C
Cozy Amnesia
Give it a shot, see how it goes, and if it fails you could sell it to me 
. and i'm serious
. and i'm serious
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150w HPS Club and Resource Guide......
- Thread starter Pipedream
- Start date
ambr0sia
Member
catman said:
For what it's worth, the small (6x7) room my cab is in was an addition to our home and is windowless and constructed of well-sealed 14" logs followed by 2" of compressed styrofoam insulation followed by 1" wood paneling; The floor is concrete. I can't remember it feeling even remotely warm even throughout the hottest days of summer, though I admittedly wasn't actually measuring the temperature. It's always been the coolest part of the house, almost cellar like in temperature consistency - I suspect that'll be a different story this winter, though, since we regularly get sub-freezing and sub-zero temperatures up here in the Northern Rockies.
I'd still hate to tread a "maybe / hopefully it'll work" kind of line, though. If ya'll think 172cfm of Vortex likely won't cut the mustard in a cab this size, I'd rather find a new solution that will - It's going to be a significant pain to reconfigure the cab and find somewhere to house my fresh seedlings in the couple weeks it'll take to make an exchange with BGH, but it'd be worth it in the long run...
jasonk
Member
Hey everyone, I'm thinking of starting a cab on a patio of my 14th floor apartment. My first concern is obviously going to be temps outside. I don't see it getting below 15°F in the thick of winter. Is there a safe type of electric heater with a thermostat to be used say... in line with PC fans that anyone can recommend?
Besides the typical light, smell & sound issues, is there any other concerns with growing on a patio as opposed to indoors I should be considering??
Besides the typical light, smell & sound issues, is there any other concerns with growing on a patio as opposed to indoors I should be considering??
killa-bud said:hey guys,
just some pics of some "colas",burmese pure f2 i guess(thanks again) and jlp's sdxog(also thanks again)
yeild'ed a lil over 2 1/2 oz's,both great strains
it was way to crowded in there for a 150
nice work killa-bud
so which picture is which? I am guessing the burmese pure f2s are the top picture?
-suga
ambr0sia said:Thanks to all the incredible help from the folks in this thread, my final cab design is finished and will be physically completed either tonight or tomorrow!
The air will enter the veg chamber via 6 individual 1.5" light traps across the floor. From here, it will leave veg bound for the flower chamber via 6 more 1.5" PVC pipes that direct air to the dead bottom center. This air in turn will be drawn through the cool tubes and into the utility room, across the ballasts, and into the ventilation room, where it will be filtered through a CAN33 carbon filter and pushed out via a 4" Vortex 172cfm inline fan.
One pickle I've found myself in has to do with the PVC outer diameter and inner diameter. I (admittedly stupidly) based my intake calculations on the outer diamter of the PVC, which equaled out to about 6 2" intakes to double the 4" outtake. Turns out the PVC has an actual functional inner diamter of 1.5", which calculates out to the need for 7 intakes. Is this difference critical enough for me to make another trip to Home de'Pot to pick up additional elbows, and tubing, or am I going to be ok with 6?
I'll be starting my own grow thread tonight, so long as I can find my camera charger - stay tuned!
FYI, for those interested in picking up the E-conolight MT6H151G ($20 pendant mount 150W HPS), may as well do it now while you can; I had to call my order in last week because the site was down and while they had me on the phone they mentioned that the model is being discontinued. The sales rep didn't know why or if it would be replaced by a newer model or not.
the design looks good, one question, how deep is the cabinet?
On the fan question.... I would bump it up to like a 256cfm fan. Although a 172 cfm vortex is a very strong fan and can likely handle the setup I'm more of a more is better - you can always buy a speed control if it is too much..
I tried running a 400 watter with (4) 1.5" inner diameter (2" OD) pvc intakes in the bottom plus a 265 cfm dayton blower and found that I needed more intake so I ended up using darkroom louvers on the back. Based upon that experience I don't think 6 will cut it... 7 or 8 might.
The darkroom louvers are really easy to work with and allow for better air flow although a bit pricey. If you have the option I would use two of the bigger square ones (stay away from the round ones - they leak light) with one for intake into veg and one between the veg and flower chamber.
I would also ditch the cool tubes.... not worth the hassle. a bare bulb 150 can be effectively cooled by a small fan. Just throw a couple small fans in the upper right corner blowing across.
Then instead of having the ducting going into the utility room you can just leave it wide open from there all the way through to the filter.
Again a lesson I learned in my big cabinet was that having duct sized openings is a bad idea ... I started the 400 watt cabinet with a shelf in the middle and the top being used as a utility space... you can see in picture below I had a duct from the filter to 4" hole in the shelf.
This worked for the 150 but when I put the 400 in there it didn't work as temps were 25+ ambient of 70 ( a 400 is roughly equivelent to the two 150's you plan on running imho)
So I put the filter on the back and added three darkroom louvers to the back wall
Still had issues and it wasn't until I cut several more 4" holes in the shelf that I was able to get temps under control.
So my advice is to just have the air as free flowing as possible out of the flower chamber. The filter fan combination will take care of light leaks on that end, you don't need to worry about keeping the utility room dark during lights on... just make sure to cover any led lights on powerstrips or what not with some aluminum foil tape.
My finaly suggestion would be to ditch the 6 x 23 watt cfls in favor of a bunch of 24" t-8 electronic tubes (walmart under cabinet lights). The tubes will run cooler and you can get a variety of different temp bulbs for them at pet stores...
In this picture you can see the small type off fan I would use in the upper right corner of your flower chamber to blow across the 150s and keep the hot air from collecting in that corner. These are found at walmart although being seasonal items you may not find them now.
you can also see the 18" t-8 and 24" t-8 lamps here. I don't think the 24" ones will fit as the bulb is 24" long but you can probably figure out a way.
