Looking to get some feedback on my grow setup. I've been a long time smoker but never had any problem finding marijuana to buy so only grew for fun. I'd typically forget to water not really check on the plants, and just fart around with it. Unfortunately, times have changed. It's now impossible for me to buy and I'm going to have to grow to get my medicine. My consumption is roughly 2 grams per day of medical quality. I'm going to need a yield of roughly 360 grams in order to supply myself between grows accounting for failures. Cabinet Size: 90CM (width) x 50CM (depth) x 135CM (height) -- The height is the height of the main grow chamber. Actual cabinet is around 300CM in height. Area: 0.45SQM Lights: I was planning to buy 2x Apollo 6 'Full Spectrum' LED lights. They will barely be able to fit in the cabinet but should have a clearance of roughly 6-7CM on either side of the light from the doors and the back wall. These lights consume roughly 300W of power each. Strain: Random sativa seeds for the first grow. On my second grow I will likely find some northern lights. I do not have anywhere to keep a mother for clones so I'm going to need to start from seeds on every grow. This is difficult as I'll likely get some males which means I need to start with extra plants. (Do I have the space?) Exhaust: I was planning to do a 6" exhaust through a self-made odor neutralizer container. Is it realistic to think that I'll be able to pull out 360 grams out of this setup per grow? IMG_20170327_212821 by smokerph posted Mar 27, 2017 at 10:06 PM IMG_20170327_212828 by smokerph posted Mar 27, 2017 at 10:06 PM
Are you looking at the true, from the wall wattage of these lights? Or are you looking at the "equivalent wattage"? Many LED manufacturers, especially cheap chinese blurple LED manufacturers, list their product as "equivalent wattage", and their real wattage is less than half of what they claim. For a first grow, I find the majority of people end up with no more than 0.2-0.3 grams per watt, unless you REALLY know what you're doing or have a ridiculously natural green thumb, I'd expect around that number.
The lights are reported as 300W at the wall. Each light has 4 fans though. Here is the light supplier on ali. I kind of know what I'm doing. I've been around successful growers and have bought from them before. They always take me and show me their operations and we discuss various issues they're facing at any given point in time. Stuff like spider mites, strange leaf colors, herms, topping, fim, etc. I was planning to FIM the plants initially and then top them after the initial FIM. The 0.3 would give me 1G a day, I'll have to conserve and limit myself but all in all that wouldn't be too terrible.
That link shows they are reporting 209w from the wall, and I would be super suspicious about that light, they are using seriously outdated technology and billing it as the latest and greatest. I'd be sketched out.
Any recommendations? I can't get anything here from most US / EU manuf (shipping is prohibitive). Best bet for me is to buy off ali. I see some of these Apollo units being resold on amazon with good reviews under various brands. But you're right, and to go a little further, buying off ali is always sketchy.
I bought 3 450W LEDs... turns out real wattage is 200 per unit. I need 1000 real watts from my 5'X5'X7' grow tent. I just ordered a true 400 watt LED. Total light costs from my tent will be close to $900.
I gave up on LED and just went with metal halide / HID because they're so damn cheap. I've got 250W metal halide now and searching for an additional 250W unit. Got a great deal (50% off the ballast and a free bulb) because the manuf no longer produces the units -- Paid roughly $75 for the ballast, bulb and reflector. Working on getting my exhaust situation sorted now. Hoping to be up and running in the next week or 2 with 250W and then 500W shortly after. .. I decided that a lower yield is better than no yield! Hoping for at least 0.25G/W with 500W HID. Maybe I'll find that I have a botanist inside that I didn't know about and hit 0.5G/W Was also considering going 250W HPS for the second light. (If I can find a HPS ballast & bulbs)
You do know MH is the wrong spectrum for flowering right? you can use HPS all the way through but don't think so with MH.
Don't get a second one for that small space. 250W will serve you fine if you can work out the heat issue. Also note in that smaller space you are restricted majorly by height. If you have not already, maybe look into scrogging. I say that because you are in a small space. Also like said above you can flower with that 250W MH bulb, but check to see if your light allows you to get a HPS to switch. I know some only allow one kind. Remember don't touch with your hands the oils!(Sorry I don't know your full level so I thought I would say it). Just remember your plants will 2x-3x in size when you goto flower them. And you don't have a lot of height to mess around. My best guess is your first grow you will get 200 grams, I think you can get 300-360max. This is just a guess because it's a long road from here to cure. But 100% get your venting issues resolved if you are going to be using HPS. I still think you will not be able to control the heat in there with 2x of them. A 600 handles a 4x4x8 and a 1000 handles a 5x5x8 just fine. Your 250W can handle a 3x3 just fine. Grow with your light you have now and make adjustments. I feel this will become an issue of too much light. Long winded sorry. Again your space is a 3x2x4 if I converted that correctly.
