Grow Project #1 A few concerns

M

MaoZebong

New Member
Hey 420.

I'm about ready to begin work on my first grow-box, and with that, the first grow. But with it comes a few concerns.

First I'll describe my plan. (Very James Bond villain, I know. I apologize. :p)
I'll use a wardrobe I found on the Ikea homepage, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post the link here. I'll seal and sturdy up the wardrobe. The box will have two growing chambers, so I can keep a continuously growing garden. Size is approximately as follows: height 185cm, width 140cm, depth 51cm. I have no idea whatsoever about how to translate that into imperial numbers, but I'll give it a darn good try. Don't shoot me if I'm wrong, plz! :p about ~5'8" by 4'4" by around 1'6''?

I'll use a 10 liter (2,5gal?) bucket and pvc piping with activated carbon as homemade air filtration, and a centrifugal fan, 24W, 179m3/h (Not touching this one!) for ventilation.
And here we come to concern #1. I live in a country where this gift from the gods is still illegal, so the system has to be at least 90% odor free with the doors closed. Is this achievable?

Lights will be HP CFL's.
And this is the second concern. I'll most likely be using 150w or 250w CFL's, and I've read a bit about them. What I haven't found out, though, is do I need ballast for cfl's? Not 100% sure what ballast does. Also, how much light is strictly required, and how much is recomended in a space of this size?

And just for general information, I'll be growing in dirt the first few grows, then hopefully switch to hydro.

Thanks in advance.
 
with good plan on odor control you should be able to do it..
as for lights, clf's have thier own balast built in, so you'r good to go there..
and use as many as possible :) 6500k for veg, and 2700 for flower (and probably one of the opposite mixed in for a full spectrum)

the 100w cfl are really 23w cfl (but a 100w incandecent equivilent)..

are you planning on using 150w cfl, or 150w equevelent?

how are you splitting your space? top/bottom?

based on a number of thread I have read, people reccomend about 50w per sqft,, but you don't really need that, just a good ref,, so if you can put like 3-23w 6500k cfl and 1 23w 2700k cfl for your veg area,, and flip them (3x2700, 1x6500) for flower,, but then as the plant gets bigger, you may need to add a couple more to help get penetration down to the lower parts of the plant

Roseman has a great tutorial on CFL's

CFL Light Tutorial

and this is a neat DIY cfl reflector

DIY CFL Reflector - How To (Simple, Cheap & Effective)


:goodluck:
 
thanks caddie.. really though, all of the knowledge I have came from here,, and the tutorials that the great have put together..

read all the stickies on the different forums,, some great stuff.
 
Hey thanks a lot for that info Herb Zen.

I originally planned on vertical division, but of course I'll get a bigger surface for more plants with a horizontal division. Still not entirely decided on this point though. Haven't actually seen the wardrobe in the flesh yet.

The CFLs I've looked at have only said High Powered CFL 150w and 250w, not sure which type they are. Again, not sure if I can post links to webshops on this forum, so I choose caution. ;)

As for the smell, I think I'll see about getting an ozonator or whatever they're called.
 
The ones I've seen look identical to these ones.

EDIT: And they are supposedly specifically made for growing stuff.
 
ooohhh.. those look like the good ones at least way more powerful than what I was thinking of.. :)
I don't know how much room you got, (outside the tent) or how stealth you are trying to go,, but ig you have room you can check out this thread

DIY Odor Control Bucket

also, ther is this for a carbon filter,, I am thinking of making one like this, but with ducting instead of 5gal bucket...

DIY High Flow Carbon Filter
 
The carbon filter I had planned is almost exactly the same as the DIY High flow carbon filter you posted the link to.

I'm not yet sure what size cabinet I'll end up with. It'll be your general bedroom wardrobe. Trouble is, that's a pretty wide ranging standard... And it'll have to be completely stealth. The info I have already dug up says the system I've planned will be very near the standard I'm looking for, but I'm not entirely sure I trust the sources of the info. Had to double check with you pros here on 420 before I committed all that money.

EDIT: btw: that ona block tip was priceless. Gonna get that for sure. I remember using it while I was an industrial cleaner, but I didn't know they'd made it for residential applications.
 
It'll be your general bedroom wardrobe. Trouble is, that's a pretty wide ranging standard...
Click to expand...

you got that right..lol once you get it, post the dimensions or pics, and we will all help you out in preppin it..

meanwhile, there are a number of stealth setups on these forums for you to get some pointers from...

Amroire Stealth Grow Box Sweet set up Video to watch!

Stealth Dresser NEW! POG - Pure Afgan - Gigabud - Quiksilver and More!



funny story about the Ona,,, my plant was in the bedroom closet, and I had the ona in there to help get rid of odor.. the whole room smelled nice...

then I moved the plant into my new room, and when I took out the Ona,, all te regular bedroom smells surfaced (dirty socks, etc),,, man, my wife was upset because the room smelled so bad now.. lol I gotta get a jar of ona for the bedroom... :rofl:
 
I just made a layout overview of the two options I'm currently considering, without having seen the inside of the wardrobe.

The cheapest way to light this bastard leaves me with 205w cfl for the veg room, and 500w cfl for the bloom room.

Another concern I have is if having the drying room in the same circulation as the rest of the plants. Will it be too moist? If so, will having a sheet filter covering the ventilation hole help?
 
