My (soon to be grow room) Feedback appreciated

What are the dimensions of the cabinet? It looks ok. A few suggestions though (Not that I am a growing expert by any means).

• You have a large grow cabinet, You could probably make use of all the extra space and seperate the cabinet into 3 sections, one for seeds/clones, one for flowering, and a next one for vegetation, which would result in more frequent harvests than using the whole cabinet as just one chamber. Of course, you can't grow your plants as tall, but, you get more harvests (and presumably more bud as time goes on).
  • Doing a setup like this would also probably be more efficient for you if you were trying to grow stealthily, as growing large plants in a large cabinet with sufficient lighting requires sufficient ventillation=sufficient noise.
  • If you were to use 3 chambers, i recommend t5 lighting over typical fluorescents, as it does provide sufficient lighting for smaller grow areas/cabinets(Assuming you divided it into 3 spaces) and puts off MUCH less heat than hps/mh bulbs, and it produces about 2000 lumens for each of it's fluorescent bulbs.
• If you were to go with the original plan on using the whole cabinet to grow, you should invest in stronger lights and more ventillation. You should be able to ventilate a 400w hps/mh air cooled light/reflector fairly easy in a space like that with the right fans and ducting, maybe even a 600w wouldn't be pushing it too far if you were to invest more money into quality fans/blowers and placed them strategically.
  • With an exhaust dayton blower 465 cfm fan connected via duct to your reflector and another exhaust blower located located somewhere in the middle of the cabinet, you should be able to provide yourself with the proper ventillation needed, given that there are enough intakes at the bottom of the cabinet. However, the drawback of implementing larger cfm fans like this is the amount of noise it gives off, but, the more ventillation you can provide the more light you can use. (Though i know you would like to keep this cabinet stealth, if you have your own living quarters, you really should try to maximize your yield. If anything, just put a bolt-padlock style lock on the cabinet and lock it whenever your mom visits, that, with the storage room door shut, should provide you with enough stealth and security, assuming your mom isn't going to snoop around your personal quarters(im assuming). Even if she hypothetically found the cabinet, just don't open it lol.

just my .02 g

 

1st, dont use foil. Use white paint, or mylar paper. The glossy side.

For lights, id do a florectent combo. Use the spiral higher lumen ones at the top, then have the long 40 watt ones filling in lower on the plants. You should get some nice reflection if you do the mylar or white reflective paint. Trust me on the foil.... its way outdated.

 

In order to connect computer fans, you would have to buy a 12 volt dc adaptor and do a little rewiring. I haven't tried it yet, but supposedly you just connect the wires to the fan and voila, just make sure you cut off the yellow wire to avoid draining power (useless), theres a thread somewhere here explaining this process thoroughly...http://forum.grasscity.com/grow-room-design-setup/247688-sneaky-grow-cabinet-3.html(I think the creator of this thread wires his own computer fan, could be wrong though, if anything, just search the grow box design forum, its in one of those threads).

As for lighting, I think if you have already purchased your lightbulbs you should use them and save yourself some money, however, i'm not too sure if they're compatable with the t5 lighting fixture. Personally, i will be starting a small stealth cabinet(About 3'H,2'W,1'3"D) with a t5 lighting fixture and using 3 3000k's and 1 6500k for the vegetation cycle and 3 6500ks and 1 3000k for the flowering cycle. Just a personal experiment of mine, I want to compare the results with fullspectrum lighting(through veg and flow) and cycle specific lighting (3000k's for veg, 6500k's for flowering) and see the difference in yields/potency.


When it comes to the setup of your cabinet, you can still easily make your cabinet into 3 chambers, it would however reduce the height of your plants. BUT, use the scrog method and you should be content with the perpetual harvests you'll recieve. Lets say you have approximately....5'7" of space, you could make a seed/clone section a foot tall, and light it with fluorescents or a t5 light lamp (only 3" tall). this would let you grow you seeds/clones to approximately 7-9 inches before placing them in the veg room.

As for the veg room, you can then place it directly over the seeding chamber, and make it about 1'6" tall, using 3000k's for vegging(Veg your plant to about a foot tall then flower). And consequently, the flowering chamber could be on top of that, about 2" and 7' tall in order to give more room for when it grows.


OR


you can make it two chambers(I'm liking this idea a little more due it's simplicity), and have a seed/veg chamber on the bottom, approximately 2'8" and then have a flowering chamber above. This would allow you two harvests instead of 3 or 1 once both chambers are full, and is the best of both worlds(financially and space wise i think).

The only problem with adding more chambers is that each chamber needs sufficient ventillation, which rises the cost up slightly, but if you can afford for it, go for it(I would).


