Micro grow design, need YOUR opinion!

[GreenEngineer]

Hey guys, new to the forums and haven't too many replies on my other thread, so I'll go ahead and post my planned design for a stealth (cabinet) grow box and I'd like your opinion of what I can improve etc!

It's gonna be 16 x 20 x 55 inches (DxWxH) and this is how my first design is looking! Using a passive intake (3) with a silent 140MM (65 CFM) exhaust computer fan.

Planning on growing Northern Lights or SSH by Mr Nice, I'm aware of the height issue but I'll LST/12-12/bend to make it work.



My train of thought for this is that my closet makes up for 9,8 (let's round up to 10) cubic feet on the inside. And you should have a CFM that is higher than that, by at least 2-5 times (read various articles). Is this correct/OK?

There will be some extra space between the fan and carbon outlet (2), should I keep this open or closed, I was thinking it would be an area air could escape to should it ever be too slow through the carbon filter (white cone on top of it all, a DIY filter). And also, I put the fan near the lamps in order to hopefully reduce heat inside the box.


Using a setup of 6x42W CFL's , is this overkill for my space? And finally, I've planned to go with mylar on the inside, but would white paint work as well? I.e any major light leaks? Thanks in advance for checking out my cabinet!

Sincerely,
GE

 

[GreenEngineer]

Could a moderator move this to "Growroom Designs"? I think I must've put it in the wrong sub-forum. Cheers!

 

[waveguide]

mm.. casually..


tall, not as much floor tho - if you're really stuck with that space, you may consider dividing it into ~36 flower the rest veg

you'll proof the airflow when it's solid

if you stay with the height, consider dropping maybe 2 cfls down opposite corners... all the light up top it's more than you can use.. the canopy will block a lot of it.

as said casual, 6x 23w bulbs up top save some power and 2 suspended 46w to get under the top off top o my head g/l

 

[waveguide]

youll either want a lot of boxes or the lights on chains too, 2x distance = power / 2


after years and years, my dedication to stealth has flagged some to my general frustration with small spaces.. sum over duration of accidents and inconveniences. elbow room, room to set up and mix nutes, important. gets tiring after a while, foresee that.

 

[GreenEngineer]

@waveguide

Do you mean 36 plants like a sog? sorry English isn't my mother tongue

And the distance would be 63 CM, if I'm at 252W power right? As for electricity, it's included in my bill so doesn't matter cost wise

 

[grouchy]

I would look into the diy cob leds, specifically the cree cxb-3070, cxb-3590 or bridgelux vero 29. They are 50-100w leds depending on your driver and heatsinks ability. One or two of these leds will give better results than six of those cfl bulbs imo. You can aim all of light down at your plants without a reflector which gives you more headroom and less heat generated per lumen. It would also give you the option to run your heatsink through a seperate cooling system than the flower room allowing you to cool your lights without carbon filters like a cooltube but without glass.

I started with cfl bulbs and moved to hid lights to increase bud density and size and needed to upgrade again to cob leds just trying to find a way to get quality nugs in a tiny space. I wish the led technology had been there back when I started, I could have saved so much money.

Myself and others here can help you build it if you decide to go that route.

 

[GreenEngineer]

@grouchy

Thanks for the thorough and, somewhat, overwhelming help! Out of all the methods to light a crop led is the only one I haven't thoroughly read up on. Doing it as I'm writing here and it sure looks like a contender.

I didn't really follow on the cooltubes and heat sinks but I'd love to hear more about it as it sounds very exciting. Not sure whether to pm you or take it all here and share with everyone

Thanks again!

Sincerely,
GE

 

[UptownChill]

Cab looks fine for maybe a plant or two. I wouldn't bother with the CFLs. LED would do fine. Those CFLs put off way more heat than a CFL. A 150 HPS will give you hear issues in that can.

Lucasformula.com. And a simple Hempy bucket. I use Maxibloom and I swear it's so cheap and easy to grow that way and you get good dank weed. You are growing in a limited space so, autos are a great choice. Or photo 12/12 from seed. Learn about LST.

I personally would wait on the cob. Until a company does the research and puts a good tested one on the market. It will be cheaper and probably have much better spectrums for the plant than a DIY. Even Mars LED does fine. CFL will work tho, if that's all can do. Been there done that 2 when I was a noob.

Seriously. Hempy bucket, Lucas formula. Look it up and thank me later.

 

[grouchy]

There is no need to wait for a commercial cob light, diy cobs cheaper and fairly easy to build. In tiny spaces they excel because of how efficient they are. Efficiency doesn't just save electricity, it is a measure of light vs heat. The cree and bridgelux cobs can run over 40% efficiency where red/blue leds are around 30%. HID is somewhere around 35% I believe. More light with less heat is important and minimizing loss of light by shining it all on the plants is too.

You can build the heatsink into the ceiling of the grow space and seal it up tight. Then mount the carbon filter to the fan exiting the grow space to the utility area. Half of your heat, if not more, will now come off the fins of the heatsink in the utility area and not need to be filtered through the carbon. With a couple of passive exhaust holes it should vent the the hot air out of the utility area using the carbon filter fan. The leds inside the grow area will get warm but nowhere near as hot as cfls completly enclosed. You will need a pc fan blowing on the heatsink but most builders use pc coolers which are a fan/heatsink combo that can be purchased cheap.

