MMJCalis 4x6 growroom build!

[MMJcali]

Hey all, welcome to my build journal where I will document my latest growroom build.

This was inspired by a friend of mine who found out last month he was terminally ill. I wanted to help in whatever way I could, and to him that was to grow him top quality meds on the house. I've always been a micro grower, just for fun and to provide my own meds, so this meant expansion.

Unfortunately on Friday he passed away, just 3 weeks after his diagnosis. But the one moment I'll remember more than any... he was bedridden, hard to move and even speak. The docs insisted he take morphine, and he did at first, but he would end up staring at the wall for hours, unmoving. One day I brought him over some dank brownies and we each ate one. Within 30 minutes, he was laughing, walking around, hugging me. He quit taking the morphine, he was comfortable and happy... It was beautiful.

Now I truly believe this plant has healing potential, and in his honor I want to continue with the build. So, take a seat, spark one up (or eat one, if you're anything like me) and let's have some fun for my dearly departed buddy.

:friends:

 

[MMJcali]

alright!

I'm about 70% done now but lets back up to the beginning...

this pic is the space I started with. the closet to the left is now painted white and will be my veg room. some windows to deal with and I'll have to build a partition with a door but nothing I can't handle...



The plan: two 600w HPS in air cooled hoods on a closed loop. Separate vent fan to exhaust the space into the larger room, where I have an AC unit. Starting with soil and eventually will build a RDWC

First things first - I removed the light fixture that was in the upper right and installed an electrical outlet for my fans and such. Bought some foam insulation boards from the depot, cut some holes for my closed loop lighting vents, removed the window pane and popped them into the window holes. Primed the foam with some BIN and caulked the edges:



Next I painted everything white and laid out my hoods to hang (sorry its blurry):



Next to hang everything I used an electricians rail and bolted it to the ceiling with toggle bolts. Hung everything up and installed my ducting. Here you can also see I started framing for the doorway with the top plate and bottom:



And this morning I finished up the door frame, gonna be a nice big 36" exterior steel door, should help dampen the sound a bit



That's it for now... gonna take the rest of the day to meditate and chill for a bit, tomorrow I'll aim to get my organic soil mix going so it can ferment for a bit while I finish up...

 

[CawdoR]

Sorry to hear your friend passed away. Hope your grow goes well and you don't run afoul of any sort of trouble

 

[dekab247]

My condolences on your friends passing, but take great pleasure to know this. You gave him that moment of joy that many with such pain never get. I am sure there was, and is still much love from the departed towards you.

Just a side note: I quit toking for almost 3yrs was a rec user. Chronic pain patient multiple surgeries due to a cycle wreck that should've killed me. After all the drugs opiates, non-narcotic as well. I picked back up with MMJ. I am now off of almost all the meds. Cept for two I still take regular. Pain is thru the roof, but I can deal with it to a certain degree now, but the BEST news of all. Thru my personal experiences, and seeing what I have gone thru, and how it's helped. I have changed two peoples minds that MMJ is for real, and not BS. One being my significant other.

Good on you for helping, and best of times with your garden...D

 

[MMJcali]

Cheers CawdoR, I'm legal in CA, growing for myself and my gf so I'm allowed 12 in flower which is more than enough for my personal stash If the cops come a knockin I already have all the paperwork ready.

Dekab247 - thanks bud. I'm happy to hear you making your way off the drugs. I had a similar experience about 4 years ago, doctor prescribed Percs for my arthritis and klonopin for the resulting anxiety, became heavily addicted to them which pushed me to other drugs. messed around with way too many, until I had a moment of realization and sobered myself up quick. Now I manage my arthritis with cannabis and have 0 anxiety so no need for the other pills been off drugs for 4 years, held down the same job ever since, graduated university, held a gf... in a way cannabis saved me from a pretty dark spiral.

I was thinking of going organic for this, but I have 7+ years with DWC systems so I'm getting cold feet. There's just so much to learn about teas and addendums and what not. I think I'm going to set up a bigger DWC first, then while those are going I can play around with a few bagseed plants in soil so I can learn and make all my mistakes. Who knows, maybe soil just isn't for me... though I've heard some say the taste is much better, and others say thats BS.

 

[mojave green]

i can't grow in soil to save my ass. itsa different skillset fer sure. i'm stickin to hydro. the taste better myth, lol.

 

[MMJcali]

Spent the last two days designing my Undercurrent RDWC system... here are the plans:



veg will have two rows of two 5gal buckets, each 'column' has two double bulb t5 fixtures. the two on the right will be the older batch and the two on the left will be the younger batch so I can adjust the T5s for the two different sizes. when the right batch goes to flower, the left batch moves to the right and I plant two new plants on the left. Total time in veg, three months. Will top and monstercrop, removing all bottom leaves. Once in flower will SCROG for a massive even canopy.

I'm doing this to stay in compliance with my plant limits. if I keep it perpetual, there should be no loss since I'll always have massive trees ready to throw in the flower room.

Debating on doing a prototype system with flex tubing before I commit to PVC but PVC is so damn cheap.

Thoughts welcome!

