Okay....wow man well with a 4x7 room as 4 feet deep and 7 foot wide with a normal ceiling height as its in your basement than i would think oyu can fit in at least 3 rows of 5 plants comfortably and allow them to grow fully....but if your using this area for just vegging you can crame in nearly 4 rows of 7 plants....1 plant per sq. ft. so that would be 28 plants.....but i mean thats only if its gonna be used for veg.if they go into flower and oyu have that many plants it might get cramed....unless you start floering quickly for height and do something like sog.
as for the heat issue....with that big of an area you will need some heavy duty lights...correct? well if you got a hid light in there than im sure that the heat will control itself if you have the room blocked off and depending on how cold it gets the light should be able to heat it up if not than you just put a heater in there without all the extravagent planning....just a suggestion.
as for the drip system sounds good bro....are you going soil then to start and moving to straight hydro or what?
what are more of your ideas im curious now.lol
Right on brother. I take account all replies from above. The total room used to be a coal room for the coal burning furnace. You have to climb into the room. I have the area to climb in covered with black plastic from the inside Wth a big tapistrey covering the outside wall /hole. Then I have sheleves with rollers on them to slide them away. Pull back the tapistrey, and then crawl into the grow room.
So right now my whole room is about 10x7. The ceiling height is lower as this house was built ages ago, so we're talking about 6.5-7 ft high. So as you walk into the 10x7 area, on the right will be the vegging area as I described above. To the left will be about the same aas vegging area. So I have about 2 feet in the middle to house pumps, electrcial, sensors, and all that stuff. I like a clean layout, so cramming wouldn't be my thing. I have OCD in some things, so symmetry and space is a must for me. Keeps me in check.
Right now I'm just using bag seed and 4 tube 40 watt floruscents. I have about 6 plants growing right now. They are about 2 weeks along. I'm just using miracle grow atm. But my idea is to mothers these girls. Clone and veg em for 2 weeks, then flower them to see whats up. Clear out the girls. Mess with the other clones and then switch them over to the rockwool cubes.
I decided the drip system to start out with. I picked this as this is my first time with anyof this. So to me without the experience of messing with water heights on an ebb and flow system, that a drip system would be easier to calibrate and set up it's sweet spot needed to water the ladies.
I have some reinforced concrete poored in that right side where the vegging area will be. It's a 2'x2' block strechted the length of the foundation wall there to help support the conrecte poored stairs. So what I'm going to do is just use this reinforcement as the base of my grow tub/table top. I'm going to frame off of that 1' and our a conrecte tub/basin I'm going to have a drain line installed to that that will run to the main of the house. I will do this for both grow areas. So that way I can opt to recycle the water/nutes, or what I'm done I just just drain them out the main line. That will save on the hassle of lugging those tubs around with water.....hmm with that in mind. I need to plan to branch off the water supply lines. I want a one stop shop to grow in. So water supply = me happy.
So the thing in here is I'm in the midwest. No it's not the north, but I do know my basement gets down to around 40-50 degree F. I've never had my water lines frozen so that is good. So I know I'm going to want some heat in that room when the lights are off. The room will be very much enclosed, so I don't want to use a external heater. So I decided to just plan for radiant heat with tiled line tub/basin. Once I'm up and running , I can just have the radiant heat turn on with a timer/ temp sensor and hopefully that should make climate control as far as heat /cold cycles go easy and stealthy. Like I said, I like things very clean =) I'll just need to double check how the nutes could possibly affect my tile/grout and vice versa.
I plan on using a 1000W lampfor both veg and flowering. HD/HPS.
The middle of the area I'm just going to have a stand with adjustable shelves with 4'floruscentson the top of each row. I'll use this for my seedlings and clones. I would like to use a drip system for these things, but I'm still reasearching and learning what I hope will be best for me. Where I'm at with this, is that I'm still dialing in the info on nutes/water ammounts to feed the babies versus the greater amount to wich the older ladies feed on. I don't really want to mess with 2 tubs of nutes possibly 3 when you factor in the flowering room. Down the road when I'm better, but not I don't think in the beinging. I want to prepare for success, so the less things I have to deal with on my first room, the less I have to correct when I make errors.
And so the flowering room, I'll do the same in there. But will have the ebb and flow system in there. I'm deciding on this because Like I said earlier, I think it will be easier to control the water heights as neeed for the plants because I should have ltos of roots on the ladies by this time, and they should be able to get the water heights managed with little fuss.
So this is where I'm at in my head. What thoughts of mind I have constructed from learning on this site.
Right now I'm working on the first row of my stand. The 6 plants are just about 2 weeks old. I want to make the stand like a shelf. It will have 2-3 rows. I will plan the height of the row to 1' of plant growth height. Then I figured when they get 1 foot, I'll move them to the tub.
I want to make the bottom of row where the plant sits to have a tray or small draingage system on it too I think. That way I can water there, and allow over flow of water to drain out the potters/cubes in the tray without risk of having my lights on the lower rows blowing up.
Thanks again guys.
I am a bit stoned right now as all this reading of the site has jsut made me horny for a toke. So I know this post was long winded.