Blue-adepts DIY SuperStealth tubs + pics

Well i have learned so much around here i figured i should repay the knowledge. Here is a pictoral build of the stealth tub setup i designed/built. I will start off by saying Red-Greenery inspired me to build a tub setup long ago, but i wanted something that would be as inconspicuous as possible.

On to the good stuff

your going to need:
2 large stackable rubbermaid tubs (your choice on size really)
1 rubbermaid tub to sit atop the stack (the pics will show you)
1 sheet of galvanized duct sheet metal
2ft of 3in ABS +2 3in couplers
2 1.5in ABS elbows + ~6in 1.5 ABS
~1sq ft of screen
1-2 rolls weatherstripping
12 EZ light bases + bulbs of choice
1 PC power supply+ 2 80mm fans + 2 120mm fans
misc wire/wood
1 piece of 1/8th plexi, you will find out your size later
rivets
Krylon fusion paint, or other suitable

Tools req: (well the ones i used anyway)
jig saw, box knife, screwdriver, rivet gun, compass or circle jig, tape measure, hammer, pliers, drill(1/16th bit, and 1/8th)


Start by painting the large tubs with a few coats of black paint, then heavy coats of white. Remember we are going for stealth here, so no light transmittance is needed.


Cut out the bottom of your top tub, leaving enough overlap to rivet the bottom to the top of the bottom tub.







Set your cut tub on the lid for the bottom tub, trace and cut, then rivet the tub to the lid.








Now we get to do a little carpentry

Get yourself a suitable pice of wood to use as the light box/electronics base. I happened to have an old Ikea wardrobe that was 5/8 mdf.
Turn your top tub upside down on your wood and trace the outline of the inside of the tub. You want the wood to fit like so:





Make marks inside so that when you build the light box it will actually fit in between the handles of the tubs, i have notice most have a pretty good taper here, and what fits in the top may not fit 6in down from the top.

From the lines you made earlier, we can make a simple box to house our lights. I went with 6in rips of 3/4 MDF because i had it laying around.



once the box is built for the lights i would suggest test fitting it in the tubs, just to make sure you have adequate clearance. If it fits, then move on to installing the light bases/wiring. I chose to go with 4 groups of 3 for my lighting. This allowed me to have adequate room in the center for the grow chamber venting ( which you will see later)



Wire your lights in parallel, and drill 2 holes in your light box top to feed the lighting wiring up into the electrical/filter/vent tub.




At this point i took the light box back apart and applied aluminum tape as a reflective surface to the entire light box interior.




Now we will get started on the venting

In the center of your light box top (take the bulbs out if you put them in for testing) measure and mark/cut two circles approximately 3in in diameter. You can use a compass or use the 3in ABS you have. You can now measure and cut your plexi to match the light box, and transfer the 2 holes to it as well.






To attach the plexi drill 1/16th pilot holes in the mdf then drill a 1/8th hole in the plexi. If you dont make the holes in the plexi larger than the screws it will crack in a most unpleasant way.

Go ahead and weatherstrip and attach the plexi just to make sure everything fits good.

Next we take the 3in couplers you bought and table saw/hack saw/gnaw furiously in order to get roughly 1/4 in rings.




Cut your ABS into 2 1ft pieces and glue a ring roughly 1/4in from one end of each piece ( i used my plexi light shield on top of another piece of plexi as a gauge to hold the ring 1/4in up)




once the glue has set, flip the pipe over and glue a ring so that the outside edges are the same distance apart as your light box is deep (6in for me).



Once the glue is set you can wrap the section between the two rings with reflective tape, and fit them into place.




with the inner rings pressed firmly against the inside of the light box, glue a ring onto the pipe on the outside of the light box. This will effectively trap the pipes to the wood part of the box. DO NOT GLUE A RING TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLEXI you want to be able to get the lights out in case they burn up.




Before we fit the top tub, cut the excess pipe from the top of the light box. Leave ~1/2 inch for the filter stack to attach.

Paint the top tub inside with a plastic bonding paint, give it several coats (dont forget the lid)



Cut the bottom out of the top tub, leaving an ~1in section to attach it. You may have to notch the tub to fit around the vent stacks. Once you fit the top tub and know how much room you have, mark and cut two holes as close to the center of your light clusters as possible. These will be the intake and exhaust for your light box.







I used a standard PC power supply for power, (there is a ton of info online about modding PS's to turn on when power is applied, so im not going to go into it here) My PS just happened to have a fan on the bottom of it, so i capitalized on this by using it as the exhaust draw fan as you see here. I would suggest finding one that is setup this way as it is simpler than cutting the PS case to accomodate a fan.





