Advice on Deep Water Culture setup

[williebilly234]

DarkRoom Grow Tent 150
Deep Water Culture™ Pro II - 24 Planter
Multi Spectrum Pro 420 (x4)
600 Watt Plantastar HPS Lighting System (1x)
Dual Spectrum 65 High Output (x2 = 4 lights)


So that is the setup I am thinking of going with but I wanted to check if anyone has used the DarkRomm Grow Tent 150 with the SH Pro II 24 planter.

If my math is correct then the tent has 25 sqft and the 4 planters take up roughly 24.125 sqft which seems like it would be a little too tight (mounting fans, lights from the tent.

The tent is 6.6 feet in height and from what I understand I need 2' between the MH/HPS (600W), the planter is about 1 foot in height leaving 3.6 feet for the plants total growth (which is OK, I am going to try short veg state and start flowering at 12'' and go with a shorter strain).

The lumens per square feet should be 8432, which is a little lower than my target of 10,000 per square feet but my understand is that should be fine for this type of setup.

I will be keeping the double res outside of the tent and will insulate that seperately (and for easy of access to the res). I want to avoid going to the next bigger tent as I like the idea of a 5x5 pod and I would be able to get 4 into the room I will be using.

So this would be phase 1, phase 2 would duplicate the setup and make one a pure veg room and the other a pure flowering room and the closet will end up being the bonsai mother/cloning stating (might go with a small tent for the mothers).

The idea I am going with is creating a Grow Pod (the tents appeal to my sysadmin nature). Still need to work on the cooling setup but will play with that once I get the equipment and do a test run with Basil or something. The room has an air conditioner and venting heat is nothing new to me (same principles as a data centre).

The light config I plan on using:

- 600W M/H
- 4 CFL 420 Pro (2 in pure veg config, 2 in multi)
- 4 clap 65 (2 veg, 2 flower config)

Too much? too little? 8400 lumen per sq ft seems ideal, I think when I get my pure veg room it will be all cfls and use the HPS in the flowering room, not sure 5x5 seems to require ALOT of cfls.

So the questions I have are:
- advice on the setup (i.e. lights is it over kill? I want to max the potential yield)

- Darkroom Tent 150 (5x5x6.6) is that going to be too tight to get all 4 planters into it? It *should* fit but theory vs real world that doesn't always work.

- General comments

btw: BIG thanks to Roseman and MostlyCrazy and all the contributors, wish I had a resource like this back in 98(last grow I did...did NOT end well...man I was a stupid kid). Roseman you tutorial saved me from going down the aeroponics route which seems much harder and more expensive to do. THANK ALL OF YOU!! YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!! and I promise to get a grow thread going when I get it all setup (3-4 months down the road, then when taxes come in doubling the setup )


p.s. I wasn't sure if this should go to the grow room specific forum or not, I posted here since I am looking for specific advice on Deep Water Culture room.

 

[williebilly234]

lol ok note to self: don't do math when I am baked

went over the numbers again, they didn't see right to me and then I realized the planters are *not* 24 sq ft, they are 2 sq ft.. haha

that means the Darkroom 120 is perfect for them and the planters should take up roughly half the space.

That made me happy but it was starting to get a little bigger than I wanted (eventually want one tent for a veg room and 1 for a flowering room).

That also let me get my lights under control with 6 65w (1/2 6500k and 1/2 2700K) and 2 420 watt multi spectrum. When I got my math right (lol still kicking myself on that, sooo obvious when looking at it).

so now that I am doing math correctly, that means with the tubs I am looking at using (2x1.33x1.04) larger than the what is currently being used (Rubbermaid rough neck 53L/14Gal, still looking for smaller).

so each container gives me 384 sq inches to work with and leaving a diameter of 6.9 inchs (should be the same total diameter the 2 sq ft containers use) that would allow me to have 8 planters per planter, the concern I have is the extra volume that the tubs have, it means I have to maintain 8-10 gallons per res.

Not that big of a deal as I plan on using a water pump to drain the res, tracked down a mini float valve for $10 and will replicate the extra 2 container res (10 gal control, 14 gal holding tank).

So all said and done I can get 8 plants per planter, plus the extra external res and I should have more than 2 inchs between the bottom of the net pot and the water line in the res tank (4 inchs for the pots, 3-4 inchs of water, leaves 2 inchs of height roughly).

So looking good so far, now to look at lumens per square feet.

2 420 watt CFL
6 65 watt CFL

that gives me a total lumen output per sq ft for the whole tent of 5475 lumens/sqft
but I won;t be using all of that space for growning, the actual planters will take up 10 sq ft, leaving me a lumen output of 8192 lumens/sqft, which looks to be a good number and since 6 of the lights are clap mounted it gives me a lot of flexibility on where the lights are placed (thanks again Roseman!).

I am still debating (re: reading opinions of my betters ) on whether to include a 250watt HPS/MH to supplement the spectrum/lumens (advice please on that?)

I am going to go the DIY route as I can save roughly 200$ Cdn on parts that way (might have to order the air/water pumps, they are really the biggest expense and have to track down an irrigation hub but that shouldn't be too hard).

So feeling good again about the size of the room and the potential turn around. part of me is thinking of trying SOG later with a 2x2x1 feet container and using 2inch net pots (total diameter of 5 inchs) would allow roughly 22-24 planters per planter but that runs into the irrigation hub limitations (not sure if there is a 10 or 12 pot hubs and each tank would require 2 water and 2 air pumps but it seems doable, I suppose you could put Y joints into the irrigation tubes to get an 8 port manifold to service 16 2 inch pots).

meh SOG isn;t in the cards to start with, that's my usually 'wandering down a fun tangent' thought process kicking in again

 

[williebilly234]

ahh still doing my maths a little wrong, visual square foot layout (love excel for this using boarders) showed me where I was going wrong

leaving a 1 inch lip around the outer edge the spaces on the length side is:

1"-4"-2"-4"-2"-4"-2"-4"-1" = 24 " length

on the width it is:

2"-4"-4"-4"-2" = 16


That gives the plants 4" of spacing down the middle of the planter between the edge of the pots and 2" between each plant along the length of the planter.

working on the light config I think I am going to add two 85 watt CLF to the setup for the outer corners and rotate those each day to the corners that are not covered or pickup 4 85 watts and put them at each outer corner (where the light from the overhead 420s would be weakest).

still playing around with the light setup but since CFL are pretty inexpensive on the low end there isn't any reason not to pickup extras, I plan on having for each 65 and 85 a 2700k and 6500k bulb to swap out and help balance the veg/flower stages).

From what I have been reading having a bit of red during vegand a bit of blue during flower makes a big difference in growth and yield rates.

cheers