250watt Stealth Medical Cabinet

Hi Guys,

I'm new here, I have been a long time member of CW & OG but never much of a poster.

Welcome to my first thread at ICmag

I have grown many different ways & watts over the years but after a recent major relocation I have had to change the way I grow dramatically.

I am the caregiver for my partner who battles with some health issues and as a result needs a constant supply of the one and only medicine that seems to help her. Because of certain circumstances it was decided that I should take on a new challenge and drop to my lowest ever grow wattage of 250 watt hps. This new development required some serious thought for a guy spoiled by years of growing with 1000 + watts.
After much deliberation I came up with a design that I thought would suit our needs. I decided on a scratch built cabinet because security and stealth were major concerns.
Anyway, its five successful grows later in this cabinet and I figure it is about time I shared it with everyone that is interested in a simple cabinet that with minimal effort will supply a steady stream of quality buds.
This cabinet regularly produces 7 ounces of quality bud for a healthy outcome of 0.8 grams per watt. I am sure I could increase the yeild but I really don't have the time to put more effort into it than I already do.

Be warned, I am a bit of a do it yourselfer (call me cheap ) so most of this stuff was designed and built by me to suit this particular cabinet.

Okay, lets get stared:
First a few details on the cabinet.

Size: 1320mm (52") high X 960mm (38") wide X 670mm (25") deep.
Main Grow Area: 620mm (24") X 620mm (24") @ 4 square feet.
Main Light: 250 watt hps, which in this space provides a nice 60 watts per square foot. The light is housed in a home built air cooled hood where fresh air is drawn in from outside the cabinet and the hot air is expelled into the ceiling space. The light has its own 75 cuft per minute fan which runs whenever the light is on.
Veg lights: 4 x 20 watt 2 foot flouros with the ballasts mounted outside the veg chamber to keep the temps down.
Ventilation: Apart from the fan attached to the air cooled hood, the cabinet also has a second 75 cuft per minute fan which draws air through both the veg and flower chambers via a home built carbon scrubber through the electrical chamber and vents out of the cabinet into the ceiling space.

Anyway, enough rambling from me its time to checkout some Pics.




Ready for paint.




Painted in flat white



The assembly starts, first its time for the dividing shelves and the flouros and then some stcky backed sponge to light seal it.




This is the underside and light traps, I painted everything in & out with flat black to make sure it was light proof. Note the drain hole in the middle of the floor, I grow hydro so the water needs to go somewhere in the event of a disaster :smile:

Okay, where was I?
Oh yeah time for more pics.




This is the veg chamber, you can see the intake vents on the back wall, they are attached to similar light traps as the ones on the bottom of the cabinet.
Between the lights is some PVC pipe that vents into the electrical chamber above.The exhast fan draws through this pipe.




This is the electrical chamber, it contains: 250 watt ballast, flouro ballasts, air pump, power board, and timers. As you can see the pipe from the veg chamber below turns right and goes through the wall into the flower chamber, this makes sure that the veg chamber is vented throught the carbon scrubber to contain all smell. Behind the timer on the right wall is a 4 inch hole through the wall into the flower chamber which attaches to the carbon scrubber. If you look high to the left you will just see the black 75 cuft/min exhast fan mounted to the ceiling of the chamber, this fan draws the air from both the veg and flower chambers through the carbon scrubber and also vents the electrical room at the same time.




Top of the flower chamber, with my home made hood and carbon scrubber. You can see the 75 cuft/min fan mounted to the ceiling and the carbon scrubber mounted through the wall on the left into the electrical chamber.




Here is the bottom of the flower chamber with my res and scrog screen installed.

Hey Ghost! Welcome and congrats on your first post.

That is one sweet little cab and nice work on the fabrication! I like DIY, as well.

Looking forward to more pix and descrips!

How is the heat in this unit w/ the 250? What is the bottom left space under the veg chamber for?

take care

HeadyPete

So how's it look all together?




Here you can see the whole thing, the chamber at the lower left holds my nutes, ph stuff and other assorted crap.
You can see the intake vents at the bottom of the flower chamber they have fine stocking over them to help keep the bugs out. I also have a fifth intake hole on the back wall of the flower chamber, this is the usual place where my circulation fan mounts and draws more fresh air into the chamber to keep the girls happy. :smile:




Pic with the res in.

Hey Headypete thanks for the welcome.
The temps in this cab run at about 2 degrees Celsius above temp on the outside of the cab. The summers around here can get very hot so I designed the cab around the ventilation system.
The small chamber under the veg chamber is to hold my nutes and other assorted stuff.

Thanks for droppin by,

Ghost

Well, I think its time to stealth this cabinet up. :wink:




First it gets a paint job courtesy of my partner.
You can see the inlet and outlet fittings, the fitting on the right is the light hood intake, the centre fitting is the light hood exhaust, the fitting on the left is the main cabinet exhaust.





