Review my shopping list, before I go shopping

Bit of background, my Mum has had severe back pain for a number of years and the doctors keep prescribing tramadol, she was on 8 a day and it was preventing her from pretty much doing anything normal. Her friend put her on to marijuana and she's found it a whole lot better than the pills. I thought I’d try my hand at some gardening to save her the effort of trying to track down gear all the time, and my friend has a space to grow, if I put it all together. I've never done this before so I wanted to get some opinions and feedback from people who have.

That's where you come in...

If you find anything you can answer or comment on, I would greatly appreciate it.

The space is a standalone cupboard in a well ventilated room with useable space of 50cm deep x 55cm wide x 117cm high, about 0.32175 cubic metres, or 11 cubic feet (If the online conversion calculator I used is correct).

It is going to be quite hard to run ducting outside the room for the exhaust, is this a deal breaker?

I thought that running LED lighting would be good to reduce the risk of overheating, the two available locally are a 90W unbranded light (http://sog.shopau.biz/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=62&products_id=1584) and a 2x75W light using Epistar LEDs (http://www.easygrow.co.nz/led-grow-lights/767-2-x-50-watt-integrated-led-grow-light-.html). Would you recommend one over the other, and if so, why? If you’d recommend not going with LED lights could you please link me to an explanation of why they might be a poor choice for this situation?

For the exhaust fan I was thinking something along the lines of a 100mm centrafugal with carbon filter (http://sog.shopau.biz/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=1173) but not sure if this is enough for the space?

Is an active intake fan required as well, or just passive intake?

In terms of light/odour leaks I’m having trouble figuring out how to get a power cable in through the box without introducing any gaps, currently I’m thinking that when I jigsaw out the hole for the exhaust fan I could cut out an extra bit the diameter of a power cord, and slot the cord into it before the fan goes in and then use putty to close any gaps.

It will also require a removable front panel, I was thinking of just screwing this on to create a closed box, and unscrewing each time I need to go inside, but this seems like a lot of extra work, any tips on creating removable panels that do not introduce leaks?

Is there any major component I am missing?

Cheers!

Im glad your mother is doing better with the good herb! Great mission man.

Im not too sure what you mean about not being able to have ducting outside the room. If you mean everything needs to be contained within the cabinet, youll be alright.

With that space I'd run with CFL's. Its similar to my space and I have no experience with LEDS so cant help you on that one. CFL's are great though they dont run super hot and are the easiest with installing and wiring. You can have a few vertically on the sides and install a few on a hanging fixture. You have enough space to run a cooltubed 300w comfortably if you wanted to too. Looks like budget isnt restricted too much.

You dont need an intake fan. A passive will create negative pressure and bring all the air through it and the filter. That fan/filter combo is crazy expensive though. I got a well known brand S&P fan for less than a hundred bucks and my diy filter was 25. Anyway the specs on it are good for your space.

Drill a hole big enough for the cord and duct tape the inside around it. Works for me. Ghetto but hey. You can also run it through a pvc corner air intake/lighttrap.

Get some cabinet hinges for the front panel and install a legit door. That screw stuff doesnt sound fun. Plausible, but not fun. Weather stripping works wonders for light proofing and seals up the tiny crack from the hinges.

Is stealth a big concern? A tent makes shit so easy I wish I had one but Ive built my cab NGB style.

GL

Buy a nice tent like a Secret Jardin. Put a nice LED in it like an Area 51 or Platinum LED and be done with it. I built my own cabinet when I started out a few years. It worked but nothing like my tents work. The tents are purpose made. Some of their functions won't be apparent to you until you learn the hard way maybe.

surfsem said:

Im not too sure what you mean about not being able to have ducting outside the room. If you mean everything needs to be contained within the cabinet, youll be alright.

Click to expand...

