Getting ready to build 9' x 9' grow room in basement - advice welcome

superstoner1 said:

only til i come. stick your leg out further. but i do pass on solid advice from a lot of experience.

Click to expand...

SS knows what hes talking about and does pass on alot of info,Tht he does not have to and has helped me alot,When i get the time il for sure listen to what he sais about building my room.I would do it now just some real life chit going on now.




BEECH

Here's my room as it is now. My original plan was for me to veg and my buddy to flower. Well, so much for that. Now I have to divide my rooom to have a veg and flower room...still need to install ventilation. Not sure how I should do it.

Okay so I have put up a Panda film wall between the two rooms - one room will be for vegging and the other for flowering. The flowering room is 10' long x 8' tall x 8' 5" deep. Can someone recommend what size and brand carbon filter and what size exhaust fan i should use?

Keep in mind that the total size of the room is 18' long x 8' tall x 8' 5" deep. However, there is the panda film wall put up between the two rooms and sealed with duct tape. I will be cutting a doorway out of the panda film and then placing a piece of panda film back over it and velcroed down as a makeshift door to keep light out of the flowering room. This being said, the vegging room won't have much smell I don't think so should the calculations just be figured for the flowering room which is 10' x 8' x 8' 5"?

Thanks!

Too bad you can't veg in a closet or something. That's going to be a nice bloom room.

When you pick your fan and filter, don't cheap out. The cheaper the fan, the louder it will be (hydrofarm and vortex make good fans)

Couple questions for you guys regarding the ventilation.

1. Can you/is it a good idea to pull the warm air in the grow room thru a carbon filter and blow thru your light to cool it and exhaust out?

Here's how I am thinking of doing the ventilation but am not sure if this will work so any input would be greatly appreciated:

My grow room is in my basement. My flower room is 9' deep x 8' tall x 8' 5" wide. I was thinking i could bring air in from my 2 car attached insulated garage. I'm in Michigan so the air gets pretty cold outside during the winter. Pulling from my garage should bring in a little bit warmer air but still nice and cool. I was then thinking that I would have my carbon filter with a fan on it pulling the hot air out and blowing thru the light hood to cool it and exhausting back out into the garage (the same garage I am pulling the cool air in from). My question is this, will this work? The concern I have is that I am pulling cool air from the garage and exhausting warm air back out into the garage. Will the garage eventually heat up to where it is pulling hot air back in to the grow room? Also, will the Co2 levels decrease so much that the intake proves useless?

I was not planning on putting a fan on the intake ducting as I figured the exhaust fan would pull air in thru the intake ducting while running to cool the light and filter the air. Anyboy know if this would be the case or not?

usernamessuck said:

Electrical is done - 14 outlets in a 9' x 18' - having an outlet nearby shouldn't be a problem! Drywall starts this weekend. Plans have changed, this is going to be just a veg room for now. We will be flowering at another location. Nice thing is, I have the room to expand and put a flower room in if I wish sometime down the road.

Electrical is set up so that I can go to hydro in the future if I wish.


View attachment 2384501View attachment 2384502View attachment 2384503

Click to expand...

is that wiring up to code where you're at? romex wouldn't pass code here...just sayin'.

frankly, i'd ditch the panda film, drywall it all in, and paint it all flat white, saving the high density foam to insulate only the plants from the floor. but that's just me.

looks good tho, well thought out. i wish i had that kind of room to work with. good luck.

JoeyV said:

is that wiring up to code where you're at? romex wouldn't pass code here...just sayin'.

frankly, i'd ditch the panda film, drywall it all in, and paint it all flat white, saving the high density foam to insulate only the plants from the floor. but that's just me.

looks good tho, well thought out. i wish i had that kind of room to work with. good luck.

Click to expand...

Joey: where are you located and what do they require regarding wiring? I know nothing about code or wiring. I had a friend of mine who is very knowledgable in electrical come and do my wiring. He has a very extensive grow operation and wired his entire building. Not sure if it's code or not.

Already lined the walls with Panda paper. I was going to drywall but then a friend of mine who grows suggested the panda paper because it makes it simple to clean the room. Drywall is more difficult to clean.

I will be posting more pictures this weekend once I get a chance.

I'm in the midwest, great lakes area.

