Good day everyone,
I have been posting bits and pieces all over and wanted to start a grow journal of my experiment. I wanted to design an area that can grow 1 plant very nicely. Looking at most tent sizes and how many people put plants into I decided on something smaller so I used 18" x 18" x 48". My plan is to do a scrog grow and top it fim a few times in veg to maximize space. I designed the light to be a complete coverage vs just using 1 cob and driving them hard.
Grow cab 18"x18"x48"
made of white 5/8" Melamine
(I picked up 1 - 4' x 8' sheet for 30$ and this was enough material for complete cab and door.)
Light =16" x 12"
4 x 96 pcs Samsung 3500k 80 CRI lm561c 16`` strips, each done in 8s12p beach run at 1400ma which is 116.6667ma per diode.
6 x vero 10 2000k 65 CRI chips being run at 350ma each.
Samsung strips are attached to 1.5" 1/8" Aluminum u channel
Veros are attached to 1.25" 1/8" Aluminum U chanel
Drivers are mounted externally and use quick connects.
HLG-120H-C1400B
ELG-75-C350A
Circulation,
I am currently using 6 x Panasonic Panaflo FBA09A24H which I got for bargain price of 4$ a pop, these things can be run at 24v or 12v .17a and hit around 55 CFM(however at 24v these things sound like a bathroom exhaust fan, 12v they are dead quiet so I run them at 12v for half power).
Carbon Filter,
I built this myself out of 1/8" black acrylic and added two 90mm pc fans running at .25a each one intake and one exhaust, I make my own carbon filter by rolling 10 micron felt covered in activated carbon so its like a sushi roll or ro membrane layered and sealed with some zip ties.
Water is a ro\di membrane with a ph of 6.
current nutes are a growtek Kickstart for the seedling and transition phase, Im going to transplant to the 5 gal smart pot in a weeks time and then I will switch to GH MaxiGrow, I just want a simple dry nute that I can mix myself and adjust strength. For flower I will use Just GH MaxiBloom. Also supplementing with cal mag because of RO.
Strain is Purple afghan Kush by Dinafem. Fem seeds.
so far both seeds germinated 100% using water glass method for 18hrs and then switch to paper towel.
I stupidly killed first seedling by not paying attention to temps and it got real cold and pretty sure I killed the root because it never did anything once i planted it, waited 2 weeks then gave up and germed another.
Here is the 1st pic which is just the 3500k on
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Here is a shot of both the 3500k + 2000k at full power
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And last pic shows just the 2000k diodes so you can get a sense of how different the spectrum are
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Here is some shots of the light so you can see how I made the heatsink, I had the veros sunken a bit so to create a mini refelector using the slightly longer 1.5" channels. I used Arctic illumnia silver paste and nylon screws and bolts to secure the strips to the heatsinks. The samsungs use 18 AWG solid core and the veros use 22 AWG solid core.
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Here is a shot of how the cab looks currently, The area to the right of the light is the Air intake on the cabinet, there are 3 of the panasonic fans setup in parallel blowing air cross the light and down to transfer heat towards bottom of box, Light stays cool to the touch doing this method. The big behemoth in front is temp fix for humidity, I was struggling with 30-38% RH and now get 55-60% so much better for veg but quite big so i think I will put it outside and direct a it towards and intake down below.
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Now for some fun shots of the lil one.
This first shot is Oct 1, this is approx 9 days after seed.
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Next is done on Oct 3rd, not much growth
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Here we fast forward to today 6 days later Oct 9th,
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My experiment so far is using the veros 2000k's for veg as well. I was originally going to use them for a flower boost but then
@Rocket Soul suggested trying them in veg because they contained no IR, just heavy on yellow and orange. So far growth has been great but will continue to post progress to see how it vegs and how much stretch, so far it is very compact with only a few mm's to cm between each node.
Hope you enjoy,
Any and all Feedback is welcome, thanks for looking.
NC