Help w/ New Hydroponics Setup

Just Drip More During Flower And Ye Totally Agree A Carbon Filter Is A Must If You Doin It Proper Like Ya R

Here is a pic of the whole grow space.
Room is 3' 10" x 7' & 7' tall. The shelf you see on the floor to the left is my work space for the plants( its 6 1/2 feet x 2 feet). i was planing to vent strait into the attic from here like i had said. I do understand the point behind drawing more air in and getting rid of the air that i've been conditioing/heating... the thing is if i vent back into the house i cant keep the door to that closet closed. and i wanted it to apear normal from the outside, besides the noise im sure the fan can and will make. as far as the electric bill is concerned its included in my fixed rent amount so im good on that. and i'll only be here another 4-5 months. so after one good harvest i'll have to build a new grow room at the new location. which should be easier 2nd time around .

So no one thinks there is any problem with me using this drip system for all stages of the plants? just need to up the amount of water during flowering?

Mitus said:

Here is a pic of the whole grow space.
Room is 3' 10" x 7' & 7' tall. The shelf you see on the floor to the left is my work space for the plants( its 6 1/2 feet x 2 feet). i was planing to vent strait into the attic from here like i had said. I do understand the point behind drawing more air in and getting rid of the air that i've been conditioing/heating... the thing is if i vent back into the house i cant keep the door to that closet closed. and i wanted it to apear normal from the outside, besides the noise im sure the fan can and will make. as far as the electric bill is concerned its included in my fixed rent amount so im good on that. and i'll only be here another 4-5 months. so after one good harvest i'll have to build a new grow room at the new location. which should be easier 2nd time around .

So no one thinks there is any problem with me using this drip system for all stages of the plants? just need to up the amount of water during flowering?

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Maybe I don't understand what you're doing. You want it to appear "normal" so I should assume you're going to weatherstrip the doors so no HID light escapes making it look like you have a UFO in the closet right? You want the fan inside the room right (or at least the intake for the fan)? So you draw air in to the fan and HOPE there is enough leaks in the room to let fresh air (and much needed CO2) in but no light out?

Secondly... a LANDLORD who will keep an eye on utility bills and you want to exhaust roughly 400cfm of conditioned air to the outside with no recirculation? How big is your home? If it's 1500sq ft with 7' ceilings you have 10500 cubic feet. That means a COMPLETE air change every 1/2 hr or so? You think your electricity bill will go up with a HID fixture? Of course it will but add either a furnace or an a/c unit running all the time just to keep up and you'll see a real utility bill.

With respect to nutes/water just consider that a big mature plant (regardless of veg or flower) may drink as much as 1-2 gallons a day. That will also depend on the humidity in your home and how much evaporates too. I've grown a huge mother in a drip system but I needed to fill the rez every day. If your rez can hold enough water to get you from 1 day to the next you're OK. If you want to take a 3 day vacation forget it.

Very valid points and I guess it's hard for me to explain the situation exactly. How much should a carbon filter cost for that fan?

not to discourage, but i'd be sketched out with that landlord situation. Landlords arent dumb, they do notice things like electricity usage doubling. Now, keep in mind, the threshold is high, for instance, a brand new gaming desktop will have a 1500-2000 W power supply. A large monitor will use a further 200-300 watts. These are things lots of people have. Large tv's, hundreads of watts. Some will draw up to 100 turned off. So a 400w light is well below threshold even if it's on 24/7. Problem as i see it is it's all going to be turned on together. Suddenly you'll be using a LOT more elctricity then you were, regardless of it being a mere medium total ammount. If i were a landlord (and not also a cool stoner like i am) and saw that i'd check to see why because people grow weeeeeeeeeeed. Electricity here is every 3 months, don't know bout you, so he wouldn't see it right away probably. I don't know, i just wouldn't want my landlord checking my elec bill, even though I know logically i'm well below threshold even with a lot of electricity being used, because i don't have a large tv or a desktop computer. Bam, 1500 W saved a month. So i would worry, and yet i wouldn't worry, you know? It's up to you how sketchy you think the situation is, but think it over, saying you're "good" because your landlord pays for the op to run scares me a bit.

