The 250w Vertical Scrog Organic 'Olympus' Cabinet Grow

[Womyn]

Hello everyone, this thread is dedicated to my recently constructed Olympus cabinet. It's a combined veg+flower cabinet with blumats and smart pots. Construction is nearing completion right now, just a little lightproofing left. My last grow in a 165W PL-L computer case went fairly well (and ended dramatically: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=262913) so I decided to scale things up.

Overview:

Electricity:

Rear door:

The cabinet is 1 meter wide, 0.6 meters deep and 0.8 meters tall. The veg chamber is 30 cm wide and 50cm tall, powered by four 30W CFL's and currently contains a Seedsman Feminized White Widow and Feminized El Alquimista, both of which are free gifts we got with our purchase of Northern Soul seeds from the Original Sensible Seed Bank. The flower chamber is 0.7 meters wide, 0.6 deep and 0.8 tall and is powered by a 250W Sunmaster dual spectrum bulb. Odor will be kept under control by a 160 CFM carbon filter driven by a 180 CFM S&P inline fan. The passive intakes and exhaust both run through the floor - the shape of the light traps force the intake to suck air from either side of the cabinet while the exhaust blows to the front and back. Air comes in from the intakes, is sucked through the filter into the inline fan and is then pushed through the cooltube and out the bottom. The light traps themselves are made of a lightweight, water and fire resistant high tech foam that is essentially a gym mat.

We decided to go for maximum yield and quality in as little space as possible to reduce risk and increase mobility in case of emergency, so the cabinet was designed for vertical growth. We will be using a modular screen so pieces of the screen can be removed and reattached to give each plant an ideal amount of space. The pots we're using are 3 gallon (~11 liter) smart pots and irrigation will mostly be delivered via 3 blumats placed in every pot.
The soil mix per gallon is as follows:
1.5 tbs ground Espoma Dolomite Lime
1.5 tbs Neptunes Harvest Crab Shell
1.5 tbs Dr. Earth Alfalfa Meal
1.5 tbs Dr. Earth Kelp Meal
0.5 tbs Earth Juice Volcano Bat Guano
1 tbs Nature's Footprint Glacial Rock Dust
1/3 tbs RTI Xtreme Gardening Mykos

1/3 of the mix was humus

 

[Womyn]

A truly K.I.S.S. solution for noise caused by the fan vibrating:

Germination was difficult. A small computer growbox was used, but we left too many CFL bulbs on for a weekend and killed off a White Widow and a Northern Soul seed. It's an embarrassing beginner's mistake. To further complicate things, we bought a premade soil mix from a hydro shop that burned our seedlings. The White Widow has just recently sprung back to life after transplating into the smart pot, while the El Alquimista was germinated in rockwool and then immediately transplanted into a smart pot. As of today, the WW is about three weeks old and the EA is about a week and a half old. The WW will soon be transferred to the flower chamber (it will remain in veg schedule) so we can clone it and place the clones in the veg chamber.

The El Alquimista:

I'll update this thread every few days. Can't wait to see that empty flower chamber fill up!

 

[BlackBelt]

Great Work man!

 

[mr. gt]

I love it man. I'm a big supporter of the vertical scrog. There is some old old threads on various forums with this technique but most of them are too old to pull up. Just don't over or under fill the screen


mr. gt

 

[Yakov]

Those are the blumat jr. versions, aren't they? How do you find they work, and do you have any issues with salt build up? Are you running nutes through them, or do you feed separately? How often you you have to fill the rez once the plant gets larger? They seem like it may be a little fussy way to do it.

 

[Yakov]

Oh, but, since I can't edid, and I seem to be too stupid to remember, good luck, things seem to be looking good!

 

[Crowmax]

Nice cab you made Womyn!
How noisy is the 180 CFM S&P inline fan? They rate it 20-26db noise if im not wrong. That is like a PC fan. Is it really that quiet?
Best wishes for your grow, will be watching.

 

[Womyn]

Yakov:
Yeah, they're the smaller version. So far so good, in my last grow they helped quite a lot and could keep the girls happy for up to a week without intervention. I'm not running nutes through the blumats so salt buildup is negligible and I'll only be feeding Biobizz nutes as supplements because I already bought the damn things, might as well use them. The soil is packed full of slow release organics so except some guano tea while flowering, there's no real need for nutes. We use blumats because we may want to leave the cab alone for up to a week, and also because they are SO good for the soil and plants - blumats keep the soil damp and the micro organisms kickin'. A lot of people who irrigate once every couple of days lose almost all of their micro flocks because of dry conditions. Right now the plants suck up about half a liter every day, but it's mostly due to evaporation from the smart pots. I predict that at least for a while, water consumption will not rise much. I still don't know what to expect later on, but I'll DIY something out
Thanks!

