My Cabinet (w/DIY's and lots of love)

[hoosierdaddy]

I was given an armoire quite awhile ago, and I have starred at it for a few years planning to one day construct a killer cab with it.
I drew up some plans and changed them several times before I actually started the work. I had already spent lots of time researching for the best set-up available to construct a nice cab with, and I always came back to the armoire that I have. It, IMO, is the best cab a man can purchase for the money, as it lends itself perfectly for a grow cabs needs.

I have always been a closet grower, until last year when I dared my first outside grow, which was a fantastic success, BUT...I have promised my lovely wife I would not put her through that stress again. So, it's back to the indoors.
I think I am really going to dig this cabinet thing!
My first grow is now underway and I will be posting a grow thread in the Mandala section, since I am deflowering the cab with the Mandala Safari Mix.

But, for this thread, let me introduce my armoire....


This little jewel is 4 ft wide x 6 ft tall x nearly 2 ft deep.
The left side is the flower chamber, and it has a footprint of 23" x 19.75" which is roughly 3 sq ft, or 1 sq m.
The mom chamber has the same footprint.

Here is the last plan I churned out before starting up the saw and drill...


As you can see, the airflow starts out in the top of the mom chamber and flows through light traps into the cure/storage chamber, and into the flower chamber. The airflow is routed through the top of the flower chamber into the utility chamber that holds the remote ballasts.
A 6" inline 230cfm duct fan powers the exhaust through a chamber divider (that was provided by using one of the removable shelves) and through my DIY 8x12 carbon scrubber. (props to the scrubber gurus of ICmag)

This is a shot of the mom chamber as is:
You can see the light trap 90's on the right side of the mom chamber, which wasn't satisfactory airflow, so I have holes drilled directly in front of all the 90's but I placed no 90's over the extra holes. I simply cut a piece of self-cut air filter from Waldos World and covered up the holes. Works great.
I have 2 45watt CFL's in the mom room.

Notice in the cab sketch that I show a double stadium scrog. This is what I plan to use, once I have the moms that I want, and have a clone system working. But until that point, I am using a stationary 3 pot system for a SOG.
This is the mini-stadium that I have set up for the time being.
Note how I show a radius circle from the center of the HID on both the SOG and the SCROG set ups. IMO, this is very key to having the lighting set up properly to the grow platform, no matter what method of grow is used.

This brings me to my HID. It is a contraption that I constructed from 2 econolight 150HPS, and a piece of SuperTuff-R (dow corning) aluminum coated insulation board. I love the stuff, and use it for many things.
I will give a shot of the light here, but I plan on a DIY on how to build one of these rascals in detail. I am quite proud of my little Rube Goldberg HID.


The other side of the reflector is a mirror image of this side, but this side is the only one with a fan attached.



The air flows through the roof fo the flower chamber into the ballast room.
This room is stealthed out and tight using the SuperTuffR board.
The outside of the ballast room is cool to the touch, as is the rest of the cab actually. I doubt choppers can spot this cab.


With the plug board out, you can see my ballast boxes. I used old Intermatic timer boxes for this mount. I then elevated them using parts of the cheapo econolights I bought. I will show in detail how I fashioned the boxes in my HID build thread later.
Now, if you look real close, on the right side of the ballast box, you will see a cardboard box protruding through the chamber separator. This is simply a 6x6x6 box from Office Depot. This box is housing my 230cfm duct fan. The spaces created internally were stuffed up with poly batting.
The box is shimmed up with styrofoam.
The duct fan is connected to my DIY carbon scrubber in the exhaust chamber. With this cardboard box setup, I can barely hear my fan running without the scrubber connected. With it connected, this is damn near completely stealth. This is a shot of the exhaust/scrubber chamber. Air exits out the back of the cab.


I have forgotten a ton of things I'm sure, but if anyone has any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them.

Hope y'all like my armoire!

