150w HPS Club and Resource Guide......

[DiscoBiscuit]

whats up disco, were you refering that to me about the low level footprint ? i got to the point over 50 post to where I can tweak my settings now. It did not show you under my friends list.

Yes sir. I referenced low-level as compared to HID. Your T5 may be HID but proximity is key with any small lamp. I've got HID in flower but it's low level as compared to larger bulbs. Plus, I have to get canopies as close as possible or I get small fluffy buddage. Sorry if I sounded derogatory.

I messed up and friended you before your 50. Let's see, you're on my list so I can't send another invite. But I'd like to exchange so send me an invite if you wish. I may not get the invitation but I should appear on your list.

 

[J23]

New to the club

New to the club

Hi everybody. I guess I'm ready to join the gang...

I've built my box a couple months ago but it was just last week when I finally decided to give it a go. It's 52"W x 20"D x 37"H. Since it's sitting in a middle of my living room I was attempting to make it as stealth as possible. It was kind a challenging 'cause only left side of a cab is adjacent to the wall and all three sides are exposed so there is no holes, ducting, wires etc sticking out. It took me too long to finish it but hey, I made it. It's built from scratch witch wood panels from Ikea so it's also matching my other furniture in the room. Basically box is divided into clone seedlings section (19W x 19D x 24H), mechanic section above it (19W x 19D x 9H) and flowering section in right part of a box (30W x 19D x 34H).

150W HPS in a bake-a-round style DIY cool tube. Termaltake fan TT-9025T (92mm, 12V DC 0.4 A, powered by 9V 0.48A adapter) sucks air from inside of the box and pushes it thru HPS to mechanic section/cooling the bulb. There is delta AFB 0912 (92mm, 12V 1A, 38db, 58cfm) fan installed in a floor pushing air thru CanFan 705. As you can see on the pic scrubber can be unscrewed so it's not blocking a light while there is no stinky plants flowering at the moment. Seedling is lighted by 23W CFL 6500K ( i believe it's 75W equivalent). There is also a LED panel there but I think I'll move it to flowering section as additional light. Passive intake of 16 sq in. drawing air from under the cabinet (cab is sitting in a toe kick). Remote ballast. I moved it about 4 ft away so now it's sitting in my aquarium cabinet where it's humming sound it totally unnoticeable.

There is one fan circulating air in a flowering section. It's suspended on a rubber band so no vibration/noise is added. Only when Scrubber/fan are working you can hear some noise but when I asked my unaware friend if he hear something unusual he couldn't tell anything apart from my aquarium equipment. I don't remember what are the temps in flowering chamber but it was around 85 with ambient of 72. Actually I started with 250W HPS but I couldn't solve the heat issue. Stronger fans made too much noise so I had to downgrade to 150W.

Cool tube + fan is a must. Even if it's "only" 150Watter it's quite warm there. When the cab doors are closed and fans running you can't hear a thing. I hope delta fan on my scrubber will do OK. While test runs you can hear slight high pitch tone from about 3 ft away, but like I said, I know its there... Otherwise, it can go unnoticeable.

What else... Oh, there is tray with sliders installed underneath for better access when pruning plant. I plan 1 plant scrog so it may make my life a little easier. At some point I may upgrade to Panasonic whisper/DIY scrubber combo. After reading this post seems like it's almost silent.

Like I said, I plan on setting a scrog. My plant (feminized northern light from nirvana) is 1 week old and it's in a fox farm ocean forest. Recently, after reading coco thread here I decided to go coco. I'm not sure when would be the best time to transfer my plant from soil to coco, thou. Any suggestions?

Anyway, I'm proud of myself for completing this project. It was pain in the ass. I went through PC fan guide by ScrubNinja (Thnx Scrub!) and RedGreenry VENTILATION 101 and many other threads. A LOT of reading but very useful info there. Still, I'm sure that my box is not perfect. So far there was a lot of tweaking. I have a bunch of fans with different cfm and db ratings + a few power supplies with different amp and voltages. I was switching them trying different nominations to achieve acceptable temp/noise ratio. Like someone said, each box is unique and even if you know basic rules of building the box it take some trials to find right combination. I still may encounter some problems in a future but for now - I'm good.

Here are some pics of my box...

__________________________________________________-

 

[J23]

oh, tomorrow I'll try another way of attaching those pics so they are little bigger...

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

If noise ever becomes a problem, blame it on the fan, pc or aquarium etc sitting on top of your cabinet. Completely silent operations are rare and many rely on something innocuous in the vicinity to blame noise on.

 

[J23]

...Exactly, my friend. Also, I have PC in the same room (8ft away) and it's humming helps "distract" attention from the box.







that's better now ...

 

[OrgAeroMan]

Looks nice dude I'm looking forward to see how the Nirvana fem. Northern Lights goes, I've been thinking about trying out their fem. gear. Good luck buddy and safe growing!!!!!

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

J23, I like the way you mounted the tube. What's that, PVC? That's also a neat socket bracket.

How do you exhaust the heat?

 

[J Budman]

I just have one quick question since my cab is similar. Where does all the hot air go from the mechanical compartment? It looks to me like both chambers vent into there, but no exhaust from there? Am I right? Or just missing something? If there is no exhaust how do you keep it so cool?

