20,000 Watt Medical Grow Op Construction

SCCA said:

looking very nice gardener! that dwc plant is awesome, how big are those leaves? i just tied some plants down this weekend as well. you may want to super crop those inner branches to thicken them up. i usually give them a week to turn up toward the light then trim out any small, wimpy branches. do you have girdling problems from wrapping the tie all the way around the stem? if you have never seen it before, the tie can cut into the stem as it swells and damage it. it can kill the stem, but you pay much closer attention to your plants than that.

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I don't know if you can see it in the picture, but the tie is just wrapped around the branch twice...not twisted at all. I've seen what can happen when twisted...the tie ended up totally embedded in the branch. However, the branch lived...I don't know how. If you just wrap it twice, the branch will just expand the wraps as it grows.

budXL said:

Just read the entire thread! great stuff!

Have you looked into chameleon plasma lights? I was just given one, but it was my first grow, ofcourse i was lucky with a 3500 dolar set up for a small grow lol they are a couple weeks from finished but the buds look amazing.

Do you know anything about these lights?

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Do us a favor and post some pictures of the light and the plants.

oohhhhhh Proto Plasma

[youtube]atrKO1tnNBY[/youtube]

I'd LOVE one of those

collective gardener said:

Some new pics here. I've been testing a Bubba using soiless (like the whole room) and another using DWC. Here's the results. Wow.

So, as you can see, the DWC plant smoked the soiless by far. I've never seen a plant do sooooo much better in hydro. That bucket is a simple home built DWC unit with an air stone and 1 small air pump feeding 2 buckets. The feed is the same as the soiless (Cutting Edge). We're going to test flower 2 DWC plants. If they continue to blow doors on the soiless, I may have to make a change already. DWC is my favorite hydro settup. I like that it's an individual res for each plant, so any water problems will be limitted to one plant. Moving them around is totally easy. I also like the simplicity of no pumps or emitters.

We've totally filled the entire 200 sq ft flower area. I have 2 - 1000 watt ballasts and 2 - 600 watt ballasts powered up and ready, but not much space. I think we're going to sacrafice some working/walking area and hang 2 air cooled reflectors for the 1000's and 2 Adjustawings for the 600's. I can then throw away that cheap wing in the pic. We still have plants in veg that are ready to flower, so it has to be done. Helper D said he doesn't mind the extra work of moving plants 3 and 4 times for every watering. While he's doing that, I'm going to start building DWC buckets!

I included a pic of how we tie down our plants. I have mixed feelings on this technique. It makes for a large diameter plant, but many of the growing shoots are small. I'll have to see how we yield to determine what changes we may want to make.

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CG - Im actually running cutting edge nutes in 5 gal DWC as well And I tell ya its funny the things you can get excited over, I say that because I was having difficulties finding an economical way of moving the buckets around then I found something similar to these plant caddies (but locally)
.... http://www.nextag.com/Gardman-Usa-R161-Plant-800097038/prices-html
I just wanted to share that with you in case you can use them as well.

The farm kits are great for putting clones in dwc when the roots aren't big enough to drink the water yet. They sell them in my local hydro and are just like the setup you have seen but just the drip ring, 2 tubes (I think 1/4 in. Maybe smaller) and the 2 tubes are inside a slightly bigger pipe just to hold them together. Basically the air pump blows on one tube which actually loops back down into the water and the air bubbles actually push the water up the other tube to the drip ring. Its pretty simple yet sophisticated. They have them in my sunlight supply catalog right next to the waterfarm.

And D sounds like a good guy n friend to have around. Can't say I'm not jealous tho.

Yeah those plasmas are badass. My gardener will be the one to drop 20 g's and buy a few?lol

Here's a pic of farm kit with part #. Sorry all my pics are big I can't minimize them on my phone cuz I can't use riu's upload.

yowzza said:

CG - Im actually running cutting edge nutes in 5 gal DWC as well And I tell ya its funny the things you can get excited over, I say that because I was having difficulties finding an economical way of moving the buckets around then I found something similar to these plant caddies (but locally)
.... http://www.nextag.com/Gardman-Usa-R161-Plant-800097038/prices-html
I just wanted to share that with you in case you can use them as well.