As for using a 400W light in an apartment, it shouldn't be that suspicious, I'm pretty confident the drug task force won't bust open your door over half a kilowatt difference of energy being used, even if your bill slightly correlated with your veg/flowering months. It's those who are using 4 1000w lights in their basement or spare apartment room that have something to worry about lol (Correct me if i'm wrong). As long as your bill isn't spiking up more than usual(I don't expect more than $20-60/m), i'd be relaxed.

O yeah, and no foil....go with mylar or white reflective paint lol

 

For the 3 chambers, light leaks from chambers shouldn't be that big of a problem, but it depends on how you ventilate i guess. The only possible problem i can see arising with having one pipe with 3 different holes in it is that the first hole (closest to the fan) is going to have the most amount of air being sucked into it and the other 2 may have significantly less, so you may have to experiment with the size of the holes you cut(maybe cut the hole closest the smallest? getting larger as you work down the chambers so equal air is being pulled in the long run?) Personally, i don't know as I've never ventillated in such a way. I would probably vent each chamber with its own smaller exhaust cfm fan and passive intake or create a light-proof gap on each floor with a powerful exhaust on top and a fan operated intake in the middle back wall and few passives on the bottom. But your better off reading other threads on how to ventillate a multichamber cabinet than taking my advice as I'm not exactly sure how to.

If you were doing chambers, lets just say you have 3, seed, veg, and flower. You would sprout them first, but make careful grow log notes as they grow, keeping in mind how long your going to keep them in that chamber untill they are ready for the vegetation chamber(an example being half a month).

Then you would vegetate the seeds to approximately a foot high in your vegetation chamber(or half of w.e. final height you want your plant, as they tend to double in size in flowering) and then keep careful grow log notes on that too(an example being it took 1 month for your plant to be 1' tall).

Now, in order to have a consistent and timely grow, you would have to calculate it so you'd have your 2nd generation vegetated plants going into the flowering chamber right after your 1st generation leaves. In order to do this, you would have to find out how long your plants flowering time is(lets say a month and a half) and time it so by the time it finishes flowering, you'll have a vegged plant ready to go in. So you'd basically subtract the number of days it takes to get a cannabis plant to finish its vegetation cycle in your cabinet by the total length of time it's whole life cycle takes and plant it on w.e. day you figure out. The reason you have to be specific as to when you plant it is because if your flowering cycle is longer than your vegetation cycle and you sprouted your 2nd generation seeds as you were transplanted your 1st generation plants to your veg chamber, your 2nd gen might outgrow your box while you wait for the 1st to finish.

I think that made sense...tired..



For the t5 lights, you misunderstood, you can only have 1 in each chamber, but each holds 4 2' long fluorescent tubes, either 3000k or 6500k, which gets expensive and probably isn't worth it unless you got the money. And they're more suitable for growing smaller plants as their lights only penetrate about 12" through leaves and foilage. You could still make great use of them and they'd still be sufficient, however, but you'd probably benefit a little from having a few vertical fluoro's on the side for some supplementary light.

If anything, try 3 6500k's** for veg and 3 3000k's for flower your first time and mix up the order next time and compare your results. After a grow or two you'll realize whether you want full spectrum lighting or cycle specific lighting(or maybe both, like only 3000k's for veg but full spectrum for flowering).

 

6500K for VEG(Blueish), 2,500K(White/Orange) for flower. TRUST ME. I did the trial by error with them.

 

In veg, it's really best to use all 6500k bulbs. In flower, you want mostly 2700k, but you can add in a 6500k or two if you have the space to balance the spectrum. Also, make sure you're looking at the actual watts the bulb uses, not the incandescent equivalent. For instance, a 26w CFL = 100w incand. That 100w number is irrelevant, ignore it. You want at least 100w of actual watts being used per plant. Also I like to note that this is only a guideline, the best way to know if you have enough light is if every bud site is 6 inches or less from the surface of a bulb. CFL's and fluorescents in general have a short range. T5's are a bit stronger, and can penetrate deeper.

 

I used that exact cabinet and it is not very good for several reasons.

It is made of thin plastic.
Hard to lightproof.
The bottom sags when weight is on it.
It's too narrow and too short.
Nothing you can do about smell, too many leaks.

I would definitely recommend investing in a nice closet or hut, especially if you plan on doing more than one grow. I regret not doing this in the first place and went through several closets before I finally bought a HydroHut.

That cab is definitely really weak though man, sorry to rain on the parade. Do some more research and try to look into wooden cabs. I got a good one at Lowes that served me well. Good luck.