Doormouse's stealth pc build guide and grow journal!

To all the blades and beyond:

Welcome to my PC growbox guide!(for those interested my grow journal starts in the next post or so) This guide is for those of us who do not have the luxury to move our stealthy grows out of a pc to the freedom of a larger growbox. I.E. a true stealth micro grow, from seed to harvest all in a home pc case.

First things first, you need a case! Now, with the set-up we'll be running the more room, the better so this guide shows the box being built into a full pc tower (~17in tall). This being said, if you don't have a full pc case all is not lost, I have seen this build in a mid tower (~14in tall) however it would be pointless to go smaller than this seeing as you wouldn't yield more than an 1/8th or so.



Once you have your case go ahead and crack that sucker open, and then my personal favorite part: Pull it all apart!

Remove the two side plates(I purchased my case for a few bucks so you'll notice my case is already missing the drives and motherboard)


Go ahead and remove all of the wires and set them aside(no need to buy new wires when you have perfectly good ones sitting in there) as well as removing the drives and chips. Before you throw out the motherboard salvage the fan that should be attached (most full towers will have three fans: one exhaust, one motherboard, one from the power unit. most mid towers will have two: mother board and powerunit)



Now since you're pulling everything out anyway, go ahead and pull out that power unit(the small metal box in the upper-back section of the case) it should be attached via screws through the back of the case. Once you have that out go ahead and open it up.



There are a few things you need here: one, cut the wires connected to the fan, leaving as much cord attached to the fan as possible. Two, cut the wires attached to the power cord adapter (they should be brown and blue) and again, leave as much of them attached as possible. And finally detach the rear wall of the power unit(cut/snap off along the red line in the pic)



Keep the back and rescrew it into the back of the case, trash the rest.

If you're using a full tower then there should be some supports(the large metal wall seen in the third picture) as well as the drive cases. To remove these you will need to take out the rivets holding them in. I personally used a nail punch/set to pop out the rivets but you can also use a small drill bit(but be careful). Once the rivets are out you should be able to simply pull the drive cases out, the only resistance you may run into will be those supports, but a bit of loving and they'll come out(I personally punched mine out )



Now comes the most important part of keeping this micro-grow fully stealth: the main light trap!
It's simple enough, just cut out a piece of plywood(or particleboard if you're truly paranoid) to fit the size of the case like so:



Next you need to measure the diameter and/or circumference of that fan you saved from the motherboard and cut a hole in the plywood where you want the carbon filter to go. Since you have the board out anyway you'll want to attach a power strip to the other side of the board so that it's cord will line up with the wires from the power unit when you reinstall the board.
Also, cut a hole(or holes depending on how you want to do your lighting) for your light sockets.



Apply some mylar while that board is out still(I used a sun-shield from autozone)



Tape (or otherwise affix) your carbon filter to the other side of the fan (I used the carbon filter from http://forum.grasscity.com/do-yours...mart-carbon-filter-micro-grows-zen-style.html but feel free to use your own) and then fit that board back in.

Go ahead and cut and strip the end of the wires to the power strip, power unit, and the fans. to power those fans independently you'll want a dc converting power cord to plug them into, such as



While I won't go into specifics with wiring, (seeing as you'll most likely want to do it differently then I did because the way pc cases are shaped varies greatly) I will show you how to wire the power unit to the power strip. Take the brown wire from the power unit and hook it to the black wire from the power strip. The blue wire from the power unit attaches to the white wire from the power strip. If there is a ground wire for the power strip(probably green) just fold it out of the way and tape it.





From here just wire up your lights (hook up a light timer if you want, I know I did) and put all of your mylar in place. Set and glue the board in place. Caluk up any gaps or holes where light can escape(remember, if light can get out, so can smell! DUN DUN DUUUUUN). (if there is anywhere you want to place caulk that you want it to stick to one surface but not the one it would attach to, just place vasaline on the surface you want to not be attached. don't worry, it cleans up easy.)

Aaaaand you're pretty much done.

Special thanks to bigfoot14 for helping with a few parts of construction!

hope this helps and happy growing

 

Day 0 Humidity: N/A Temp: N/A (my thermometer broke! will be picking one up in the days to come. but the temp from the cases dry run was consistently 75-80*F)
seed cracked in 2 hours, popped out of the soil in under an hour.
great hopes for this grow

 

Thanks

I was going to say in my first journal post but I didn't have time last night.

I have two fans-12 volt .25A(so if you paid attention to the guide they are both being run off of the one dc converter I took a pic of) to run and about three inchs across, one for the filter and one for exhaust. I was a little worried about the filter at first but the air flow seems to be just fine, I guess we'll really find out when we hit flowering.

The temps are staying between 75-80, so pretty much right where I want them for now.

And right now i'm running one 23watt and two 18 watts for veg, but I'll have to switch over to two 23 watts later in the grow to make room for the plant

 

thankyou backseat grower-.-

 

it is not, but it's tiny and has a great thc content(~18%!) and I'll just force it into flowering when I need to

 

as much as I can, not today because of how the light cycle matches up with my work schedule, but I'll keep on top of that better in the future.

I kind of need to do daily updates so that I don't accidentally get tempted to talk to everyone I know about it lol

 

yeah, that makes too much sense. And I'll need plenty of help, though I've read quite a bit this is only my second grow, first time indoor

 

So day 1 and 2 here...

In my infinite wisdom I managed to plant the seeds upside-down lol

From what I've read I'm to just leave the seed, it'll right itself. However...I'm not sure how the seed made it to the surface if not via the taproot?

 

it's what i'm confused about :/ I obviously put it in upside-down, but I don't know how it surfaced like that.

but yeah i guess I'll go flip it

 

Day 2 edit:

Just flipped the seed and it is now just barely covered. the arrow shows where it's buried.

For what it's worth the tap root is almost a CM long.

soil is moist and it's still nice and warm in there, I'll be picking up a thermometer/hydrometer within a week or so, it doesn't matter for right now while the bag is on fortunately.

 

done and done, thanks man