First Grow Box

Excited2start

Excited2start

Well-Known Member
So a few months ago I started to turn a cabinet I had in my house into a grow box. The box on the inside is painted flat white and is 6 cubic feet of space. What I first did was choose the lights that I was going to use, since I was trying to save as much money as possible I went with CFLs. For veg growth I am using 3 26 watt at 1600 lumens each(6500k) plus a 55 watt at 3860 lumen(2700k), and i have two tube CFL lights one 20 watt 1300 lumens (3000k) and one 17 watt 800 lumens(7000k). The 26 watts and the 55 watt all are mounted on the side of the box to allow as much room for the plants to grow up wards. I had a couple out dated computers that I was going to scrap so i took out all the fans and wired them to 12v adapters to run them. I have three fans total. Two sucking air out and one sucking air in. the two fans sucking out are near the lights to expell the access heat the generate. The inlet fan I have some dyer ducting that I had left over from what I used for my washer. I have it directing the air to the middle of the of box so that the plants have a breeze going around them. My next thing I am going to add when i get the time is a homemade co2 generator made out of a two liter bottle some warm water sugar and activated yeast. I will be using air tubing for a fish tank to direct the cos over the plants. When it comes time for flowering, I have two more 55 watts that I am going to replace two of the 26 watts with. I am going to leave a 26 watt and the 20 watt that are closer to the blue spectrum. I feel this will help give a good spectrum for the plants to grow. I am currently using it to grow, I have just started my first grow with it. I have never grown before so I hope this works. Feel free to leave any comments or question.
 
How is it hard to read? I do not understand what you mean. It has a nice flow to it and gives all the information that is needed for you to understand what i am doing. Do you mean I should dumb it down? I do not know how to make it any easier to read then it already is.
 
Yea they are correct. I know it is not very big but i have seen people do it in computer towers, and this is bigger then one of those. It is a cabinet big enough to put a 19 inch tube TV on it. So I think it will work fine. I already have six plants that are about 5 weeks old right now that I started from seeds. And they seem to be doing very well as of right now.
 
yes i understand that one plant can get very big,but the plants are not sexed yet and I did not buy the seeds i got them from a bag. I know that they may not be the best stuff, but I am looking for experience before investing money into seeds. Want to make sure I can at least do it before putting up the money and the risk of trying to get seeds sent to me.
 
Excited2start said:
yes i understand that one plant can get very big,but the plants are not sexed yet and I did not buy the seeds i got them from a bag. I know that they may not be the best stuff, but I am looking for experience before investing money into seeds. Want to make sure I can at least do it before putting up the money and the risk of trying to get seeds sent to me.
Click to expand...

Six square feet is plenty for the first time grower. I grow in about eight square feet in the flower closet. You don't need huge plants to get a good harvest. Look into LST, SOG and SCROG.

If the bag seed you have was from a large commercial grower, most likely you should be able to grow a better plant. Many journals on here show that it can be done.

Good luck, keep the faith,
Prairie
 
Thanx for the info. I felt that the space was sufficient and should be alright for my first grow. Not to mention that I live on 186 acres of land so if the plants do get too big for the box I can just move them out side. I was looking into SOG and want to set up my box for that method. What are they other two? are they pretty much the same thing as SOG just called something different? Or are they something different? any information on them would be great.
 
Excited2start said:
Thanx for the info. I felt that the space was sufficient and should be alright for my first grow. Not to mention that I live on 186 acres of land so if the plants do get too big for the box I can just move them out side. I was looking into SOG and want to set up my box for that method. What are they other two? are they pretty much the same thing as SOG just called something different? Or are they something different? any information on them would be great.
Click to expand...

Reading through this post will help answer lots of questions.
How to Grow Marijuana Everything You Need to Know

SCROG (Screen Of Green) is taking SOG a step further making it ideal for small grow area's. The basic ideal is to train the plant onto a flat screen. Positioning the bud sites evenly across will allow for better overall light coverage as the plant goes through flowering. It brings all the bud sites to an equal plane. They all get the same amount of light. You won't get a super huge big bud off your plant doing it this way, but you will get a larger overall harvest in weight.

LST is Low Stress Training. This is gently forcing the shape of the plant. You tie and bend the plant onto the horizontal plane to grow at. This will cause the secondary branches to grow out. Again, the ideal is to bring more bud sites into the ideal distance from the light.

