2714W 5 pound CFL MICRO GROW ikea box idea! comments please!

[Dimebagg]

much better thinking, But still not in the right direction, the days of rigging your own cabinet are gone my friend, get on the grow tent, air cooled reflector and HPS bandwagon.. you will need a 4" vortex fan to pull weight from your tent.. you r so far from the tree.. get a 600w hps air cooled light system, and a homebox large or small, with fan and filter, soil, doing it right will save you money, this is all i will help you

gotta disagree with all that, but if its sarcasm, sorry, its just hard to catch over the internet.

Ive had a blast building my 2 cabinets, and I think I have something good going now.

Put to the OP, I would seriously consider 2 150w HPS's from econolight. You sure could stick a whole bunch of t5s in there, but I think if you wanted to maximixe your lighting, youd probably need just as much ventilation for either.

Again, Ive had great results with CFLs, but I just dont think that using flourescents in a tall, stacked cabinet is the best way to use them. Just my opinion.

 

[urbanlights]

thanks for mentioning the remote ballast idea, never thought of it. problem is, all the ballasts i've seen on the net (after you mentioned it) only support 2 tubes... i wanted 8 tubes per chamber.. but with a remote ballast i think your plants can get even closer, maybe even touching?

 

[ricard0]

Have a peak at the biax t5's also.

I use them for my veg cabs and they are pretty sweet. I use the 55w doubles per ballast and they don't use much heat at all. You could also have the ballasts OUTSIDE of the cabs to reduce any extra heat they might give.

If you are thinking t5's have you thought about remote ballast style of a setup to reduce heat?

Best idea posed yet.
PL-L bulbs are brighter than T5's IMO (more lm per inch), and put off less heat.



They all but eclipse the sunlight shinning through my window

 

[hilbie]

does anyone really believe doc budd yeilds with his shultz fertz n fish emulsion blend and small containers under cfls, i dont think most do, but hes got a great set up none the less. I do agree with a few people online that clfs match hid in smaller grows, i think the playing feild is fair, they both put out decent light assumeing u have enough of them, but thats micro style. for larger grows the headache of a grow your size is just something experienced growers arent going to be into. maybe a few t-fs, or t-8s, or even 6 or 7 68watt cfls bulbs or something but your setup sounds like pure lunacy to me, u seem like u have the novelty, hobbyiest mentality.

 

[medmaker420]

thanks for mentioning the remote ballast idea, never thought of it. problem is, all the ballasts i've seen on the net (after you mentioned it) only support 2 tubes... i wanted 8 tubes per chamber.. but with a remote ballast i think your plants can get even closer, maybe even touching?

I would never let plants TOUCH the lights ever no matter how cool you think they may be. Very unsafe, if you feel that is a possibility then setting up a chicken wire or mesh or glass barrier between the lights and plants will be warranted.

There are ballasts you can get to support various amounts depending, also running multi ballasts is possible is well. I would suggest not JUMPING IN BOTH FEET FIRST like it seems you tried to do and really research the best method for YOU to enjoy micro growing even if you want to try and accomplish it at large scale.

If you like Dr Buds method then I suggest setting up either a SMALLER or EXACT version that he has and FIRST try and get close or match his results and go from there. Got to crawl before you walk my man.

really not sure how you will be taking my advice because yesterday you were in a piss of a mood it seems to hear honest advice.

side note/
halloween headache! got to love the gin!!!!! my head hurts

 

[RJE231]

It's so much easier to go with a larger light in the space you are working with, cooltube it and then add some CFLs in the dark spaces. DR Bud's method works great for him because he's able to grow monster single cola plants out of tiny amounts of soil and his timing is perfect for his strains. Trust me I've tried his methods and while they work OK for the casual grower you won't get as much yield (or even close IMO) unless you really have your stuff dialed in properly.

For the cab grower I think the best way to grow from ground up is to start with a seed plant run and then take cuts to get mothers, after that Scrog it up and if you want a variety of strains just add more plants to the scrog which will allow you to go into flowering a bit faster.

I found with my cooltube setup there was a few places that were dark in my cab so I hard mounted some of those 42W CFLs in there to help out but mainly the big HID is like 10x easier to do.

 

[Laylow0]

I dig your idea with several shelves and moving the plants down when the height requires it!

I think you may have to rethink the number of shelves or the height you have aloted each shelf. A 10" mother/clone room is pretty small imo. Dont the containers take up 5-6" already? And the lights 1-2"?

I would also recommend starting with less wattage. You can always add more watts if you see that your closet can handle it.

Dont let all the HID guys move you away from your ideas. Sometimes whats in your head needs to get out. Just try it out and see where it takes you. Who knows where you will end up.

I have used the same closet you are looking at, the short version albeit, and its great for growing. All you need is to cut some holes and your ready to go.

laylow0

 

[grouchy]

You are changing the Dr. Bud method when you use shelves with different heights. He sets his bulb at a fixed height and lets the plants stretch up to the bulbs. You should start with a scale copy of the Dr.s method and see how close you can copy it. If it works good then try to multiply it a little at a time as you get better.

 

[slowandeasy]

Joking right?