Yep, meaning that after going through the carbon filter it will exhaust into the room. Glad to know this is possible!

surfsem said:

With that space I'd run with CFL's. Its similar to my space and I have no experience with LEDS so cant help you on that one. CFL's are great though they dont run super hot and are the easiest with installing and wiring. You can have a few vertically on the sides and install a few on a hanging fixture. You have enough space to run a cooltubed 300w comfortably if you wanted to too. Looks like budget isnt restricted too much

Click to expand...

Very interesting, I hadn't considered CFL's but I will read some more threads about them, I think I saw a lighting thread on these forums - I'll read that again and see what is available here in New Zealand.

surfsem said:

You dont need an intake fan. A passive will create negative pressure and bring all the air through it and the filter. That fan/filter combo is crazy expensive though. I got a well known brand S&P fan for less than a hundred bucks and my diy filter was 25. Anyway the specs on it are good for your space

Click to expand...

This is a big surprise for me, I had just sort of assumed you would need to have an intake fan that matched the exhaust fan, so good advice thanks! The price may be a bit higher because it's in New Zealand dollars and there's not much available locally, and I didn't want to do a DIY filter for my first run in case I got it wrong

surfsem said:

Drill a hole big enough for the cord and duct tape the inside around it. Works for me. Ghetto but hey. You can also run it through a pvc corner air intake/lighttrap.

Get some cabinet hinges for the front panel and install a legit door. That screw stuff doesnt sound fun. Plausible, but not fun. Weather stripping works wonders for light proofing and seals up the tiny crack from the hinges.

Click to expand...

Great idea!

surfsem said:

Is stealth a big concern? A tent makes shit so easy I wish I had one but Ive built my cab NGB style.

Click to expand...

I had been skeptical about how air-tight the tent's would be, in terms of odour leaks, but I could start looking at them more and figure out if I could get one that fits inside the space... I probably couldn't get away with a standalone tent - I would still need to put it inside something else.

Thanks for all your help, really appreciate it!

BigEasy1 said:

Buy a nice tent like a Secret Jardin. Put a nice LED in it like an Area 51 or Platinum LED and be done with it. I built my own cabinet when I started out a few years. It worked but nothing like my tents work. The tents are purpose made. Some of their functions won't be apparent to you until you learn the hard way maybe.

Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to help out

Both replies have mentioned getting a tent... that's a big clue that I should be rethinking this before I go charging ahead with my plan. I'm just not sure at this stage if I could have a tent setup without it being inside something else. I'm having a look at those Secret Jardin tent's now.

Are you able to comment on how air tight they are, and whether you need to be more careful with the noise levels of the fans?

The tents are not airtight. I leave the vents open on mine. I have an oscillating fan inside that runs on the same timer as the light. I have it in an extra room downstairs in the basement that I don't use for anything else that I can keep locked. I don't need a carbon filter or any of that where I live. I just open the windows a bit when I get home from work and let everything air out.

Ah cool, thanks for the update. I will probably carry on with my plan to build an MDF cabinet that sits inside the standalone cupboard, there will be airflow in and out of it, with filter on the exhaust, but the rest will be airtight.

I also need to figure out how to treat the inside walls/ceiling, some people I see have used reflective material and others have just painted it white. Still not sure what is best from these two options.

OtautahiGreen said:

Ah cool, thanks for the update. I will probably carry on with my plan to build an MDF cabinet that sits inside the standalone cupboard, there will be airflow in and out of it, with filter on the exhaust, but the rest will be airtight.

I also need to figure out how to treat the inside walls/ceiling, some people I see have used reflective material and others have just painted it white. Still not sure what is best from these two options.

Click to expand...

I chose this white compressed sawdust board thing that's heavy as hell and is meant for shelving. Melamine or something was the name. Anyway it was thick enough to use that I didn't need framing and it was already white so I didn't need to paint anything.

Sort the threads in the cfl section by most viewed and it'll give you some of the best threads on the site to read and reference from. There's also a micro grow section that will show you what others are doing in similar spaces.

This guy pulls ounces out of a cardboard box and cfls
rollitup.org/t/4th-cfl-grow-with-jungle-growth-soil-blue-mataro-and-afghan-kush-x-train-wreck.380156/