Growbox

vice viceroy

New Member
Hi all, check out the growbox project i've been working on. It's 27" square by 5' high.

I based my plans on this thread Grow Box Construction

here is a pic of the lid of my box. In the lower right is a silverstone fm121 computer case fan. It is rated for a max airflow of 110.03CFM. It's extremely quiet, and it comes with a speed control plate (pictured just under the fan). In the upper left is my $20 jigsaw from lowes. It's not much of a jigsaw as you can imagine, but as you can tell from the hole I sawed out, i'm not too handy with a jigsaw anyways! :laughtwo:

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Here is the box put together. I bought some growbags at the hydro store. They're square so they should be fairly space efficient. I got nine 3 gallon bags and four 7 gallon bags. If things go well, I will get four healthy females to transplant into the bigger bags. oh yeah, I also got some mylar.

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and here it is with mylar attached and in it's new home in my closet!

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Currently working on adding casters to the box. but I'm going to need some washers, so it looks like yet another trip to the hardware store :cheesygrinsmiley: Then I'm going to build the door.

I've got JoeyWeed C99 seeds on the way, and I'll be growing under a 250 watt hps. This is my 3rd grow so I do have bit of experience. This will be my first attempt in an enclosed box.

questions, comments? Any advice on how to maximize yeild? I've thought about scrog, but I imagine feeding would get pretty messy since I wouldn't be able to remove them from the box.
 
SCROG is a theoretical "Screen Of Green", as opposed to the traditional Sea Of Green(SOG). A screen envelops the area above the plants and as they flower, the colas are drawn through the holes, keeping fan leaves and unwanted bushiness down, and bud growth above the net and closer to the light.
 
Your ventilation looks pretty skimpy.
I am very positive you will have severe heat issues. Sorry, but its just my opinian.
 
Exhaust fans should be up top cause hot air rises. Turn your lights on with it closed and put a thermometer inside. After 4 hours with everything running as if you had a plant in there, check the temperature. If it's over 85-90, you need another fan pulling air out.
 
Thanks for the advice folks. I'm definitely planning to check temps before I put plants inside. That silverstone does push quite a bit of air though. here are the specs

If it really does push 110 CFM, I should be okay. I'm also planning on adding a cooling fan to the hps hood. pics to come soon.
 
more grainy pics:

This one is of the door I made. I'm not very good at precision cuts, so my door would not close properly. I'm doing a poor-mans b&w poly sheeting technique I learned from a post by TrickDaddy. In this case, I'm constructing the sheet from a blue tarp, mylar, and ducktape. This is a pic of the partially constructed door. I will fold over the edges of the sheeting and tape it down.

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An interesting idea, but after setting up the hps inside, I see alot of light getting straight through the mylar and tarp. I may have to get the b&w sheeting after all.

Using some spare irrigation tubing I had to raise the edge of the doorway for my cheapo poly plastic door. The idea is that this will minimize light leakage. I eventually covered all the tubing w/ ducktape.
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Well I put it all together just a few minutes ago. added some velcro around the corners and sides for the door, wired up my hps, I even added another cooling fan to the hps hood. I have a little culinary probe thermometer in there now (a real thermometer is on my list). Looks like it's holding a steady 87F. Urdedpal, you may be right [sigh]
 
People that have seen my pics on this thread will be pleased to know that I have a new camera! It's a Canon powershot sd1000.

I've also purshased another fan to see if I can keep the temps in that box alittle lower. I'm using another store bought 120mm case fan since I had another 12v transformer laying around. Here is a pic of the fan, and the adaptor I made out of an atx 12v extension:

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Cutting the extension cable keeps me from having to slice the cables on my $13 fan. That way it stays under warranty.

One thing of note: The fan seems to spin faster when held vertically rather than horizontally. I'm strongly considering mounting the fan on the side of the box, rather than the top like the other one.
 
thats probably how it was designed to fit into a computer so i wouldn't be surprised. If its the exhaust fan just put on the side at the very top, the only difference you will see is results.
 
