OK Steve here is the plan. You need two sea containers buried in the ground, one to house your generator, cooling equipment, a few hundred gallons of RO, and everything like that. The other one can be all grow space. That way even if there is an earthquake and your house is destroyed your grow will be OK! I figure you will have room for about 2500gallons of fuel.
Stevehman's Advanced LED's Height Test - 720W - Gigabud - Grow 5.0
- Thread starter SteveHman
- Start date
OK Steve here is the plan. You need two sea containers buried in the ground, one to house your generator, cooling equipment, a few hundred gallons of RO, and everything like that. The other one can be all grow space. That way even if there is an earthquake and your house is destroyed your grow will be OK! I figure you will have room for about 2500gallons of fuel.
Interesting grow. I hope the light give ya some good buddage. Kind of be nice to see what comes out. I almost got some LEDs to try, but from all I seen alot of peoples have problems getting meat on the bud. Looks like you have a good bank of lights I need to go back afew and see whats up. But myself I opted for two 1000 watters on rails with a good air cooled hood. Working great for me. And really hasn't done alot on my electric bill. But then I have alot on my electric that isn't plant usage. Well GL on the grow ++ across for ya Keepem Green
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- #103
Norcaliwood, this is my 5th grow using LEDs, have had some pretty meaty buds in the past few grows, this one is shaping up to be a very good yield. I wouldn't discount LEDs as a whole, there are some lower end units that don't produce, but the lights I use are at the higher end when it comes to quality and output.
Thanks for stopping by. If you cruise through the other journals I've done you will see some serious bud porn courtesy of light-brights
Thanks for stopping by. If you cruise through the other journals I've done you will see some serious bud porn courtesy of light-brights
- Thread starter
- #104
Day 15 in 12/12:
pH 5.7
PPM 1099
EC 2201
Res Temp 67
temp 84
RH 64%
The girls have been drinking a ton of water, about 5 gallons a day. I am filling the top-off res every 2 days. They are also going through about 5 gallons of nutes every two days as well (based on the PPM drop). I have been adding nutes every two days to keep the PPMs in the range, mixed based on a 5 gallon addition.
I'll be doing some more trimming this week. I have been removing a lot of the lower small growth and anything that looks thin growing towards the inside of the plants. I want to keep the airflow going through them as much as possible. Here's a shot of the "trunk" of one of the girls, and a good example of why I Top/FIM them while still in the cloner (as soon as I have a root mass the size of a golf ball):
Here is a shot of the girls. It looks like they're done with their stretching. I'll be raising the light on the end for the rest of the grow to see if there's and effect on yield.
For 15 days in bloom, they are looking pretty good. They're putting on some weight and the stems are getting thick in anticipation of a massive weight gain. The stem in that last picture is thicker than a pencil, an it's near the top!
Comparing the Gigabuds in the NFT to the ones in the Hempy, the NFT is much bigger (bud-wise).
pH 5.7
PPM 1099
EC 2201
Res Temp 67
temp 84
RH 64%
The girls have been drinking a ton of water, about 5 gallons a day. I am filling the top-off res every 2 days. They are also going through about 5 gallons of nutes every two days as well (based on the PPM drop). I have been adding nutes every two days to keep the PPMs in the range, mixed based on a 5 gallon addition.
I'll be doing some more trimming this week. I have been removing a lot of the lower small growth and anything that looks thin growing towards the inside of the plants. I want to keep the airflow going through them as much as possible. Here's a shot of the "trunk" of one of the girls, and a good example of why I Top/FIM them while still in the cloner (as soon as I have a root mass the size of a golf ball):
Here is a shot of the girls. It looks like they're done with their stretching. I'll be raising the light on the end for the rest of the grow to see if there's and effect on yield.
For 15 days in bloom, they are looking pretty good. They're putting on some weight and the stems are getting thick in anticipation of a massive weight gain. The stem in that last picture is thicker than a pencil, an it's near the top!
Comparing the Gigabuds in the NFT to the ones in the Hempy, the NFT is much bigger (bud-wise).
Great job, Steve! 
Those are some serious trunks!
Those are some serious trunks!
Very impressive. keep it up.
cryodude
New Member
Looking awesome Steve. But they always do. Can;t wait to see how this experiment shakes out in another 50 days or so!!
- Thread starter
- #108
I am going to have a serious pile of nugs from this test. I need to get a trimmer and I will be designing and building a dryer box for the harvest. I'll put that into the DIY section when I make it. It should be able to handle 3~4lbs and keep a fairly constant RH for a more controlled drying environment.
Plants looks great, can't wait for the final results on the height differences.
Whatcha looking at for a trimmer???
I had looked at trimmers a while back and they were pretty pricey, starting at about $250 for one of those salad bowl things you have to crank.
