PC Case grow - Stealth + Perpetual + LST

v12xjs said:

Here's those pics Dr.Blunt

There's a 92mm fan shoehorned into the inside of the case pushing air out. The blue thing is a plastic food container. The blue keeps the light out (or in) and the outer fan is sucking air through as well. Inside the blue container is a folded strip of cooker extractor hood filter.
I used to have the top of the container bonded to the case so I could just snap it off to replace the filter, but the top was clear and let light in so the blutack acts as a temporary fixitive and light seal until I can work out a better system.
That outer fan is the noisy one in my system. With that unplugged there is no noise at 6v, but it helps keep the exhaust efficient so it stays.

Here's the pics:

Click to expand...

Thanks alot im gonna use somthing like yours for my grow box i just havent figured it out yet.

why dont you put the 120mm fans on the outside of the case?

Hope it helps Dr.Blunt. Keep us posted on what you do.

Cheers again floridasucks. At present I can't work out how to do it so it improves on what I have. The bottom of the container is perfect for that 80mm fan. There is an adapter available to convert a 120m fan to an 80m hole so I'll pick one up next time I see one. I'll let you know how it goes.

Got some pics while I served the ladies breakfast just now. Here you go:

Heh. I'm at 'almost' because I've been trying to germ bagseed for f'ing ever. All my seeds are some 10 years old. As crazy as this sounds, I'm in a locale where we got nothing but sensi. I have heard of only one dude with seeded stuff in the past 5 years and that was accidental. The fuzz really put the smackdown on the schwagg rings and even the midgrade stuff.in the area. If people here want to smoke, they gotta pay $360 min. every time. I've been coping with that forever, but just got tired of 10 years of $360 per and felt like it was time to finally do it. Well.. as I said, the seeds are bought and on the way, so I should be posting some cool shit up here soon.

As far as the power thing goes, I ditched the psu's from the cases for space and went with a semi-ghetto setup with very decent surge protectors and light plugin converters, so my fans are all ac in one of the cases and the other 2 5 volt dc's are wired up via a modified cell charger. I'll be starting my journal soon to discuss the mechanics of it all more indepth prior to my seeds arriving, so.. pics soon.

Keep up the great work. Also.. a couple questions..

1. What is your per-plant yield?

2. What's the structure of your perpetual? You start from seed or do you clone somewhere in there? I'm planning on vegging a couple weeks, nabbing a clone from the mommy and flowering the mommy as soon as the clone roots. The clone, then becomes the new mommy until it's veg'd enough to take a clone from her and repeat the cycle. Lucky for me, I have room for several cases and it's really not out of the ordinary for me to have a lot of computer cases in my house.

I feel for you on those prices faceplate

Looking forward to debating some tech stuff on that journal of yours too. My perfect goal is to have a motherboard in there too so it IS a pc. Stealth squared
Send me a link when you get it going.

All plants are a bit different and we all make mistakes so crops vary. That's why I do my system. If this was a higher yielding scrog and I eff up all is lost. This way I'm only ever 3 weeks away from a full recovery.
I just use the wet loo roll in a tupperware container trick to germ. I germ 1 every 3 weeks or so. Never anything more than an 8 week strain. I've had longer ones in and tried running 5 plants but this is more manageable. I'll germ the next one 24 hours before Granita finds out the axe-wielding truth about me

I got about 14g out of a badly nuteburned LR#2 and that's about the worst I've had. 20g+ is what I expect but I just use safe nute levels and miniscule pots. I prefer an easy life to max yields and a gram a day is plenty for my needs.

put linux on that motherboard and you'll be my hero. So.. here's my thought on that.. load linux onto a usb stick and do a motherboard that can boot usb and you are GOLD. You don't need a cdrom drive or anything. Driveless computers are easy as pie these days, but watch your humidity levels.

shes lookin nice and crystally. what does it smell like? i dont know if you can do this with your setup but like i said before cut a hole the size of a 120mm in the side of the case. you do have a flat peice of metal that opens on the side, like most cases right? and could you put up a pic of the actual pc case closed up?

Hey faceplate27. My thinking is to put a microATX mobo under the case where the feet screw in. I'm weak on linux skills but I do think it's the right OS for the job. If I can fit it under there then humidity should be contained as there would be 2 seperate chambers.
I'm slowly building up the goodies to make a 2nd case with all the tricks I've learned. The Antec kit looks perfect but they are very expensive cases. I will definitely be fitting a mobo in there but there's no rush just yet.

Greets floridasucks. Checked out your cardboard grow and was very impressed. You should do one of those tv gardening shows Bet your viewing figures would be huge
Thanks again for the suggestions.
Not all improvements turn out to be positive which is why my case is always a bit scruffy and looks like a work in progress. It is. But without knowing exactly what the effects will be I wouldn't want to start cutting up the case.
If you look at the inside pics of the light and heatshield you can just see a fan above the little one I fitted. It blows right into the centre of the bulb, so the airflow coming in starts at the front top and goes to the back top where it is forced down and into the exhaust fan. If I put a side mount fan in there it could interfere with that airflow and cause more heat issues than it solves, so I need to think about it.
Oddly enough I already go against the generally accepted view of cold air in at the bottom front and warm air out at the top rear. I actually found that putting the cold air in at a high level cools down the system faster and better than introducing it low down. It also doubles as a fan over the plants so it's a win, win.
Do you want to see the case in daylight or are you looking for light leaks. Just asking so I can get the pics you want.

gettin quite frosty, good to see you were able to get the temps under control dude, and consider yourself lucky its warm, im running the shower right now cuse this basement has no heat T_T

Thanks LOLsauce.

