bigfoot6913
Well-Known Member
My First Grow
　
　
Hello my name is "Not Important". I have been lurking about for a while now, absorbing vast amounts of information and applying as much as I can to my first grow. I'm hoping to share the experience with y'all and hopefully make some friends along the way!
This is a dream come true for me. I've wanted to build something like this since I was a lil sprat, but never had the means to do it right. Recently some friends and I decided to put their money and my abilities/passion to work. To come together to build what I would like to think is a tight little hydroponics setup.
　
Ill start by laying out the initial battle plan, eventually show you the far more conservative finished product and hopefully someday the end result.
　
We had the entire basement of an addition to work with.
It was 1 large open room 25x14x6.5
The original plan was for a perpetual grow of 3 plants grown to full maturity once a month. Basically 6 and mom in the veg room and 3 in the Flower room.
We built and installed large hanging panels 4'x6.5' to act as doors separating 4 feet from the room along its entire length.
What we now had was a grow space 25x4x6.5.
The idea was simple.
Split the grow space into two parts.
Flower and Veg.
I spent a month hunting around the internet for used hydro equipment. I got some great deals on environmental controllers, lights, ballasts, fans pumps etc.
But couldnt find any flood and drain setups that suited my taste or spacial limitations.
So I did the logical thing and designed one myself.
I'm not claiming to have reinvented the wheel but I'm pretty proud of my design and I can't really see any major holes in its functionality. (please gently tell me what they are, if you recognize them)
With a long, narrow, short space running a perpetual harvest and having bought about 4200w of lights and air cooled ballasts. I pictured something very linear and almost modular.
I had a vision of removable bottom drain buckets of hydroton on a timed flood schedule.
No floats, No "Brain Bucket", No Bullshit
In hindsight I probably built the most vertically inefficient setup available. A side drain ebb and grow can sit right on the floor. Mine has to allow for the height of the resevoir, tables, drain lines etc.
Having said that, I feel like I need to point out that I hadn't seen anything quite like what I had in mind and simply wanted proof of goddamn concept.
I have a background in hottub repair and knew I could get most of what I needed for my pumps, manifolds, fittings etc from my supplier and I left the rest of it to Homedepot and Walmart.
　
So, the buckets were born.... Oh those fucking buckets...
The buckets were great in my minds eye. Just drill a hole, put a fitting on, attach a drain and youre good to go.... Not so Much
There was a lip on the bottom of the bucket directly in the center about 2 inches in diameter. If we cut the lip off the hole was too big for our fittings. So we had to cut inside it and fill the gap with silicone.
Any guesses what happened?
They leaked...
All 16 buckets we built (because building one and testing it wasnt something I even considered) leaked terribly. Silicone does not stick well to shiny slippery plastic.It is not intended to fill gaps almost a half inch across.
Not my most shining moment but ultimately we salvaged the fittings and switched to 10g Rubbermaid Roughneck totes. 10 inches shorter, twice the capacity and a flat bottom perfect for the fitting. Winning!
Just as an aside... I think more Rubbermaid containers have dope and snakes growing in them than Rubbermaid could ever fathom...
We also had a bit of a debaucal with the shitty shelves we bought being way too flimsy and almost breaking before we even got started. We replaced them at the same time we got the Rubbermaids. This modular idea was really starting to come together...
　
So in the mean time about 6 months of canadian winter suck the life out of the project and put everything on hold.
By the time we were ready to restart "Project Freegreen" our priorities had changed and we decided to scale back on everything. We hadn't finished building out our space or come close to running water, so the revamp wasnt too much work. we had lots of parts just hadnt assembled any of them.
We still had all the equipment for the larger grow show but decided to pick and choose the best to make this thing work. So, we went from the pie in the sky perpetual setup to 4 plants grown for as long as we want under 1k HPS and 1k MH.
I still have my modular feel but the removable buckets intended to move along the "production line" lost there necessity status. Proof of concept wins again and the disconnects stay!
　
So the basic ingredients as it is now...
