Extreme conditions

[Robo Jester]

Hey Gang,
Been reading about 6 or more hours a day since I found you all.

I am forming a plan in my head how I want to do my first grow in a few months.

Just wondering anyone else have specific issues I should know about for growing in the desert?

I am thinking a grow box in the garage...but since I live in the "las vegas valley area" is hot as hot can be .

That is one of the reasons I am thinking I may wait till oct to start.

I am leaning towards CFLS since I will be dealing with heat to being with I don;t need more

It appears that CFLs are prefered to TUBES due to the easy of moving them around etc.

I am planning to scrog 2 plants for my own use and to share with visitors. I am that super nice guy who keeps beer in the fridge for company even though I don't drink.

I plan to built my own box as I am super handy DIY kinda guy.

Thanks in advance for any input!

Robo

 

[lootznbootz]

Sounds like you got the right idea. Speakin from experience.
Yes it is possible to grow with tubes but your end result will not be what your expecting.
My first grow i grew with 10 32w tubes and a few cfls mixing the spectrum more warm during flower.
The plants in general stretched way more throughtout the whole grow. Even with them being practically touching the leaves.
Now i use
2 150w cool cfl
3 100w cool cfl and
2 100w warm cfl
To veg under my plants have very tight node spacing
Partly due to genetics but overall its obvious to me the tubes had something to do with it.

I have a 600w hid in a 3x3 tent and 440cfm inline fan and carbon scrubber which normally would be overkill but on hot days i can turn up my fan with my speed controller and keep temps down.
This could be something to think about depending on what you plan on putting into it and expect to get back.
Maybe a small 3x3 box with a 400w and a bigger fan to exhaust heat. Of course youll have to make sure your pulling cold air from somewhere if thats not possible then definetely stick to cfl youll still need to control heat regardless tho cfl still give off some pretty decent heat

Hope that helped

 

[AKgramma]

Robo: You might have to invest in a cooler to lower your temps if you want to grow year-round. But while you are growing in the winter, we up North will be sturggling under almost NO light, very low humidity, and a host of bugs that have moved indoors.

I, too, use CFLs, and find that the more the better. But, it is true that you wont get the tight nugs that LED and HP users get. You'll have to settle for bud pressing in the corner of a baggie to firm up your nugs. I've done this both fresh and after cure, and it works just fine. My smokers , when they are in the mood for whole nugs, like them. In the end, however, most smokers crumble them up or use loose material for joints. So there IS a place for larfy buds!

 

[mrbubbles87]

You'll probably need to get a commercial humidifier or swamp cooler. I have a lot of friends in CO that really struggle with low humidity. I've heard down in NV it's insanely difficult to achieve the 80% that veg plants seem to love.

I would also recommend a T5 light fixture. It will generate heat but not as much as Leds or Hids. I run a 4ft 8 bulb t5 in my 2x4 veg tent and it increases my humidity substantially more than in my LED, t12, or HID tents.

Sent from my SM-N920V using 420

 

[Robo Jester]

Just going to grow my own meds so I am not worried about how tight they are

So long as they are potent !

 

[Robo Jester]

Really torn between CFLS and tubes.

Hows your nugs? Tight?

 

[Kalimaki420]

I would think about some Mars reflector led´s two 96 x 5W.

 

[TorturedSoul]

I am leaning towards CFLS since I will be dealing with heat to being with I don;t need more

It appears that CFLs are prefered to TUBES due to the easy of moving them around etc.

Last time I checked, CFLs were slightly less efficient than tube-type fluorescent bulbs. CFLs do offer more options in terms of placement and are easier to find these days.

The thing about fluroscent bulbs (of whichever type) is that they still produce heat. And they are less efficient than HID (HPS or MH) lights. You might think about the size of your grow area - you want enough light to "fill" it, or to decrease that area's size, so that light is not being wasted. The amount you wish to yield plays a part in this, of course. What I'm getting at is, if you are considering CFLs, you should try to determine just how many watts' worth of them you are likely to end up with. The amount of heat produced by one small-wattage CFL is less than, say, a 400-watt HPS. But if you end up with 400 watts' worth of CFL lighting, lol, you are actually producing more heat than someone running the HPS would. If you doubled your CFL lighting to 800 watts to make up for the efficiency difference, you are producing significantly more heat.

Then, too, is the fact that most HPS (and MH) setups have remote ballasts that can be positioned outside of the grow room (assuming it is a small, personal-sized grow, this can often be done with the length of cord that is supplied with the light). It's a PITA to remove the ballast from a CFL light bulb (it can be done) - and a bigger PITA if you want to do it to a couple dozen bulbs. Therefore, it is easier to remove the ballasts - and heat that the ballasts produce - from HID lights than from CFLs.