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Hey, thanks for keeping us in mind. Those will work great for our DWC's in 5's. I did notice that a bucket full of water is heavier than a bucket full of wet coco. LOL. I just ordered some casters from Ebay to build plant movers for the 10 gallon pots. These wheels are pretty heavy duty and cheap as I've found...basically a buck each for 2" wheels.
http://cgi.ebay.com/48-NEW-2-SWIVEL-CASTER-WHEEL-SET-HOME-BUSINESS-CASTERS-/180634371123?pt=BI_Casters&hash=item2a0ea5c433

So nice to hear from another Cutting Edge user. Are you happy with the nutrients? Which ones do you run? We run the Micro/Grow/Bloom+MagAmp. We do not run Uncle Johns or Plant Amp. I always add some Sulfur to whatever nutes I am using. This is why I add MagAmp. Plant Amp and Uncle Johns seem like a waste of money to me. I mean, one is just Calcium and one is just Potasium, right?

Tell me about your DWC. Is it just a pump, or is it the Farm Kit Wood mentioned? Any problems with it? It really seems too simple to be true. I mean, DWC was truly one of the first Hydro settups. A bucket of water and an air pump gets you in business. Then the industry comes out with the Turbo Tunnel Hydro Max (with or without pure oxygen enrichment), and everyone forgets about good ol DWC. Funny thing is, I have used Aeroponics, NFT, Ebb-n-Flow, and top fed Hydrotons, but this is my first DWC. This is too funny. If you guys could have seen the Aeroponics settup I designed and built, you would have assumed I had tried the simple stuff and moved on to totally complex. I, actually, just read about the simple stuff and then went on to the totally complex. My Aeroponics settup worked great, but was expensive and complex. I now want to see a test between a cheap little DWC settup and a full blown Aeroponics settup with atomizers, water chillers, and the whole nine yards.

Sr. Verde said:

oohhhhhh Proto Plasma

[youtube]atrKO1tnNBY[/youtube]

I'd LOVE one of those

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As soon as someone can produce an LED or Plasma or Whatever, that meets or exceeds the performance of a 1000 watt HPS without the heat load for under $1,000, I'll buy it. Hell, I'll buy 20 of em...for real. However, from what I've seen, we're not even close. I'm almost thinking of picking up a Stealth LED to compare it to a 600 watt HPS in my bloom room. I've seen all the company testing and I don't trust their tests any more than you guys do. I figure it would help out the entire RIU community if I were to conduct a side by side test. Let's wait till after the first harvest (April 5), and if you guys are interested, I'll test whatever LED the bunch of you feel is the best against an old 600 watt HPS. So, start doing your research on who makes the best LED. And, PLEASE, no LED company shills pushing their product on this thread. If you show up here (I've seen them on other threads), I will be forced to sick this entire group on you.

I am post #10 on this Win post. Thus, I am entitled to 33% of all produced from this OP. thank you.

collective gardener said:

So, as you can see, the DWC plant smoked the soiless by far. I've never seen a plant do sooooo much better in hydro. That bucket is a simple home built DWC unit with an air stone and 1 small air pump feeding 2 buckets. ... I like that it's an individual res for each plant, so any water problems will be limitted to one plant. Moving them around is totally easy. I also like the simplicity of no pumps or emitters.

...While he's doing that, I'm going to start building DWC buckets!

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Is THIS the system that you use for DWC? I wonder how long a plant can live in it if you lose power...

collective gardener said:

As soon as someone can produce an LED or Plasma or Whatever, that meets or exceeds the performance of a 1000 watt HPS without the heat load for under $1,000, I'll buy it. Hell, I'll buy 20 of em...for real. However, from what I've seen, we're not even close. I'm almost thinking of picking up a Stealth LED to compare it to a 600 watt HPS in my bloom room. I've seen all the company testing and I don't trust their tests any more than you guys do. I figure it would help out the entire RIU community if I were to conduct a side by side test. Let's wait till after the first harvest (April 5), and if you guys are interested, I'll test whatever LED the bunch of you feel is the best against an old 600 watt HPS. So, start doing your research on who makes the best LED. And, PLEASE, no LED company shills pushing their product on this thread. If you show up here (I've seen them on other threads), I will be forced to sick this entire group on you.

Click to expand...

