2nd grow 1st grow room

like the title says this is my second grow, but my first actual grow room. my last grow I literally hung a light in my closet and made it happen. I grew a single sour diesel plat in there. didn't yield the best, but I got a zip off of the natural grown plant, no lst, horrible lighting, and several mistakes along the way. this time will hopefully be a different story.

so I moved into this house about 3 months ago, and theres this room in the basement that just keeps speaking to me (if you catch my drift). I kept going down and visualizing what could be.

This is what I started out with. I hung a metal halide up to get some light. at the point of this picture here the plan was just clean the room and grow 1 or 2 plants in the middle...


That idea quickly changed


There we go... loads more room for "activities"
The next day I robbed some fluorescents out of the garage and hung them up long the walls to create a "seedling station"

The plan is for the plants to spend their entire life in a 5 gallon bucket. Ive never had good luck with transplanting ANY kind of plant, so im going to avoid doing that here. I can easily raise and lower the buckets by adding or removing pepsi crates.
Now for the flowering area ill have a bed of pepsi crates that I can, once again, add or remove crates to gain the proper height. im just playing around with the placement of the light trying to figure out where I can get the best coverage


im thinking this will be the best possible flowering area. maximum height potential with space around for them to grow and me to walk. I would have gone into the room more, but there is a hole in the ground where a sump pump used to be. there is a newer pump and pit elsewhere in the basement, so this one will not be "active". more just a hole for me to step into during the grow lol

last night I came across one hell of a deal on 3 t5 4 foot 4 bulb fixtures with bulbs


so in total I got 3 fixtures that all worked with a total of 84 light bulbs for a meesley $20.... SCORE
I tested all the bulbs and only found 2 that don't work, and that's because they were broken

also found out that all the bulbs are food grade with the shatter coating on them... SCORE AGAIN

after making sure they all worked it was time to clean the used lights, here are some side by sides of clean vs dirty, one hell of a difference




Todays goal is to get most of the celing put up in the room, as well as hanging the t5s up. I cant hang the full celing until the HVAC guy comes to replace and fix the boiler in the house , as one of the main water lines runs through the room.



Ive got 400 sqft of mylar from amazon, as well as some replacement bulbs for the MH. at this point I don't have, nor do I have access to a HPS fixture so itll be MH and T5 through the whole process. down the road I will get a HPS fixture, but ill make do with what I have.

as soon as the HVAC guy is done itll be full swing on the project. ive got a lot of work ahead of me. I am open to tips or questions. im here to learn, and I hope you all will be able to help me maximize the potential of this room im setting up.
 
Got to work today trimming the door frame so the door will close, the basement flooded before I moved in. I'm just trying to save money wherever I can and that means trying to fix a bowed door frame before replacing it... Still more work needed thereimage.jpeg

Also got to work measuring and cutting the plywood for the ceiling
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Plus I've got the t5s down there sorta wired up... They make a good work light lol
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These 3 lights will be tied together in a "pack" and will all raise and lower together. I will more than likely add the MH in the room also, but at this point it'll be more supplementary light than the main light. Really hoping this boiler gets done soon. I dropped the deposit for the work today so I hope any day now to see it replaced.
 
well its been almost a month since my last post, and i dont have any updates, other than the HVAC guy will be starting on my boiler this coming week. he said itll take him about a week to completely check and fix everything. he has several spots in the house to fix since the neighbor turned the heat off last winter when the house was empty. there are at least 5 breaks in the boiler system that i know about... and i hope no more are found as the price for the repair goes up with each break found. hopefuly next week ill have some real progress pictures for you guys, but for now im still waiting
 
well after 4 months of waiting the HVAC guy is finally here to fix the boiler. upon inspection of the system it was discovered that it is in worse shape than anticipated. there were 5 known breaks in the system. today it was discovered that there are around 15 breaks throughout the house, both in just lines and actual heating elements. the cost of this repair just skyrocketed, but its necessary. and honestly I just want it done so I can finish up my room and get to growing. I have an estimated finish of Thursday this week for the boiler to be done. hopefully by Wednesday of next week ill have some seeds in soil, but for now here are some boring boiler installation photos.

out with the old
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not in yet, but the new
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a couple of the new breaks that were found today
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these 2 were discovered and fixed today
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and they managed to get one heating element replaced today
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that's all for now. as it stands Im just giving hope that none of the pipes are blown inside a wall, but I wont know for sure until all the current blowouts are fixed. keep your fingers crossed for me as this repair bill has almost certainly gone far beyond what I wanted to pay....
 
well...… my fear has become a reality. all the blowouts are fixed and still the system will not hold pressure. they have it tracked to an area upstairs, but to access all the pipes im going to have to pull up a bit of the floor and some baseboard. the HVAC guys wont pull floor or baseboard so I have to do it. im so far out of patience and money its not even funny.