Okay, next I attached some ducting to the two exhaust vents and then to the ceiling, as you can see I also installed some foam boxes around both the exhaust vents to dim the sound of the fans a bit.




Now time for some well placed sound insulated boxes.




And there you have it!
Safe, stealth, quiet, light proof, and minimal smell. And after five grows in this cab with no real changes to the design or equipment I think I am on to a winner!

So, After all this effort what does the product look like?
You be the judge
7 ounces of this every grow keeps me happy.










Thanks for checking out my Cabinet guys, if you have any questions I am happy to answer them.

That is just awesome! I love how you pile the boxes on top to hide the plumbing...a few more boxes lying around and it will look very junky and stealth!

Nice buds.

HeadyPete

Wow... awesome cab there TheGhost.
I need to convert to a design similar to yours. Much more efficient than my big growroom with bigger lights. Very nice job.

ghost- what an amazing cab my friend. i have been struggling for a while now with how i was going to design my cab to maximize its efficency, yet keep it cool and stealth. my situation is that i will be living in a house with four people and only 1 of them will actually know about the grow. thus why it must be complete stealth.

i had already planned on doing a dual-chamber setup like yours but now i have alot better idea of how to vent better. in my cab the only large difference is going to be that i am planning on using a 400watt hps. this is where i have a question for you.

since your using a 250 and its aircooled you can get away with only using 12cm fans. my idea was to save money and just get a batwing reflector and vent the whole box using something like an activeair 180cfm blower system which would suck the air through my carbon filter and be vented out my window.

the only thing is that i dont know if a 180cfm blower will be enough to keep my temps down. what are your thoughts? since youve used high watts before how many cfm do i need to move to keep my ladies cool under a 400?

also i was wondering what type of material you used to build your cab out of? i had been looking into just buying a prefab cupboard but if it would be cheaper to build myself i would prefer that.

thanks for your help.
keep it real
darrinjefferson

Hi Guys thanks for dropping in.

Indophiliac, thanks man, yeah I was surprised how efficient this little cab and light could be. I have found that I have much greater control over the environment in a cabinet than I used to in my larger grows.

darrinjefferson, Thanks for your comments. I have a little experience with a 400 in an enclosed space so I will answer your questions as best I can. First off, the ambient temps in your location will play a large part in how you design the cab and its ventilation. I would seriously consider air cooling your light, a 400 puts off a serious amount of heat in an enclosed space and if your summers get anywhere near hot then you will struggle to keep the temps at resonable levels. If your summers don't get too hot then the 180 cfm should work fine if the system is designed properly.
Just a warning, the noise the fan makes will put a serious dent in your stealth plans, a 180 cfm fan will vibrate and make considerable noise no matter how well you mount it. Go into your bathroom and turn on the exhaust fan then close the door and go into the next room and listen for the noise, this should give you an idea what kind of noise to expect but remember that the average bathroon fan is only 100cfm.
My fans are extremely quiet, mounted on rubber isolation mounts and inside the cabinet and I can still hear them at night through the wall.
The material I chose for this cabinet is called MDF (medium density fibreboard) I used it because its easy to work with and you can get it in different thicknesses, I used 16mm. This stuff is also very dense so I figured it would help in concealing the fan noise.

I hope that goes some way to answering your questions.

Later
Ghost

thanks alot ghost, your advice helps alot. i have started a thread in the growroom design froum http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=31212. it has my idea. its funny cause even since i posted it today i have already altered the way the cab will be. its fun to learn. take it easy

who knows...i might even change my setup to a 250 so that i can use a smaller fan and reduce the cost a bit. would a 250 be enough to cover a 2'x3' flower room? maybe some fluoros too.

thanks for the help.

What kind of fan are you using to pull the air through your carbon scrubber there? Also, how exactly did you make your reflector? I'd love to make my own and just get a 250w HPS ballast kit, but I'm not sure how to go about making the reflector. Also, is that a sheet of glass, or is it something like plexiglass?

You've got an amazing design, thank you so much for the in depth pics and explanation. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!

darrinjefferson: a 2x3 foot growing area is 6 square foot which equals 42 watts per square foot, this is a little on the low side but I guess all it will mean is the buds on the outside edge of the growing area will not be as large as the ones closer to the middle. The down side of a large growing area is that in order to cover everything with the light you will need to raise the light too high above the tops, and with a 250 watt with a usefull canopy penetration of about 8 inches this could cost you in yield.

Bounty29: Thanks for dropping by, I am using a 75 cft per minute 4" electronic type fan to vent the grow through the carbon scrubber. Actually it handles the job very well and I don't even notice any change in pitch when I attach the scrubber.
The shield on the hood is made from 4mm glass, The hood was made from a roll of 0.5mm aluminum that I got from the hardware store. I chose this material because it was easy to cut and fold with basic hand tools. I folded it up and riveted it together, I also attached some angle to the bottom of the hood to retain the glass which is removable for cleaning. Sorry, but it is the only thing that I have built that I didn't take any pictures of in the construction phase.