That yellow wiring is called Romex. It's rated for 600vac @ 20 amps, or 12000 watts. My guess is that it's going to a 15 amp breaker which will give you a max of 1800 watts continuous before tripping the breaker.

However, that means you may need multiple breakers if you're planning on drawing a large amount of power.
For example, say you wanted to run 3 1000 watt lamps. You're going to need a minimum of 3 breakers to supply that much power.
However you could run 3 600 watt lamps on a single breaker, though you'd be at the bleeding edge.

In my area, Romex wiring inside walls like that is not up to code. It's illegal.

What union electricians usually do is run conduit or in some instances, BX. Conduit is simply pipe with wires running through them. BX is a flexible metal outer casing with wires running through it. In both cases the pipe/casing is grounded. If the wires get hot and melt the shielding, they short to the metal case and trip the breaker, stoping the flow of current. Also, if you drill through the drywall and hit Romex, odds are you'll short the wires or even get shocked. Thats less likely to occur with conduit or BX.

Also with conduit, you can pull new or additional wires through the pipe. Not so with BX. Definately not with Romex.

The fact that you haven't drywalled the inside of the grow room is good, because, if you want you could re-do the wiring with BX. However you're probably ok with the Romex.

JoeyV said:

I'm in the midwest, great lakes area. That yellow wiring is called Romex. It's rated for 600vac @ 20 amps, or 12000 watts. My guess is that it's going to a 15 amp breaker which will give you a max of 1800 watts continuous before tripping the breaker. However, that means you may need multiple breakers if you're planning on drawing a large amount of power. For example, say you wanted to run 3 1000 watt lamps. You're going to need a minimum of 3 breakers to supply that much power.However you could run 3 600 watt lamps on a single breaker, though you'd be at the bleeding edge.In my area, Romex wiring inside walls like that is not up to code. It's illegal. What union electricians usually do is run conduit or in some instances, BX. Conduit is simply pipe with wires running through them. BX is a flexible metal outer casing with wires running through it. In both cases the pipe/casing is grounded. If the wires get hot and melt the shielding, they short to the metal case and trip the breaker, stoping the flow of current. Also, if you drill through the drywall and hit Romex, odds are you'll short the wires or even get shocked. Thats less likely to occur with conduit or BX.Also with conduit, you can pull new or additional wires through the pipe. Not so with BX. Definately not with Romex. The fact that you haven't drywalled the inside of the grow room is good, because, if you want you could re-do the wiring with BX. However you're probably ok with the Romex.

Click to expand...

All of my outlets go to (2) 20 amp breakers. The light will be powered by 220.

Subscribed

Breakers are cheap, and if your building the room yourself, the wiring is a sinch too.

superstoner1 said:

by having a dedicated veg/ clone room beside my flower room, similar to op, i am able to harvest 17 times per year with a 4 week veg and pull 2+ pounds every harvest. thats close to 40lbs per year.

Click to expand...

You could always do 12/12 lighting from seed and have every inch available all the time for flowering.....just saying.

The room looks dope though, gave me ideas on starting one.

i wouldnt even think of starting from seed every time. what a waste. what a loss of good phenos too.

Hey, I grow in my basement in a cold climate so I thought I could offer some advice. I have 2 rooms, one with 6 lights and the other with 12. I vent straight outside with a passive intake. The best thing you could do for getting a proper climate is hook your exhaust fan to a temperature controller. Preferably one with an idle speed, like this one: http://www.grozonecontrol.com/TV2_en.html This allows you to set a desired temp and will keep an idle speed to keep negative pressure in your grow room. Negative pressure is what you want if your not running a sealed room, as long as air is always coming into your room and out through your carbon filter on your exhaust fan then the only air escaping with go through your filter. Also try your best to have the intake on the opposite end of your exhaust as to make sure the fresh air doesn't come straight in and the out without passing over your plants.

It is a good idea to bring the air in from your garage, you will want the air to be warmer than the freezing air temps you will get in the winter, exhausting in there prob wont be a problem if its a large garage and it looks like you actually don't have much light in your grow room anyway compared to the size of it. The only problem I see with that is that your garage might smell a little like pot, or something fresh. I find the filters do a great job of eliminating odor but I do find that a smell still come out, not dank bud but something freshish so if your at all worried about other people in your garage then I would try to vent directly outside. Other than that your rooms look good, I'd try to put a lot more lights in your rooms but that will come with time I'm sure.