I've been researching LEDs for the last few months. The results ARE there, just not to the overly exaggerated manufacturer claims for area coverage and HID power replacement. Be careful bringing up this topic here as your journal may run away with it though. There are some extreme opinions out there as earlier-gen LED were garbage and they got a bad rep as a result.

There are several successful grows with LEDs that I have seen. Here is one that is a side by side comparison of 600W LED vs 600W HID, LED comes out on top. You can also look up a couple journals right here on RIU by users "dunit" and "ledbudguy" to start.

I would sum up my research on LED lights as follows:

• Don't believe any manufacturer claims. ONLY independent grow journals! - REAL results
• Don't get any light that has diodes less than 3w. And they will try to confuse you with "3w3", "3w chip" technology, etc...
• Budget 70-80% LED power to match (and likely exceed) HID power results. You will need 420-480W of LED to replace that 600W. It would cost you more than $1000 though.
• More less powerful lights for a given area is BETTER than less more powerful lights. Interlacing is key with LEDs.
  

I would be VERY surprised if you got the Spectra 500W from Grow Led Hydro and it did not outperform a 600W HPS. Coincidently, that is the one I would get. Have not see any completed INDEPENDENT journals with StealthGrow yet.

collective gardener said:

While I may have gotten a tiny bit more growth out of a 5 gallon soiless pot, I doubt it would be anywhere close to that DWC. I have dozens of plants right now in 5 and 10 gallon soiless, but nothing has exploded in growth like that DWC did. Those clones have only been rooted a little more than a week, meaning the 1 gallon pot isn't anywhere close to rootbound. Let's see how they do in bloom.

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IDK man, I'd have to disagree with that. The growth difference is huge when there's that much of a difference in container size. Going from a 3 to a 5 you don't see a ton of difference, but yeah.

The thing led's seem to be lacking in is penetration.

Plasmas look like they might be the next big thing but not until there affordable to everyone.

How's the bubbas n lavenders lookin gardener?

RawBudzski said:

I am post #10 on this Win post. Thus, I am entitled to 33% of all produced from this OP. thank you.

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Where would you like that sent to?

medicine21 said:

Is THIS the system that you use for DWC? I wonder how long a plant can live in it if you lose power...



I've been researching LEDs for the last few months. The results ARE there, just not to the overly exaggerated manufacturer claims for area coverage and HID power replacement. Be careful bringing up this topic here as your journal may run away with it though. There are some extreme opinions out there as earlier-gen LED were garbage and they got a bad rep as a result.

There are several successful grows with LEDs that I have seen. Here is one that is a side by side comparison of 600W LED vs 600W HID, LED comes out on top. You can also look up a couple journals right here on RIU by users "dunit" and "ledbudguy" to start.

I would sum up my research on LED lights as follows:

• Don't believe any manufacturer claims. ONLY independent grow journals! - REAL results
• Don't get any light that has diodes less than 3w. And they will try to confuse you with "3w3", "3w chip" technology, etc...
• Budget 70-80% LED power to match (and likely exceed) HID power results. You will need 420-480W of LED to replace that 600W. It would cost you more than $1000 though.
• More less powerful lights for a given area is BETTER than less more powerful lights. Interlacing is key with LEDs.
  

I would be VERY surprised if you got the Spectra 500W from Grow Led Hydro and it did not outperform a 600W HPS. Coincidently, that is the one I would get. Have not see any completed INDEPENDENT journals with StealthGrow yet.

Click to expand...

That is the DWC system I tried. Yes, power outage could be bad BAD. I would never commit an entire grow to this. However, power outage in many hydro systems would have the same effect. Aeroponic...NFT...to name 2

Let's PLEASE not turn this thread into the oh SOOOOOOO boring LED debate. My fault for engaging. The only topic worse is organic vs. hydro. They just don't go anywhere. When the day comes that I pick up an LED for testing, I'll post it right here. AND, I won't purchase said LED without first getting input from the group as to which one to get for testing. Until then, we're rocking these 1000's.

Wolverine97 said:

IDK man, I'd have to disagree with that. The growth difference is huge when there's that much of a difference in container size. Going from a 3 to a 5 you don't see a ton of difference, but yeah.

