Hey bros, I'm just getting started planning out my first grow. I haven't bought anything just yet except some beans (White Widow and Jack Herrer) from buy dutch seeds. I've read the WW is a little more forgiving than the JH so i'm gonna start with that. Here's my situation, I have a closet about 6ft deep, 12ft wide and 9ft high however the door is in the middle of it and swings inward. Because of this I have roughy 32 sq ft to the left and 25 sq ft to the right of it. This leaves about 15 sq ft in the vicinity of the door (pretty much right in the middle) that I can't really use. I'm planning on growing the 10 seeds in soil and pulling the males of course. My questions: 1. There are 2 recessed lights in the closet (right where these 2 left and right 'grow spaces' would be) that I can remove and run an exhaust through. I've been in the attic and found some exhaust pipes (for the toilet area and shower area) however they're only about 4" in diameter. Is this big enough? I can run something to a larger exhaust area but it would literally be about 20' of duct to the larger exhaust (unused gas fireplace). 2. I believe I'll only be using the area to the left (32 sq ft) I'm thinking of going with a 400w HPS light, is this enough? 3. What are the quietest type of fans for intake / exhaust I can get? 4. I'm trying to figure out the best way for intake without making things too obvious. Living in AZ the air from the attic is either going to be REAL hot or REAL cold with maybe a few months out of the year when it's "normal". I don't think the 1" crack under the closet door is large enough for the climate controlled temps in the house... or is it? 5. Finally, should I flower the females I get from this batch or pick the best of the best and clone them? I'd like to go for the cloning, what do you guys think? Thanks guys!
Some real good questions. I would drill one or two 4" holes in the base of the door or a wall and install a louvered vent for an intake. Real easy to light proof a 4" hole by using a 4" PVC elbow shuved into the hole. It will look like this from the outside of the closet. *Except the hole will be at the base not the top of the door.* Your exhust situation is great. The 4" exhust duct coming from your bathroom's fart-fan will be more then enough. Unhook the duct from the top of the fart-fan and rout it to your grow. Just leave your fart-fan blowing in the attic to make life tuff on the rats. You need to pick a fan/blower that can pump air (not just blow it around). A "PC" or axial fan won't pump air more then a foot or two at best. You need either a squirrel-cage fan/blower or a inline duct fan/blower. Both will work fine. The squirrel-cage fan costs half as much as inline fans, but the inline fan makes half the noise. Ebay is king when it comes to getting a deal on a blower, but they have squirrel-cage fans at local hardware stores (Homedepot/Lowes). Got to the hardware store and look at bathroom or range/oven vents. Make sure it has a minimum CFM rating of 150. A 150 CFM blower will push alot of air out a 4" duct. Your fan/blower does not have to be the same size as your ducting, it can be reduced to any size with an adapter. I have two inline fans in my set-up. One for the light and one for the space. Both are hooked to 4" PVC. A 400w light will be good for 4-6 plants. CLONE EVERYTHING. Always take a sample clone from a plant that is started from seed. Clones are best taken before flowering. So that means you might have a few male clones in your clone room at some point. Just label all your clones and seed plants. I failed to take a sample clone from a seed plant a while back, it came out to be the best weed I ever grew. I was pissed. Before starting your 1st grow cycle, build a small clone room/box. A florescence light and a PC fan is all your need to make a working clone box. A clone machine can be made from a small fountain pump and a bucket. Tons of step by step instruction can be found on making a clone machine. You can clone with just water and nothing more. Dont jump the gun and start up before your ready to clone. It will also reduce your cycle time in half. I hope this has helped. Peace, R
Thanks! That's good to know, I'll be looking for some inline fans on ebay... any recommendation for the quietest? Also, where can I pick up a good carbon filter for relatively inexpensive? Even though the exhaust is going to go straight out of my roof I'd still like to be safe. I've already started gutting the closet (removing shelves and stuff)... this is going to be interesting!
