This is my plan for a grow shed. Looking for input on how to improve it as I'm a first time grower. I plan It to be a 10' wide 12' long 10' high I want my flower room 10' wide by 5' deep with 2 HPS lights covering approximately 10-12 plants with a veg room with floro or MH lighting at 10' wide by 4' deep this room will also house my clone/starter chamber on a shelf thats 4' wide 3' deep that's approximately 4 feet off the ground underneath this shelf I plan to place as water aging tub (unknown capacity) then I'll have my entry way into shed/rooms and a dry room where all the drying will take place this room will also have a fresh air intake at floor level and will have a 8 inch in line booster fan to pull fresh air and push in into veg and flower rooms veg will have a 4 inch take off out to middle of room and then in flower room it will have two 8 inch take offs one per light. the shed will be exhausted through a layered carbon filter layers will be carbon filter media and the sleeves of activated carbon. Air movement will be oscillating fans 2 in flower room and one in veg
Looks nice bud, just make sure it's insulated based on climate and you have room to move around, I have always been blessed by my crazy long arms
Good idea. I had designed one as well a while back that was 16'x10'x9' ceiling. I would suggest drying your stuff in your house where you can better keep an eye on it. It would also free up more room for your flower room. 8' flower room 4' veg room. Where do you plan to hang your ballasts/fans? How are you planning on cooling it and wiring it? It would be a good idea to have ample room above the lights/plants for hot air to rise and a thermostat controlled fan to suck out the hot air at the top just in case.
I plan to use a blower from a furnace that is mounted near the ceiling of my flower room that is thermostat controlled that blows through a carbon filter set up (top left corner of diagram) as far as ballasts they will be mounted on the wall to keep them up outta the way. Fresh air will have a return air grill on the floor of my "dry room" with an inline duct fan mounted up near ceiling as well and blow air into veg and flower rooms across the lights to keep them cool. As far as wiring I plan to have a breaker panel mounted with 15 amp breakers run 2-3 circuits into flower room for lighting and fans veg will need a 2 circuits for lighting and fans?
Your amount of space rocks, wish I had that much room to use. I don't know if I am understanding but you plan on forcing air into the rooms? You are using air cooled hoods and I have what you wrote confused? If you are using air cooled than your plan seems pretty good, a inline to pull air force it over lights in one room, a booster fan after this and onto the flower room, and then outside with the air. Either through roof or through the floor if you can with vents. The floor rock as people can't see heat Sig it makes it harder to tell what's up. I would then use all passive air vents to pull new air into grow rooms. 8" fans at the top of room with carbon filters pushing air out and drawing New air through passive vents at bottom of room. No power needed to get fresh air for rooms. I would think about mounting your ballast all in one central spot. The drying room seems like a decent place, the ballast create heat. You can extend the life of them by keeping them outside of rooms, it will also save only a few degrees inside of grow rooms. If you haven't already bought your lights I would recommend 600 watt setups. The are the most energy efficient hid light setups. More points of light is also better for plants, allows smaller groupings of plants. So veg room 2 600watt mh, flower room 3-4 600 watt hps. Make sure lights are movable up and down to adjust to growing plants. Your plan seems well thought out just figured I would throw a dew ideas out there.
First off glad to see I'm finally getting some feed back! I've put countless hours on here and a few other forms in research And drew up and then re drew my plans a few times as I've learned more. But basically I plan to use a blower fan out of a furnace (I do plumbing/hvac/r for a living so I can get one at any time) my plan is to use this blower as exaust wired to a thermostat set to 75 degrees to evacuate the heat build up that pushes the hot air out a home built carbon filter of layers of carbon filter media and sleeves of activated carbon I figured that would be enough to remove the heat build up as well as enough cfm to force the air through the carbon scrubber. I will have oscillating fans in the rooms to provide air movement across the plants. As for fresh air I have an 8" inline booster fan rated at 471 cfm mounted at ceiling height to pull in fresh air from floor mounted transfer air grill and push it to my lights to cool them off at the same time. I live in a pretty cold climate and I want to recycle the heat off the lights for winter operating. I'm building up my material as I can while I'm in research mode as I want to make sure I'm not gonna mess this up to horrible. (I'm a first time grower) As of right now I have one 1000 watt hps light the 8 inch fan and the furnace blower wheel with tstat I also have a small 150 watt hps I was gonna throw up in veg room just to throw out some of the red spectrum I also was gonna use floros in veg room as well as clone chamber or would MH in veg and floro in clone be better?? And what is everyone's preferred strain?? Has anyone ever tried the strain called "the black"?? Leafly says it rates pretty high on the pain management scale which is what I'm looking for
Floro in clone only, if you have this big of a setup don't mess with trying to veg under flor. Your plan sounds better now that I understand what you are saying better. I use hot air from grow room to heat up my place as well. Only makes sense to try and use all energy effectively. As far as veg. Goes run either 600w mh per 1000w of hps in flower room. Or if you want to cut down heat go with led, birthdays a whole other line of research. Grow room design is pretty important, I work as a carpenter myself. The hard part wasn't building the I'm understanding equipment moving air. It's the real growing part. Read books, read threads. Figure out your growing medium, your nutrient line, containers for grow. A trial run would help you out a lot start with less equipment fewer plants and than expand. Get your grow feet under you so to speak. Glad to hear you are putting in the research time man. Awesome to see somebody with more than one cfl and a dream.