The drivers for the leds will get warm too but they can be mounted on the outside of the cab or in the utility area. Drivers can range in price from cheap chinese units to higher quality dimmable drivers and everywhere in between. It's more important to get good quality cob chips than it is to have good quality drivers.

It doesn't take much skill to build your own, you don't even really need to solder anything to make it correctly. Start by reading Bueno Times thread here and see if it's what you want.

 

[grouchy]

I also have a good design for a pc fan carbon filter I have been using for awhile. It uses two pc fans in tandem to create more pressure to push through the carbon allowing you to use a thicker layer. It is just a plastic container with fans mounted to the top and bottom and it pushes through the layer of carbon supported on expanded aluminum (gutter guard from home depot) and some fabric to keep it from falling into the fan. You can make the carbon layer as thick as you would like and change it as often as needed.

 

[waveguide]

i meant dividing the height, eg 32" ceiling for flower, the rest for veg.. in that space, 36 plants nooooo..

i use a diy led in bloom, actually my bloom cab has the led and three cfl sockets.. led is cheap to operate, nice and cool, but cfl are inexpensive and easy to replace. i feel pretty happy about using both, and gettinbg the richest spectrum i can out of my electronic spectrum producing stuff thingies.

 

[mikeAKAsilas]

I think 6 42 watt CFL's will be a nice amount of light but are going to be really hot and take up a lot of space.

Not to mention they don't last as nearly as long and are easy to break. I'd recommend one of these http://www.apollohorticulture.com/LED-ufo-180w.html

The best part is you can find them for $80-100 bucks (the same or cheaper than a setup that can run 6 42watt CFL's) and you hang it, plug it in, and you're done. Lasts forever, much less heat, much lower risk of fire, and it includes all the correct spectrums whereas with CFL's you'd probably want to change the temperature of the light when you switch from veg to flower.

Just my $.02

 

[fuggzy]

Grouchy has a good point.

Grouchy has a good point.

There is no need to wait for a commercial cob light, diy cobs cheaper and fairly easy to build. In tiny spaces they excel because of how efficient they are. Efficiency doesn't just save electricity, it is a measure of light vs heat. The cree and bridgelux cobs can run over 40% efficiency where red/blue leds are around 30%. HID is somewhere around 35% I believe. More light with less heat is important and minimizing loss of light by shining it all on the plants is too.

You can build the heatsink into the ceiling of the grow space and seal it up tight. Then mount the carbon filter to the fan exiting the grow space to the utility area. Half of your heat, if not more, will now come off the fins of the heatsink in the utility area and not need to be filtered through the carbon. With a couple of passive exhaust holes it should vent the the hot air out of the utility area using the carbon filter fan. The leds inside the grow area will get warm but nowhere near as hot as cfls completly enclosed. You will need a pc fan blowing on the heatsink but most builders use pc coolers which are a fan/heatsink combo that can be purchased cheap.

The drivers for the leds will get warm too but they can be mounted on the outside of the cab or in the utility area. Drivers can range in price from cheap chinese units to higher quality dimmable drivers and everywhere in between. It's more important to get good quality cob chips than it is to have good quality drivers.

It doesn't take much skill to build your own, you don't even really need to solder anything to make it correctly. Start by reading Bueno Times thread here and see if it's what you want.

Led cob technology is already here. There is nothing to wait for. Go with Cree, or Bridgelux like stated above. The design of the heatsinks is rather flexible. I personally use chains to lower my light, instead of boxes to raise the plants. It's w/e you like. I just posted this opnion for another guy....

I would look in to doing a diy cob solution. With a bit of research, you can make any mix up you want. (wants per inch, spectrum, heat and light spread) I don't claim to be a led guru, or an electrician. Just a guy with lost of time on my hands that gets filled by research.
[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=62043&pictureid=1462823&thumb=1]View Image[/url] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=61870&pictureid=1458341&thumb=1]View Image[/url] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=62043&pictureid=1462824&thumb=1]View Image[/url]

I have a cab thats 10"x12" with 4 vero 10 giving me 38w, and could easily add 4 more. My cab is in a closet also but the door is wide open all day, and my temps are MAYBE 1-3° above ambient. I do have a healthy exhaust system, but when the heat of the cob is dispersed properly, controlling the ambient is shouldn't be to hard imo. Although in my case I have no restrictions for cold air reaching my cab.

I would recommend higher quality cobs (cree, bridgelux) over ebay specials, if your budget allows. Better efficiency, better use of watts, less heat produced by wasted watts, better spectrum, actual data sheets for EXACT info,It's just better is my point.

This is a link to digi-key, and the filter is only set to the vero 10 array, you can dial the rest in to how you want it. http://www.digikey.com/product-sear...t=0&page=1&quantity=0&ptm=0&fid=0&pageSize=25

As far as drivers, you may find someone else (Dion I'm pointing at you man) that can hep you better, but here I go.
you want to get Constant current drivers. Look for "led driver" they are ready for led with needing to wire any drop resistors. You can use other dc supplies like a pc psu or w/e, but I have no clue what you would need to rewire. Sorry, I dont know how to explain it w/o great detail. It alone would take me an entire page.