-suga
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jasonk said:
Biggest issue would be the security problems caused by a box on your porch that would be pumping steaming air like a dryer. The exhaust will be full of moisture and will condense like your breath on a cold day. Likewise it will melt snow and if the rest of your porch has snow and the area around your cabinet doesn't it will stick out like a sore thumb.
Putting that aside and assuming some how it will not be out of place nor produce too much noticable heat
growing inside you can generally leave your intakes open. growing in a cab outside or taking outside air in you will need to filter the air for bugs. Probably just medium weight filter material over your intakes should do it.
The ceramic electric heaters they have these days are pretty safe and probably your best bet. However I would imagine that you will be able to get heat from your lamp and ballast which you would keep in your grow area.
Maybe you should consider a thermostat on your ventilation fan, run your lights at night when it is coldest to use the extra heat and add supplemental CO2 via the fermentation method that pipedream has mentioned in the past.
Higher CO2 concentrations will allow you to vent less often.
If you wanted to go balls out - a small propane pilot lamp in the cabinet could allow you to run nearly sealed - as the flame would burn the o2 from the plants and produce heat and co2.
People run big setups this way... two rooms 10' x 10' with a central lung room. Lamps on flip-flop so one room is always on. The central lung room has something to control humidity down and up, a co2 burner, air conditioning unit and a carbon filter to clean the recirculated air and dust. Add bunch of sensors and a control unit... Still a very tricky way to grow... reproducing this on a small scale would be very hard.
anyways sorry for the tripple post morning but I have the day offf....
some of my burmese pure buds grown under a 150 in may '07
and to show that not every strain is a winner... here's some jack herer x blue satelite that hermied around 49 days in ... yuck - I just ground up a bunch for vaping... we'll see if it even produces vapor ... funny thing about vaporizing is that you really get to see how much trich the bud has in the density of the vapor.
grown under my 150 in Dec-Jan '05 I think ?!?
without flash
with flash
ambr0sia,
As long as everyone is making suggestions, I'll throw mine into the mix.....
save yourself alot of unnecessary work and expense, and make your box easier to maintain on the inside. Give up all of the PVC pipes between the veg and flower chamber, and just make a double wall with large openings one the top and bottom of opposite sides. Its cleaner, easier, and will allow more airflow. Here's a very bacis graphic of what I'm suggesting......
jas,
I'm using a DC reversible fan. In winter I switch the polarity and it pushes the warm air in the top of the box down around the plants. Works great.
good luck! PD
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yeah what pipedream said!
ambr0sia
Member
Pipedream said:
Not a bad idea at'all! One thing I would worry about though, is creating a preferential pathway through the closest cooltube to that wall if I'm not taking the effort to "pipe" the air to the center of the cab - Is this a reasonable concern or just going overboard?
I see a lot of folks running Dayton blowers - Since it looks like I'll need an upgrade and these seem to be one of the few brands that have a model that runs @ ~250cfm, would it be a good choice in my situation? It looks like there's even an adapter so that I can run it "inline" stylee and not have to do too much modification to my existing design to make it work. Do they work with fan speed controllers? Are they loud? Any other suggestions for a fan that can fit in a space 12" wide by 3.75ft tall?
Sugabear_II said:
I was pretty limited with depth in the space I'm using due to the door; 2ft is all I've got.
Again, thanks for putting up with my deluge of questions, everyone - You've all been a great help in my seemingly neverending quest for the perfect stash!
ambr0sia said:
again I think the cool tube is going overboard and is totally going to make things more complicated for you. Cool tubes are best employed for when you have a separate closed ducting for them without a carbon filter and then a smaller system with filter for the grow space - so two fans - one for the lights only and one for the room. hard to do on small scale (I tried with my first 150 cab fwiw).
Dayton's a pretty cheap (a 256cfm is around $60) and available at graingers if you can get them to sell it cash and carry.... They're louder and less capable of moving air then an inline. I've never seen them hooked inline stylee but it is possible. Saying this on second thought I think your 172cfm inline will be fine, just ditch the cool tubes, open the airflow into theambr0sia said:
ambr0sia said:I was pretty limited with depth in the space I'm using due to the door; 2ft is all I've got.
Again, thanks for putting up with my deluge of questions, everyone - You've all been a great help in my seemingly neverending quest for the perfect stash!
2ft is good ... you will have plenty of space.
I hope you don't mind that I've modified your diagram a little... to show a more free flowing design that will I think work better.
p.s. I also got rid of dem pine trees for you
Knives
Member
growDaddy said:
sorry, got a little excited lol. from 1 night in 12/12, the tops already turned a bit yellow! I think they have been waiting. Bagseed is lookin good. may be too early but i think it might be a girl. my plan is to harvest the bubblicious and bagseed, place as many 16oz cups as possible in the remaining space and 12/12 from seed while i wait for my thunk to harvest. maybe pull an extra oz off of 4 or 5 little trees lol. send the pot vibes of peace my way
ambr0sia
Member
sugabear_II said:
You think 2x150W lights are going to be ok in a 40" tall cab without cooltubes? I guess the only reason I was using them in the first place is that I thought those 300W were going to be getting *way* too hot in a cab that short. Then again, this is my first grow, so I've really got no clue
Now that's what I like to hear! Though to be honest, I'm not entirely understanding why removing the cooltubes will make my previously too small fan more adequate than with them... Can anyone help me wrap my head around this one?sugabear_II said:
sugabear_II said:
Mind? If you just figured out how to make this 172cfm work in my space, you'll stand as a god amongst micro-growers, at least in my book!
sugabear_II said:
p.s. I also got rid of dem pine trees for you
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