I have tested three inline fans. They all seemed to be pretty even. The plastic cased one by Fantec did make more noise, but put out a hell of alot of pressure. I use the Elicent fans in my grow today. Alot depends on how you mount them and how much ducting your going to use on the intake and exhust. Mounting on bungee cords can absorb some of the noise. Get the good heavy duty bungee cords with the colored skin. Dont use the all rubber bungee cords (rubber tarp staps), they will crack in two months. I don't know of a cheap carbon filter. They cost alot. You can make your own with one of the thousand step by step instructions you can find here and other pot forums. It will still be alot even home made, due to the bulk activated carbon that is needed to fill the damn thing. I pipe into the attic, treat with ozone, then pump it out at 3AM with an attic fan on a timer. Smell is only an issue the last three weeks of flowering and drying the harvest. Ozone seems to work pretty good for me. Remember if you are going to use a carbon filter, then you need to get a more powerful fan. Good luck, R.
thanks bro, this stuff really helps! just installed electrical outlets and ordered the vortex inline fans for intake and exhaust. i'm going to go with at least 50 watts per sq ft for the flowering area, so i'll actually be over since i'm going to grab 2 1000w HPS's unless you think I can get away with 2 600w ones. Electricity is not a MAJOR issue however I would like to keep this low... i'm not sure how much I can expect 2000w to run me (not to mention the other lights for moms/clones). also will get some cfls for a box (found a nice cab at home depot for 99 bucks) for cloning. this should leave me with another 15 sq ft to house the mothers i want to keep... i'll also go with cfls here. which leaves me with the question, how much CFL output do i need for clones and moms? do these generate much heat? as i said, i've got about 32 sq ft (approx 5.8 x 5.5) for flowering... i'm curious how i could get the most bang for my buck in this space when growing the clones i've read 1 plant per sq ft is the rule of thumb, but when does this rule not apply? how long should I veg the clones for before budding? i'm curious if i veg too long then flower if the plant would become too bushy and prevent light from getting down below i suppose it all depends on the plant type... i've got these seeds (yeah i know i went overboard): buy dutch seeds: white widow, jock horror (jack herrer? these seeds are real small) subcool: black cherry, pinky soma: nyc diesel i am so overanxious to get them all growing however i'll be patient and get a test grow under my belt... should i stick w/ the WW? i've got about 9' of vertical space and 32 sq ft of area to do this
2000w in a closet grow seems to be alot. Your 6x6 flower room will be real hot with that much wattage. Not to say it can't be done, just its a bit much for a basic grow. Remember, your plan will change ten times before it works well. Try and spend as little money while getting the kinks out. My first plan for a 4'wide x 2'deep x 7'tall closet was 8 plants. I got more good bud from 5 plants then 8 (about 6-oz every 70 days or so). When I went hydro, I only had room for 4 plants. The 4 plants made as much good bud with less scrap then 5 in soil. So I scaled down to a 400w cool-tube and was able to maintain the same harvest. Point is, I dumped a ton of money with a great big plan. If I had your space, I would install one 600w cool-tube on 6 to 8 plants. After the first harvest, I would expand and refine (if needed). This way you won't be selling stuff on ebay this time next year. I wish I had this advice before going nutz on my first plan. I would not install an intake fan. It would be better utilize as exhust or a light cooler. Using one fan to cool the hood and one to replace the air would make less noise and cool better then having one installed at the intake hole. Or a conventional use of two in-line fans is to install one into the top of your carbon scrubber and the other one in series to help keep the air moving at a high rate. A fan installed at the intake will keep your guys up at night. I'm able to keep 20 clones and a mom in one 2'x2' box. It requires very little cooling. I have two axial or PC Fans to cool the whole clone box (I still need a heater in the water). I use two florescent light bars that hold a total of four 20w tubes. I turn half of them off when no clones are in the box. I dont veg much in the clone room. I found that in ten to fourteen days under a 400w MH bulb in the flowering room is enough veg for my grow. This makes my cycle time about 70 days. I only need four clones, so after they root I pick the best four and put them back in the clone machine with full size mesh baskets and wait for an opening in the flowering room. White Widow is bullet proof. Very simple to grow. I keep a few other moms from other strains, but I like the WW plant most. I only have good things to say. I have found no down side to the plant or smoke. I keep my moms in soil because it requires no maintenance and growth rate is slow. I made some Vic's Super Soil and it stays good for one year. No need to feed, just water. Hope, this helps, R.