You can get a meanwell and be happy you got a trusted name. This is the route I went for my micro cab, but I'm waiting on some much cheaper drivers from ebay for a larger setup. On paper, if the driver runs at the rated specs, and it happens to be the specs you want... well good game. The ebay drivers I am waiting on are going to be a gamble. However, I spent less on 12 ebay drivers than I did on 2 meanwells.

You can run the cob at what ever current you want (within a reasonable range)to adjust the wattage output. I run my cobs at 350ma, or .35a for about 8w. ~26.7w *.35a= 8.01w.

A good guideline to go by when shopping is that it will be ran at ~50% of its max current. (this is where prefabs get you with a 300w panel thats only pulling 150w actual draw) Then just get a calculator (volt calc from the app store on the phone is handy) and start running numbers to see what wattage you can get with the drivers you want. VOLTS * CURRENT = WATTAGE. Volts will be listed as forward voltage (vf), and current will be listed as either amps (A) or milliamp (ma)

Prices are way cheaper to build a diy top of the line fixture than buy a mid range prefab. Take the apache for example. Now I'm not saying it's bad, but it IS retardly priced. the 120w is at http://www.apachetechinc.com/white-leds/1-white-leds-at120w.html and from what I understand it is in the lower 30% for efficiency. You can build a setup in the lower 40%s for a FRACTION of the price.

Heat sinks can be sourced from amazon, ebay, or my preferred site is heatsinkusa.com Although if you run the smaller 3w led, ebay is probably the cheapest. If you plan on running 1 larger cob, a pc cpu cooler would be your best rout. Those can be found on newegg, and amazon for ~$10, look for the alpine11, it goes on sale frequently.

Some resources are:

Dion is a great resource. I have read lots of his stuff.

This thread is great he goes through like 3 grows with larger cobs, and towards the end gets into talking about the smaller cobs. He post all his parts, and where to find them also. Gets very technical with the efficiency and spectrum of his lights. https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=284309

SupraSPL is an amazing person to reference. He can be found here, and RIU. Do a general google search for "diy cob" and it is the 1st entry by RIU.
The 3 above people are great at referring your questions to.

Google diy cob grow journals, or anything related to "cob & grow"

I hope at least some of this was helpful.

 

[fuggzy]

I know some of that doesn't make sense (referring to his problem) but it carries the same basic idea of lighting.

Also if the only this you pay attn to about what grouchy and I said, is read the Bueno Times thread. It is a great, nah GREAT resource.

 

[Dion]

I know some of that doesn't make sense (referring to his problem) but it carries the same basic idea of lighting.

Also if the only this you pay attn to about what grouchy and I said, is read the Bueno Times thread. It is a great, nah GREAT resource.

yup bueno's thread is fantastic

plus he uses more smaller cobs which a great aproach to diy- benifits would be this to save cash over cree and run them softer to make up efficiency although the cost dif is minimal the spread is great

ok but the cbx came out since his last build
i havnt looked at them too much yet(like smaller more veros vs cxbs) but both aproaches work well
im super not a fan of the vero 29s and running them hard

rant

 

[Bueno Time]

yup bueno's thread is fantastic

plus he uses more smaller cobs which a great aproach to diy- benifits would be this to save cash over cree and run them softer to make up efficiency although the cost dif is minimal the spread is great

ok but the cbx came out since his last build
i havnt looked at them too much yet(like smaller more veros vs cxbs) but both aproaches work well
im super not a fan of the vero 29s and running them hard

rant

CXB would kill my fixture in efficiency.

Like you said though they came out after my last build and I built the new fixture for excellent spread and being able to run it closer to the canopy which helps with my short headroom.

 

[Dion]

CXB would kill my fixture in efficiency.

Like you said though they came out after my last build and I built the new fixture for excellent spread and being able to run it closer to the canopy which helps with my short headroom.

i think another advantage LEDs have especially using the smaller chips is how close you can get them to the canopy-

like when comparing output to HPS considering inverse square law of light and losses due to the more than half of the 360 degree bulb's light being redirected down(losses to reflector)


so even not taking spectrum into consideration seems an LED's lumen will be more luminous than an HPS's Lumen lol just a thought

thanks for all the info bueno- i always send ppl to your thread when they ask me about veros hehe

 

[GreenEngineer]

Myself and others here can help you build it if you decide to go that route.

I'm really sorry to revive and old thread, but is there anyway to send PM's on IC? I'd like to bounce some ideas before I make a new thread about a build. Thanks! @grouchy

 

[grouchy]

I'm really sorry to revive and old thread, but is there anyway to send PM's on IC? I'd like to bounce some ideas before I make a new thread about a build. Thanks! @grouchy

You need 50 posts before you can pm

 

[jaayjaay]

how is that filter sandwitched between two fans working out for you? do you ever feel you are creating enough negative air flow?