I think that will be way.. complicated.... ;)

why not split into two.. one for veg/clones and one for bloom. you do not need a separate section vor your ventilation,, unless you are talking about a place to put a big fan....

are you worried about smell when drying? You might setup a small box to dry them in, with a little ona to block the smell, but I think putting aside space in teh cab for drying, will take away from valuable growing space,,,,
 
Complicated, how? To build? I doubt it will pose a problem. That's part of the fun! :) If you are talking about the operation, I gotta say I like the idea of having one self-contained unit. From what I've seen in the grow journals, the plants keep growing somewhat in bloom, so the veg room doesn't need to be as big as the bloom room.

The ventilation room is to house the bucket filter and the fan. I'll make the ventilation room mostly airtight, and seal the bucket to the hole leading into the drying room. If I actually go ahead and do it this way, I'll have to redesign the carbon filter, but I already have an idea for that. Might put some extra strain on the fan, but I'll go overkill on the fan anyway.

Is there a problem with drying like I planned on, will it be dry enough? I'll be using dirt to grown in. If not, I'm going to accept the loss of the space, maybe just make it smaller than depicted.
 
Here's the filter/fan design I want to make. Obviously, the input and output holes will be bigger in relation to the other parts in the actual assembly. Will the fan (~55w ~200L/s) be able to pull the air through that filter?
 
move the input hole to the side of the bucket of carbon,,, so it travels through the bucket, into the center pipe, and out through the fan and out the top...

you have way more ambition than me.. :),, gonna be alot of work, but I can't wait to see you results, as you have some confidence in your building skills ;)
I think the toughest part for you will be to isolate the light in the different chambers,, maybe have the chamber between the veg and flower be your drying area,, so it can be the light buffer... that way you don't have to make light-traps between the flower and veg chambers..
 
I figure I'll get more air-scrubbing if the air moves through the entire bucket of carbon. Having the 4" pipe IN the bucket takes up space where I could get more scrubbing with more carbon. The air still moves through the bucket before reaching the fan and then the output hole, it just goes through a much thicker layer of carbon. I'll remove the whole bottom of the bucket (replace it with chicken-wire and sheet-filters), to get as large an intake hole as possible.

I may be completely off on how the activated carbon works, but the way I understand it is that the more carbon the air goes through, the better filtration I'll get.

I'll rearrange the interior as you recommended. Makes a lot of sense. Cuts down on some sheet-filter usage as well.

As for the construction, I went to trade-school, so I learned a lot of what I need there (plumbing, technical construction and such,) and my dad always let me help him build stuff when I was a kid. I love building things.

As it is now, all I'm lacking is the money to buy everything I need. It'll be around a grand for everything. And I have nothing from before. And most weeks, I can't even afford enough food, so that'll be tricky. :D
 
I think I lost you on the carbon filter,, . I thought it would just have one pipe going into the center of the bucket,, then all the air has to pass through the outside wall of the bucket, through the carbon, into the center tube, then up and out through the center pipe.... but you may have a different design in mind,, you definately have the technical background,, so I am interested to see your progress

As it is now, all I'm lacking is the money
Click to expand...

ain't that the truth...
 
I'll have to try it out, and see if it works. I have no idea. :D It'll cost me one plastic bucket to fail, and if I do, I'll go with the tried and trusted method. My theory is that the general working is the same, you just "inhale" on the bottom instead of the sides, so you essentially get 11" of scrubbing without the pipe, instead of just 4 1/2" with the pipe. But again, I may have misunderstood the whole concept. :D Also, with this design I can seal the bottom of the bucket to the hole in the floor it's standing on, so I in the future can make a practical seal to cover the entire front inside the doors, so all the air entering the cab, will be through the filtered intake holes. It's probably not necessary, but I subscribe to the motto that if something is worth doing, it's worth overdoing. :D

Good thing is that playing around like this won't make it much more expensive, because all I'm doing is moving stuff around which I already have. (When I've bought everything I explicitly need, that is.)
 
Alright. Tiny update. Finally got a buyer for my PS3 and Xbox 360 to finance the grow. Have a couple more things out for sale, so I haven't been able to afford everything yet. Still missing the ventilation components, lights and seeds. Also all the "little" things, like ph up/down, measuring instruments and scales and things.

So I've got the wardrobe. It's an Ikea wardrobe called Dombås. Not sure if that's what it's called outside norway, though, because Dombås is a tiny village in norway. (I checked the american Ikea site, and it was called dombås there as well, but I'm unsure if the site recognized my IP and gave me local names anyway.) It's 182cm tall, 140 wide and 50 deep, with two double doors and one single. I can post a link, but I'm not sure if it's allowed to link to commercial sites on 420.

I got something the people in the store called super-mylar. It's not smooth, but looks a bit like inverted diamond sheet metal.

I ordered Ona Block from some place on the internet. :D Really looking forward to seeing how it works. I have one question, though. Does it just mask the smell, or does it somehow cancel the smell out? If it just masks the smell, then it won't trick a dog.

And lastly, the thing I'm most worried about. The fertilizer. I was recommended something called Canna Terra Vega and Flores, so I bought that. The worry is that they recommended it because it was the more expensive option, since they didn't have anything I've seen people here use.

I went to get the light bulbs, but the store was summer closed... WHAT? Anyway, I'll hold out until they reopen, because they have the good bulbs at 70% of the next cheapest store.
 
Oh yeah. WHERE DO I GET MY SEEDS? I'm going out of my mind trying to find a serious looking online store.
 

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