 

[MMJcali]

The room is almost complete! here I put in the door with the help of a trusty neighbor:




then I put up the boards and caulked all seams:



then put on the finishing paint and started to hang my equipment:




I'm getting excited. lots of hard work going into this, can't wait to test it out!! I'm away and on business for the next week but when I get back next weekend will finish the room and start building my HHRDWC system

 

[MMJcali]

Hey friends, just wanted to apologize for my lack of updates - - things got crazy with work, but I promise I kept on building in whatever spare time I had! That meant no updates, but I'm finally at a spot where I can take a step back and marvel without noticing something that isn't perfect haha.

This included water filtration, AC unit, mother cab, cloning station, work table, veg room and flower room. Building it was easy, making it streamlined, practical and pretty was the hard part. A lot of tearing things down and re-engineering, but hey if you're going to do something do it right, am I right?

Will post pics tomorrow or Monday of the finished set up including my awesome little mother cab. I acquired some excellent clones from a reliable source and have been training them to be bonsai. With these genetics, my girl and I are set for a long long time.

For mothers I have:

Chem D
XXX
Tahoe OG
Exhale OG (proprietary cut from local collective, will see how she compares to the tahoe)
Blue Dream
Strawberry Tahoe
Animal Cookies
LA Confidential

I also have some Dinafem Strawberry Amnesia seeds going in my veg room right now, they're about a month old. Popped 3 and have taken some clones of each, hoping to find a keeper in there. So far I'm super impressed with them, not finicky at all and the branching/growth structure is amazing.

Happy Saturday, hope y'all are being responsible

 

[Mikell]

Bloody hell, looks great in here. I love the professional look, stoked to see some interior shots.

Only suggestion would be to swap out that timer for an Intermatic. Other wise it's a thing of beauty

 

[Yggdrasil]

Pulling up a seat, have a very similar space I've been contemplating doing something similar with.

Cheers
Ygg

 

[MMJcali]

Welcome Mikell, and thank you! Yea good call on the intermatic... I'm worried this little guy will blow one day and leave me in the dark. I'm planning on starting my first test flower in January, we'll see how it holds up...

Yggdrasil, make yourself at home, feel free to ask questions. Building is fun but I find that designing is the most fun.

I'm writing out the update as I reply here. One thing of note, I decided against the RRDWC system since I'll be having plants in different stage of growth therefore requiring different PPMs. It's only 6 buckets, gives me something to look forward to doing every Sunday. Also I feel like dumping a bucket is a lot easier than draining with a pump and hoses. We'll see how I manage haha

 

[MMJcali]

Apologize for the orientation of the pics. If anyone knows how to rotate them on here (they pull up as upright in my photo viewer but for some reason post sideways) feel free to offer constructive criticism :-D

So here's where it will all begin... the mother cab.



Was a ClosetMaid i bought at Home Depot, ~$80. I figured I'd make it light-tight because...why not...so I got some darkroom louvers and weatherstripped the door. Using a simple CFL fixture, just enough light to keep em alive and growing slowly since I won't be taking clones too often:



Mothers are all from rockwool clones, planted in Happy Frog mixed with some mosquito dunks (I had a traumatic experience with gnats and flies a while back... better safe than sorry). Here they are in various states of training:




They will all eventually look like this OG:



Over here we have my supply station with a shelf for clones:

 

[MMJcali]

And here are the lower branches from the Dinafem Strawberry Amnesias, waiting to pop roots ETA 5 more days:



This is the veg room beside the flower room, please excuse the black-wrap, it's a temporary fix to keep the light from spilling out of the window that was built into the door:



Here are the 3 SA's and one Blue Dream, all were just FIM'ed about 3 days ago. Currently under one 3 foot double T5 but I have two more T5 fixtures ready to add as they get larger:



The rail system was installed with Electricians railing and toggle bolts, then eye loops and steel rods, super customizable for future proofing or adding extra T5s/ventilation:



And here's a closer on the girls:



More to come, reached the max attachments...

 

[MMJcali]

When things ease up a bit I'm going to post a full grow log of the dinafem SA's... but here's a little teaser of them.

Popped 3 fem seeds about a month ago, FIM'ed three nights ago, removed lower branches for clones.

My hope is to find a strawberry pheno, so after another three weeks (and another FIM) I'm going to throw them into the flower room. The best QUALITY pheno (I don't care about yield since my trees will be so massive) will be kept as a mom and the other two will be gifted to collective members in need (for free of course.)



And here's the Blue Dream. She's been slow, but I have the spare bucket and interested in seeing where she goes.


Next we'll see the flower room...

 

[MMJcali]

So on the right side of the door I hanged the ballasts, timer (which Mikell pointed out should be changed to intermatic, will look into that in the future), and fan speed controllers for the two fans - one for the lighting system and one for the room itself. The speaker wire going into the hole is for the AC system I have in the outer room, I wired up a thermostat to kick on and off to keep the temps lower than 82. To the right is the main temperature/humidity hub, where all my wireless probes read out so I can give one look and make sure everything is in check:



Here's a look inside the room:



A look at the lighting/ventilation system (I redesigned this 3 times by the way, wanted the most headroom and most efficient layout possible):



Intake, I decided to use the trusty old flex duct with flat black spraypaint... thinking of adding another beside it for good measure:



and this is where the exhaust for the veg room (left) and flower room (right) comes out.



two more pics and we're done (for now!!)

 

[MMJcali]

Here is my water station and AC unit:



And of course, handy kill-a-watt meter to keep tabs on my (sure to be crazy) electricity usage:



That's all for now, off to dream land, long day at work tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy!