First grow, first draft cabinet, first time poster!

[over10]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have been perusing through these forums for a little while now, gobbling up as much information as my brain can handle, (I wish I knew about this site sooner!) and because I have achieved the "go-ahead nod" from the fiancée, I'm finally putting together a plan to begin. I would very much appreciate it if anyone with any experience would have a look at my plan and offer up any suggestions or advice that they think might help.

Before I get into specific questions I will explain my mission:

I want to stealthily grow enough high quality chronic to sustain mine and my fiancée's smoking habits, while staggering harvests by about a month.

(Disclaimer: my idea of "high quality" means high potency, good taste, density of nugs, etc... I realize that these factors vary greatly by strain, but I am also aware that the growing environment will have an effect on them as well. Being a newbie, I just don't know how much)

This means that I am not overly concerned with maximizing my yields. Yes, I am interested in simple solutions to help me get a few extra grams from my plants, but as far as being as completely efficient as humanly possible... it's just not what I'm growing to do. In any situation, if a question is posed that will grant me greater yield on one hand or higher quality nugs on the other, I will always want quality. I will never be flowering more than 4 plants, and even then, ideally, they would be staggered. Typically I will be flowering 2 plants a time if this works out like I hope.

So on to my specific questions. I sketched up a very crude picture of the idea in my head for this cabinet, and I will use the rest of this thread to describe it and pose my questions.

For the general attributes of the cabinet:

It will be approx 6ft x 4ft x 2ft total. (Height x width x depth)
The flowering and veg rooms will be 4ft x 2ft x 2ft each.
The rest of the compartments are 1x2x2
I will be painting the entire inside flat white.
I will be running hydroponic, most likely DWC for the bloom room and drip for the veg room.
The bottom left (blue) chamber will have two reservoirs built on a slide so that I can pull it out and access the back one, and I was also thinking about a gurney type mechanism for it so that I could just wheel it out of my house if it needed washing.
The bottom right (orange) chamber would have the ballast for the HPS light. *Would it be a good idea to insulate this room and dump the heat out so that it doesn't spread to the rest of the cab?*
The top left (yellow) chamber doesn't have a purpose in my head yet except for ventilation holes and maybe tubing and wiring from assorted devices...
The top right (purple) chamber will serve to hold a fan and a carbon filter.

My plan for the veg room is to rock fluorescents unless I hear advice telling me otherwise. I actually would have the space for another ballast, but it seems that the general consensus is that it's not necessary for such a small operation.

The flowering room!

Here is where I simply cannot make a decision on how to run it. I don't have the experience to wrap my head around how each one of these options would go, so I will try spell them out and hope for help:

Option #1:
My initial thought was "I want to do it right." Because of this, I had imagined a 400w (maybe even 600? they're more efficient I hear) HPS in a cooled-hood type housing with a closed ventilation system pulling fresh air over the bulb and an additional ventilation system pulling air from both sections (flowering and veg) and exhausting through a carbon filter.

Then I began to think... Do I need 400w of bulb for only 2 plants? But are the amount of plants really the question, or is it the amount of space? (or moreso the way the space exists?) If I could keep the bulb far enough away from the plants it shouldn't matter, right? So if I ran a 150w or 250w bulb, would I need a cooled hood, or could ONE powerful fan (serving as air movement and odor control/exhaust) keep the temps down? Million questions here, thought they helped outline my thought processes.

Option #2:
Ditch the cooled hood idea and downgrade the bulb to a 150 or 250, relying on the 400+ CFM fan (which is also pulling air from the veg room) to keep temps low as well as perform odor control. This option will clearly make temperatures more of an issue, but will it be workable? Will it affect the quality of my buds?

Option #3:
Same as option 1 but with a "cool tube" instead of a "hood" and a vertical setup. Will it be harder to grow as a first-timer in a vertical setup? Does this mean I should be looking for sativas as opposed to indicas? Is < 4 feet of vertical space enough for that type of grow?