4 - 10g Rubbermaid totes w/ custom quick disconnect bottom drain
1 - 50g Rubbermaid tote resevoir
1 - 1/4hp Submersible sump pump
1 - Plastic shelving unit
1 - 2" x 4 x 3/4" outlet distribution manifold
1 - IGS 110 RH/Temp controller
1 - IGS 010 Timer
1 - Ellicent 4" inline fan
1 - Ellicent 6" inline fan
1 - Seabreeze oscillating fan
1 - Canfilter 30lb charcoal Filter
1 - Greengold Switchable 1k HPS/MH Ballast
1 - Homegrown Hydroponics 1k MH Ballast
2 - Cool Sun 6" vented hoods
Various Hoses, Adapter, Clamps etc...
We finally have it all set up and we are dialing in our Temps, RH, Nutes etc with a handful of seeds we germed that I've been saving over the years. We're going to get clones for the real run but the little guys growing now are thriving and teachings us lots before we grow fro reals.
So the plan is to use the large part of the room we cut off from the grow area as our stable air mass from which to draw our conditioned cool air into our various inlet for cooling our lighting and our room. So the 25x10x6.5 is going to be air condtioned and will serve as our cool air resvoir if you will.
Im using the 6" ellicent to cool the lights and I'm dumping it right outside. No fuss, no muss. The 4" Ellicent is strapped to my charcoal filter and its sitting in the corner scrubbing and also moving air around within the space.
I have an environmental controller that will handle Co2 aswell but they are nervous about venting Co2 directly under there bedroom and i cant convince them otherwise.
So, in a setup that was never supposed to need to be vented I now have to vent to the outside world. I'm probably just going to route the 4" on the charcoal scrubber to a y with the light exhaust and dump it outside.
Because I intend to use the air from inside the outer room to cool my space and not outdoor air. Im going to hook the temp controller up to the scrubber so it dumps scrubbed air outside as the fans mounted low inside on the doors pump cool air into the space.
This is all theory so far but in the next few days Ill know if it works.
Im all worded out for today. Pictures coming soon...
　
　
　
Hello my name is "Not Important". I have been lurking about for a while now, absorbing vast amounts of information and applying as much as I can to my first grow. I'm hoping to share the experience with y'all and hopefully make some friends along the way!
This is a dream come true for me. I've wanted to build something like this since I was a lil sprat, but never had the means to do it right. Recently some friends and I decided to put their money and my abilities/passion to work. To come together to build what I would like to think is a tight little hydroponics setup.
　
Ill start by laying out the initial battle plan, eventually show you the far more conservative finished product and hopefully someday the end result.
　
We had the entire basement of an addition to work with.
It was 1 large open room 25x14x6.5
The original plan was for a perpetual grow of 3 plants grown to full maturity once a month. Basically 6 and mom in the veg room and 3 in the Flower room.
We built and installed large hanging panels 4'x6.5' to act as doors separating 4 feet from the room along its entire length.
What we now had was a grow space 25x4x6.5.
The idea was simple.
Split the grow space into two parts.
Flower and Veg.
I spent a month hunting around the internet for used hydro equipment. I got some great deals on environmental controllers, lights, ballasts, fans pumps etc.
But couldnt find any flood and drain setups that suited my taste or spacial limitations.
So I did the logical thing and designed one myself.
I'm not claiming to have reinvented the wheel but I'm pretty proud of my design and I can't really see any major holes in its functionality. (please gently tell me what they are, if you recognize them)
With a long, narrow, short space running a perpetual harvest and having bought about 4200w of lights and air cooled ballasts. I pictured something very linear and almost modular.
I had a vision of removable bottom drain buckets of hydroton on a timed flood schedule.
No floats, No "Brain Bucket", No Bullshit
In hindsight I probably built the most vertically inefficient setup available. A side drain ebb and grow can sit right on the floor. Mine has to allow for the height of the resevoir, tables, drain lines etc.
Having said that, I feel like I need to point out that I hadn't seen anything quite like what I had in mind and simply wanted proof of goddamn concept.
