Scipio Aemilianus
Member
I have decided to convert a very secure 8x12 room into a grow room. I thought you guys might like to follow my progress and I would love feedback from the community.
The Basics: I have an 8x12 room (actually 7'5"x11'5" when you consider the 2x4 framing) with a door in the middle of the 12 foot section. The room will be used for cloning/vegging/flowering and most storage though I can use adjoining space, I just prefer not to. I can safely ventilate as much as I want. Plenty of power. No water in the room but I can drive my truck up to the door with RO water I make at home (three cheers for living in a big building where water is unmetered).
For now I'm doing everything in Fox Farm Organic Soil with Cutting Edge Nutes. I put a layer of hydroton in the bottom of 3 gallon pots then mix a little into the soil and that's it. Eventually I'll switch to an advanced hydronpic system but for now I'm keeping it simple, really simple. Plus I've had very good results with that combination.
Since the door is in the middle and I want to do everything in there I plan to divide the room into equal thirds. A central vegging/cloning chamber, ~4x8, and two ~4x8 flowering chambers to either side running on opposite 12/12 cycles.
Technically one or both will be 11:45 minutes so that power usage is essentially constant. Call me paranoid but I'm not taking any more chances than I have to. With this my power consumption stays constant aside from a small dip twice a day. It will look a lot like a server that resets twice a day, especially when averaged hourly as I believe my meter reports it.
In the center vegging area I was imagining two 4'x1'x'6' high open metal shelving units on casters with standard 4' florescent tubes plus some storage. If I decide to send mothers to flower when they get big then this is all. If I grow the mothers out they'll get their own pots on casters with their own lights. The flowering chambers will be separated by a ~7' high wall of panda film from floor to ceiling. It will have a zipper ~4" off of each wall and the giant center flap can be rolled up and velcroed to the ceiling when accessing the flowering chambers.
In each of the identical ~4'x8' flowering areas I was planning to build a ~7.5'x3.5' table with a water basin beneath and the plants sitting on top of a taught chicken wire fence above that. The pots will each have a pair of .5 gal/hr drippers set to a 15-minute increment mechanical timer. So at preset times they will get 15 minutes of watering automatically. Since all plants, young and old, will get the same amount of water there will be a lot of runoff but that will just drip down through the chicken mesh into the reservoir below. With the hydroton layer at the bottom of the pot I've found the plants are fine with a lot of runoff though I've never done this before. Previously I would give them a lot of water then drain the excess out of their saucers.
The reservoir will simply be plywood covered by a 20mil plastic pond liner to make it waterproof. Assuming I avoid any jagged edges this should hold water quite well. I'll put a layer of mylar over the top of the table above the pots (making long cuts to allow it to fit around the stems) so evaporation shouldn't be a problem. At 3.5'x7'x a hair over 6" deep the reservoir holds 100 gallons. I would make it at least 1' deep and then I can bring water over and add nutes in 100 gallon increments. With a 100 gallon tank and a 1000 gallon/hr pump (surprisingly cheap ~$35) to fill/empty plus fully automated watering that makes the whole water business quite easy despite having to "truck" water in. At 7 gallons a day I would have to drive over some RO water and add nutes all of twice a month. I like the sound of that and if I get lazy I can store water in the adjoining space. It sounds great but what do the experienced growers think?
I imagine I'll start out with 18 plants per table, so 3x6 plants in a ~4'x8' area. I'll run a bunch of string along the 8' length and bend them down to it. As clone production ramps up I'll increase the number of plants to hopefully reduce the flowering time. Eventually I have plans for switching over to an aeroponic setup where I don't even bother vegging, just cut long cloans, root them and then straight to flowering but for now, what number of soil bound plants should I aim for? How far from ideal is 18?
For lighting I'll start out with a pair of 600W HPS digital ballasted lights on a light mover. They have the crappy bent metal half-tube spreader but I think they'll do quite well with the light mover taking them back and forth on a 7' track. That's 1200W of HPS for each of the flowering rooms. Do you guys think that's a good number or should I plan to add a third?
I've got seeds on the way. Once they're here I'll grow them into mothers and start what I'm hoping will eventually smooth out into a perpetual grow with close to weekly harvests. I don't have too many grows under my belt but attempts have shown I have a green thumb for cloning so I've at least got that hitch covered.
Ventilation is handled by a large centrifugal fan with a DIY carbon filter blowing into a central box which vents into an acceptable location. I figure I can pick up a simple one-way door for ventilation at Home Depot and when the fan in a grow chamber shuts off with the lights the door will close preventing back flow. Air naturally enters through effectively unobservable vents to the adjoining space I control.
The space is not air conditioned though and I'm worried it may get too hot this summer. In my parts we have weather similar to New York City though a bit cooler to give you an idea of what I'm dealing with. So I'll have to deal with upwards of low 90's coming into the room. The air is a bit cooler than outside thanks to tons of concrete but I'm worried it's not cool enough. What do you guys think? Do I need a portable AC or can I just slug it out? Please tell me I can slug it out because I don't look forward to having to figure out how to route the air when sections are really hot but only for halves of the day and the middle section is always warm. I'd have to figure out how to cool their source which isn't easy either....
Right, so that's my grow room. Picture will eventually follow. Thoughts?
Any idea what sort of yields I could expect with say a solid strain of White Widow?
TLDR: 8x12 chopped up into three 8x4 sections. Two for flowering, the middle for cloning/vegging. The girls sit in pots and soil on top of a big ~3.5'x7' reservoir and they have automated drippers. The runoff just drips back. There are two 600W HPS on a light mover per flowering chamber. The air comes from a concrete warehouse style space and I'm worried it will get too hot.