Hope this help, keep the faith,
Prairie
 
Excited2start said:
I had a couple out dated computers that I was going to scrap so i took out all the fans and wired them to 12v adapters to run them. I have three fans total. Two sucking air out and one sucking air in. the two fans sucking out are near the lights to expell the access heat the generate. The inlet fan I have some dyer ducting that I had left over from what I used for my washer. I have it directing the air to the middle of the of box so that the plants have a breeze going around them.
Click to expand...

Hey man, in the process of building my cab and concerned about overheating for DWC reasons. Wasnt sure if you could tell me how happy you are with the fans you have running in their. Just cant quite make up my mind on sizes.

Im looking to run a set of intake/outtakes across the top to keep my CFLs heat moving out and another parralled set across my res/plants in the base of my cab. My cab is about 4' tall, with a 30" by 22" base (roughly 24 cubic') and Im wondering if 4 120mm fans will be enough. Thanks!!
 
Well you should first find out how many Cubic feet per minute the fans are. Since I used old fans and my box is a little bigger then a PC box it just made sense to use them. Mine move about 3 cubic feet a minute. Two of them are at the top of the box by the lights, and I have two sucking air in. I attached one to the box sucking air in. Then I put dryer ducting on it to direct the air and added another to the end in the box. I find this really help divide the work load on the fans and keeps a nice breeze in my box. I have added one more fan on the inside to help circulate air around the plants.




I would have to say that I am very happy with them and how they are working. Between the five fans the temp never gets over 85 degrees. The biggest thing is just to make sure that you get ones that can move the air out of the room at a moderately fast pace. I found fans online that are 120mm and they move 12 cfm. So if you had two of these types of fans sucking air out you will move 24 cubic feet of air a minute. this would be way more then you need because they say you should be able to move the air out of the box every five mintues. I dont know if the information I just gave will help you, but hopefully it does some what.
 
Great answering Prarie...
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to PrairiePoet again. I'll get ya next time!

PrairiePoet said:
Reading through this post will help answer lots of questions.
How to Grow Marijuana Everything You Need to Know

SCROG (Screen Of Green) is taking SOG a step further making it ideal for small grow area's. The basic ideal is to train the plant onto a flat screen. Positioning the bud sites evenly across will allow for better overall light coverage as the plant goes through flowering. It brings all the bud sites to an equal plane. They all get the same amount of light. You won't get a super huge big bud off your plant doing it this way, but you will get a larger overall harvest in weight.

LST is Low Stress Training. This is gently forcing the shape of the plant. You tie and bend the plant onto the horizontal plane to grow at. This will cause the secondary branches to grow out. Again, the ideal is to bring more bud sites into the ideal distance from the light.

Hope this help, keep the faith,
Prairie
Click to expand...
 
Excited2start said:
Well you should first find out how many Cubic feet per minute the fans are. Since I used old fans and my box is a little bigger then a PC box it just made sense to use them. Mine move about 3 cubic feet a minute. Two of them are at the top of the box by the lights, and I have two sucking air in. I attached one to the box sucking air in. Then I put dryer ducting on it to direct the air and added another to the end in the box. I find this really help divide the work load on the fans and keeps a nice breeze in my box. I have added one more fan on the inside to help circulate air around the plants.
I would have to say that I am very happy with them and how they are working. Between the five fans the temp never gets over 85 degrees. The biggest thing is just to make sure that you get ones that can move the air out of the room at a moderately fast pace. I found fans online that are 120mm and they move 12 cfm. So if you had two of these types of fans sucking air out you will move 24 cubic feet of air a minute. this would be way more then you need because they say you should be able to move the air out of the box every five mintues. I dont know if the information I just gave will help you, but hopefully it does some what.
Click to expand...

So far Ive been looking at these puppies:
SilverStone 120mm Shining Blue LED Case Fan with Rifle Bearing Noise Level 26.6 Db FN121-BL
they run for about $9 a piece on amazon and move 54CFM haha. Just gotta isolate which wire is for the LED to cut that BS out. And like Ive said, ill prolly pick up 6. Two sets of intake/out take, one for my ONA filter, and one spare, who knows, maybe I will only need one in the top and one in the bottom, we'll see. Any ideas?
 
I would start off with one in the top of the box near the light and another sucking air in on the bottom. As well as one inside the box to circulate the air around in the box better. But this is only my opinion. You could do two in two out and two in the box to circulate air as well. if you find that one in and one out does not work well enough for your needs.
 

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