Option #4:
Option 4 is here to represent any of the above options WITHOUT using a big fan to ventilate the veg room (only the flower room), and to build in a passive intake/small fan system for the veg room alone (probably with an oscillating fan as well)

So I've posed a few questions, and for those that do not care to read through the entirety of my newbie thread (no offense taken), or those that have a short memory, (surely understand) I've re-written them here:

1) Should I insulate the ballast room and exhaust it? Do ballasts get hot enough for that to be a worry?
2) Should I rock fluorescents or something better in my veg room? I will only ever have a few clones (10 max?) and a mother or two in there at one time.
3) CO2: This cab is obviously not airtight, and I don't even want to begin to mess with that yet. Will spraying the plants down with soda water suffice for an extra dose of co2, or should I really look for a way to incorporate that to achieve the highest possible quality?
4) Finally, I posed a few options for my flowering room, and some feedback on that matter would be greatly appreciated

Being that this is my first post here, I want to say that I've fallen in love with this community. There are some great minds here with a wealth of knowledge, and it's refreshing to see such a wealth being shared with others. The crazy ideas, the greased-wheel operations, the journals, the feedback, and simply, the way this community operates is something that resonates within me. I plan to be hanging out for quite some time. THANK YOU!

 

[pinecone]

I don't like the ballast low and next to the reservoir. Why? Electricity and water don't mix. If you have some sort of resevior leak your ballast is going to get wet. The heat from the ballast is going to rise up into the grow.

A much better idea would be to locate the ballast at the top with a hole in the top or back of the ballast housing compartment so that hot air can escape - or alternatively, run your ventilation through your ballast chamber.

The flowering and veg rooms will be 4ft x 2ft x 2ft each.

Unless you plan on having an extensive collection of moms (or dads) the veg room should be considerably smaller than the flower room. It would take a while to get an extensive collection of moms flowering 2 plants at a time unless you can purchase clones.

Option #1:
My initial thought was "I want to do it right." Because of this, I had imagined a 400w (maybe even 600? they're more efficient I hear) HPS in a cooled-hood type housing with a closed ventilation system pulling fresh air over the bulb and an additional ventilation system pulling air from both sections (flowering and veg) and exhausting through a carbon filter.

Then I began to think... Do I need 400w of bulb for only 2 plants? But are the amount of plants really the question, or is it the amount of space? (or moreso the way the space exists?) If I could keep the bulb far enough away from the plants it shouldn't matter, right? So if I ran a 150w or 250w bulb, would I need a cooled hood, or could ONE powerful fan (serving as air movement and odor control/exhaust) keep the temps down? Million questions here, thought they helped outline my thought processes.

My thoughts are that you have a pretty small compartment for a 400w light. I would stick with the 250w unless you plan on making the flower area bigger. Also, I wouldn't think you would need a two fan closed ventilation system. All you should need is one big fan to air-cool the light and exhaust both rooms and perhaps the ballast chamber.

Option #2:
Ditch the cooled hood idea and downgrade the bulb to a 150 or 250, relying on the 400+ CFM fan (which is also pulling air from the veg room) to keep temps low as well as perform odor control. This option will clearly make temperatures more of an issue, but will it be workable? Will it affect the quality of my buds?

I like the idea of an air cooled hood with the 250w light - again with one fan.

1) Should I insulate the ballast room and exhaust it? Do ballasts get hot enough for that to be a worry?

See my comments on the ballast housing above.

2) Should I rock fluorescents or something better in my veg room? I will only ever have a few clones (10 max?) and a mother or two in there at one time.

If you are going to flower 2 plants its hard to see why you would need 10 clones rooting. For 2 moms and a few cuttings fluorescent lights should be fine, but if this is what you are going to do make the veg area smaller and the flower area bigger.

3) CO2: This cab is obviously not airtight, and I don't even want to begin to mess with that yet. Will spraying the plants down with soda water suffice for an extra dose of co2, or should I really look for a way to incorporate that to achieve the highest possible quality?

Soda water isn't going to supply enough C02 to affect plant growth. To do C02 supplementation properly you need a burner or tanks and some environmental controls-switches. Typically these systems don't work very well in small cab-tent settings as the cab-tent needs to be exhausted frequently to dissipate the heat. Each time the cab-temp is exhausted all the CO2 goes.

4) Finally, I posed a few options for my flowering room, and some feedback on that matter would be greatly appreciated

I like the idea of using one (big fan) to do all the ventilation and cooling. If I were building this cab I would think about working the airflow from the coolest area (veg room) to the hottest (ballast chamber). Something like the following passive vent system might work.

Darkroom Vents-->Veg Chamber--->Darkroom Vents-->Flower Chamber-->Air-cooled hood--->6" Centrifugal Fan-->Carbon Filter in Ballast Chamber (with large hole in the top or in the back so that air can escape).

You probably don't have to re-invent the wheel here as there are likely growers who have designed and use cabs similar to the one you are trying to design. Do some searching and read through some of the cab threads in the Grow Room Designs Forum (The Mill's Pride Club, The Cab Club, ect).

I know you are concerned about stealth. You should know is that fans and especially whooshing? air make do make a decent amount of noise. While it is pretty easy to make a cabinet that doesn't look like a grow room it is much harder to make one that doesn't sound like a grow room.

Pine

 

[FreezerBoy]

Standard lighting is considered 50 watts per square foot. For your space, that's a 250. You can go larger but, that means more heat, bigger fans, more noise, less stealth.

Ballasts do indeed pump out heat. Up top is the best place. Not just because heat rises but, the farther from the water the better.

 

[over10]

Thank you so much, Pinecone! Those are all wonderful, educational pieces of advice.

Your idea of moving the ballast chamber to the top is a fantastic one... it actually solves a few problems at once as you pointed out. I will take a look at re-designing from scratch with airflow being the key factor in mind.

I thought the veg room would need to be so large because (please keep in mind I am inexperienced and a lot of these are based on assumptions):


- I wanted to have a high(er) number of clones going so that I could choose the best ones to put into flower and discard the others. Does this seem unreasonable?
- I figured that if I'm growing for personal use only, I might be experimenting a bit (cloning different ways, different veg light setups), or I might just want to keep a couple extra mothers around to switch up the bud selection from time to time.
- If for no other reason, just a little extra work space.

Do these seem like legitimate reasons to have a larger veg area, or are there other solutions? Can you think of a better use for say... half of that space? (Dividing it with a horizontal shelf)

Man, ballasts next to water... yeah, pretty stupid in hindsight. Glad I posted asking for advice. Thanks again for your response. <3

Edit: I've found many sources saying that spraying carbonated water on foliage is a way (not necessarily a great one) to feed your plants some extra co2... Is this simply untrue? Then again, how would someone really know...

 

[pinecone]

I thought the veg room would need to be so large because (please keep in mind I am inexperienced and a lot of these are based on assumptions):

- I wanted to have a high(er) number of clones going so that I could choose the best ones to put into flower and discard the others. Does this seem unreasonable?

I'm speaking in generalities here, but cloning success rates are very high and one clone from a mom plant is pretty much equivalent to another clone from the same plant. In other words, I don't really see the need to root 10 clones if you are only going to flower 2. Rooting 10 clones in plugs wouldn't be a problem in a smaller veg area, but transplanting them into larger containers probably would be. Again I just don't see the point as they are likely to be very similar.

- I figured that if I'm growing for personal use only, I might be experimenting a bit (cloning different ways, different veg light setups), or I might just want to keep a couple extra mothers around to switch up the bud selection from time to time.

Honestly, cloning can be done in a window much of the year so if you want to experiment this is a good way to do it.

It is also possible to keep moms really small (like in a 4" x 4 " square pot). Such moms are known as bonsai moms. There is a thread on how to make and maintain them in the Indoor Soil forum.

- If for no other reason, just a little extra work space

Fine

Do these seem like legitimate reasons to have a larger veg area, or are there other solutions? Can you think of a better use for say... half of that space?

The only reason to make the veg area smaller is to make the flower area bigger. If you are going to stick with a 250w light 2'x2' is a an appropriately sized flower area. If you could go to say 2.5' x 2' you would likely see a significant improvement in yield (and perhaps quality) with a 400w light, all else equal. I run a 400w light in a roughly a 2' x 2.5' footprint. I happen to have a cab (Mills Pride C13) that a lot of people (used to) run 250w light in. A good yield in this cab with a 250w light is 5oz. A good yield with a 400w light in the same cab is 8+oz.

Edit: I've found many sources saying that spraying carbonated water on foliage is a way (not necessarily a great one) to feed your plants some extra co2... Is this simply untrue? Then again, how would someone really know...

There is a lot of bad science around growing pot.

What are the sources?

What scientific evidence is provided?

I don't buy that you would get enough C02 this way to make a difference, but I could be convinced by a credible science based argument. Also, you can grow great plants without C02 supplementation.

Pine

 

[over10]

@Pinecone

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. I plan to start designing this cabinet in Sketchup3D today featuring all of your suggestions. 2.5 x 2 sounds like a great idea, and judging by some of the nugs you've posted on other threads, it's more than just an idea.

As far as the carbonated water issue goes...