As the hot air comes out of the light chamber through the PS it is vented straigh towards the side of the top tub. We need to get that air out, so cut 2 holes to accomodate 120mm pc fans blowing outward. You can also set up the intake fan for the light box. DOUBLE CHECK TO MAKE SURE ALL YOUR FANS ARE BLOWING THE WAY YOU WANT.





Heres a shot of the underside with the bulbs and plexi out, to show the intake and exhaust for the light box.

Next we will build some filters

Cut a piece of screen about 4inx4in and set it across one of your vent stacks, then press a coupler onto the stack trapping the screen. Fill with loose activated carbon/kitty litter/whatever you choose to use. Then lay another 4x4 piece of screen over the top and press a short piece of ABS onto it to trap the top screen into the coupler.








Using double sided weatherstripping tape i stuck 80mm pc fans to the top of the filter stacks to pull air from the grow cab up. Make sure you have enough clearance that the fans are not pushed into the lid of the top tub, you want at least an inch here.



To finish out the intake, cut an 80mm square out of the duct sheeting, and trace the outline of a 1.5in ABS elbow in the center. Draw in 4 tabs to join the two and cut away. Bend the tabs as shown and screw to the elbow.





Now you can mark and cut the intake passthrough in the top tub and fit the rest of the intake pipe.





To avoid anything brushing the outside of the 120mm exhaust fans i built a small angled cover for them and riveted it to the side of the top tub ( sorry i dont have a pic of it installed, but you get the idea)





With a little tidying up of the wires, and a power strip/timer added, we finish out the top.




For the grow chamber intake i designed light traps to fit under the handle sections of the lower tubs.

I dont have any installed pics, but see here for the traps:

CLicky


Once the light traps are installed your ready to grow



Thanks for watching, and happy growing.

Blue-Adept

A+ for design... I like it, very stealth too if put amongst a lot of other crap in a garage. Nice work~

wow that is one hell of a grow tub. Definitely stealth if I were to ever see those stacked like that. Your cab is very innovative and gives me a couple ideas aswell. Keep up the great work man, ill be stoppin by every now and then to see how things r going. Good luck

Jeeeeezus!

hats off.i understand how much work goes into something like that.very good.!

the intake is 2 of the light traps i linked above (they are also in the Link-o-rama), i just cut 2 squares out of the bottom tub near the handle recess and riveted the light traps directly to the tub.

I have actually already finished a full grow with it and was incredibly pleased. I had 3 plants scrogged in seperate screens( to make removing one at a time easier). I never weighed the yield but i would estimate it to be 2-2.5 oz dry.



BA

Simply amazing. The most stealthy set up I've yet to seen on this website. How much noise do your fans produce. Other than maybe the little noise of those PC fans that thing is 100% stealth. Do you have any idea of about how much the system in total cost?

since i had the wood and plexi already, i figure $225, if i had to buy the wood/plexi it would be around $250 start to finish.

all the 80mm fans are running at 12v and the 120mm fans are running at 5v. It makes less noise than a computer not noticeable in a garage/closet at all or in a room with anything that makes noise (fridge/computer/ect)



BA

Nice work! I remember somebody talking about doing this a while ago, was that you?

It's a hell of a lot stealthier than mine...



But if I camouflage it...

might have been, i built this one about a year ago, just took me a while to post it


BA

That's awesome man, if you put that in a garage, it would look like storage. Good luck with your grow, with a mini controlled biosphere like that you shouldn't have any problems at all.

That is an amazing tub build. For my first "not just thrown together" grow, i will probably being doing a rubbermaid! Great info

/nerdon
and is that Sasuke and his sharingan? lol Kakashi owns Sasuke
/nerdoff

Very cool and well done.

How easy is access to the bottom of the plants?

I'd like to try something like that adapted for a 400hps.

I use 3/4 gallon pots with individual screens for scrog, attached via 1/2in pvc to each pot. This makes lifting out one plant at a time cake. As far as the cab goes, you just lift the top two tubs off the bottom tub, everything can be set aside, and you have easy access to a tub full of plants. I grow in a soilless mix, so i wanted to be able to let the pots drain, then put them back in the cab.


and yes jebus it is.

BA

Not only do you deserve this:


But you also deserve a cookie:

Daaamn homie! You're build-up was so detailed ima build one myswlf for shits an giggles. ::Thumbs Up::

Very nice!

One question I have about this type of setup: Once the plants get big, how do you get at them? How do you water them? Do you have to take them out? And how about training? Once they start filling up the space, how do you do things that require you to reach down into the bottom? And when they get really big, how do you get the top tub back on after taking it off? Don't the plants have a tendency to spread horizontally beyond the rim of the bottom tub? (OK, that's more than one question.)