My most intensive constructive endeavour to date: 7'L x 27"W X 5'5"H grow cabinet with a wall partition to make a 4' x 27" flower room and 3' x 27" veg/clone/mother room. I started this last Sunday Jan 17, working a few hours a day. The Speed Queen (Mandala Seeds by way of Dr. Chronic) seeds came in and 5 were started germing on Wednesday Jan 20. As you can see, behind the flower room door is black plastic contractor sheeting to light proof it. It is firmly secured to the top of the cabinet and velcroed along the sides and bottom. No equipment has been installed yet but the seedlings will start off in the veg room in grodan in a plastic tray for a few days under daylight CFLs and RO water only. When the grodan shows roots out the bottom, the seedlings will be moved to an 18gal aero tub for 15 days under the same CFLs with GH nutes on Lucas Formula method 1. They will get moved to 5 gal DWC bubble buckets under a 400w HPS with GH nutes and same formula. The seeds aren't femmed, so should I take clones from all the subjects as soon as possible or wait til they start showing sex under 12/12?
Before too long (tomorrow probably) I will begin setting up the equipment inside the cabinet and make a test run to ensure sure everything still works and is still watertight. Aero veg tub and aero cloner bucket in veg room with CFLs. 400w HPS connected to carbon filter and 440 CFM inline vortex fan. 5 gal DWC bubble buckets attached to Tetra Whisper air pump (just got this in today, never used this brand before. The 35 watt commercial air pump I already have makes an insane amount of noise so I won't be using that if I can help it) and micro-pore air diffusers. I've got a variable speed control dimmer on order for the vortex fan (it makes a lot of noise plus it's about twice as much fan as I need for the space I have but I got it cheap). Also on order is a reverse osmosis water filtration system. yay. Before summer gets into full swing I may need to invest in a portable room air conditioner. And, eventually, I need to look into a CO2 setup of some sort. A gas CO2 generator looks promising and looks like less hassle than dealing with a tank and regulator.
Up and running. Put my germed seeds into starter plugs and under a Humi Dome with a couple daylight CFLs on top. Got a small heater in the veg room right now to get the temps up. Got the can fan, filter, 400W cool tube HPS,ducting, and DWC buckets in the flower room. Just need some new airstones for the buckets and gotta rinse my hydroton pellets out and soak 'em in pH corrected water (but won't even need that stuff for 2-3 weeks yet but better to get it done tomorrow than wait til the last second). Ran a closed heat test in the flower room with the can fan on full, high, and medium. Makes too much noise on full, and makes too much noise on high. Medium is ok but obviously not able to keep the temp down like the higher settings. This is ok for this time of year but will need to get that portable AC before too long. My RO water filtration system came in today and I managed to break a piece less than 5 minutes out of the box. I've rigged a fix to it and am waiting for the adhesive to set then I will be able to run tests on my Veg tub, flower DWC bubblers, and cloner.
Room setup looks good, might want to put some plastic up over the particle board if you get high humidity. How is that electrical looks a little wounded in the pic.
Good call on the plastic, wasn't gonna put up any more plastic cause I'm lazy but you got a point on the RH. As for the electric, it's solid but I could always go any throw some staples and zip ties around to make it prettier.
I haven't used 5 gal buckets for a grow in a few years, so I neglected to consider the bucket lids. I bought solid net pot lids for the buckets at a hydro store some time ago and won't be able to incorporate those into this grow. So, I went to the store today and bought some new lids, cut out a hole in the middle with a hole saw and silver taped the lids. Alas, there were only 3 lids at the store, so I'll have to get another one anther day (not like I'm gonna start flowering right now anyway). Also, I might possible revert back to using the 35 watt commercial air pump on this grow (even though I just bought that brand new air pump) and build an insulated box to muffle the noise it puts out. The air diffusers I currently have require tubing larger than what the new air pump uses.
Made my screen today, took considerably longer than the last one but that's because I threaded the string this time instead of looping around 60 or so screws. I'd rather take the extra time than have to buy extra screws.
Made my screen today, took considerably longer than the last one but that's because I threaded the string this time instead of looping around 60 or so screws. I'd rather take the extra time than have to buy extra screws.
