Red' Greenery's 150 HPS Cab

Hey Guys - I just finished building my brand new shiny growbox.

My 254W CFL Rubbermaid tub was a prototype for this growbox. I ran the 150W HPS in the tubs for a week with no problems. My 254 Watt CFL Rubbermaid design can be copied into cabinet and you will have no problems.

My Rubbermaid design was meant for anyone to put together with simple tools, a drill, utility knife, and a few screwdrivers. The cabinet design needs some woodworking tools. I used a jigsaw to cut the ventilation holes. A table saw and a radial arm saw were used to cut the shelves. A jigsaw would work fine if that's all ya got.

The cabinet is from Canadian Tire and is 60" tall x 24" wide and 12" deep.
It was on sale for $50. I think I'm going to pick up another one.

The ventilation system uses three 100mm 65CFM fans from Radio Shack along with 4" ducts from Home depot. I like using AC fans because they are easier to wire and a bit more powerful than DC fans.

The lighting chamber uses my cool-box design which is like a ventilated hood or a cool tube made from an old piece of glass that I cut with a $2 glass scratcher that is installed like a shelf.

I've been picking up goodies all week and took the day off work and put her together today.



Here is the top, sides and bottom kick board assembled.
It's sitting on a blue yoga mat so I don't scratch my nice flooring.



This is the floor of the cabinet with a passive intake cut to 25 sqin, 12-1/2" x 2"

This is twice the area of the 4" duct that will exhaust this section of the cabinet.

Always cut the intakes twice the exhaust size to prevent a big pressure loss to maximize air flow.

I made a light trap using 3 pieces cut from one of the shelves.

It's a bit better than Kleenex boxes - eh! The airflow is down at the back, turns to the front then splits left and right before going straight back at the sides. This works really well with no light leaks or glowing



This is the top of the lighting section made out of one of the shelves.
It has two 4" 65CFM fans one blowing, one sucking.

In my Rubbermaid design, a single 38CFM fan is sufficient to cool the 150 HPS so there's lot's of ventilation here.

I installed the 4" (100mm) fans because they match up with the 4" duct. My HPS has a safety feature that one fan is a backup for the other in case one fails.



This cabinet came with a cardboard backing which I replaced with a piece of 4' x 24" melamine that I got at Home Depot for $10.

It worked out perfect since I wanted to leave the very top section open. I mounted another 100mm duct fan with a 4" tin duct. This fan will exhaust the grow section into my homemade scrubber.



Now I'm assembling the light section from what I call my cool-box design. It's basically a ventilated hood using a piece of window glass.

Two rails made from some scrap MDF particle board are screwed to the sides.

The glass heat shield sits on the rails like a shelf.

I took one of the spare shelves and cut it to fit in the space between the glass and the top shelf to seal in the light chamber.

I can slide the glass out easily to change the light bulb. The fans make a positive pressure with some air leaks inside so I don't need to seal this up at at.



I picked up a 150 HPS security light for $125 at Rona Home Hardware. You can only get 35W at Crappy Tire for $75 and 70W for $99 at Home Depot so locally this is a sweet deal.

The photocell shut off switch has to be taken out of the circuit.

I used Sugabear's guide http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=36344&page=1&pp=15 to rewire the HPS light. I'm not going to go into detail cause Sugabear's how to shows it all!!!

I'm using the light can as a temporary remote ballast and have it sitting on the top shelf in the utility area. The light recepticle is mounted remotely in the lighting chamber. I still have some cleanup to do electrically. My connections are all wire-nutted together and then taped up with electrical tape so they won't pull apart. I plan to put the ballast in an electrical project box and mount a proper electrical receptical box.




And here is my inline scrubber. It's connected with a 4" duct from the growcab and just sits on top. I pulled the 4" fan that was mounted in the tub lid and put it in the growbox. I had to block up the extra hole.



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Edit - I got my camera fixed and will continue to add pictures and details....

Red

wow that's ridiculously clean

jealousy++

RED!!! Great job, Ill be watching to see it all in action.

BTW people...I have learned a great deal form REd, I owe him many thanks from the bottom of my buzz.

glad your trying new stuff a guy can copy your not filtering the air pulled from above the glass ? and are the fans you got 120v or 12v,fron instore or online? thanks again for sharing your wealth of knowledge

Hi Red,

Nice building skills, much respect.

How tall are you going to veg your plants now? I'm sure you're in for a big increase in yield!

Peace

S

Thanks for all the compliments guys!!!