here's what i've got so far 600w lumatek digital ballast, 600w hortilux HPS bulb, 600w MH conversion bulb, cool tube, grow yo yo hanging system, 6" vortex inline fan, min max / hum therms (2), 15 1.5 gal pots, 4 3 gal pots, soil (canna coco), couple germination trays, w/ 2' T5 light & small dome, 45 1.5" miniblocks, tall humidity dome 7", standard ducting and other radial fans for airflow & mylar... also 2 x 2' double bulb T5 lamps for the cabinet below when I get to storing moms (i would have went for 1 4' but the dimensions were an inch too wide for the cabinet) i also got a fairly large cabinet from home depot for 99 bucks, its about 4' wide 16 inches deep and 7 feet high. I plan on using this for germinating / cloning and keeping my soil based moms (when i get to that point)... for now everything is going to be in soil after I germinate under the 600w MH until I can sex them and pick the winners i'm going to try and germinate all 20 of these WW and JH seeds and get some nice moms from those to clone at this point i need to decide which way to go with the growing of the clones, i've been reading up and there are a lot of approaches i can go with hydro so i'm a little torn which way to go i see complete systems for around 600 bucks (also aeroponic systems too for around the same price but this is probably out of my league right now) or could I build my own? i was thinking of trying out the scrog with these clones, but i'm not sure again which way i should go what do you recommend? hydro system pre-built? build my own? scrog? grow normally? once i can decide on this then i'll move on to getting the related materials (testers, grow mediums, carbon filter, etc) the money is exactly a huge issue, i've spent about 800 so far on my purchases and i have a budget of about 1500 total i'd like to stay within but if its something that can't be beat i can justify going over a bit so how should I approach growing these clones when I get to that point? i wanna do one more round of equipment buying and be able to sit tight knowing i've got everything to get rolling thanks for the input bro! you've been a great help
Okay, I'm going to go with an EBB & FLOW in my space. Should be nice. Anyway, for the ventilation setup I'm a little stumped. Check out my attached diagram. I *think* this is the way I should do it but I'd love some input. I have to use the 4" bathroom exhaust fan space (the bathroom exhaust to the roof will be connected to the exhaust for the room) as a passive intake inlet (I could add a fan here if necessary) because I can't cut this door to add a vent. Also there are cabinets on both sides of the door so thats a no go as well. So my questions are: 1. Will the passive intake be sufficient this way? Should I add a fan? (I made a misake in my diagram, its really only 4") 2. If you look at the diagram, I have the ducting going THROUGH the flower room and leaving a passive intake hole here (T connector) and then going out to the rest of the closet and finishing off the intake inlet. Is this ok? 3. The exhaust is also set to exhaust both the flower room and have a smaller exhaust for the rest of the room (to grab any exhaust from the cabinet where the moms will be). The flower room is pretty much going to be sealed with mylar so that I don't have any light leaks. My main concern here is negative airflow / vacuums... this is why I hope the passive intake is sufficient being that it is going to be split into a sealed flower room as well as the rest of the room. The exhaust is going to be doing the same thing. Maybe I'm over doing this, but the space has to be shared and since the flower room can't have light leaks I figured this was the only way. Let me know! Someone!
The room design seems sound. Remember, things will change after your first grow. Do a small 1st grow. You have no way of knowing if the seed you germinate will be a male, female, or both. So you will need to take a clone from every plant you get from seed. Not all female plants from the same strain are equal, thats why its important to keep a clone from each seed planted. Use labels to keep track. Your best bet is to do a bag seed first run with five to six plants max. You can make an aeroponic clone machine for around fifty bucks or less. If you need help making a clone machine just make a new post asking for plans. I will post a step by step or a basic no brain'r home made cloner. Not hard to do and you dont need plant food to clone. Adding a fan to your intake or adding another fan to your exhust will give the same amount of air-flow. Just consider the amount of noise an intake fan will make vs another exhust fan. Best way to check air flow is to listen to the noise your fan makes when the door to your grow is open and compare it to when the door is closed. If it has to work hard when the door is closed, then you need a bigger intake port (not another fan). Good Luck, R.