I can knock out another shelf above but not the one below. I was hoping to FIM, top and tie them down so they grow small and bushy as opposed to growing up. I've seen some pictures floating around of some pretty incredible stuff that people have done to that end. Creating plants that look more like a bonzai tree than marijuana. I've had experience with large (1MW) bitcoin mining that was air cooled. The cabinet is roughly 1.35m3 (full cabinet size not just the grow area). With a 400CFM / 11.3m3/m exhaust the air will completely cycle roughly once every 10 seconds. I'm exhausting out of my roof so the air won't recycle or cycle back through. With only 500W of heat generation the plants themselves should stay at room temperature assuming i place my intake correctly. Since the majority of the exhaust will be coming from the grow area it should be cycling the air from the grow area more like once every 2-3 seconds. Meaning... Every few seconds there is 100% new air in the grow chamber. There will be no lingering air. Ambient temps are pretty high here though. The room the cabinet is in, is NOT air conditioned. Peak temps here can get up to around 30-35C. I'd really like to get as much light as possible and increase my yield as much as I can. I just learned today that a friend of the family as leukemia. I'm going to need to produce some hash in the hopes of helping to cure them along with the barbaric chemotherapy they're on. My needs will have to take a backseat. I've got another room I could grow in but the smell would stink up the entire neighborhood (it's on the ground floor and no where to properly exhaust to) and cops here will just shoot people they suspect of dealing or even using drugs on sight. Proof isn't necessary. They don't even need to plant a weapon to get away with it either. Yet, I'm the criminal.... Society is fucked.. At least I live in a high end subdivision where the security guards (ex-military armed with automatic weapons) will actually prevent cops from entering. Can't wait till my visa from spain comes through. I'll just grow on my balcony! Thanks for your feed back.
You can exhaust all you like, there is still a limit on how much heat is stuck in there. I would suggest starting off with what you have less that second unit is going to be a good air cool unit, that way you can remove your other 250watt unit when you see how hard it is to control that heat. If you are direct shooting the exhaust out of your roof, where is your filter at? Remember the inside of your tent will never be cooler then the outside of your tent. If it's 89 there is no way to reduce that inside of the tent (will be much much much much higher).
additionally, i tried this with a 440cfm exhaust... it sucked all the heat and air out of the house causing the heat/air to run more often than not.
What I learned with the bitcoin mining is that, as long as you're completely cycling the air in a very low time frame the heat never builds up. Based on my observations of other's grow operations the same principles would apply. The temp inside the grow chamber will increase, but by an extremely small amount... Maybe 1c to 2c at most above ambient. With such a small space and such a high volume of air flowing through I'd expect less than a 1c increase above ambient. It will be intake -> boxed high cfm -> custom filter -> exhaust to roof (as per the picture in my OP). I was planning to put the filter after the fan. I've seen that most people pref to put the filter before the fan. I wasn't sure if there was any reasoning behind that (still more reading to do on the filter).. I would suspect that it's easier for the fan to 'suck' through a filter than 'push' through a filter. But, If I place the filter after the exhaust fan it would allow me to place it in the attic if I wanted. I could stick a 50 gallon plastic drum up there for filtration with multiple layers, etc. I'm going to worry about the filter after I start growing as it will be probably 90 days until I go 12/12. It will be difficult to design a filter for such a high CFM though. I doubt I'll be able to just grab something off the shelf.
Are we comparing graphic card heat to an hps? Because my ATI 7990 (High end, high heat much more cards that run a lot cooler) runs at 90C (194F). Your plant runs at 76F or 24C. You also don't have the radiant heat that an HPS puts off with a GPU. It's apples to oranges. You can do a filter after the fan(normally all attached.) if your filter allows it to be blown into. A custom one you may end up making a mess(blowing it every where). You have a hard road in front of you with the path you are going down I feel bud. Also why didn't you run the bit mining on an open rack?
Ya, it will be a very hard road. My only other option is to leave the country. I can't do that at this point in time unfortunately. I need the THC to control my NPD. I can't work if I'm not high. I'm one of those people who's a more productive member of society if I'm constantly ripped. We were running open racks of asic gear. We had hot and cold isle design with duct work. You are correct about the radiant heat. But the same rules should apply. Heat will radiate to the nearby surroundings (mostly the air) and the new air will perform heat exchange with it's surroundings and be sucked out. Worst case I can remove a light and return back to 250W. And, I will be starting off with 250W so I'll know almost immediately if it will work or not. I'll probably get some sensors for a RPI to monitor temp, humdity, etc, in different locations of the cabinet.