The "Green Man," can be found on YouTube, he does it alongside a co2 tank system, but gives off the impression that it "couldn't hurt." Below is a link to one of the youtube-sized sections of his DVD... if you care, watch at about 8:30 and he brings it up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSDwpHzk8Ps&feature=related

There is a debate on rollitup.org as to whether or not it could actually hurt or help. One guy actually apparently did an experiment on some of his own plants but I can't make an account there for some reason so I haven't been able to check out the pics.
http://www.rollitup.org/newbie-central/279896-carbonated-water.html

Are these sources credible? I honestly have no idea, I'm not the person to ask. I just wanted to show you what I've been reading to let you make your own decision. I'm not concerned with those tiny details at this point. You've helped me immensely to get the ball rolling. Thanks again!

 

[FreezerBoy]

- I wanted to have a high(er) number of clones going so that I could choose the best ones to put into flower and discard the others. Does this seem unreasonable?

Depends on your success rate. Took me months to get a single clone to root. Now I'm at 100%. If you haven't cloned before, I'd start with a couple dozen cuts. If you're an experienced cloner, just take the cuts you need.

 

[pinecone]

As far as the carbonated water issue goes...

I did some quick research.

Lets start with some facts
- The amount of C02 in the air is about 0.04% (0.0004 as a fraction)
- The amount of C02 recommended for C02 supplementation of MJ is 0.12% to 0.15%.
- C02 supplementation is more effective with more light.
- A 2'x4'x4' box contains contains 32 cubic feet of air - or about 906 liters
- thus a 2'x4'x4' box (the size of combined veg and flower in your cab) contains about 0.36 liters (0.04%*906) of C02
- According to this guy (http://www.science-house.org/CO2/activities/co2/soda.html), a 16oz bottle of soda contains one liter of C02
- Thus if you could get all of the CO2 out of the soda bottle to displace air in the box you could get the amount of C02 in the box up to 1.36 liters (the original 0.36 plus 1).
- This would leave the concentration of CO2 in the box at 0.15% which is right about the recommended level.

Sounds good right?

Well it is not so good considering that the 2'x4'x4' box is going to need to be exhausted frequently - or continuously in absence of a timer or controller. Even if you could let it rock for 30 minutes before exhausting on a timer, you would have to put in a soda bottle worth of C02 in the box every 30 minutes to achieve the recommended level of supplementation. Also you probably can't get the liter of C02 contained in a 16oz bottle of soda water into the box by misting; some is going to escape & 16oz is hell of a lot of misting for a few plants.

What this suggest to me is that spraying soda water on plants is not an effective way to supplement CO2.

Pine

 

[over10]

I did some quick research.

...

What this suggest to me is that spraying soda water on plants is not an effective way to supplement CO2.

Pine

Yet, undoubtedly, an effective way to acquire carpal tunnel syndrome at a younger age. Thanks for showing us your thought process. Can't argue with that!

 

[over10]

So after some more poking around I had an idea.

What if I extended my flower room like you were talking about, simply because I just do not need that much space in veg room... but I went with a 250w HPS (air-cooled w/ reflector) and then threw in some PL-Ls in the corners? (more to come as far as bulb specifics)

My understanding is that this could provide more lumens to the plants in a broader spectrum (both in terms of color and in area) while reducing noise and heat over a solo 400w system. Is this feasible?

 

[pinecone]

So after some more poking around I had an idea.

What if I extended my flower room like you were talking about, simply because I just do not need that much space in veg room... but I went with a 250w HPS (air-cooled w/ reflector) and then threw in some PL-Ls in the corners? (more to come as far as bulb specifics)

My understanding is that this could provide more lumens to the plants in a broader spectrum (both in terms of color and in area) while reducing noise and heat over a solo 400w system. Is this feasible?

Honestly I don't know because I've never tried this myself and haven't really studied it in other grows. This said, my instincts say you would be better off with a 400w light with a balanced spectrum bulb like the Phillips Daylight Metal Halide (aka Ceramic Metal Halide) which runs a magnetic HPS ballast. Incidentally I would recommend the same bulb for the 250 HPS. I say this because the side lighting is going to effectively reduce the space for plants - also whats to keep the plants off the side lights lights?

As long as your house is cool (60s and 70s), you come up with a good design, and purchase enough fan you ought to be able to keep your cab cool. Granted, I'm not pulling through as much (multiple chambers and darkroom vents) stuff as you would be, but my 2'x2.5'x5.5' 400w cab only runs a couple of degrees above intake temps.

Pine