So are you up and running then?
If it only gets cold in the dark period, try throwing a blanket over the rig 20 minutes before lights out to retain some heat.
Another possible solution if it's available where you are is a heating mat. They are used in home brew wine setups to assist fermentation and they only provide a gentle warmth, but that may be enough for you. You could maybe fit one under the case and have it on a timer that runs opposite to your light timer.
Got any pics up yet?

v12xjs said:

You should do one of those tv gardening shows Bet your viewing figures would be huge

Click to expand...

haha thanx man.. yea your fan setup sounds good, they look real happy anyway. just a pic in the daylight, one with it closed up and one open.

Looks very good for a PC case grow. You gave me an idea. I`m currently growing with CFL`s. Next grow I`m gonna use HPS, so I could make another small cab with CFL`s and put some clones there. Extra bud always is good!

What strain You have there?

Will do FS.

I'll post them tomorrow as the lights are on 10pm to 10am.
Forgot to describe the smell for you. Granita has a very strong deep smell. My clothes are still smelling of it from the 2 nights with the door open while I had the heatwave. It's mad when I open the door though as the next in line to the chopping block is a pure indica and she has that fresh light skunky smell.

Hey dsn. Thanks for stopping by.
You are spot on with your plan. You can never have too much bud

The main plant is Ice Cream and I would strongly rate it so far. An easy grow and very profuse budding. I only got 1 seed which is a shame. There's an Amstel Gold next. Again it came from a seed swap and there's only 1. I didn't have much hope for her as she's pure indica and they don't do well in my system. The 2 youngest are both CH9 Jack and I have another 7 of those so I should be able to learn how to max them after a couple of practice runs.
The CH9 seeds fit my profile of genetics well and are a good price but even better is the fact that those guys welcome questions on any of their range.

ahh thanx for the smell report. why would a pure indica not be good for you system? i would think thats what you want cause it stays short.

I used them a lot to start with for the short stature, but they don't really put out roots and this affects yields a lot. I think they need a veg period to build up a rootball but that's just in my experience and not something I've read.
In contrast the sativas I grew carried on growing roots for the whole grow, sometimes I've had to repot within 2 or 3 weeks of harvest due to this growth.
I now select genetics that are around 80% indica and 20% sativa and they grow into those 1 litre pots perfectly.

v12xjs said:

I used them a lot to start with for the short stature, but they don't really put out roots and this affects yields a lot. I think they need a veg period to build up a rootball but that's just in my experience and not something I've read.
In contrast the sativas I grew carried on growing roots for the whole grow, sometimes I've had to repot within 2 or 3 weeks of harvest due to this growth.
I now select genetics that are around 80% indica and 20% sativa and they grow into those 1 litre pots perfectly.

Click to expand...

wow i never would have thought that. very intresting.

It didn't make sense to me but it's a repeatable experiment so I've had to learn from that.
Much the same with venting cold air in from the bottom. In there it just gave me 2 temp zones. A cool one at the bottom and grill at the top.

The latest big find is in using 6500K light in a 12/12. Granita is the first to benefit from it. All previous grows lost the shade leaves very early in the flowering stage. So much so that I needed to do very little manicuring, but those leaves are bud food so I wanted them to stay on!
10% 6500K and I have lost virtually no leaves.
I would guess that this also works the other way and that a 2700K in veg will help plants to switch to flowering faster, but it isn't an experiment I'll be trying soon as I don't do veg.

Here's a pic from during the heatwave that shows the inside of the case. With the new pots I actually have a bit of free space on the left now and I can't help thinking I can use this for a bonsai mom. I wish I could leave well alone

Here's your pic:

v12xjs said:

It didn't make sense to me but it's a repeatable experiment so I've had to learn from that.
Much the same with venting cold air in from the bottom. In there it just gave me 2 temp zones. A cool one at the bottom and grill at the top.

The latest big find is in using 6500K light in a 12/12. Granita is the first to benefit from it. All previous grows lost the shade leaves very early in the flowering stage. So much so that I needed to do very little manicuring, but those leaves are bud food so I wanted them to stay on!
10% 6500K and I have lost virtually no leaves.
I would guess that this also works the other way and that a 2700K in veg will help plants to switch to flowering faster, but it isn't an experiment I'll be trying soon as I don't do veg.

Here's a pic from during the heatwave that shows the inside of the case. With the new pots I actually have a bit of free space on the left now and I can't help thinking I can use this for a bonsai mom. I wish I could leave well alone

Here's your pic:

Click to expand...

I went 12/12 from seeds with just 2700k's and having exact same problem glad i found an answer so quickly lol the bottom three sets of leaves are curling and dying off :\
where do u get your 6500ks from? i tryed b&q and wilkinsons and no luck wen i looked before.

This is actually an impressive PC grow. Which case are you using?

nice, inspirational grow you got going..