I hope that helps.

Later, Ghost

Just a couple of pics to show some detail.



This pic should give you a better look at how the hood is constructed, and you can also see in better detail how the scrubber mounts.




This pic was taken at about half way through the first harvest in the cabinet, you can see that I have also trimmed away alot of the lower leaves to get a better shot. This was my first grow under a 250 watt light and I miss timed the 12/12 switch resulting a bit of an overgrow, the buds ended up at about 14 inches above the screen, which is the very upper limit of my vertical space. It resulted in a bit of tip burn on one of the buds but it was a small price to pay for such a error.
This grow yielded 6 oz and to this date has been the lowest yielding grow to come out of this cabinet.

Later,
Ghost

very nice cabinet you got there ghost - I like the avatar too, reminds me of the story of the ghost.

I grow in a smaller cabinet with a 150 I'm also on my fifth grow in there and it has been very successful producing around 3 ounces every 2 months or so. I just love seeing how others get it done.

Well that's it, I just think it's great and have not much else to say.

Thanks for the reply and information ghost. It seems like everyone says you need a centrifugal fan in order to successfully pull air through a carbon filter, but it appears that you don't use one and you don't have an issue with that. How thick is your carbon? I was planning on building a foot long filter with 1" of activated carbon all the way around. If I can do that and get away with using a fan like yours (Which I'm still not sure what exactly it is) then that'd be amazing. I see you use a PC fan to vent the hood on your light, what's the CFM of that fan, and did you just splice that up with a AC/DC adapter? Thanks again!

Also, sorry for all the questions, but... What did you use to cut your circular holes in the MDF? It looks like they were all cut after it was constructed. And finally... how much MDF did you use? I just built a 2'x2'x4' cabinet and I used one piece of 4'x8' plywood and two pieces of 2'x2' higher grade plywood for the top and bottom. Total cost for framing and plywood was about $35-40

bountry29 you took the question right from me. i want to know what kind of materials are needed for the construction. is plywood good/strong enough for what i am going to be needing. i would think that plywood will work fine. how well does plywood paint?? if i use it not only will the inside become white, but the outside is going to also become painted to help increase its stealthiness?

thanks for your help guys.
im gonna be on and off for a bout 5-6 days, im working at a lacrosse camp.
i will stop by when i get time to brainstorm some new ideas.
later

I put together the frame for my cabinet last week, I'll start painting the panels for it in about an hour, both sides, first a layer of primer and then flat white on the inside and gloss white on the outside. I'll probably do one layer of primer and two layers of paint. I'll be sure to let you know how it looks after. The plywood I bought has one clean side, free of knots, so it'll look good on the outside, and the other side, the inside, isn't quite as high quality but I'm sure it'll work just fine. I think I'll make a trip to Home Depot to see if they have any of the MDF, and if they do I'll definitely get some prices for us.

Edit: My cabinet is just going to be a single chamber, 2'x2'x4', I think I'll use that for a few grows at least, until I'm more familiar with growing, and then upgrade to a newer cabinet and stuff.

well thanks for all the help bro. i wanted to do the same thing also with my cab, except imight paint it black. not sure yet. what does mdf stand for?
alright well i gotta go, im stoned as shit and now i gotta go coach lacrosse. man what a great life.
you should look at my thread, check the link. later bro

Hey guys,

sugarbear II: thanks for the comments, its much appreciated :smile: good luck with that 150 grow.

bounty29: No problems with answering questions, thats why I started the thread. I figure if someone can use this info then I am happy to spread it.
The depth of the carbon in my scrubber is 15mm, yes it sounds thin but remember that I am only growing with a 250 watt so the level of odour is never very high anyway. Even though I think it is capable of doing two grows I do change the carbon every grow just to be sure. The fact that I have to spend $12 and ten minutes of my time per grow is a small price to pay for being able to use a smaller fan that creates less noise and increases my security. I have always grown by the policy of designing the room/cab around the ventilation system, apart from the obvious benefit to the pants the rooms ventilation system plays a large part in two major security concerns, NOISE & SMELL.
The fan used to vent the system is identical to the one used on the hood, they were purchased as 75 cft per minute inline fans ready to go with wall plugs installed, they actually had steel ducting bolted on to them so they could be monuted inline a 4" duct run. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the one on the light is replaced every 3 grows because the heat causes it to get a little too noisy for my liking.
I cut the holes in the MDF with drill mounted hole saws and an extra large hole saw for the 4" holes that almost burned my drill out (dusty shitty job).
I remember buying three 6'x4'sheets of MDF, I still have alot of material left.

darrinjefferson: See my reply to bounty29 for your material questions.
MDF (Medium-density fibreboard).

You will notice that I don't mind replacing equipment on my cabinet, I even change the bulbs every second grow. I do this to keep the efficiencies high and more importantly to maintain the highest level of security I can. Call me paranoid but I am the sole caregiver to my partner and I can not afford the worst case scenario.

Later
Ghost