I have a background in hottub repair and knew I could get most of what I needed for my pumps, manifolds, fittings etc from my supplier and I left the rest of it to Homedepot and Walmart.
　
So, the buckets were born.... Oh those fucking buckets...
The buckets were great in my minds eye. Just drill a hole, put a fitting on, attach a drain and youre good to go.... Not so Much
There was a lip on the bottom of the bucket directly in the center about 2 inches in diameter. If we cut the lip off the hole was too big for our fittings. So we had to cut inside it and fill the gap with silicone.
Any guesses what happened?
They leaked...
All 16 buckets we built (because building one and testing it wasnt something I even considered) leaked terribly. Silicone does not stick well to shiny slippery plastic.It is not intended to fill gaps almost a half inch across.
Not my most shining moment but ultimately we salvaged the fittings and switched to 10g Rubbermaid Roughneck totes. 10 inches shorter, twice the capacity and a flat bottom perfect for the fitting. Winning!
Just as an aside... I think more Rubbermaid containers have dope and snakes growing in them than Rubbermaid could ever fathom...
We also had a bit of a debaucal with the shitty shelves we bought being way too flimsy and almost breaking before we even got started. We replaced them at the same time we got the Rubbermaids. This modular idea was really starting to come together...
　
So in the mean time about 6 months of canadian winter suck the life out of the project and put everything on hold.
By the time we were ready to restart "Project Freegreen" our priorities had changed and we decided to scale back on everything. We hadn't finished building out our space or come close to running water, so the revamp wasnt too much work. we had lots of parts just hadnt assembled any of them.
We still had all the equipment for the larger grow show but decided to pick and choose the best to make this thing work. So, we went from the pie in the sky perpetual setup to 4 plants grown for as long as we want under 1k HPS and 1k MH.
I still have my modular feel but the removable buckets intended to move along the "production line" lost there necessity status. Proof of concept wins again and the disconnects stay!
　
So the basic ingredients as it is now...
4 - 10g Rubbermaid totes w/ custom quick disconnect bottom drain
1 - 50g Rubbermaid tote resevoir
1 - 1/4hp Submersible sump pump
1 - Plastic shelving unit
1 - 2" x 4 x 3/4" outlet distribution manifold
1 - IGS 110 RH/Temp controller
1 - IGS 010 Timer
1 - Ellicent 4" inline fan
1 - Ellicent 6" inline fan
1 - Seabreeze oscillating fan
1 - Canfilter 30lb charcoal Filter
1 - Greengold Switchable 1k HPS/MH Ballast
1 - Homegrown Hydroponics 1k MH Ballast
2 - Cool Sun 6" vented hoods
Various Hoses, Adapter, Clamps etc...
We finally have it all set up and we are dialing in our Temps, RH, Nutes etc with a handful of seeds we germed that I've been saving over the years. We're going to get clones for the real run but the little guys growing now are thriving and teachings us lots before we grow fro reals.
So the plan is to use the large part of the room we cut off from the grow area as our stable air mass from which to draw our conditioned cool air into our various inlet for cooling our lighting and our room. So the 25x10x6.5 is going to be air condtioned and will serve as our cool air resvoir if you will.
Im using the 6" ellicent to cool the lights and I'm dumping it right outside. No fuss, no muss. The 4" Ellicent is strapped to my charcoal filter and its sitting in the corner scrubbing and also moving air around within the space.
I have an environmental controller that will handle Co2 aswell but they are nervous about venting Co2 directly under there bedroom and i cant convince them otherwise.
So, in a setup that was never supposed to need to be vented I now have to vent to the outside world. I'm probably just going to route the 4" on the charcoal scrubber to a y with the light exhaust and dump it outside.
Because I intend to use the air from inside the outer room to cool my space and not outdoor air. Im going to hook the temp controller up to the scrubber so it dumps scrubbed air outside as the fans mounted low inside on the doors pump cool air into the space.
This is all theory so far but in the next few days Ill know if it works.
Im all worded out for today. Pictures coming soon...
　