When I checked into making a DIY trimmer, there really wasn't too much. Some modified box fans and dremel/weedwhackers, but nothing that really looked effective.
Some of those commercial trimmers look incredible but are huge and VERY expensive.
But, I only have a couple of plants being harvested at a time. If I was doing a few pounds instead of a few ounces, I'd definately have a trimmer!
Let me know what you find!
I think with SteveHman's DIY skills, he'll Frankenstein up some bizarre hybrid of shop-vac and dog clippers. Think a Flowbee for meds!
- JZ
Love it! Exactly what I was thinking too. Nice Jozo! I could use a Flowbee at the moment... Getting a little shaggy up top.
Grow is looking fantastic Steve - love the pics of your plant base after Fimming/topping. Is that what you did is FIM? (sorry high, and maybe missed that!)
Super healthy looking grow bro!
- Thread starter
- #114
I could make one, but it would probably cost me as much in time and materials as the ones I'm looking at online (fleabay, about $400, search trimpro). If I had the time and equipment I would make one, but it would end up costing as much as the ones that are already done. Although a flo-bee type device may be fairly easy to make....I think with SteveHman's DIY skills, he'll Frankenstein up some bizarre hybrid of shop-vac and dog clippers. Think a Flowbee for meds!
I FIM'd these, although some were topped. That's the thing with FIM'ing, if you don't do it right it's just topped. I did all of them 2~3 times to get them bushed out. Depending on their size I did them 3 times (note to self, no more than twice in the future).
Thanks Sisco, glad you're along for the ride.
- Thread starter
- #115
Iron Chef Challenge poll is up:
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Iron Chef Challenge
Well looked back abit. I can see that LED's seem to work good on veg and early flower. I see don't see and what I call fat ass buds. We all grow our own ways and I've always said LED could be the future. I have a friend hes got those, what are they, 600 watt panels, I think, going. Hes been doing 2 of them in a 4x8. He grew some N-Lites#5 and I did also from the same seed package, cept mine under a 1000 watter. His yield was like 60% of mine. And he flowered 5 days longer. I can't call it, maybe I'm just a creature of habit, but I'll stick to the HID Myself. I see you got a areoponic system going. I hear tale those are one of the fastest producers there is. I've only dabbled in top feed or drippers myself. Areo is suppose to be the gospel of speed.. Don't ya have alot of trouble with support if ya have to move the plants at all? Or you keeping them small? I know even my drip ring units flop over when there is some head weight on the plant. Well whatever works for ya guy. I hope you enjoy a great harvest and Keep em Green
He used 1200W of LED vs your 1000W HPS? Please provide the brand of those lights, my thought is they are Chinese 4 band lights. The lights Steve (and I) are Advanced LED's using 3W diodes and 11 different bands of light proven to produce big dense buds.
If you can produce greater than 0.75g/ W with HPS I beg you to make a journal so we can learn your secrets.
- Thread starter
- #118
I figured buds the size of soda cans out of a SOG would be considered to be pretty good size and 20+ ozs dried-trimmed and cured from a 2x6x4 space would be fairly impressive. But, I can see you're a hard man to impress. So on the current grow I am trying to out-do that grow by 50% and deliver 30 ozs dried-trimmed and cured.
As for the aero, that thing is amazing in how fast it is growing these plants. They are easily twice as far along budding as their sisters in the hempy buckets (both went 12/12 same day). No issues in support yet, but if I need to keep them upright I will do what I did on Grow 3.0 with the bungees--worked great!
As far as comparing to an HID, I have not grown with them so have no opinion (at least not based in experience). I do feel confident though that I could get as good a result with the same wattage in lights (600w LED vs. 600w HID). I am always skeptical about claims of an LED drawing 200w being equal to a 1,000w HID.
I wonder how the results would have turned out if you used the LEDs and your buddy used the HID. I think grower experience has more to do with the results (or maybe he had sub-par LEDs, the really good ones cost quite a bit more).
Either way, glad you're here for the grow, and I hope to add to your knowledge base, not convinced I can change your mind, but maybe sway your opinion a little.
OG13
New Member
As far as comparing to an HID, I have not grown with them so have no opinion (at least not based in experience). I do feel confident though that I could get as good a result with the same wattage in lights (600w LED vs. 600w HID). I am always skeptical about claims of an LED drawing 200w being equal to a 1,000w HID.
Hearing this from you means quite a bit to me. Never believed the claims, and haven't seen the side by side yet. For our scale you could not cost justify them, not on "energy savings" or heat output. You guys can have more plants, but we have cheap electricity.....
- Thread starter
- #120
I wish we had cheap rates here, we pay about $2.43 a kwh, in Seattle they pay about third of that. SDG&E actually raised the rates this year because as a whole San Diegans were using LESS power, so they had to make up their revenue shortfall by hiking up our rates.
If you have cheap power enjoy it.
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