Joking right?

This thread is a joke right? I will not say what I want to, because it is too rude. Dont waste your time on even thinking about this! People with real experience are giving advice. This guy just read the Dr. Bud thread and is in love with him now. Typical internet crush. Obviously he has zero experience, but thinks he knows everything from one thread. Not bashing urbanlights because he is new or bashing CFL's. Some ideas are bad, this is one of them!

 

[Chief Rbud]

hello, im not a cfl hater because thats all ive grown with inside, i grew for 8 years in the late '80's and up to the middle '90's outdoors. i even bred my own purple sativa skunk strain that performed well in my sub-tropical wet climate. i just started growing again in early 2008. i use between 500-600 watts of cfl's during flowering. not exactly a micro grow, but not big production either, just for some personal. it sounds like you are wanting commercial quantities, and i believe you have missed the point of what the good dr. has done and some of what he said in the thread.
the reason the dr. pulls such insane #'s is partly his 25+ years growing experience, the particular hybrid strains he uses, the way he does the perpetual SOG, and the way he calculates his yields. he is using a 9 week strain and multiplies total yield each week by 9 weeks, ex. 30g/ week x 9 weeks = 270 grams. if he were using an 8 week strain then his yield would only be 240 grams. so g/w is irrelevant for you. what you need to do is concentrate on his sog method, on the watering method. on the proper soil mix, and on the nute regimen. once you have that down, then look at what he said he would do for commercial quantities. he wouldn't bother with cfl's he would use HID's and has done so with numerous 4x4 ebb and flow tables
set up in a perpetual SOG. part of the key to the high g/w he gets is the strain he uses and how tight he crams them under the light. even if you were using chesaw and did everything exactly the same way the dr. does it, i doubt you would pull the weight he does simply because of his extensive experience growing in all sorts of conditions. so having said all that, i like your cab idea, but i agree with an above poster that said you should reduce the # of chambers, and increase their height. possibly 3-4 chambers would be best so you have a chamber for the exhaust fan and the scrubber on top,(about 16 inches) a mother and cloning chamber below it,(about 30 inches), and 2 flowering chambers at different stages of growth with the final flower chamber being about 24 inches rotate the newly rooted clones in and the finished girls out.(about 9-10 a week. i agree also that using the # of cfl's u stated for this cabinet would be to much heat. like u said t-5's or pl's would be better, but in the flower chamber i would use an 8 bulb t-5 HO set up on top, and some cfl's on the side and back wall to increase yield. total of maybe 400-600W in the final flowering chamber. t-5 4 bulb set up is good enough for the mother chamber, and a t-5 HO 6 bulb set up for the 1st flower chamber. to cool it, and thats why i am responding, i would put a strong fan on each level blowing directly across your lights, and an inline 6 inch fan with around 735 cfm's in the top chamber along with your scrubber. possibly insulated with that car foam insulation that blocks road noise. i think your goal of 5lbs is unrealistic at best and just plain not doable. so if you had 10 mature girls in the flowering chamber and you pulled 5 grams from each,then you would be perpetually harvesting 50 grams/week,and it would give you 450 grams/ 9 weeks if you were using a nine week strain and thats with at least 400W in the flowering chamber. still not bad, nearly a pound from a small cabinet i think this is doable and i believe it is more realistic for what you are trying to do, maybe 5 grams/ plant might be a bit high for a new grower, but it is possible for you if you dial it all in right. so having said al that, if you were able to pull this of with the numbers ive stated. nearly everyone in the microgrow section would be worshiping you, maybe even the dr. himself, and thats at 1 lb/9 weeks. but like i said, if you are wanting 5lbs/9weeks, then you need to step up to 4 4x4 hydro tables and get 4 1000W HPS's over each of the 4 flowering tables. and a shit load more tables and moms to support the 512 mature girls that would be on the table at 8/square foot. 16/ square foot is only for young clones, it will be half that with mature flowering girls. now. my question is this? how many lifetime sentences do you think you would get if you were caught growing 512 mature females? it would be easier to grow about 6-10 tom hill style bushes outside each summer, and you would have way more weed for a lot less effort. and not got to prison for 5000000 years, maybe only 10-20 depending on where you live.lol i hope this was helpful, dont give up on the cab, its a great idea if you think it through properly, im going to be doing a cab grow with an old cedar wardrobe my next grow, it wont be perpetual, but i will be using all the other methods outlined by dr. bud to see what my yield would be, i bet it will be better than lst'ing several plants in the same square footage. so i hope i have helped you, and you dont get discouraged in your attempt. good luck and good growing.
sincerely, Chief Runningbud

 

[CaliRaised]

5lbs in a cabinet... Lol. It could never happen even with a lifetime of experiene. I am assuming the most yield from a cabinet of this size could yield would be maybe 1lb with a 600watt hps, and that is without the mothers, maybe the clones would fit on top but even they need 12" of space. My advise is to try out some tomatoes before you kill 100's of clones or seeds.