 

[J23]

Thanks for compliments guys!

OrgAeroMan: I've red somewhere that NL is pretty good yield-er. Like I mentioned before, I got it from Nirvana. I highly recommend those guys. Stealth shipping was... stealth. My seeds disappeared during shipping and were resend no question asked. Very nice and helpful customer service!

DiscoBiscuit: that pipe is standard plumbing PVC from home depot. It's 4" outside dia. and 3 1/2" inside. Since bake-a-round is a little over 3" it fits neatly with a little foam seal around it.

Here's bulb mounting:


3 legs made from thick wire (it's from paint bucket handle ) and shaped like C letter. Tighten around the socket with screw type metal band (home depot as well). At first I've used strips of sheet metal but than upgraded to wire = less air resistance/noise when fan pushing air thru tube...

J.Budman: air from mechanic section is pushed thru scrubber to seedlings chamber. Only one 3' hole there in the bottom. For now it's OK but I may put extra PC fan there during summer and maybe expand outtake...

 

[BC Chronic]

Hello everyone!!
Sorry I have'nt visited lately but I just got caught up..
I would go crazy waiting longer than 9-10 weeks..lol...for any strain...
My last TW grow yielded 4 O's dry which was better than the first go...
i'm growing AK48 now so here's a pic...

this is at day 36 of bloom...she is a very heavy feeder too..
thanks again!!

 

[J23]

Hi BC. I'm a father of a 1 week old NorthernLights baby girl. This is my first grow (I'm for SCROG too) so I'll be watching your progress closely!

 

[GrowBox420]

150watters...

150watters...

Hows everyone doing thought I should put a pic of the Sour D...

Also here is some pics of the Cheeze that has come out of the cab it was a first grow and I yielded 35g's


Hope everyones gardens are nice and frosty with goodness.

 

[OrgAeroMan]

J23, it looks like you have your shit together. Kudos on the cab, and thanks for the speedy response. Your lovely lass should be happy in there Keep us all posted on your progress!

BC, WOW! Nice growing, that TW looks like a champ! I love it. 4 oz. Super impressive. It appears you have got the old cab-eroni dialed in nicely. I'm glad you came back to show us your bountiful harvest. What's next on the schedule? I'll be watching and waiting... impatiently

GrowBox I'm a huge fan of SD. Where did you get it? She looks immaculate. I ran some SDxDC from CannaCopia (Chuck-D), and was extremely pleased. Keep up the good work!

 

[kjz71521]

Lookin good

Lookin good

Nice work growbox, I have a question for tha O.G. Growerz. My plants been in flower for almost 3 weeks. Is it possible to take clones and put them in my bubble cloner back in the vegg chamber..? Im curious how they will come out...

 

[tronkyx]

Hey kjz71521,

It is possible to do, just the clones gonna be stunted for a while, but they'll be fine, hurry dood.

Tronkyx from MEX

 

[OrgAeroMan]

Indeed.

 

[OrgAeroMan]

Time is of the essence.

 

[J23]

... a week later

... a week later

Hi again, everyone. It's been a week since my last post here so here's an update on my grow. A couple of days ago I moved my plant to plain coco (GH CocoTek). She was a little more than a week at that time so I was afraid I might have hurt her but she's doing fine. When working on mixing a nutes (GH Micro and GH Bloom @ 6ml/9ml ratio => H3ad formula) I came to conclusion that my ph meter is crap. It was $30 Hanna. Of course I have red many advices from growers advising to shell out a few $ more and get something better but me being cheap ass decided to "save". Well, the meter takes around 10min to stabilize. Also, taking measurement from the same sample within 2 hrs time span gives significantly different readings. Anyway, I scored another one off of ebay + new calibrating solution. It's been used at some lab, and when googled manufacturer's name it turned out they specialize in laboratory equipment so I hope it will be accurate.
Anyway, here's my bush and yet another shot of my box...

week ago and now


GrowBox420: your girls (#7591) are lookin good!
...mean no harm

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

I know what you mean, J23. I've got a checker and it sucks. I get about ~18 months use per probe (and the damn thing's $20, lol.)

It helps if you rinse the probe with each use. If you have to store the tip wet avoid distilled or even RO, the meter will spaz and won't function correctly. 7.01 calibration solution is fine if you don't have storage solution.

Two-point calibration is better than single-point. I use 4.01/7.01 with the checker. If I get a suspect reading, I usually recalibrate.

Stirring the solution with the probe helps settle the reading. Be careful not to bump the probe against the container. Another thing that helps slow reads is to dip in 4.01, rinse and re-read whatever you're testing.


pH up and down solutions can wane fast. It's best to add at application, in other words make only the amount of solution you need at a time.

 

[J23]

...just thought somebody might be interested

...just thought somebody might be interested

if you thinking 'bout building Bulenath's whisper fan/scrubber combo you might find it interesting:

Broan QTR050F Bath Fan, 50CFM @ 0.4 sones @ $32.90 + S$H

http://www.wamhomecenter.com/produc...=Froogle&utm_medium=Feed&utm_campaign=Product

great deal compared to Panasonic ~$100

...just thought somebody might be interested