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this is the area of flooring that has to come up. the flooring was improperly placed and it butts up to the return pipe below the radiator, the brand new radiator they installed had to be cut out so the floor can come up on Saturday.
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in order to isolate where the leak is they had to install 8 ball valves in the basement to close off parts of the system. effectively splitting the system into 4 legs.
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this will be nice in case of a sudden leak in the house somewhere I can shut of a single area of the house but retain heater function in the rest.

they also got the new boiler into its resting place. its a more compact unit, but at the same time its supposed to be wayyy more efficient.
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so the new timeline is for them to be done Monday. tomorrow they are supposed to come in and plum the boiler up and fill and pressurize the part of the system that will actually hold water. then Monday they will track down the final (hopefuly) leak, fix it and fully pressurize the whole house... im literally scared to see the bill on this one
 

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Lordhooha

Well-Known Member
well...… my fear has become a reality. all the blowouts are fixed and still the system will not hold pressure. they have it tracked to an area upstairs, but to access all the pipes im going to have to pull up a bit of the floor and some baseboard. the HVAC guys wont pull floor or baseboard so I have to do it. im so far out of patience and money its not even funny.

View attachment 4194089
this is the area of flooring that has to come up. the flooring was improperly placed and it butts up to the return pipe below the radiator, the brand new radiator they installed had to be cut out so the floor can come up on Saturday.
View attachment 4194093
in order to isolate where the leak is they had to install 8 ball valves in the basement to close off parts of the system. effectively splitting the system into 4 legs.
View attachment 4194095
View attachment 4194096
this will be nice in case of a sudden leak in the house somewhere I can shut of a single area of the house but retain heater function in the rest.

they also got the new boiler into its resting place. its a more compact unit, but at the same time its supposed to be wayyy more efficient.
View attachment 4194097
View attachment 4194098
so the new timeline is for them to be done Monday. tomorrow they are supposed to come in and plum the boiler up and fill and pressurize the part of the system that will actually hold water. then Monday they will track down the final (hopefuly) leak, fix it and fully pressurize the whole house... im literally scared to see the bill on this one
I’m so happy I had geothermal put in.
 
I’m so happy I had geothermal put in.
my parents house is geothermal. they did it 10 years ago when they built the house. it wasn't really popular in my area then, but it has really caught on, and honestly my parents house is always comfortable. no really overwhelming cold or hot spots within the house. this place doesn't have any duct work within it so installing anything central air related is for the most part out of the question
 

Lordhooha

Well-Known Member
my parents house is geothermal. they did it 10 years ago when they built the house. it wasn't really popular in my area then, but it has really caught on, and honestly my parents house is always comfortable. no really overwhelming cold or hot spots within the house. this place doesn't have any duct work within it so installing anything central air related is for the most part out of the question
My house was built in 2011 and I bought it 2012. The guy that built it put in electric baseboard heating :wall: in northern Michigan :wall::wall: so no duct was here so when I had it installed they had to do everything. But my house runs on one zone and my grow rooms run on another. I enjoy it cheap as hell to heat like 30 bucks a month or less in winter an summer even in 90 degree weather it’s at most 2 bucks a month to cool. It’s pretty sweet. It was expensive but well worth it. I added plenty of wells on my closed loop too for all 175 ft a piece so it can keep up easy in the winter.

Good luck to you though.
 
well its off to the races now. the boiler is 100% done and functional. they got out of here shortly after 3pm today and i got to work shortly after, lining some walls with mylar. i did what all my staple inventory would allow, and also what my back would let slide. ive still got a bit of work ahead of me on this one. i never fitted the celing pannels up, just kinda loosely trimmed them. i have to find a dehumidifier, mount lights, figure out exhaust, etc etc. but for today i stuck with just laying out some mylar.

here is my cutting area where i would cut a piece off the roll just some plywood and pepsi crates
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and some initial progress. i tried to "shingle" the mylar on there. this means that the overlaps make the light travel down the mylar instead of going behind it and getting trapped in between it and the wall. i didnt succeed in every area, but oh well im not perfect
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and i ran out of staples with the cabinet, cealing and entrance wall/door to do so this is how i left off for the day. i moved the t5 light pack into the room to see, and im going to need sunglasses to be able to work in the room lit up, the pictures dont do it much justice, but it really is impressive how much light these things give off.
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thats all for today. ive got a few things i need to pick up for this project tomorrow. hopefully ill have more updates then
 
well, the HVAC guys have already been back twice for leaks that presented themselves after they left, im currently waiting on them to return again to fix another. the room is still in the same state as my last post. the last thing I need is for the HVAC guys to show up and need access to a fully functional grow room. I swear I haven't forgotten about you guys, but I need this boiler to be leak free before I start... when it leaks, it leaks into the basement which really messes with the humidity down there... ive got my fingers crossed that the leak that's presenting itself now is the last. money is getting SUPER tight and its getting to be a stretch having to pay for all these repairs as well as having to purchase my stash at full price vs the cost of growing my own... hopefully more updates will follow soon, but for now all progress has stopped on the room.
 

Lordhooha

Well-Known Member
Sad to hear hope things get better.
well, the HVAC guys have already been back twice for leaks that presented themselves after they left, im currently waiting on them to return again to fix another. the room is still in the same state as my last post. the last thing I need is for the HVAC guys to show up and need access to a fully functional grow room. I swear I haven't forgotten about you guys, but I need this boiler to be leak free before I start... when it leaks, it leaks into the basement which really messes with the humidity down there... ive got my fingers crossed that the leak that's presenting itself now is the last. money is getting SUPER tight and its getting to be a stretch having to pay for all these repairs as well as having to purchase my stash at full price vs the cost of growing my own... hopefully more updates will follow soon, but for now all progress has stopped on the room.
 
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