My first grow room

Why half of your space to prepping and maint? To me I would want to even decrease the space in the veg area and increase the flowering area. I am changing one of my rooms now. For cloning and vegging
I am switching to custom cabinets with separate lighting and ventilation so that I can devote even more area to flowering. My cloning area is going to be a used set of kitchen wall mounted cabinets to even provide me more usable space. But in the end it is all a matter of your personal choice. But, one thing that I know for certain..... The time and effort and thought that you put into your space is more important than anything else. I have seen people with alot of money invested in lights and fans and meters and systems and doodads and the latest geejaws have less than impressive results because of design and layout problems. I have also seen guys with completely homemade jury rigged hand me down systems produce fantastic crops because they thought things through and had every possible thing covered.
I even have one friend that was able to redirect spring water from out of the ground that is so pure you wouldn't believe it with absolutely perfect pH because it percolates up through limestone rock. He can direct it straight into his homemade pvc pipe system to flush. Or he can direct it into his big 55 gal drum when he wants to add nutrients. all by turning a valve. He heats it with an outdoor woodburner when it is cold and cools it with great big water evaporation cooling fans that he got for free from a greenhouse that went out of business. He is working on a combination water wheel , solar and wind power generation idea to help cut his electric bill. Now that guy is a planner!! Best of luck!

Thanks uptheholler;

I plan to grow more than mmj, veggies and such throughout the winter months. I thought having a bit bigger veg area would be nice for that. I'm not apposed to hearing a good suggestion on sizes. I live in Michigan though and I am limited to how much I can legally have, 2.5oz. I have nobody else right now that I'll be growing for, so I thought that the 4'x4' would be more that ample. Thats some thinking outside of the box there, but living in a subdevision will hinder most of those things for me. And I get the gadget fever, every time I looked into something I always found some cool stuff. But being that this will be my first grow, I am trying to hold off on anything crazy. I will focus on a more simple grow. I figure that the LED's will pay for them selves in the long run; are they a gadget? Sure they are, but a justifiable one. I'll try to limit those lights to my gadgets for now. Solar and windpower would be cool, and maybe sometime in the future I'll be able to play with something like that. As for the work area being so large, I figured it gave me room to make a mess, and put a bench in there too, as well as some cabinets for storing nutes, tools and things. I though I would set up a shelving system above the bench and have the bench up against the wall. I could use the shelving system to dry the meds after harvest.

I ran out to home depot today and picked up 40 of 2x4's, pretty sure I can rough the biggest portion of the room with that stack. I still need to get the drywall and insulation. My basement stay a pretty steady 65°F so I'm not sure if I need to insulate it too well. The lights should keep it warm enough in there? I was considering not even hanging the drywall and just using the orca grow film for the walls. My thought was adhering some velcro on the wood and film so that I could pull back the film as a makeshift door if I ever needed to get to the sides of the veg and flower rooms.

Hey Timothypaul,
I wasn't suggesting that you do all of those things! My point was that you can do alot of stuff pretty cheap. From your post it looked like you were devoting half of your space to prep and maint.? As far as light you wont get near the heat off of LED lighting so if you are counting on that for heating you may have an issue. 4x4 for vegging will not leave you much room for other stuff! Best of luck

Thanks for the suggestions.

I have a good start on my room, used up all of my lumber to build 3 walls, and most of a 4th wall. I will add pictures soon.

As for the veg space being small. I am building the entire construction with screws, so that I may customize at a latter date if need be. I am glad i decided to use screws, as I've already had to remove studs to change as I went. I decided after building the first wall that I would like to have doors on all sides of the veg, and flower rooms.

Need to make another lumber run now to get a bunch more 2x4's. All of the extra doors ate up my stock pretty fast

There will be 4 36" doors on each 4x4 room for easy access to the plants.

I am thinking of making a false floor in the rooms so that I can keep the roots cooler. My basement stays around 65, so that's almost perfect for root temp. I can insulate the root zone separate if the rest of the plant, keeping it a separate temp.

I will be adding pics and videos soon.

