Newbie needs advice with setup of 10' x 10' growroom

W

wwguy

New Member
Hi, here's my story. I'm new to this. I've decided to partner with my gf. I'm getting her a place and we'll devote one room, probably 10'x10' to setting up a grow room. As we are newbies, we know this will be tough, so I only really hope to cover my expenses and give her enough to live for the first couple crops. She really needs to get out of a bad situation where she currently lives so this is a win/win situation.

So I've decided to get clones and we are going to grow og kush as our first plant. I would like to get about 10lbs out of our first crop if possible and I'm wondering what would you suggest as a simple cheap setup for a newbie that will get us there. I don't mind paying for equipment and stuff that we need, but I don't want to go crazy on this first crop if you know what I mean. Sort of build up gradually as we build experience.

So I'm looking for a simple, cost-effective setup that will get us there. Any help will be appreciated by my girlfriend and I immensely!
 
sfernald said:
Hi, here's my story. I'm new to this. I've decided to partner with my gf. I'm getting her a place and we'll devote one room, probably 10'x10' to setting up a grow room. As we are newbies, we know this will be tough, so I only really hope to cover my expenses and give her enough to live for the first couple crops. She really needs to get out of a bad situation where she currently lives so this is a win/win situation.

So I've decided to get clones and we are going to grow og kush as our first plant. I would like to get about 10lbs out of our first crop if possible and I'm wondering what would you suggest as a simple cheap setup for a newbie that will get us there. I don't mind paying for equipment and stuff that we need, but I don't want to go crazy on this first crop if you know what I mean. Sort of build up gradually as we build experience.

So I'm looking for a simple, cost-effective setup that will get us there. Any help will be appreciated by my girlfriend and I immensely!
Click to expand...

Don't know about 10lbs, But my thoughts would be organic soil ( more forgiving than hydro) maybe four to six thousand watt bulbs or do six hundred watt bulbs, Digital ballast's, monitoring equipment ( PH tester, tds/EC meter, soil ph meter ) and ventilation ( Intake and exhaust) .....I know this is very vague, But you have to read as much as you can about growing meds, It doesn't happen over night.
Hope this helps some :goodluck:
 
There is some cognitive dissonance going on here.

You cannot want to "not go crazy" with equipment and want 10 pounds to harvest. This isn't realistic unless we're talking about outdoor crops.

We can greatly help you become successful however it won't be cheap, but it will be quality. You'll need about 3 - 1000w lights, you can put four of them in there however you won't have any room for mixing nutes, working etc.
 
Thank you. I understand. I don't mind spending. I just don't want every trick and pony. I guess sleek setup might be a better way to describe what I'm looking for. I want to keep things as simple as possible at least for the first couple crops. I'd prefer soil to hydro, etc.

My gf just asked me about the smell... What is the way you would reasonably control the smell in such a grow room? Will there still be a strong odor in other rooms of the house with charcoal fitting and fans?

We are reading, reading everything right now btw. It's just really nice to see actual practical solutions described by people who have experience if you know what I mean.
 
ColoradoHigh said:
Prior to me installing my 6" carbon filter/fan combo, you could smell my grow throughout the entire house. Now as long as I keep it closed up enough to create negative pressure within the grow box, there is no smell at all anymore.
Click to expand...

Wow, that is awesome. Thanks for that info. Is there a particular one you use or does it matter? I am noticing most of this stuff I can get on amazon. Is this where you guys buy stuff or are there better places online or perhaps discount retail stores?

Also, is there anything we should look for in the house we will rent? We will be going out soon to choose a place.
 
It doesn't really matter, in fact there are many ideas for DIY under Do It Yourself. I purchased most of my stuff off of eBay and Amazon, but this was before I found :420: with all of their sponsors, most of which will give discounts to :420: members. As always, you should perform due diligence and research on all of your options before pulling the trigger.
 
I've gone thorough a lot of these calculations, and they're fresh in my mind, so let me pass them on.

I currently run a pretty efficient little 4x4 room, and I'm getting about an oz per sq ft. The room is completely full, like a tent, so the walls are close and I get the advantage of reflected light, so I get by with a 600 watt hps. That's less than 50w/sqft of HID, which is a better ratio. Your 10lb goal could be optimistic. That's 160 oz = 160 sq ft under lights = like 13 x 13 feet. For a flower room of the size you want, you're going to want space around the plants to work with them. If you give yourself 2 feet, your room becomes 8 x 8 = 64 sqft. For 64 sqft, you'll want (64x50) 3200 watts of HID or more.

In addition, you'll need another space to work in - for vegging, cuttings, soil and amendments and mixing, etc.

Hope that helps. :cheesygrinsmiley:
 
Oh, it does. Thanks. We can look for a little bigger room, maybe there is a 13'x13' or bigger out there in our price range.

Question: how big does the space for vegging, etc need to be usually. Can that be a closet size room?
 