Drip will work for all stages. I don't know a lot about it to be honest. Having multiple resses that then mix with each other seemed redudant to me. On the other hand, with hydroton drip most of the time most of your roots will be in the air. The key will be being able to adjust your feeding to keep up with the plant and root growth because once it has a large root structure it can't be allowed to dry out and get owned. Again, if there is going to be stagnant water at the bottom as a safety factor for the large root mass that will innevitably grow there then i would say airstone in each bucket.

cabon filter basically free though. You can get that honneywell furnace replacement filter for like 5 bucks at HD and it comes in carbonny felt sheets. You can cut em, elastic em, wrap em, do anything with them and as long as you either push or pull your air through a couple layers the smell, imho is gone. Activated charcoal from WM in a metal mesh pencil cup with pantyhose stretched around the outied to prevent leaks will also work if you tape it to the intake or exaust.

U are the man!... and the landlord is related to yours truely... I'm good means I'm good. Several electronics that I've been over using the last three months are now going to go unpluged while I grow. There will be a short spike in electric usuage but if I calculated right it shouldn't be enough to raise suspicion. I'm gonna post more pica later tonight as construction continues

Mitus said:

U are the man!... and the landlord is related to yours truely... I'm good means I'm good. Several electronics that I've been over using the last three months are now going to go unpluged while I grow. There will be a short spike in electric usuage but if I calculated right it shouldn't be enough to raise suspicion. I'm gonna post more pica later tonight as construction continues

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I think you misunderstood my analogy. Forget about the electricity usage on the light...it is minimal and certainly not a red flag. If you had (3) 1000s I'd be concerned. My comment was the increase in your utility bill because you're using either your a/c or heating system to keep up with a complete air change every half hour if you choose to draw air from the home and exhaust it outside. Do one or the other....draw from, and exhaust to the outside (which will require tempering the inlet air based on outside temps) or draw from the inside and exhaust to the inside with a filter.



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I see what you mean. So its probably safer/easier just to vent back into the house if get the carbon filter?

Mitus said:

I see what you mean. So its probably safer/easier just to vent back into the house if get the carbon filter?

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Yeah, carbon filters work wonderfully. You can buy an ozone generator too but I've never been a big fan of them. All you need to do is mount the fan inside the room, connect a 6" flex duct to the discharge and connect that to your light hood. From the other side of the hood you connect another piece of 6" flex and take it to the carbon filter. Leave enough slack flex duct so you can raise and lower the lights. If there is any way to put a grille on the wall of the room so the air outside the room can be pulled in it will work better than relying on infiltration. Remember though.....if you install a grille make sure you do it in such a way that you're not letting light in so it wont affect flowering. I cut in a grille through ONE SIDE of the drywall down low. Then on the other side of the wall I cut in a grille up high and use the stud cavity as sort of a duct. No light entering, but plenty of air.

gotcha. i think i'm gonna wait a little while on the carbon since i havent even moved the clones here yet. thank you for all the useful info on the fans

Mitus said:

gotcha. i think i'm gonna wait a little while on the carbon since i havent even moved the clones here yet. thank you for all the useful info on the fans

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So after meeting with a panel of experts/stoners i'm going to go and exchange the balast/bulbs and kick it up to 600 or 1000 watt tomorrow. Finally found the trays i was looking for also...

droped by to check on the clones today and they're looking pretty nice. Gonna grab some bubba and some OG probably on friday

Here is some better pics of the room. Its 7 feet deep and a little less then 4 feet wide, and 7 feet tall. the shelf i built to house the res and the plants is about 19 inches tall and leaves just enough space for the 18 gal res and a few inches to spare.

as you can see in the pictures there are 2 vents running above the closet and exit above the door. they are both air conditioning outlets. is there a way to use that to my advantage for venting?there is 2 vents because this room used to be a garage and it was converted. 2 shitty vents was better than one i guess. maybe i could block off one of the vents, then tap into it and use it as an exit for my fan? maybe i dont know what im talking about... any input?