The Basics: I have an 8x12 room (actually 7'5"x11'5" when you consider the 2x4 framing) with a door in the middle of the 12 foot section. The room will be used for cloning/vegging/flowering and most storage though I can use adjoining space, I just prefer not to. I can safely ventilate as much as I want. Plenty of power. No water in the room but I can drive my truck up to the door with RO water I make at home (three cheers for living in a big building where water is unmetered).
For now I'm doing everything in Fox Farm Organic Soil with Cutting Edge Nutes. I put a layer of hydroton in the bottom of 3 gallon pots then mix a little into the soil and that's it. Eventually I'll switch to an advanced hydronpic system but for now I'm keeping it simple, really simple. Plus I've had very good results with that combination.
Since the door is in the middle and I want to do everything in there I plan to divide the room into equal thirds. A central vegging/cloning chamber, ~4x8, and two ~4x8 flowering chambers to either side running on opposite 12/12 cycles.
Technically one or both will be 11:45 minutes so that power usage is essentially constant. Call me paranoid but I'm not taking any more chances than I have to. With this my power consumption stays constant aside from a small dip twice a day. It will look a lot like a server that resets twice a day, especially when averaged hourly as I believe my meter reports it.
In the center vegging area I was imagining two 4'x1'x'6' high open metal shelving units on casters with standard 4' florescent tubes plus some storage. If I decide to send mothers to flower when they get big then this is all. If I grow the mothers out they'll get their own pots on casters with their own lights. The flowering chambers will be separated by a ~7' high wall of panda film from floor to ceiling. It will have a zipper ~4" off of each wall and the giant center flap can be rolled up and velcroed to the ceiling when accessing the flowering chambers.
In each of the identical ~4'x8' flowering areas I was planning to build a ~7.5'x3.5' table with a water basin beneath and the plants sitting on top of a taught chicken wire fence above that. The pots will each have a pair of .5 gal/hr drippers set to a 15-minute increment mechanical timer. So at preset times they will get 15 minutes of watering automatically. Since all plants, young and old, will get the same amount of water there will be a lot of runoff but that will just drip down through the chicken mesh into the reservoir below. With the hydroton layer at the bottom of the pot I've found the plants are fine with a lot of runoff though I've never done this before. Previously I would give them a lot of water then drain the excess out of their saucers.
The reservoir will simply be plywood covered by a 20mil plastic pond liner to make it waterproof. Assuming I avoid any jagged edges this should hold water quite well. I'll put a layer of mylar over the top of the table above the pots (making long cuts to allow it to fit around the stems) so evaporation shouldn't be a problem. At 3.5'x7'x a hair over 6" deep the reservoir holds 100 gallons. I would make it at least 1' deep and then I can bring water over and add nutes in 100 gallon increments. With a 100 gallon tank and a 1000 gallon/hr pump (surprisingly cheap ~$35) to fill/empty plus fully automated watering that makes the whole water business quite easy despite having to "truck" water in. At 7 gallons a day I would have to drive over some RO water and add nutes all of twice a month. I like the sound of that and if I get lazy I can store water in the adjoining space. It sounds great but what do the experienced growers think?
I imagine I'll start out with 18 plants per table, so 3x6 plants in a ~4'x8' area. I'll run a bunch of string along the 8' length and bend them down to it. As clone production ramps up I'll increase the number of plants to hopefully reduce the flowering time. Eventually I have plans for switching over to an aeroponic setup where I don't even bother vegging, just cut long cloans, root them and then straight to flowering but for now, what number of soil bound plants should I aim for? How far from ideal is 18?
For lighting I'll start out with a pair of 600W HPS digital ballasted lights on a light mover. They have the crappy bent metal half-tube spreader but I think they'll do quite well with the light mover taking them back and forth on a 7' track. That's 1200W of HPS for each of the flowering rooms. Do you guys think that's a good number or should I plan to add a third?
I've got seeds on the way. Once they're here I'll grow them into mothers and start what I'm hoping will eventually smooth out into a perpetual grow with close to weekly harvests. I don't have too many grows under my belt but attempts have shown I have a green thumb for cloning so I've at least got that hitch covered.
Ventilation is handled by a large centrifugal fan with a DIY carbon filter blowing into a central box which vents into an acceptable location. I figure I can pick up a simple one-way door for ventilation at Home Depot and when the fan in a grow chamber shuts off with the lights the door will close preventing back flow. Air naturally enters through effectively unobservable vents to the adjoining space I control.
The space is not air conditioned though and I'm worried it may get too hot this summer. In my parts we have weather similar to New York City though a bit cooler to give you an idea of what I'm dealing with. So I'll have to deal with upwards of low 90's coming into the room. The air is a bit cooler than outside thanks to tons of concrete but I'm worried it's not cool enough. What do you guys think? Do I need a portable AC or can I just slug it out? Please tell me I can slug it out because I don't look forward to having to figure out how to route the air when sections are really hot but only for halves of the day and the middle section is always warm. I'd have to figure out how to cool their source which isn't easy either....
Right, so that's my grow room. Picture will eventually follow. Thoughts?
Any idea what sort of yields I could expect with say a solid strain of White Widow?
TLDR: 8x12 chopped up into three 8x4 sections. Two for flowering, the middle for cloning/vegging. The girls sit in pots and soil on top of a big ~3.5'x7' reservoir and they have automated drippers. The runoff just drips back. There are two 600W HPS on a light mover per flowering chamber. The air comes from a concrete warehouse style space and I'm worried it will get too hot.