Subbed, looking forward to pics! Sounds like your got a plan, best of luck with it.
Can't wait to get these panels! I think you'll be able to get all four lights in your flower room, and that is actually the company's footprint dimensions. I'm putting same panels into a 2x6 flower room. Hopefully I get away with three and use the other for veg, but I'm buying with plan to use them all in for flower. Thinking already of getting couple more for veg.

I also plan to use 3 in the flower room and save the 4th for veg. I'll start out with 2 to start a couple of mothers from seed (if they ever get here) and then use a couple clones to start and veg them. Once ready I'll move the clones and 1 light to the flower room, leaving the other on the 2 mothers.

Ok I took some pics of the WIP when I got home from work today. I plan to go get more lumber after work tomorrow. Hope I can get some more walls built this week.

The 4th wall on the floor needs 5 more studs to be completed. So close on my guess...

Ahaha Fuck me..... that's your first grow! Damn i had like a tiny closet my first grow, hell I've been growing since 99 off and on and never came close to anything being framed up in a room That size!! Very outgoing and way to jump in! I like that. Growing herb, fruits and veggies together, i know nothing about. Personally i wouldn't cause I'm So afraid of introducing bugs but i guess that's more of an outside garden problem....i do not know but either way i will be following your grow

Wow man, your've got a great space to work with. Good job. Best to be short and know what to buy to finish, rather than wasting money on to much.
Why is the layout on this thread different than any others I've visited?
Got panels? Peace

Yeah i thought something seem different.... i now notice the layout is different? And a question, you say you want hydro aeroponics but you'll start with soil? Why is that? why not grow soilless If hydro is what your after but don't wanna grow hydro first? I'm only curious

Thanks guys, the layout is different because its a blog and not a thread post. My grow will be put into proper format. I started this before I had 50 posts and wasn't sure if I was allowed to start a post prior to 50 posts. I do have my light panals, they came yesterday, I will post them next week. I will try to wait for my camera to be returned to me so that I can do an Unboxing.

I tried to upload the new pics, but I can't seem to do it from my phone. I'll do it when I get home from work in the morning.

Reason I'm going with soil first, is because it's my first grow. It's more forgiving and will provide me with more time to correct mistakes in watering, nutes and such. Also the extra cost for supplies to do aero, hydro grow. I'll slowly get the gear for that and in time I'll switch to it. Plus with a high brix soil you can have damn good harvests and very nutritious products.

Yeah I'm a big fan of high brix! My next grow i want to do the docbud kit! High brix on your veggies will be so amazingly good as well! Those light panels, good choice. If i had the funds I'd definitely go the same route as you with four small ones.

Here are the new pics. Since these I have installed all of the electrical outlet boxes and ran wires. Still need to finish the wiring and connect them to the breaker box.

Getting there man!! Funny you want to go from soil to hydro as most these days are going from hydro to soil/ mineralised, for high brix results. I'm in process of getting my soil ready and will be doing coir hempys in mean time. High brick especially with growing veggies as well, well that's such better quality produce than hydro, worth a thought.

Thanks for the advice. While I'm doing soil, maybe I won't move to hydro? Maybe I'll get hooked on soil? The thought behind hydro was that I could grow root veggies like beats and carrots. Maybe it won't be so bad. If it tastes that much better i may stick with the soil. Guess I'll find out in due time.

Just a quick update: I have all of the wiring complete, and turned on. I have a good start on the insulation. I plan to get some drywall later this week, as long as the weather will cooperate. Calling for rain, freezing rain, then snow 4-8" expected... Puts a bit of a slowdown into my project. I was hoping to have the drywall hung in the veg and flower rooms by the weekend. That way I could install the orca film and start setting everything up. Oh well Mother Nature wins here lol.

On a side note I have started my seeds for what will become my mother plants. They are feminized Critical and Juicy Spirit from Royal Queen Seeds. I popped the seeds in water glasses for 2 days and put them into soil on Tuesday morning. With on of the IGRO lights on the clone setting above them. They have sprouted this evening but still have their hats on.

I rambled enough for now. I'll try to post an update in video this weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to throw the new mothers in their new home by then.