I'm really happy to get this project completed. It's so nice to have doors and not have to lift off the tub to check on the plants. The big improvement over the Rubbermaid tubs is ease of access and grow hieght. I've got 46" of space compared to 26" now and can fit two 10" pots inside instead of two 8" pots or one 10" pot.

The HPS cab uses the same design as the 254 CFL / 150 HPS Rubbermaid tub. The grow section can be ventilated with a single 38 CFM fan with a 5" x 5" passive intake and the grow section with the inline scrubber and fan with a 5" x 5" passive intake. All the parts can be moved over into the new home.

In terms of lighting, the 254 watts of CFL's in the tubs are about the same or slightly better than the 150 HPS. I've checked out lot's of similar grows and don't expect any big changes from the lighting, the 254 CFL's performed somewhere in between a 150 and 250 HPS.

I hope to see some improvement on yield by running 10" pots. I've repotted before during flowering and it doesn't affect the plant one bit. I would have liked to have vegged a bit more but they are in flowering now and to reveg now will screw them right up.



Here's my babies at day 10 flowering. I think I'll keep posting progress pictures in the Lodge and just answer questions about the cab in this thread.

lookin good red!
how's the light contact on the canopy with that HPS, is there much of a light loss at that distance?

it might be a lil benefical to be able to move the plants up and down, you know what i mean? so you can move them down as they get taller so they never change distance where there is the most light available.

I'm just askin because i get a more noticable difference in my cabinet if i move my HPS/MH up or down 3 inches. if i was able to cool my reflector, hell i'd keep my plants 2 inches away!

i received that Bake A Round cool tube i was talkin about in your rubbermaid thread.


hey red, i see that rubbermaid being used as a veg chamber now...hmmmm harvests a lil faster

- SubN

Hey Subnoize - I might add a shelf to bring the plants up higher. I ended up cutting the spare shelf to make the light trap. It's not a priority now cause they are in early flowering. I'll try to maximize growth once they start budding.

I looked around for a Bake Around or some Hurricane glass but couldn't find anything locally.

Actually my cool-box design works better because I can get higher air flow rates through the larger chamber. The cooltube is partially blocked by the light. Best thing, it was a freebie since I had a piece of glass sitting in the garage and just had to cut it.

what do you mean the cooltube is partially blocked by the light?
-yeah man, anything you can use from around the house is better than buyin!
i like your design, very nice. Those cabs seem to be very user friendly.
Great craftsmanship. everything you build is really clean and effective, i like it.

yeah i'll snap a pic of it when i get my camera out today, i found them on Ebay. They are old, it came in an old box, probably from the early 90s so i don't think you'll be abld to find them locally. unless someone sold one to a thrift store, goodwill/red,white,and blue

Take a look at all the cooltubes. The HPS light goes inside of it the cooltube and blocks at least 1/2 the cross-sectional area which will drop the airflow down by at least 1/2 or more. I get maximum airflow from my fans because there is no restrictions.

Here's a very well made cooltube by BonsaiGrower. This is a pretty big tube and it looks like 6" ducts are used. The light will really plug up a 4" duct.

Besides that I'm lazy and the cool-box design is much easier to build, hahahaha.............

BonsaiGrower said:

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I have the ventilation figured out to a T and I'm on my 2nd or 3rd generation of box design so you'll see it in the details. I'm trying to KISS everthing as well.

Post your pics when you're ready!!!

oooohhh ok, i gotcha now, yeah anythig that'll take up space will restrict airflow.
This is a really cool piece of tubing though. it's built for baking bread up to 425deg F so there will be no issues with being used with say a 150-400w, i don't know if i'd trust it with a 600 or 1000 without a vortex fan.

seeing as how the lightbulb is aerodynamically designed with no hard edges i'm sure that even though it will reduce the CFMs it won't reduce the speed of the air moving over it. I think it will have a bottle neck effect same amount of matter going thru a smaller area = faster movement

when i use it i plan on setting it up the same way, with a doubled over metal strap-mounted socket and a 4" circle clamp. 4" ducting and at least an 85cfm fan

i just put in the acrylic light shield and cut a vent yesterday so after this grow i'll find a way to use the HPS. probably use the CFLs for veg or keeping clones alive or something.

I just measured it and put it up against a 2liter bottle. it's 3.75 wide and 14" long

lovely growbox. i look forward to seeing how your plants do.

i have to admit i would have had trouble not making the growspace a little smaller, and the total cab height taller to incorperate a seedling/mum/clone chamber. then again you already have a wonderful rubbermaid cab for that purpose

Hey Red!!!! ...Right on Bro. You know I'm pulling up a seat. I'm with you POMH....Red has been inspirational to me since the first day I looked at ICMAG. I was clicking around this site like mad and was fascinated with all these "micro" grows. Reds rubbermade made me start to think on a whole new level. including how and what I was going to spend my money on building my set-up. Measure twice, cut once and design it for the rest of your life. Mucho-Respecto to you Red...you handy dandy inspiration. Nice clean new cab brotha! You did your homework on so many levels!