Crowmax:
That rating is a bit deceptive. The problem with this fan is that when you hold it on your hands, it may seem very quiet, and that's probably how it was tested for noise - held in somebody's hands or some vibration absorbing material. Most of the noise from this fan comes from the vibrations it causes. When I first installed it, I attached it tightly to the ceiling of the cab with screws and the sound of a small airplane taking off filled the room. The cabinet was effectively a giant drum, releasing a wonderful low frequency drone throughout the apartment. Just when we thought that we're fucked, we came up with the idea to tie it with a shoe string in order to avoid direct contact with the wood. The noise is now low enough to make the excuse that it's a cabinet with a bunch of servers in it viable. I, myself, entered the room several times and thought the noise was caused by air conditioning (before we popped the seeds, when we would give the cab a test run every once in a while) before I noticed the AC's off.
Welcome aboard!

mr. gt:
Thanks man, good to have you onboard for scrog advice haha
You really helped us last time, fyi. The screen filled up perfectly thanks to your wake up call.

 

[Womyn]

Little update.
Lightproofing is almost done. A clone will be taken this Saturday, most probably.
The white widow is showing very good progress and it seems like the El Alquimista is picking up, too.

 

[NKOTS]

love the build and attention to detail


is your inline fan quiet enough?

happy growing

 

[Womyn]

Health problems

Health problems

Here's a little update.

The White widow:

The White Widow seems to suffer from some deficiency. I really can't figure out what it is. Measureing the p.h of the soil is practicaly imposible using the color test kit I've got, the runoff water are dark brown. I tried getting a rough estimate of the p.h by comparing the color of the runoff water before and after using the kit. Our conclusion was that the p.h is too high, so we watered with a big amount of ~6.3 p.h water. It does not seem to work, I think it only got worse. Maybe the p.h was too low and We have just made it worse?
The bottom leaves got bad first, and it slowly spreads up...

I thought that maybe the water quality in this area is poor, can this be caused by that?


I started thinking that buying a good p.h meter might be worth the money.

Here's a couple of pictures:

Any help will be appreciated

We finished working on the light traps on the bottom:

NKOTS
As I answered before, the noise is not that loud but I had to use a rope in order to prevent vibration sound.


edit: After giving it a thought i've decided to use bottled water only for some time.
If the problem is poor water quality it will probably show.

 

[Stadtgaertner]

Hey,

first things first..
great cab man! looks good..
but i think 150 watts would have been enough for your space..whatever..good job'

i am also growin 3 ww now but i have just 2-3 weeks to go left.
I had some serious problems cause i gave them a lil more water than they needed.. the symptoms where the same..starts with yellow leafes..then they wither and it spreads fuckin fast..think that costs me bout 10-15g in the end..
on the pics with the3 blumats the soil looks too wet for me..think 1 would have been enough for the beginning..

try to let em dry a bit..it was too late for my ww ..so most of the big fanleafes died and the plants had not the powerr they need during 12/12.

Good luck mate!


ahhh could you tell me what kind of fan you have between cooltube and carbonfilter?
ty

 

[Womyn]

Stadtgaertner, that doesn't sound like overwatering, it sounds like Chlorine toxicity or high salt buildup, which is what my plants have. Water has been replaced and while the old leaves will never really recover, the new ones will grow just fine.
Soil has to be at least partially damp - letting it dry kills the soil biology. See my reply to Yakov.

The fan is a TD SILENT-160/100 S&P.

 

[Womyn]

This picture was taken on 10/12/2013 (7 days before this post).

Two clones are now taking root and will be transferred to the HPS as soon as possible.

The chlorine toxicity will kill off the affected leaves eventually, but new leaves will grow healthy.

 

[Womyn]

Things are progressing very well. A white widow clone has taken root and the El Alquimista clone will root very soon.

One half of the circular scrog has been put in place and the other half will will be set up today.

El Alquimista:

White Widow:

 

[Blue Socks]

When do you plan on flipping?

Gonna be pretty tight in there I reckon but you should get a huge yield for the space!

 

[Womyn]

Hi Blue Socks
I'll flip to flowering when approximately half the net is filled. The cab's designed to be very space efficient so I'm really hoping the net will be completely packed full by the time the stretch is over.

 

[Womyn]

EA:

The new view:

 

[[mastermind]]

nice grow! dude
good luck an much fun
habby x mas and a good new y'14

 

[Womyn]

Thanks mastermind, happy new year
There was a small PH issue we took care of. The dolomite lime I've added to the soil mix must've been a little too harsh, maybe because I powdered it. Did some defoliation because the plants are too bushy near the center.

El Alquimista:

White Widow:

White Widow clone: