Hi-Tec Grow Room?

[Greenbeard]

Hello!

I am a first time grower and I absolutely love it and plan to do this for a long time. As you get more and more into this you naturally want to be better at it and in my case I'd love to equip my grow room as professionally as possible. I have been looking for threads about the best available technology out there for controlling the environment and I haven't really found it so I thought that perhaps I should start one.

What I would like to have is one control station that I can plug in everything to, something that controls the lights, the fan(s), the humidifier(s), heater(s), pump(s), PH, EC and that has built-in thermometers, hygrometers with several sensor wires that can be placed at different positions and heights around the grow room. Basically one place where I can monitor and control everything.

So, let the discussions begin and if anyone has any tips on companies that supply these sort of things feel free to pass it on.

 

[MrBelvedere]

HI, for your first time, you don't need a controller. Just Keep it Simple. If you overcomplicate things you won't be able to look at your plants and learn how they grow, and looking for pests is so important. So just get some clones/seeds started under a LED for veg and pick out a top quality Gavita 1000watt ballast and get rolling! You can control all those environmental factors very easily without a controller.

Environmental Controllers has controllers, would never buy one until you have ten good grows under your belt! Happy Growing!

 

[Greenbeard]

HI, for your first time, you don't need a controller. Just Keep it Simple. If you overcomplicate things you won't be able to look at your plants and learn how they grow, and looking for pests is so important. So just get some clones/seeds started under a LED for veg and pick out a top quality Gavita 1000watt ballast and get rolling! You can control all those environmental factors very easily without a controller.

Environmental Controllers has controllers, would never buy one until you have ten good grows under your belt! Happy Growing!

I have my first grow going already using LED's in coco. But I definitely agree that I should experience a few grows before going fully into hi-tech mode, but until then I'd like to get to know what's out there, to start planning for the future. I'm definitely in for the long run with this and plan to expand my grow quite a bit and I really need to automate the grow as much as possible further down the line. Right now I'm hand watering and I will keep doing that for this grow. The next one I am planning for a DTW-system with low-nute feeds three times a day, all automated using drip systems on timers. The next big thing after that will probably be to invest in a CO2-system and so on. Sooner or later I will need some kind of controller to take care of everything if I am to have a life

Thanks for the link, looks very interesting

 

[Papageno]

Be careful with CO2. Lots of people waste a ton of money on that because they don't understand the minimum requirements for CO2 enrichment to work correctly...nor how to optimize it.

CO2 can for sure add to the grow... but if you have the right space and do a few other things correctly it really doesn't make that much of a difference... but does tie up your options and costs money.

I am not saying don't do it. Just do lots of research on it and plan a CO2 specific space properly...don't just add it to a vented room where you don't have environmental controls dialed in. Preferably get the space right first and see what you can get doing that alone and then add the CO2 and see if you like the cost benefit ratio.

CO2 is something I would not do until down the road. Again to reiterate what MrBelvdere said...do a bunch of grows first so you understand how all this works. If he recommends 10 grows before getting a controller I would say do 3-5 runs with the controller in the right space before introducing CO2.

Take it slow because it will happen fast enough anyway. You can get amazing yield without all the fancy stuff fairly easily. But you will always want to be in there monitoring for bugs and deficiencies / abundances.


What can happen if you go to fast is you are learning the whole time. Then your next grow you do a bunch of things better with the nutes and lights. But you don't think you changed them and you add CO2 at the same time. But you vent the room wrong and the plants do much better and it has nothing to do with CO2. But you think it does. This happens all the time.