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I agree with you! You can see that I grow in 10 gallon pots. However, in one week of veg, I don't believe the difference to be that much. As the plant grows and begins to feel the container, the difference becomes more dramatic. In the interest of fairness, Helper D transplanted a group of Bubbas into 5 gallon pots of coco. We'll give them a few days to dig in and re-visit the competition. The DWC plant is now known as Godzilla...and Toyko better look the fuck out.

Don't think that I'm gonna get all emotional about some killer hydro growth. In the last 20 years I've built every hydro system there is. The extreme growth always gets me exited...and I always come back to soiless. With this much at stake, you can't beat soiless for dependability, performance, and its forgiving nature. About 10 years ago I put an aeroponic system in a CO2 enriched climate controlled greenhouse. The performance blew my mind....double the soiless! So, I expanded to the whole greenhouse on the next crop. Mid bloom cycle I developed a pathogen in the res and lost the entire crop. Now, this could be avoided with a chiller, but I'm still afraid to commit an entire grow to turbo charged systems. For now, Godzilla will get a dozen or so friends.

TheLastWood said:

The thing led's seem to be lacking in is penetration.

Plasmas look like they might be the next big thing but not until there affordable to everyone.

How's the bubbas n lavenders lookin gardener?

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I totally agree on the LEDs penetration faults.

The plasma seem the most exiting. Perfect spectrum and lots of penetration? I want that!

Bubbas are wonderful. 25 days from harvesting 11 plants.

I'm very exited about the Lavanders, which are actually Lavander x Afgan x Purple Kush, back crossed with Afgan. The guy I got em from said it was the biggest yield he's every gotten from a true top shelf quality strain. The are wild in veg, requiring lots of trimming. But, once in bloom (I've had one in for 5 days), they turn into perfect little bushy christmas trees with no stretch. I'll send a pic.

collective gardener said:

I totally agree on the LEDs penetration faults.

The plasma seem the most exiting. Perfect spectrum and lots of penetration? I want that!

Bubbas are wonderful. 25 days from harvesting 11 plants.

I'm very exited about the Lavanders, which are actually Lavander x Afgan x Purple Kush, back crossed with Afgan. The guy I got em from said it was the biggest yield he's every gotten from a true top shelf quality strain. The are wild in veg, requiring lots of trimming. But, once in bloom (I've had one in for 5 days), they turn into perfect little bushy christmas trees with no stretch. I'll send a pic.

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Sorry to sound like a noob, but what kind of trimming is necessary with wild vegetation?

lochem said:

Sorry to sound like a noob, but what kind of trimming is necessary with wild vegetation?

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You'd really have to see these things to understand. They get so crazy bushy with leaves tangled up with eachother. We just thin them a little to even out the canopy. I rarely trim plants in veg, but the grower who gave me these came by and showed us what he had been doing to increase yield. I totally trust his techniques wth these plants. He's been working with them forever.

first time grow, I was given the Chameleon genesis II plasma light
I am using C02 w/ fuzzy logic and all house and garden line hydro, in hydrotin smart pots not sure what the strain is...

was given the plants way late in veg and had to top the really lanky plants, they ended up stretching much more than i planned.

Wow first grow and givena plasma? That's fuckin badass!

Yeah you shoujld give those lavender afghans a shorter name lol. That's why I just said lavenders. Maybe Purple LAB (Lav. Afg. Bx)(if there purple)Sound like an awesome combination tho and a god outdoor strain too.

Mm I've got some plushberrys germing just goin into coco today. Can't wait man. Plus I just put in a big order for attitudes promo. I've gotten seeds from some dispenseries and sime are great(I'm really happy with my jack herers) but some are a huge let down and waste of time. Its nice you can get clones from ppl you know and trust and good genetics without ordering online from seed. Genetics are key.

EDIT: just wanted to say I've rly grown to love riu and this is by far myfavorite thread.I get as excited checking in here as I do igoing in my garden every day.

EDIT X2: thought of an awesome name for the crosses you have, Lafghan(laughgan) lol. Thought it was kinda clever. I know you can't just name your friends breed but we could call it that lol.

legally flying why did this guy say all this shit to you

Fuck you legally flying. and your mom and your stupid ass avatar. you are a fuckin dick. Eat a giant dick. . Im glad your just just an avatar cus I would seriously whoop your ass you fuckin asshole shut the Fuck up you little flea ass bitch