Speaking of heat, many HID hoods are "air-cooled." That is to say, they are designed so that the grower can attach ducting and use a fan to move air through them, cooling it and removing a large amount of heat from the grow area. I have seen buds growing right up to the glass, and they were not burned (some got light-bleached from the amount of illumination). A lot of people like to ventilate their grow and their light(s) separately, for various reasons. If one wishes to use supplemental CO2, this allows him/her to turn off the airflow into and out of the grow room for a time (some people have "sealed" grows, but this requires extra planning due to the fact that some heat will find its way into the grow) so that the CO2 sticks around long enough to be taken advantage of by the plants. But even if the grower is not adding CO2, separate ventilation setups can be a good thing. If a single setup is used, it must move more air than either separate setup would by itself. If smell is a concern (and it often is, even in legal medicinal grows)... Carbon filters work better / are more efficient when the air flowing through them is cooler. And you would not have to move as much air through one if a separate setup were used for the light(s). The air that is used to cool an air-cooled hood, OTOH, would not smell like cannabis (assuming that the hood is of good quality & has no structural defects and that your ducting setup is properly sealed). I would think that there would be more options for "disposing of" hot air that does not smell like cannabis, especially if one lives in an area with a hot climate where it would be normal for people to have fans moving hot air out of their houses.

I did see someone once build an air-cooled hood for their CFL lights. But this restricted the number of bulbs and, since they were all in one location (in the fixture he built), it removed the ability to place the bulbs all around his plants. So I do not know how helpful that ultimately was.

I have never grown - or lived - in the desert. But I grew for a while in the attic of a two-story house where the normal ambient temperature was high enough that people told me I was wasting my time. I used an air-cooled hood (HPS), separate runs for cooling the light and the grow room, lots (and lots ) of air moving across the plants, and used the DWC method. I did everything I could to help ensure that the reservoirs that the plants' roots lived in was as cool as possible, but they were still warmer than optimum. At times, significantly warmer. I actually had decent yields. The yields were not great, and the buds were noticeably airy compared to the same strains grow in more hospitable temperatures, but things were acceptable. I attribute my success to the air moving across the plants and to using large DWC reservoirs (one per plant). It was not unusual to have to add seven gallons per day to each (and I think one plant averaged around 13 gallons/day towards the end of flowering). These were fairly large plants, but still... The plants were able to uptake lots of water and transpire it from their leaves, which - with the air moving across them - helped greatly to cool them, in much the same way that our sweat helps cool us on hot, windy days. I also used several large aquarium air stones (with one pump per reservoir) AND one of these:

Darkgrow
...in each reservoir to keep things "stirred up" and to add even more oxygen to the water. I am convinced that the mad levels of DO (dissolved oxygen) is what kept my roots - and, ultimately, my plants - healthy. I very seriously doubt that I could have had the same success in those conditions with a soil grow.

You should be able to grow in your area year round, but it'll take some thought and planning to do well. You might also want to do some research on which strains do better in higher temperatures.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that, like Darkgrow stated, LED lighting might be a viable option for you. Mars-Hydro is a sponsor of this website, they have a good forum presence (their representative, SmokeSara is an active member here and there is a thread where you can read about the company and its products), and their products seem to be both well-regarded and fairly inexpensive (for LED panels).

 

[AKgramma]

TS said that adding more CFLs to a confined area would produce as much heat as a high outout bulb of the same wattage. I would like to check my setup against your statement to see if I am actually producing that much heat:

One of my area is a 2' x 4' clothes closet. I have 10 23Watt CFLs (100 nominal output) of a mix of daylight and soft whites.
The ambient temp in the house is about 70 deg F. The temp in the closet with lights on is 85 deg F. That is a 15 deg rise in temp.

Will 1000 watts of a higher-end bulb only raise the temp in the closet 15 degrees?

Consider, because a standard closet has a shelf installed about 72" up, my headroom is limited. I can't place a 48" plant under an LED or HPS 18" above the plants.

How does my setup stack up against your statement? I am truly curious, and not trying to criticize.

 

[Robo Jester]

^^^ THESE ARE THE REASONS I PLAN TO DO A CABINET AND NOT A WHOLE ROOM Dang caps loc !
Easier and cheaper to control a smaller spaces environment

the heat and the cost to run them is one of the reasons I was leaning away from HPS/MH.

Maybe I am mistaken ....there is much to think about and I thank you all for the excellent info.

Leds may be a "happy" medium.


AK you snuck in while I was typing ...my commnets were about toutureds post.
I also thank you for your input AK

It seems MUCH of this is a coke vs pepsi type thing

 

[AKgramma]

ROBO, once you drink the koolaide, one little cabinet will not be enough!

 

[Robo Jester]

That is why we are at least starting with a small setup ...

Since I do not want to sell there is a limit to what I can smoke.....

I plan to build something small enough to help save me from myself....


But I understand completely ..you should see my tools..I have tools to fix tools!