Here is today's progress...

i took some advice from a pro and am making an attempt to protect the floor in the closet... first i laid down a few towels & duct tape them all the way around the edges... then i laid over that a large peice of plastic tarp (seen in 1 of the pics) & i secured that to the wall... and before i moved the shelf in there i laid down this office chair mat i had laying around hehe... couldnt hurt?...

ok, so then i've got the shelf in there. I got a 3x3 tray from the local hydro store. they had this lid that was custom cut for some one else that never showed up for it so it gave it to me half price. they drilled the holes for the drains for me at the store and you can see i installed the drains/tubing to run back to the res. then cut a hole in the top of the res to run the drain tubing in to. lined the room in mylar... put the pump/drip nozzel together and it had a little leak so i used a little silicone on it and am letting it dry over night.

i actually went and exchanged the 400 watt ballast/bulbs that i had purchased and paid the diff to upgrade to 1000 watt .

tomorrow i'll set up the light/fan and i'm rdy to go !

-Mitus

nice man, we'll be whatching

So once I have it all set up and I pick up the clones... Can some one walk me through properly planting the clones into my setup? I have 4 inch rockwool cubes and my big bag of hydroton rocks. I the nutrients even though I don't know what to mix or when to use what strength.

Secondly... Once the are plugged into my setup, how far should my 1000watt be from the top of the plant?

ok

first, get some tap water, or filetered if your water has a high ppm. Then, ph that water down to 5.8-6.0 and sterilize with 1ml 30% h202/L. Then soak your cubes for a little while. Then, take a salad spinner and put a cube in it, use it to get water out of the cube, they should be moist but not soaking, and squeezing water out by hand collapses all the tiny air spaces int he rockwool and can fuck your clones.
Since the clones you are picking up are not rooted, as you seem to suggest then at this point if you had rooting gel or powder apply some, if not just stick the clone in the cube, at least and inch or more of stem inside cube. The premade holes in the top of the cube can sometimes be too big and not provide a good stem hug, so if your clones are thin stemmed then use something pointy to make a new hole in the cube from the bottom or side and use that.
Those cubes should then be put under a humidity dome for a few days at least, mist them lightly every day a couple times, you dont want it sopping wet, just humid and warm. As soon as roots start to show out of the cubes, get your net pots and hydroton. Sterilize both either with boiling water or h202, and make sure to seriously wash out the hydroton before you use it, like rinse it A LOT till no more red dust comes off. I use my bathtub and when im done the water stays crystal clear for the last rinse. Dont let hydroton down your drain, if it clogs the line somewhere a plumber will be suspious aas hell lol. Soak the hydroton for a bit in ph'd h202 water, people say 24 hours, but i've never had a problem as longs as it goes in wet and gets watered, but your ph may stay more stable if you soak it for longer, especially in small res/lots of hydroton applications.
So, then you take your net pots and put a good layer of hydroton down on the bottom. Then put your cube on top of that and fill hydroton arround it, hydroton should be supporting the stem and covering the cube. I don't know anything bout drip systems, so i'll say start watering immediately and that's about it lol.

Your 1000w with cooltube shouldn't really be that close to the young plants. 1000w is a lot, and even if you can control the heat, the shear intensity at close range will be too much for new clones and young plants. Hang it high, like a few feet at least, until they start to show new growth. Then, if you can keep it cool to the touch, lower it closer to the canopy. I keep my 400w within inches of the plants, and although i've seen heat stress in plants when the ambient temp went up too high, as long as the ambient temp was low enough it didnt seem to hurt the tops of the plants to be hotter by being closer to the light. I've never used a 1000w so i don't know what the closest you can keep em is by experience though. During budding heat stress is the last thing you want to the top of your main cola, but you have the veg period to figure it out in.

The clones I'm getting are already rooted.

lol ok, then you probably won't need the cubes. You can't really plant a rooted clone into a single rockwool cube. Unless they were rooted in no medium then they should be in rockwool or rapid rooters or something when you get em. In that case just put em in the hydroton and start watering, after cleaning hydroton of course. Start with 25% nutes and work up once new growth occurs.