 

[Chief Rbud]

5lbs in a cabinet... Lol. It could never happen even with a lifetime of experiene. I am assuming the most yield from a cabinet of this size could yield would be maybe 1lb with a 600watt hps, and that is without the mothers, maybe the clones would fit on top but even they need 12" of space. My advise is to try out some tomatoes before you kill 100's of clones or seeds.

i agree, i think about a pound every 9 weeks, adding up the yield each week for 9 weeks from the perpetual harvest is just about the maximum he will get, after its all dialed in with the correct strain and nutes etc. he may be able to bump it up a little, but not much more. however, utilizing the dr.s methods, and the way he perpetually harvests, i think he can have 4 chambers counting the one for the fan and the mother chamber, because hes only going to be harvesting 9-10 mature girls each week, and thats only 45-50 grams/week. so he could do that in the final flowering chamber at 2 feet or so i believe; if he obtains 5 grams/ plant, which i dont think he will, im just saying if he did yield that well from them he could pull a pound/ 9weeks. but i still think he should go for it and experiment with it all and do his best to yield as much as he can each week, he may pull off those numbers, who knows. when i 1st started using cfl's everyone told me you couldn't flower with them, but they worked good for veg, but i saw the dr.s thread, and i did it anyway and pulled 5.9 ounces from a 2' tall plant that was wider than it was tall, and it had 33 tops; nice trichome bombs. i never saw that kind of resin outdoors. my current grow thread has pictures of the last grow.

 

[Trev]

may i recomend looking into t-5's or PLL's?

t-5s have much high PAR than CFLs, thus you dont need as many to equal out.

PLL's are the same as CFLS, just flat, thus providing more headroom!



dont search growlights.. go on ebay and seach aquarium lighting t-5 or compact fluorescent you will find lights that are not labled "grow lights" can be had at much cheaper prices!

for example: 48" 4 bulb t-5HO unit for under 100$ shipped. thats 216 watts. buttt you cant really follow the Watt rule with t-5's as they are much more efficient than CFLS... or HPS for that matter...


just my .02 cents.. ive only been using PLL's and t-5s over my aquariums for the past 4-5 years or so... so...im somewhat credible? haha.....

 

[flatcurve]

If you want to do everything in this cabinet, you will only have room for one flowering chamber. The footprint that you gave would give you a little over 4 square feet. You could run two 150W HPS lights in there (to better cover the elongated footprint) and get about 75W per square foot. That's pretty decent, and easy to cool. If you can come close to yielding 1g per watt over the course of 9 weeks, you'll be pulling at least a zip per week. Grow SOG style with 27 plants in 4" square containers like these. 3 in every week, and 3 out.

Since your cabinet is 7.5 feet tall, I would recommend breaking it up like so:

top 1' - utility room, for exhaust fan, carbon scrubber & ballast
middle 3.5' - flowering chamber
lower 1' - clone room under plls or T5s. enough space to fit a whole rapid rooter tray and then some.
bottom 2' - bonsai mother room. you could potentially have four or five bonsai mothers in here.

That's probably the best way to grow in that cabinet. Plenty of personal plus a bit extra (depending on how much you smoke.) If you want more yield though, I don't recommend cabinets. You really need to start thinking about grow tents or whole rooms at that point.

 

[RagnorokYoshi]

if your buying 64 cfls can i borrow a couple bucks lol i want a new bong.

i use 4 cfls for my grow
i have my girls growing in a 30 gal rubbermaid container and they are growing too fast for me to catch up

i like cfls

 

[flatcurve]

The footprint that you gave would give you a little over 4 square feet. You could run two 150W HPS lights in there (to better cover the elongated footprint) and get about 75W per square foot.

Correction. Looks like it's just over 6 square feet. Somehow I saw 38x15 instead of 38x23. In that case, I would say go for two 250W HPS lights. That's 83W/sqft. Growing perpetual SOG in this, I would say go with 36 plants in those 4" pots. 4 in / 4 out every week. 1g/watt is totally attainable if you dial it in right. That's about two ounces every week. Don't expect those results out of the gate though. It will likely take you a while (years maybe) to get it dialed in. Two 150W will still get decent results, but that's as small as I would go, personally.

 

[snowschool]

My Two Cents.......


I'm all for CFL's .... HPS's are hard to cool!

But....... That many cfls is goinf to produce a lot of heat. In my short expirence I think that two 23w CFLS make more heat than 1 125w CFL...... My point is that it would be easier to cool this system if you used less ( number of bulbs ) at a higher watt. 65,105,125,200.. ( If you go above 65w you will have to get Mogul Sockets.

 

[paulkemp]

much better thinking, But still not in the right direction, the days of rigging your own cabinet are gone my friend, get on the grow tent, air cooled reflector and HPS bandwagon.. you will need a 4" vortex fan to pull weight from your tent.. you r so far from the tree.. get a 600w hps air cooled light system, and a homebox large or small, with fan and filter, soil, doing it right will save you money, this is all i will help you

Reality, dog.

 

[Sir_Nugget]

what if you got a 1000 watt, and pulled 4 pounds.. ??!! it can probably be done, that is about 1.3 Grams per watt,

 

[hilbie]

i just fired up my 150hps the other day, im pretty sure that my 4 cfls=around 100 watts are hotter