 

[TorturedSoul]

TS said that adding more CFLs to a confined area would produce as much heat as a high outout bulb of the same wattage. I would like to check my setup against your statement to see if I am actually producing that much heat:

One of my area is a 2' x 4' clothes closet. I have 10 23Watt CFLs (100 nominal output) of a mix of daylight and soft whites.
The ambient temp in the house is about 70 deg F. The temp in the closet with lights on is 85 deg F. That is a 15 deg rise in temp.

Will 1000 watts of a higher-end bulb only raise the temp in the closet 15 degrees?

Consider, because a standard closet has a shelf installed about 72" up, my headroom is limited. I can't place a 48" plant under an LED or HPS 18" above the plants.

How does my setup stack up against your statement? I am truly curious, and not trying to criticize.

You only have a nominal 230 watts. You could go ahead and add the other 770 watts' worth of 23-watt CFLs, lol, which would bring you up to almost 44 bulbs total and I'll give you credit for the ~½
bulb, so just call it 43.

That'd be a lot of heat - yes, only a relatively small amount per bulb... But you can cook meat with candles if you have enough of them.

, NOT 1,000. The "100" that is (I presume?) mentioned on the CFL bulb package is ad-speak for "The illumination from this bulb will seem - to the eyes of a human - to be roughly, in good conditions, comparable to the illumination that the same human would perceive coming from an old-fashioned incandescent bulb." That claim might be somewhat optimistic depending on the bulb, its color temperature, whether or not it is actually using a full 23 watts (some don't), et cetera. But even if it happens to be true, is has nothing to do with growing a plant. To be honest with you, I wish people would speak of CFLs in terms of their actual wattage, because it'd help prevent confusion.

Have you considered a small HPS, MH, or even an LED panel? A 250-watt HPS... Well, that's still not what I'd consider to be enough illumination for the square footage of your space. But it'd be more than you've got now (and not just because it's ~20 watts more) and would have better penetration. You would be producing less gross BTUs of heat and, in all likelihood, have a higher yield. I might almost consider a pair of 150-watt HPS lights if I could find ones that were decently efficient (I've heard that some 150-watt lights are built "cheap"). They wouldn't be able to penetrate as far into a dense canopy as a 250-watt one would, but you might gain more from being able to place two lights in an area that is twice as wide as it is long then you'd lose. IDK. Whether you used one 250-watt or two 150-watt ones, the ability to place the ballast(s) outside of your grow area would help a lot.

Hmm... Now that I think upon it, lol... Many brands of electronic ballasts have multiple output settings. How about TWO 250-watt HPS setups? That'd give you illumination, acceptable penetration, the ability to spread the light out, the ability to set the ballasts outside of the closet, and - with air-cooled hoods - you could remove much of what heat does get produced. Not to mention, with 62.5 watts per square foot of HPS, you would be able to grow just about any pure or predominantly indica strain and even a sativa(-ish) leaning one if you didn't mind that the buds wouldn't be as dense as they would if they were grown under truly fierce lighting. If heat in the Summer was still an issue, you would have the option of turning down the wattage on your ballasts (assuming that you chose multi-wattage ones).

And IDK about all electronic ballasts, but the Lumateks I've used would run either HPS or MH bulbs. With the 400-watt ones, I could use a 400-watt HPS bulb, drive the same bulb at a reduced (~250 watts) output, use a 250-watt HPS bulb, or do the same with MH bulbs. Actually, I don't recall whether or not I ever ran 250-watt MH ones that way, but I do remember using 400-watt ones and turning the power down.

I'm just rambling. Whichever type of lighting (or combination of same) that you end up with in your closet, I hope you add a lot more of it. At least by the time you decide to flower your plants.

Oh, and about your height limit - do consider scrog as a growing/training style. I've grown single plants in closets with low headroom, using scrog, and managed to harvest over eight ounces per. The screen was 14" or less above the top of my container, in that case, a big - but fairly low - plastic tote with a lid (I grew DWC). But I had (far) more light than you do. There was nothing between my container and the screen other than the plant's trunk/stems and I was lucky enough (I won't say skilled enough, lol, because luck played a big part) that my screen was pretty much full, with growing tips going upwards through each hole, and buds on each one. Training those single plant grows was, well, work. Imagine having your screen pretty full, needing to place a tip through a hole, and the nearest one was way over there. Those plants got manipulated more often - and more thoroughly - than the stock market. In the end, they were very nice to me even though I slaughtered them for it . Harvesting was fun - at first - because it involved sawing through the plant's trunk, then disconnecting the screen from the walls so that a friend and I could wrestle it out of the closet (repeat 3x) and carry it to a table. The neat part was, after I sawed through the trunk, I removed the decapitated (at the ankles, lol) plant, along with the tote that the big red Solo cup I'd planted it in was jammed into the lid of, out first - so I got a real chuckle out of the sight when I turned back around to the closet and it was nothing under the screen, a thick and solid carpet of buds over it, and I could barely see the screen itself. Err... Maybe you had to be there.

 

[JuliusFletche]

Nice!!