Finally have a place. Pay my own electricity so I feel this is the time to try indoors. I have a nice closet that I can use part of for a grow. The area I want to use has a slant at the top ranging from 4-6ft high. 3x3 ft wide. I was think 250w HPS 3 plants. I also have another small part I will use for clones(100 of t5). My budget is 600ish plan on sectioning off the closet with b&w polly. Need to be somewhat careful about smell so was planning on a 4-6 online duct and carbon filter. I more need help deciding the heat issue. I was thinking 240w blackstarr and maybe I could save cash on cooling fans inside. If I go HPS I was going to get a 8" cooling flange and duct fan. 2-3 small fans inside circulating air. Plan all organic. Promix/perlite medium and different tea mixtures for nutes. 5gallon pots. Already have a bunch of Fem seeds from attitude. Critical + auto Super silver haze Strawberry haze Arjun haze1 Hawaiian snow Nevilles haze Sour candy Sour ak Pineapple chunk Fruity chronic juice (5) Sweet afghani delicious Morning glory Any help would be appreciated!
I have a slightly bigger closet (4x5) with a similar slanted ceiling for flowering. I can run a 1000w HPS no problem if temps outside my closet are in the 70's. The key here is a closed reflector and 435cfm inline fan. I can get 9 plants at about 3ft in there comfortably. You should consider a similar setup with a 400 or 600w HPS. Run everything inline with 6'' ducting. Ie: scrubber>light>exhaust fan>window or wherever you exhaust. 6'' seems to be the standard for the air cooled reflectors and fans so keeping everything the same spec will reduce the need for additional flanges, reducers, etc. Go to some thrift stores and look for small fans, they are easy to find and cheap. I got a really powerful and small fan for $5 that mounts on my wall. Take those haze seeds and throw them outside or save them for when you have some more experience in pruning techniques. They will grow too tall for your closet and under a 250w will take FOREVER to flower.
I don't want to run 1000w for power reasons. I may get a 400w and a small ac unit to vent in cold air .
Picked up 2 60w cfl and a few circulation fans to get started. Auto critical + , fruity chronic juice, morning glory and Hawaiian snow. Going to get a digital dimmable 400w with air cooled hood. Sealing the area off with b&w poly. But I need help with filter/ fan set up. I want to run a 6" Inline duct from the hood attach a duct through the poly too a filter up top and then have another Inline duct at the bottom to bring air in. Few more to circulate inside. Will this be okay smell and temp size?
Your odor problem is going to be determined by the effectiveness of your carbon scrubber and the CFM output of your fan. The ratio I like to use is, calculate the cubic feet of your grow area, and select a fan/carbon filter combo that will move this much air in 5 minutes. Don't go strictly by fan rating as the scrubber will reduce the fan's airflow - the better the scrubber, the more restriction it will generally add. Best to purchase the combo with airflow rating of the two coupled together. 400W should be fine for the 3 footprint. However, I'm not a fan of the digital dimmable ballasts. Earlier builds of digital ballasts were plagued with reliability problems, not sure if the industry ever got those bugs worked out. A good quality analog ballast will run for years, and is easily repairable if it ever goes down. Maybe I'm just too "Old School", but I never quite figured out why you would need a dimmable HID lighting system to decrease reliability even further. Oh yeah, keep the ballast outside your grow compartment if possible, helps a little with the heat. You will be MUCH happier with your veg. cycle if you invest the extra $50-60 in a metal halide conversion bulb designed to run in an HPS ballast (or for a few extra bucks you can get a switchable HPS / MH ballast. Either way, the veg cycle is much quicker than running under CFL's. Don't worry, the CFL's won't be wasted, they can be re-purposed for clones and mothers. Last suggestion - I DEFINITELY wouldn't recommend mixing the AutoCritical with your other strains. All auto-strains need to run 20-on/4-off; or no less than 18-on /6-off from veg all the way through harvest. Even with a very fast auto strain, this will be too long of a veg. cycle for the other strains, especially considering the limited headroom you have in your grow pod. Remember, those bitches are going to increase 2 - 3 X their height from when you switch to bloom until they are finished. Get some string handy, you'll be learning about LST really soon!!!!! And topping, and super-cropping, etc., etc. Now, go do it & have fun!!! Hope this is helpful.
Does anyone know what bulb I should run with the 400w dimmed 50%? I plan on eventually goin to 75% then full power but for small plants I want to keep it low.
Heres what i would buy. Are you doing ventilation that will exhaust somewhere or just gonna scrub the air? http://www.greners.com/i/packages/g...rformance-grower-400w-grow-light-package.html http://www.greners.com/phresh-filters.html ^the 400 cfm one. http://www.greners.com/i/fans-venti.../6-inch-fans/sunleaves-windtunnel-6-inch.html Then just get some poly or paint it flat white. Get a box fan or a little rotating fan. Pots, whatever soil blend, and some nutes. Id recommend blue planet nutrients, theyre pretty cheap an i only hear good things about them. I just started using them.
Ordered 400w with air cooled reflector. Got a 6" online to attach to the light to push air out and through a filter and one for bringing cool air in. My only question is that when I dim the ballast to I need a different bulb or will the 400w bulb be just half power as well?
Yo dude setup sounds great. I don't. Have any experience w/hid lighting, but I think you're supposed to use the 400watt bulb
Yo dude setup sounds great. I don't. Have any experience w/hid lighting, but I think you're supposed to use the 400watt bulb. Also heard that dimming lights will decrease bulbs lifespan. Good luck with setup. Hope u start a journal so we can follow along. Holla
That's what I thought as well. Going to get another cfl and start most of my seeds tomorrow so ill have 180w of cfl until next week when my hid gets here. It does come with both mh and hps so I plan on utilizing both. Temps with 120 if cfl is around 76 then I sectioned of my closet with a sheet since my poly isn't here yet and temps got to about 80. I positioned a fan to bring air in under the sheet and temps are about 75 now since my room is pretty cold so I'm hoping the 400w won't be too hot if I have good ventilation. Not to concerned about smell but don't want it to smell the entire block up.
Yeah I plan in going from cfl to 50% mh to 75% mh/HPS then 100 hps for flower and maybe add in the cfls if I can't situated a clone area.
Added 64 watts of t8 finally found the right spectrum bulbs so I snagged it. Everything nowadays is 2800ishk but I found a 6500k so now I have 184watts of cfl/ floro and added another fan. Temps currently at 75. Seeds should be ready to be planted tomorrow.