Attached is a plan for a small closet grow room. I will be doing bagseed / scrog w/ 250 fluro lights. Any comments / questions / suggestions?
Ahh this design looks much better a lot less cramped. I would suggest you use the top chamber as a cloning/mother room but I'm not quite sure 2 feet would be acceptable are you building the box or using a premade container? Also if you do use the grow box as a dual chamber system you need to make sure there are no light leaks as they will affect the light cycles of the different chambers. You should also make sure the height of your lamps is adjustable as floros are very weak and you lose precious lumen's per foot they also don't run very hot so you can get them really close. As far as the ventilation goes I'm not sure if in your digram i see 2 inlets if so you will want a decently powerful fan as negative air pressure is the only thing keeping the smell in the box. I don't really see much need for heavy ventilation though as you will be using floros heat shouldn't be much of an issue so you might want to cut back to only one inlet as thats all you really need.
I'd use the top as part of my grow area making it just 1 section, that way you could run 4ft floro tubes in each corner giving you maximum light to all of the plant, as well as increasing the yeild. Just a suggestion.
Not a bad idea but i would still at least have some sort of veg room regardless even if it is in another cabinet I'm sure the yield wouldn't make up for the difference in time that cloning saves.
I'm building it from scratch, but thats all the space I have. I'm building it to fit exactly inside half my closet, and there a shelf just there. Those gray things the lights are attached to are adjustable tracks, so should I just run those to the bottom and get them as close as I can to the plants in the beginning, then put in the screens only when I need them? With SCRoG, could I make the bottom box a bit smaller and the top a bit bigger? That would probably be better I think, for like Tokinzergling said, a cloning/mother room. I'll cut it down to one inlet, the same size as the exhaust port right? What kind of lighting would I need in the cloning room? I'm not that familiar with cloning...so any links anyone has over that would be appreciated too. For now I'll just use that space for germinating and..idk storing my grow log. Thanks for the advice guys.
Germination and cloning both benefit from bottom heat, so putting a propagator chamber above a veg or flower chamber is always a good idea. My propagator chamber sits above some hot halides, and the clones just love it. I use fluoro tubes in the propagating chamber, by the way. And make the air inlet about twice as large as the outlet. -mu ps.. it's good to see folk drawing up proper plans, good work!
so should I just run those to the bottom and get them as close as I can to the plants in the beginning, then put in the screens only when I need them? yes With Scrog, could I make the bottom box a bit smaller and the top a bit bigger? Sorry man not a scrog grower so i don't know i just know the situations it is best used in. I'll cut it down to one inlet, the same size as the exhaust port right? Well IMHO if you want to have as little noise and smell as possible you should do this. As i said with 2 inlets it means you have to have more power to pull the air threw and there is not a whole lot of need for much venting as you wont have any high powered lighting. What kind of lighting would I need in the cloning room? Considering the amount of space you have pretty much your only option is cfl which will be fine for both rooms as it is standard for veg rooms not so good for flowering though.
As I discovered, if you open the door to your grow chamber, and the tone (pitch) of the fan changes, it means you need a bigger air intake (or in my case, remove the second layer of netting). But, if you make it too big, there won't be sufficient in-flow to the vents, and smells can leak out. You should be able to feel the air being drawn in. A 2:1 ratio is usually about right. -mu
What exactly is CFL and what are the differences from fluro? I don't want this box using a lot of energy, which lights will use less? I think they make one or two foot fluro tubes if im not mistaken, could I use some horizontal above the plants and/or some vertical in the corners? (dont know exactly how many, idk how many watts each puts out)
A cfl is a floro http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp and using fluros you will never even notice that more power is being used.
I've not used CFL's, they seem a bit unwieldy to me - weird shape, hard to reflect effectively, take up too much height, etc. I do use regular fluoros in my propagator, two foot tubes. I built a couple of twin units (2x18W tubes in each), but usually only need one set (36W total) to root my clones. You can put maybe a dozen clones under only 36W of light, and the height is used very effectively. I've even vegged under them when my mother chamber was too full (see pic below). Once you have the fluoro fittings, you can put all sorts of bulbs into them, UV, daylight, SAD bulbs, whatever. A few fluoro fittings is definitely a useful thing to have kicking around. -mu ps.. Sometimes, when you have growing clones, some will be higher than others. So, you line them up, highest down to lowest, and then simply angle your fluoro tube to match. Very effective. Here's a few clones vegging up. Note: the pic is from before I lined the propagator chamber, not that it matters much with such low intensity lighting.