Feel free to pm me with any questions as I'm not always cruising these threads

Okay guys, here's the finished room. I will explain each photo in order:

1. Growroom in basement with doorway open.
2. Growroom doorway
3.As you walk in, to your right, there is the doorway to the flowering room. You can see the doorway rolled up and bungeed to a hook in the ceiling. The doorway has sticky velcro all the way around, even on the floor, to stick the door down so no light can get through to the flowering room from the vegging room.
4. On the wall just to the right of the doorway to the flowering room is my cloning area. I just have CFL's hanging right now. Seem to do the job for me. May upgrade somewhere down the line.
5. To the left of the doorway to the flowering room is the intake ducting. It comes from inside my two car insulated attached garage. Lettin the car warm up in the morning is a good thing.
6. Another picture of the intake ducting with a Y going into the flowering room.
7. Turning to the left you can see the doorway and shelving I have installed for storing nutrients, etc.
8. Vegging area just to the right of the shelving. I plan to put another T-5 light in where the intake ducting is. You can see the hooks already hanging ready for the light in picture 5.
9. The entrance into the flowring room. I bought the Quantum Massive 6" with a Digilux 1000 Watt HPS lamp. You can see the 6 x 39 Phat carbon filter in the background along with the fan. ADVICE: while the fan (Valuline 6") is super quiet inside the room, it is loud as fuck in my living room upstairs as that is where the fan is below the floor. Had I put some insulation in between the panda film and the floor, it probably would have reduced the sound a lot so keep that in mind. I may still tear the panda film up to stuff some in there, it's kinda bad. I plan to run my lights at night so it wont be that big of deal but it would just be nice if you couldn't hear it as much.
10. Carbon filter and Xtreme Nano 1000 watt ballast.
11. 220 plug and digital timer. Fan control for exhaust.
12. Oscillating fan.
13. Dehumidifier and intake ducting.
14. Light exhausts out into the basement. You can see the exhaust vent in pic 1 towards that back of the room on the upper part of the wall. This should serve nice for heating the basement. Hopefully smell won't be to much of an issue that I have to worry about.
15. Intake vent in the garage.

One other note that you can't see, the floor has 4 x 8 sheets of high density foam on them to insulate the floor. The panda film is on top of the foam.

The humidity in the room seems to be staying around 42% in both rooms even with the dehumidifier set at 60%. Don't know if my thermometers or the dehumidifier is wrong. Temperature is staying consistantly around 72 degrees. I ran the big light for 2 hours last night and the temperature went up to 74 degrees. We'll see how it does over 12 hours.

2 things I learned from this:

1. Take the time to really think about and layout how your room will be. I did not. As a result, I have many places where there are 1 x 1 pieces of ducttape on the panda film covering holes from where something was - and then I decided to move.

2. Determine exactly where any fans you have will be located. Then insulate the floor to deaden the sound. Any body feel free to chime in here, not sure if insulation will be sufficient or if there is something else that is better.

Crickets...must've really fucked up..

I'm impressed - but what do I know...
Seriously, looks great. Fan advice is appreciated - i'm going thru HVAC design myself.
Good luck.

Nobody's plants must have anything, but plants with fresh air exchange of some kind will reach a higher potential than without fresh air. Just because plants survive does not mean they are doing well.. plants use both Co2 AND oxygen, so hinder your plants all you want. Cooled lights are obviously meant for temperature control, best achieved by installing it in the center of duct work that doesn't exit into the room itself; ideally, you still need an exhaust & (at least) a passive intake (it will only make your grows more efficient)... if you intentionally do not allow a fresh air exchange, then you are your own limiting factor.

"Just because you don't have to wipe your ass, doesn't mean that it won't stink when you're done taking a sh*t." -The way I see the "no fresh-air theory", sillies.

|B3RNY| said:

"Just because you don't have to wipe your ass, doesn't mean that it won't stink when you're done taking a sh*t." -The way I see the "no fresh-air theory", sillies.

Click to expand...

Don't forget "he who goes to bed itchy bum wakes up with stinky fingers" lol,

very nice. very nicekiss-ass