The veg room is a tough call - depends on how you want to run the flower room. If you're going to do one run at a time, you can just veg in the flower room, then switch the whole crop to 12/12 when it's time. In that case, you'll need like a closet space, yes - somewhere to store all the crap and to set up aome assorted plants under light. Or you can run a perpetual room, where you get a steady partial harvest, which you replace with vegged plants from the veg room. In that case, you need that much enough additional space. On my small scale, I need a space larger than my grow room, but as you scale up, it shrinks to less than the grow room.

It would work well, for instance, to dedicate 2 bedrooms for a perpetual grow - IF you're set on a 10lb harvest. And that estimated 13x13 actually needs to be more like 20x20 to give you room to move around the plants. Just estimates, remember, you can get better yield than I'm getting. Another rule of thumb is to expect something under 1 gram per watt of HID for yield. If you want 10lbs, that's about 4500 grams, so that would be 5 1000's in a 16x16 room. Roughly. Actually, that'd be a sweet setup - I can see the 5-point pattern, 4 in the corners and one in the middle.

You'd also have to consider cooling and humidity for those 5000 watts.

If you design a space from scratch, consider thinking in terms of trays of plants, like a 4x8 tray. Two 600s fit nicely over a 4x8. You need 2 feet all around, so that's actually 6x10, but you could snug the ends against the walls with a 3-4 foot aisle down the middle. So you could have a room with two 8 foot trays with 4 feet aisle, is 20 feet. You could run 6 trays = 4ftx3 plus two 2ft aisles = 16 feet. You'd have 7200 watts over 192 sqft of plants = 37.5 watts/sqft, kinda short on light that way. You'd expect to yield 192+ ounces = 12lbs. Gives you an idea ...

There are a number of 420Mag members running operations on that scale, so their journals would be valuable, and maybe one of them will respond in this thread.

:goodluck:
 
Perpetual room interests me. So if we do that, let's say we are shooting for 10lbs as I said. I was assuming we get 10 lbs after 3 months or whenever the crop comes in. In the case of a perpetual room, how would that break down? Would we start getting like 1 lbs a week or something like that?
 
I am getting about 5 oz per month from my 600 watt 4x4, and each plant is in the room an average of 10 weeks. That's 60 oz per year, 3.75 lbs. If you scale that up to the example I used of the 16x20 perpetual, you'd get roughly 12 times that much (12*600W HID vs my one) = 60 oz/month.
 
I'm curious as we are focused on picking out a house right now, what are your thoughts on using a garage vs a bedroom? What are the pros and cons? Is it common to even use a garage? The thing I like about it is two car garages are usually about 20x20 so there would be more room than a bedroom, no windows, plus it is unfinished so it is sort of set up perfect for the customizations we will need to do. I can guess that a disadvantage might exist if it is separate from the house. But if you get one attached to the house with a doorway entrance, would this not be preferable to a bedroom? Or is there something i'm missing here?
 
If it is uninsulated with no temperature control, the temperature swings will be tremendous. Our attached, uninsulated, unheated 2-car garage goes from well below zero to well over 100 degrees throught the year. It also is not very air tight as the rest of the house and is quite drafty.
 
ColoradoHigh said:
If it is uninsulated with no temperature control, the temperature swings will be tremendous. Our attached, uninsulated, unheated 2-car garage goes from well below zero to well over 100 degrees throught the year. It also is not very air tight as the rest of the house and is quite drafty.
Click to expand...

That's true. But insulating and air sealing a garage is pretty much a cheap 1 day DIY project. I can even blow insulation into the attic. Maybe get a space heater and air conditioner in there for when temp goes off the target 75 degrees or whatever. Where we live the temp is pretty warm normally. Plus don't all those lights usually warm things up nicely?
 
The garage is a great idea - that or an unfinished basement would be ideal. You can fit it out exactly the way you need to. You'd have to find a way to pipe water to a garage - no big deal if it's attached. A drain isn't very important unless you run hydro. You'll need a 200 amp panel for all those lights.

... can't think of anything else, offhand ....

Half the fun is working it all out ahead of time. :cheesygrinsmiley:
 
One thing I'm concerned about is the startup. Obviously costs are high. I've read a lot of different things about how long it takes to get a crop. I've read as little as two months to as high as 13+ weeks. I'm going to be starting from high quality clones. How long can we actually expect? Any ways/techniques to ensure we have something after two months?
 
I think a like basement grow its easier to control temps. in a 10x10 room I think 4 1000w 10" cooled lights would work or 8 600w which I like better less heat and you can mix more bulbs. no clones seeds are superior to clones as they have tap roots. genetics is key large haze plants (DNA, Green House), the Flav (tga), and Dj Short Blueberry are known to produce massive yields. pot size for a huge root system 10 gal for hydro and 20+ gal. for soil per plant keep in mind you will only be growing four plants in this room. they must be top and vegged for longer than small scale grows.I would go with the roots or Soul line for soil and Advanced Nutrients for hydro I recommend theses because of the first time grow and theses lines are easy to use and the ph is done for you. you need 4 months you have high bills for 4 months to go with this project. U tube the stains and the Seed breeds grows of the Strains and grow styles your interested in.
 
you only need one room for my method you just change your bulbs.and it dont hurt to pick up a few books for reference and ideas.
 

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