Bio Buckets Mega Room construction

[Guest]

After my first crop is almost done (just around 30 days of flowering to go), I allready know that I will go Hydro, and since beeing a firm beliver in the beneficial bacteria theory, I decided to make a room full of bio-buckets, Big Tokes's style.

Well actually I am thinking about 3 rooms, the existing two, plus one additional room of approximately 25m2.

One of the existing rooms i would like to make a mother&clones room, and the other a veg room.
The big 25m2 room would be used as a flowering room.
In addition to that my basement has 2 rooms, one for keeping the nutrient tanks and the other for drying&curing the finished product.

So, as I am starting this project from scratch, i hope to get some valuable imput from this community.

The main dilemas right now are:
-Should I make a sealed room or should I went with carbon filters as I do now?
-Should I use CO2 generators or just provide adequate air circulation?
-I would like to have a very productive set up, so, I have to find a way, to move plants from veg room (a separate bio buckets system) to flower room, so I can have perpetual harvests.

Next time I will post the complete drawing of how the rooms are positioned and how big they are, so it will be a lot easier for you to see what I am talking about.

 

[SneakySneaky]

well if your worried about transplanting in the bio bucket system, just get a lot of 6 or 8" net pots, that fit on 5 gallon buckets, and just swap them out lol....bio bucket systems (i just made one) need a little bit more attention at first, but its worth it once the system stabilizes.

 

[Guest]

Hi Sneaky,thanks for your imput!
That sound ok, and I was thinking in that direction, but you would have to remove the bucket cover from the net pots, and during that you might damage the delicate roots, or is the root system still smal in the first 3-4 weeks of veg?

The alternative idea was to move the whole bucket's lid, with the net pots on the lids, but I would like to use smaller buckets for the veg faze, as the veg space is 1/2 size of the flowering space.

i will also try to measure all things and see if I can fit the 5 gallon lids over smaller buckets, withouts overlaping and causing problems with the light penetration to the buckets.

First of all, how big of buckets would I need for the veg faze, here I need some imput from those who use them, as you know the size of the root mass in the veg faze.

 

[mrwags]

PD what ya frettin man you know your gonna make us Proud right? That is how you got the name.


Back From The Dead,
Mr.Wags

 

[Guest]

mr.Wags, good to see you again, hope you are fine, and that you are feeling allrigt now!!!

I have neglected my first thread a bit, but I have updated it. The reason for negligence was simple-total lack of time.
My company, and especcially my baby daugter take a lot of time, and what was left was spent in the garden, maintaining it and solving the Ph problems, and learning.

And I have decided to go the BB way.
Lets not start talking about resoults yet, I have big shoes to fill on the way, but I will do my best, and then some, so I know I will make myself proud, and that is mor than enough.

REALLY GLAD TO SEE YOU HERE!!!

 

[1TWISTEDTRUCKER]

Proud daddy,i don't have anything to add right now.i'm on my 1st grow now(soil,mostly organic).i however anticipate going to a bio bucket sytem aswell.like you i realy like the whole benificial bactiria idea.i've even considerd useing bioballs in the res.to further the bactiria field.the ones i'm looking at are at Marinedepot.com.under filter media.the ones i believe to be best are the red ones.i have a lot of friends with a lot of aquarium experince and these seem to be the favorites.keep us posted,i for one will be watching.

Peace
1TwistedTrucker

 

[Guest]

Plan of attack

Plan of attack

So, here are the promised measurements:

The Flowering room is where all the action will take place:


It is 327cm x 434cm= 14m2 and the ceilling is 2,2m high, so that gives us total volume of the room= 30,8m3

 

[Guest]

The other room is the Machine room, which will house all the nutrient tanks, HPS ballasts, water pumps and other hardware. It allready has a sink, and 2 separate water pipes. It is connected to the Flowering room with a door (on the north side of the Flowering room, which is the south side of the Machine room):



The room is 270cm x 275cm, and is also 2,2m high.

 

[Guest]

So, this is how the flowering room looks right now:

 

[Guest]

I am starting to seriously consider building this as a sealed room, because I want to max. my yields.
But first the simple math, and pleas correct me if I am wrong:

The Flowring room (FR) is 14m2 big, and when we apply the rule of having 400W of HPS/m2, it means that we need 5600W of HPS power here

I will be using 600W HPS, which means, I will need 9 of them (ok, I will be 200W short, but I guess I can live with that). Since this will propably be a sealed room, it means they will have to be air cooled.

9 lamps fits nicely in with my idea to use 3 double rows of Bio Buckets with 3 separate reservoairs. The reason for this is, as I like to grow more than one variety at the time , and also having 3 separate systems, means that when disaster strikes, I shall have my eggs in 3 baskets

 

[Guest]

The basic idea is to insulate the room from within, and then build a wooden cube frame around the room, and then attach black&white polly to it, to bassicaly create a room within a room.

This will account for a little los in floor space, but it is the only way to make a true sealed room without intake/exhaust, and with heavy CO2 enrichment.
Or am I mistaking???

 

[Guest]

Hmmm, I just found out that now I need min. 200 posts to chat....