I'm humbled you used my pic as an example..thanks man. I loved that DIY project. I used Sugabears link and just changed a few things. The only thing extra I had to buy was the electrical box for the ballast, 2 duct elbows, couple ac plugs, and the lantern hurricane glass. The reflector came just as is from the original light box and I had metel screws and metel pipe strapping laying around. It's actually 4" duct elbows but I have the light just screwed into the duct at the very end of the opening. The light socket has a small metel mount with 2 holes already from the original mount so I really didn't do anything to build it. I think it took me about 15 minutes when I sat down with everything and started to drill a few holes in the Ballast box to completion.

I wish I had of made a DIY pic run when I did it but thought since Suga already had a great thread on it why clutter up ICmag.

Here's a shot of my 430W cab light in a 1000W airlcooled hood. to show a way that you can extend the light and help with air flow, plus depending on the size of brackets you can centre the bulb into the sweet spot.

Peace Red..gonna sit back over here in the corner now and keep learnin.

BG

Wow guys, I'm overwhelmed with all the well wishes. I'm just happy to do my own thing and show you guys my stuff.

Subnoize - I'm sure the bake around will work out fine. It will take the majority of the heat away and not let it in the growbox.

Hey Bonsaigrower, that's high praise coming from a master grower like yourself. I don't usually swipe pics 'n stuff without giving proper credit. I sure like your setup and really want to do some bonsai's. I think my next project will be a veg/mom box.

looks great red! i gotta a plan for my 150, im gonna show the design soon, for your green-thumbed approval! btw, its gonna be really micro!

Wow thanks Red,,,,I dunno about me being a master grower...I've always been lucky with a green thumb I suppose though. I think I have a long way to go though...but the beauty is ... it's alot of fun learning and practicing....lol.

After watching your grows in the rubbermade it's gonna be great to watch you in the cab.

as for Bonsai we have a few resident bonsai experts as well. Mr Green Jeans for instance ... and a few others ...I'm a little baked this morning on scissor hash...memory is all messed up. ... I think there is 3 of us in the wake-n-bake thread that grow bonsai. It's a natural transition from LST to Bonsai or vice-versa.

Peace my friend...you deserve all the respect you are getting...I bet for every 10 people that post, 100 lurk and aren't members.

BG

I really like the way you did that light! do you notice the glass causing it to cool to notable lower temps? also I've never seen any one use a bigg tubber box for a scrubber...is it as easy to make as it looks?? any down sides to using that instead of other more industrial designs that use metal? well like someone said before..looks super clean..good job!

looks great red ...u gonna love that 150

grow on bro

mj

Hi bluebublelove

I'm happy that you like my cab design. The cool-box is the key to both my Rubbermaid tubs and HPS cab design. It's the equivalent of a cool tube. If you use an unrestricted fan (no scrubber) and make the intakes 2x the area of the exhaust then the fan requirements can be kept very low.

I can cool 254 W of CFL's or a 150HPS with a single 38CFM fan. The airflow through my scrubber is very low since it uses a computer fan. I calculated it at by measuring the time to fill a huge large garbage bag.

Here's the how-to to build my filter. The key to a good scrubber design is to have a large surface area, the bigger the better. The SIS or industrial filters are well made. My scrubber can be made very simply. You can add or remove carbon as necessary to adjust airflow. I can also stir the carbon to get a little more life out of it.

Red_Greenery said:

Carbon Air Filter

My air filter uses two Sterilite containers. The small one must fit inside the large one.

The bottom is cut out of the small tub, I left a small rib in the center to support the screening.
Glue the window screen in place with the epoxy.

The lid of the large box is cut so that the small box with fit into it.

Intake holes are cut into the large box and the dryer adapters are fitted onto it. You can just duct tape it to the side if you don't have the adapters. This is probably the first time that duct tape is actually used for it's intended purpose. The flap is removed from the dryer adapter and I use a hack saw to trim off the pipe on one side.

A computer fan and a dryer hose adapter is fitted onto the lid of the small box.

When the filter is all assembled, I take silicone caulking and seal up crack where the small box goes into the large box lid.

My setup uses 1/2 lb of activated charcoal for a filter depth of 1" that I buy at the pet store. The 1" layer is good for the whole grow.

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