Do you have a intake fan? Its very helpful to push fresh air in and should also help with the temp. Exhaust on top, intake at the bottom to create a constant flow of fresh air to the plants and remove heat at the same time.
 
yes burn_it, but what kind of results? :hmmmm: heh, yeah I'll definitely be mounting it on the side.

I've read around that using an exhaust and intake fan simultaneously is a waste, I suppose other people feel differently.

Seems like the conclusion is that you get more cfm with parallel exhaust fans rather than with intake/exhaust. otoh you'll get more turbulent airflow near the bottom, which should help for healthy stems.

crazy how hot it gets in there even with my 160 watts of floro tubes. it gets as high 81F. My seeds arrived today, and I immediately put them into germination. should be good motivation for me to finish this up quickly.
 
agreed about the turbulent video but i would argue that since hot air tends to rise you could then be facing a cloud of hot stale air above wherever the fans were placed. Once your plants reached past this point they'd be choking.

I'm impressed with your adaption for the computer fan there. I've got a tiny little desk fan, about 4-6 inches that I've been using without an exhaust, just an outtake vent. care to expound on that adaption? Is it just a standard 12volt adapter?
 
crazy how hot it gets in there even with my 160 watts of floro tubes. it gets as high 81F. My seeds arrived today, and I immediately put them into germination. should be good motivation for me to finish this up quickly.

I'm glad to see you can't wait to get growin in your new box but I think you've made your first mistake already. Really, I'm not trying to be a nut or anything I just don't want to see you loose your brand new c99 seeds to heat stress. What I'm saying is you probably should have completed the box and secured good temps w/ the HPS light before you germed the seeds. 81F w/ fluorescents ain't bad but I'm sure when the HPS goes in temps are gonna jump a bit higher than those fans can handle. Hope you tackle the problem. Excellent choice on the c99 by the way. I'm a big fan of it! Can't wait to see ya get em' rollin. Good luck. :cheesygrinsmiley:
 
I guess i need a larger grow space cause even with a dedicated exhaust fan, my room gets close to 95 degrees. I'm currently looking for something better.
 
I guess i need a larger grow space cause even with a dedicated exhaust fan, my room gets close to 95 degrees. I'm currently looking for something better.

Try just an intake fan near the bottom of your box with an opening or slits around the top just for exhaust. Unless you were using two fans and already had an intake as well as exhaust.
 
burn_it, heres how I made the adapter cable. I bought one power supply extension cables from frys

I cut that in half and spliced the female end of the adaptor onto the end of a plain old 12v ac adapter. So the white connector in just below the fan is the extension cable from frys, spliced onto the end of that 12v adapter in the upper left. The black connector is from the fan.

Thanks for the advice beensmokin420. Hopefully my impatience won't be my undoing. I'm going to try keeping the plants under floros outside the box during the seedling stage. at least until I verify that the extra fan will actually to any good.

Of course hps heat may not be a problem due to another mistake. I had the hps connected to a switched outlet. stupid me, forgot what the switch was for and flicked it on and off a few times real quick. After this my light isn't working any more. I'm sure I blew something out, but I have no way of troubleshooting the issue since I only have 1 balast and 1 lamp.
but it's damn complicated. Any advice on how I should go about troubleshooting this?
 
yeah, I went to the lighting store and almost bought a new bulb. I'm kicking myself now, since it definitely wouldn't hurt to have a spare even if the old one does work.

The guy at the store said i'd need an electrician to troubleshoot it. Problem is, i'm trying to stay on the down-low. I live in an apartment, so any visiting electrician would know exactly what I'm doing.

Screw it, i'm just going to buy a new bulb. and if that don't fix it, I'll just buy a whole new ballast.

Can you tell if an hps bulb is blown by looking at it? I'll try to upload a pic.
 
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