I dig what you did threading it through instead of wrapping. That looks really clean worth the 3 hours +rep
Cool cab setup, bro. Seems like some mylar or flat white paint would go a long way to cleaning up the interior and improving light efficiency. Just my HO. In the process of building a cab myself, but I'm lazy - I bought a pre-fab from Lowe's. A bit smaller than yours as well; no separate veg/flower compartments. Good luck w/your grow, dude.
Thanks guys! Good news is, I painted my veg room white (haven't painted flower room, will probably order some mylar in the next few days. I just don't like the idea of paying $18 for a 50' roll and $17 for shipping). Bad news is that my aero veg tub has a leak. Through months of use, the water pressure inside the tub has warped the walls and the lid doesn't make a watertight fit with the tub's lip anymore. So, I have taken the lid from my aero cloner and put it on a bubble bucket and put all 4 babies into that one lid and moved them into the flower room. They're still on 24/0 light in the flower room, but they now have an air cooled 400w HPS raining down sunshine on 'em from 23 inches up. I wasn't ready to hook up my bubble buckets just yet, so sometime this week I will get all 4 buckets up and running. I have decided to connect all the buckets in parallel and run them through a reservoir with a 633 pump (hurrah for extra parts laying around collecting dust) cycling water into all the buckets, and draining out through gravity hoses. This way I will only have to check ppm and pH one time instead of 4 times daily. Now I just have to figure out the logistics of this and build it. I'm quite open to suggestions!
Yo dude sick SCROG. Actually threaded... I'm gonna have to copy you. I just opened a new thread on SCROG screens. Now did you use 1 lone string. And what kind of string, or was it wire? Thanks...Peace Love Happiness Forever 2x2in or 3x3in?
Thanks! It's just cotton string, squares are 2x2. I unrolled several feet on it and cut it then knotted one end several times then took a short piece of black electrical tape and wrapped the other end to keep it from unravelling and also to make it my 'needle'. I started off doing this outside and the string kept picking up debris from the ground and making things difficult so I moved inside and made life a lot easier. It's actually 3 sections of string. For the the 4 foot section I rolled off too much, so I used that excess to start the 27" side, when that was used up I rolled off some more and finished it up. I was going to use Rumple's wire screen idea but I didn't find the 2x2 screen part anywhere so I did it DIY.
Ordered 50'x50" mylar from HTG a few days ago, arrived a couple hours ago and I put it in the flower room straight away. I've read before that hanging mylar is a total PITA, wasn't too bad. It's not exactly as perfectly laminated to the wall like wallpaper is, but I don't think that's gonna hurt anything.
HTGSupply.com represent! I love this company. They have 2 locations I know of personally, on near Pittsburgh, Pa and one in Mass. I live in Erie, Pa near the lake and am a huge fan of HTG's selection, knowledgeable + willing to help staff, and super fast shipping. I got my supplies next day because of how close I live. I'm actually working on making a list of all the things I use in my setup with links to the sites. I'll try and remember to post my setup here. My other friend in Erie orders a lot of his parts from HTG. He has 1 HO T-5 ballast from them and 600W ballast. His HO T-5 has 6 fluorescent bulbs in it and the mini ballast inside fried for the 2 outer bulbs. Also just recently his 600W is having start up problems where he has to fire it 2-3x to get the thing to turn the bulb on.... HTG was nice enough to send him free replacement mini ballast for him to fix his T-5 and also are replacing his 600W ballast w/ a new one. Their customer service and willingness to understand the situation and resolve it ASAP is awesome! I highly recommend this website for some of your supplies. Check em out!!! HTGSupply.com!
I'm on day 8 of flowering and I know that my space is gonna be stinky pretty soon! (I do have a nice carbon filter but when I open the door to check on my plants, a couple of skunks are gonna run out! So, I just turned on my Air Wick Automatic Air Freshener that's been hanging in my grow space. But that ain't tropical rain scent in it!... Online hydro stores and whatnot sell ozium canisters with automatic contraptions to put 'em in but they're rather pricy. I already had a couple of these things that I got from walmart. You gotta remove the spray head from the Ozium canister and put a spray head on it from the canister that came with the automatic thingie or else it won't work. I got it on the lowest setting (sprays once every 36 minutes). It's outside the flower chamber, not inside, wouldn't make sense to put it inside the flower chamber since there's already the carbon filter in it.
More than just a little bit am I saddened that I must hide the smell of cannabis indica (and cannabis sativa) from other persons. I wish so much that I could grow without having to hide that fact from other people.