I live in colorado so a heat sig isn't to big of a deal state law as I understand it is -- recreational use 6 plants per adult over 21 years of age and 12 plants per household of which only half may be in the flowering stage... (but I'm also trying to get my dad as he has real extensive heath problems to get his red card and dub me his caregiver... but that's a whole not her story) so my plan is to be able to do a perpetual grow and keep it all moving along smoothly at some point I may end up redesigning my setup again as I was planning to run floro in veg in sections against the walls that way I can walk/work in the middle for my cloning chamber and transplanting plants... so may have to redesign veg room with tables to handle MH lights. I plan to do a soil grow for now may venture off to hydro after I get better at the whole process... As of right now I got 3 clones off a "willy wonder" and I had some super old "big bud" seed I tried to germ out 4 but only one sprouted (hopefully it is a fem) so that's what I'm going to practice with for now...
Maybe I'll pick up a second blower wired to small VFD and use that to pull in fresh air and cool my lights that way I know there is plenty of cfm to bring in new air??
Or would I be better off running the main exhaust on a low speed using it like a passive air intake? I would also wire in a relay to be able to switch it from low to high via tstat?? Possibly run a dual relay and set it up on two independent tstats say anything less then 50 degrees in the shed would remove power from the fan then say between 50 and 75 it would send power through second relay would allow fan to run at low speed and 75 plus it will switch speed from low to high speed to pull the excessive heat out side... also have a second blower to move air around inside the shed as well as to push air across the lights??
You are definitely going above my head on this. I like the kiss method keep it simple stupid. One inline setup for cooling lights, booster fan if you have multi lights and long runs. Another inline fan system to exchange air in grow rooms. LxW xH = cubic feet, large rooms exchange air once every five minutes at least. Use this formula for all rooms sealed off that are used to grow. Carbon filter reduces cfm 20 percent or one fifth of rating if fan. Long runs of ducting and bends reduce cfm numbers as well. Always pull air never push. Passive air vents large enough to not create vacuum in room. Veg room carbon filter may or may not be needed. Now where yours gets complex is heating the rooms at this point you lose me. My suggesmion isn't cheap, put all inline air exchangers on a timer matching lights. Use forced air in instead of passive air vents. Creating a sealed system, when lights go off co2 is released through a co2 generator (Nat gas heater, propane heater.) You would need a co2 monitoring station. They also make controllers that monitor temp co2 humidity and control the environment for you when running all these systems. Costly setup. Really your setup is over my head to be honest. My success in building rooms has come trial and error, hands on you know.
Oscillating fans to move air around your grow rooms. The thermortat to shut fans down is a good plan, 66 I would shut them down. The problem is if you aren't exchanging air or bringing it in co2 drops.
Well since I'm not using the control board off of the furnace blower (motor with squirrel cage) comes out I need something to integrate 120 v blower motor to 24 v tstats (set in cooling mode) so basically this would be my control system for exhaust fan (only instead of 50 it would be 66 as you suggested)
This would also pull fresh air into the room as long as the exaust fan is running... being able to switch fan speeds all automatically from off to low to high via that control configuration depending on room temp
I have a second furnace blower (motor and squirrel cage) I may use to cool lights (instead of the 8" booster fan that's only rated for 471 cfm) this I could mount to where it also works as intake to still bring in fresh air even when exhaust fan isn't running but would more then likely cause a positive pressure in the room
Cool, plants stop growing at 63 or 60 I am not sure which honestly without looking it up so 66 gives you a few degrees bigger zone. Ideal temps are like 76-79 lights on and 10 degrees cooler with lights off. Humidity wants to be higher in veg than flower. Clones want 100 percent humidity if you can give it to them. Any stored water must be out of the light. If you leave water out to fix tap, make sure it doesn't get much light. Algee loves high temps but can not grow without light. I keep mine under sink. Get a ph, and ppm meter.
I plan to make a little cupboard of sorts under my clone station to keep my water in Thanks again for the words of wisdom! Much appreciated!