Soon to be Med Grow Room

[TheDurty]

Wow, McBudz, great grow - Just spent the last hour at least reading through it all. One day I would love to have a similar setup.

Haven't checked this post in a few days b/c I thought it had died, thanks for the post.

My grow room will be perpetual, although I won't be able to get 1 harvest a month. That is a great idea you have going there and I just may get there one day, but I certainly do not have the budget for that much light/heat. My whole grow area is a total of 10x5. That area is broken down into two rooms - The veg room is 4x5 and the bloom room is 6x5.

The biggest concern for me is how to ventilate these rooms. They are located in an uninsulated garage (although the rooms will be insulated) that is detached from the house, so no central A/C. It gets about 115 here in the summers, although the humidity is very low. Both intake and exhaust vents are located on the same wall, as you can see in the pictures. Because it gets so hot in the Summer, I will obviously have to use either a Swamp Cooler or an A/C. Even with low humidity, a swamp cooler may not reduce the temps enough to be acceptable for the plants so I may be forced to pay for the A/C.

My idea as of now is to do the following: Build the 2 rooms as I have planned to the according dimensions and use Black/White Visqueen as the 4th wall to the rooms. Then, I will drop another piece of Black Vlsqueen about 3 feet in front of the "4th Wall."
THis will change the total footprint from 10x5 to 10x8. In that 3 foot gap of space in between the "4th Wall" and the second sheet of plastic I will place the A/C unit. This way, the A/C will only have to cool that enclosed area, and not the entire uninsulated garage, and then I can have passive intakes from the "4th wall" into that 3 foot area coming from both Veg and Bloom rooms.

When I am not using A/C I can still pump fresh air from outside into this partitioned off area and still use the passive intakes.

Hopefully this makes some sense. If it is clear what my idea is, do you think this would work?

 

[TheDurty]

Oops.... to answer your budget question, I probably have about 1K to spend on this. I am lucky in the sense that 3 out of 4 walls are literally already built for me - just need to insulate them, throw up some OSB, and then White Visqueen plastic.

A lot of the parts I can also purchas as I go along. For instance, I don't necessarily have to purchase the A/C just yet as its only in the 60-70s here now.

Also...I was thinking of pulling the trigger on this T5HO setup for the Veg room (using 600W HPS for Flowering).

It's a 4 Light, 4 foot, 54W setup. I initially planned on an 8 light setup, but I think two 4 light setups will allow me to more evenly cover the room w/ light. What do you think of this price/brand?

 

[McBudz]

Wow, McBudz, great grow - Just spent the last hour at least reading through it all. One day I would love to have a similar setup.

Haven't checked this post in a few days b/c I thought it had died, thanks for the post.

My grow room will be perpetual, although I won't be able to get 1 harvest a month. That is a great idea you have going there and I just may get there one day, but I certainly do not have the budget for that much light/heat. My whole grow area is a total of 10x5. That area is broken down into two rooms - The veg room is 4x5 and the bloom room is 6x5.

The biggest concern for me is how to ventilate these rooms. They are located in an uninsulated garage (although the rooms will be insulated) that is detached from the house, so no central A/C. It gets about 115 here in the summers, although the humidity is very low. Both intake and exhaust vents are located on the same wall, as you can see in the pictures. Because it gets so hot in the Summer, I will obviously have to use either a Swamp Cooler or an A/C. Even with low humidity, a swamp cooler may not reduce the temps enough to be acceptable for the plants so I may be forced to pay for the A/C.

My idea as of now is to do the following: Build the 2 rooms as I have planned to the according dimensions and use Black/White Visqueen as the 4th wall to the rooms. Then, I will drop another piece of Black Vlsqueen about 3 feet in front of the "4th Wall."
THis will change the total footprint from 10x5 to 10x8. In that 3 foot gap of space in between the "4th Wall" and the second sheet of plastic I will place the A/C unit. This way, the A/C will only have to cool that enclosed area, and not the entire uninsulated garage, and then I can have passive intakes from the "4th wall" into that 3 foot area coming from both Veg and Bloom rooms.

When I am not using A/C I can still pump fresh air from outside into this partitioned off area and still use the passive intakes.

Hopefully this makes some sense. If it is clear what my idea is, do you think this would work?

Pk you are going to have 2 huge source of heat to deal with.

1) the light or lights

2) the environment.

In smaller spaces I always recommend using air cooled reflectors with your HID lights. You will need an inline fan (4 or 6 inch )and ducting.

Several ways to exhaust the heat out of the area.

You can go with one end open on you hood/reflector and have the inline duct action pull air from the room through the light to the outside or to a different area of the garage. Given that you will almost def. need an AC in the summer with those temps this may not be best as you will be pulling your cool air out of the space you need it most.

This is where a "closed" loop system works great for venting your lights. You can hook up a loop where the duct intake is outside air is drawn in from outside , across the lights then forced back outside. This allows your AC air to remain untouched. You can set up some smaller type system to draw fresh air in and exhaust stale air occasionally, every few hours or so. I would filter the air coming in from the outside so you don't bring unwanted pests in.


As far as sizes you are going to want 2-3 times the bloom area as you would need for veg area.

 

[McBudz]

Go for it. I think 2 of those will give your more flex over a 1 8 bulb fixture for sure. T5's are wonderful for vegging.

Oops.... to answer your budget question, I probably have about 1K to spend on this. I am lucky in the sense that 3 out of 4 walls are literally already built for me - just need to insulate them, throw up some OSB, and then White Visqueen plastic.

A lot of the parts I can also purchas as I go along. For instance, I don't necessarily have to purchase the A/C just yet as its only in the 60-70s here now.

Also...I was thinking of pulling the trigger on this T5HO setup for the Veg room (using 600W HPS for Flowering).

It's a 4 Light, 4 foot, 54W setup. I initially planned on an 8 light setup, but I think two 4 light setups will allow me to more evenly cover the room w/ light. What do you think of this price/brand?

 

[TheDurty]

You can set up some smaller type system to draw fresh air in and exhaust stale air occasionally, every few hours or so. I would filter the air coming in from the outside so you don't bring unwanted pests in.

Are you saying I only have to recycle the air in the room every couple hours? I thought it had to happen every 3-5 minutes or so. Is this a practice I should only follow during the hot summer months while running the A/C and then return to every 3-5 minutes?

 

[McBudz]

Are you saying I only have to recycle the air in the room every couple hours? I thought it had to happen every 3-5 minutes or so. Is this a practice I should only follow during the hot summer months while running the A/C and then return to every 3-5 minutes?

Right the 3-5 minutes is a figure used to help exchange hot air out not so much for needed fresh o2/c02 every 3-5 minutes. If running the sealed setup and a/c you are good heat wise. You will just want get fresh air in and out every so often without sacrificing your cool air. If you go with CO2 supplementation you can theoretically keep the room sealed.

 

[TheDurty]

My mind has just been rocked a little bit. This is great news. I thought I would be running A/C 24/7 in the summers. I can insulate the walls that will be air conditioned and it shouldn't be too hard to keep that small area at the appropriate temp. I can't afford a dedicated CO2 system yet so I will still need to vent this out, but this makes it sooo much cheaper.


Thanks for the tip.