see to this bulb is that it has a shorter rated life and is more expensive than the super hps which i use btw the guy with the ripped pants is pretty funny...lol
LOL........the guy in the ripped pants is me............If you look at the first post you will see (although kinda hard-but you can zoom) the diagram of the room. Overall dimension of the inside finished structure will be 17'6"x15'9"x8' but there is a wall running through the middle of it sepparating the flower room from everything else. The flower room will be 17'4"x8'x8' finished. Drywall to drywall. The veg portion is gonna be approx. 4'6"x2'6"x4'6". Keep in mind there will be only 12 flowering plants in bubble buckets so for veg there will be approx 20 so I can take the best 12. I will have the vegging plants in 6" net pots so when they are ready I can just transfer them right into my bubble buckets. Some adjustments might have to be made on the size of the veg area. Maybe I'll have to take up all of the 7'6" wide space and put the clones somewhere else. The mothers will be below the vegging plants (probably 3 mothers-different strains). Mother area will be 7'6"x2'6"x3'6". I've got to think about total overall wattage and of course overall price of the entire build and set up. 400w MH sounds like it would work for the vegging plants (gonna veg for 15 to 20 days). Why don't you like the 600w hsp? Right now budget and wattage are concerns. 3 plants per light is what I am going with. And I'm using scrog and cool tubes. Getting the lights as close as possible. Like rump does. I would love to go with 1000w lights but can't right now. So regular flouros will not be good for keeping mothers healthy? Thanks bro, keep the input coming if you'd like!
Shoot, I just bid on a job for a big ass RV garage with two double doors and a work shop. It was like 2400 sq. ft. and the slab is the same thickness. 3 1/2"/4". The only difference is the RV slab has rebar in it 16" on center, footings (for the exterior walls) and normal hold downs...................But yea, the slab for my project here is plenty strong enough for my perpetual grow and everything that goes with it! And your're right, it was a smokin' deal. (I've got an account at the local concrete co.)
Hi Johnnyoutlaw...I wish I had your space! I had a significantly smaller and less friendly area to work with...for what it's worth, you are welcome to check out this thread on the room construction: http://forum.grasscity.com/grow-room-design-setup/327912-new-grow-room.html And this for my continuing Grow Journal: http://forum.grasscity.com/advanced-grow-journals/350075-nukem-chronicles.html I have zero building skills and leave that to my brothers. But, I do use completely sealed grows, and there may be something of value in all those posts. I admire what you have done so far, and I sure hope I get a chance to do something like that myself...really nice!! **EDIT** Forgot to say...I use ONLY 600 watt HPS (two per room, 2 Rooms), and get a fairly decent return. I do use the Enhanced Spectrum, but only HPS. I hope that helps.
Ok so between the rain and slightly conflicting schedules, construction has been a little slow going......But still under way! Here are a few more pix of the progress. I aim to have the room/s finished and ready for garden equipment by this Sat.. I'll do my best to keep the ball rolling and update on a more frequent basis..........