 

[hoosierdaddy]

BTW...you can purchase one of these for $239 USD +shipping.
http://www.armoireshowroom.com/wardrobe-three-compartments-17089.htm

You can also find a model that is identical except for it being all white.
Lowes $109
Lowes Cab

The cab is constructed of laminate particle board, and looks good enough to be a living room piece of furniture. Although, the whole back of the cab is only a cardboard piece that gets nailed to the back. This poses no problems, and makes hole drilling etc much easier.
Once I had things ready, I caulked every seem and joint to get the sealed up thing going.

 

[BudLove]

Looks like a rock'n design... Gonna run a grow journal in that puppy to let us see how she handles the ladies in er?

BL

 

[hoosierdaddy]

Thanks, BudLove!
Yeah, I am going to journal the first grow or two. I worked quite awhile dialing this thing in (temps, air flow, etc...) before I popped the first seed.

My first emerging Safari Mixers are now only 3 days old.




I currently only have a cell phone to take digitals with, so I need to get a decent digital with macro to do any sort of report justice.
I have a Cannon 35mm that is top shelf, but film and scanning is just a hassle.

I'll keep everyone posted.....

 

[FreezerBoy]

Rube Goldberg

Rube Goldberg? Where's the chicken? The bowling ball? The iron on a string? Seriously though, any fan of Goldberg is a friend of mine. Looking good.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

Thanks for taking a peek, Freezerboy!
Most of us old tinkerers have an admiration for ol' Rube.

 

[la resistance]

GREAT find on that wardrobe! has me second guessing the new grow tent I was just about to buy


can't wait to see how it turns out

 

[nightcrawler]

Nice job man... How many plants do you think you can hold in the flowering chamber?

 

[hoosierdaddy]

la resistance, thanks for taking a look. Yes, the armoire is the cheapest one on that site, and it it lends itself best to a grow cab. I actually have had the cab for many years now, as my wife gave it to me to keep some of my work junk in. I have been planning on converting it for quite some time now.

nightcrawler, thanks mucho! The footprint of the grow chamber is 1sq meter(3 sq ft.)
For a SoG, I can comfortably fit 12-18 plants (4-6 per planter). Once I have my moms established, my plan is to lst and ScroG only 4 plants per grow. The three planters I have in there are a total of 7.5 gallons of dirt.

 

[Headless Hornet]

beautiful

beautiful

Great work. It's obvious you take pride in what you build. I'm sure you'll have excellent results.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

Thanks for taking a look and the kind words, HH!

 

[THoC]

Hey HoosierDaddy,

Sweet design and setup. Very clean!
Nice job on the HPS lights.
Im using one of those duct fans for my veg and clone boxes ( vented together ).
Luv to see the stadium scrog!
Looking forward to seeing the grow!

 

[hoosierdaddy]

Thanks for stopping buy, THoC. I like your work as well!
I am a big fan of the stadium grows that are posted on here. It is the way to go, IMO.
Although I am becoming more and more drawn to the vertical scene...
I will be starting my Safari Mix journal (cabs first grow) right away. Hope you can join me there.

I've had a few tell me how clean my set-up looks, but I can never hope to be as clean and pristine as grows like Boxy Brown's and others. They set the standards for clean, IMO.

 

[DiscoDuck]

hoosierdaddy, I saw you in the 150 club and dropped by to say HIGH. That's a wicked box ya got there, good idea with the dow board reflection.

I read where you posted about temps in your cabinet. Your intake air will be cooler closer to the floor. I realize you put your intake and exhaust in the same area but this is no problem. Check to see if your intake air is affected by the warm exhaust air. It may be sucking in additional heat. If your airflow is segregated, (prevented from mixing in an airflow loop) disregard the info below.

One way to avoid the loop is to install an air duct from the intake to the floor. The overall distance between the floor and the exhaust will keep the airflow segregated. It only takes a little heated air to make an increase in inside temps.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

Hey, DiscoDuck. Yeah, I am a big fan of the Dow insulation board. Keeps heat in, dampens sound, and the brushed aluminum side of it seems to be the berries for reflection optimization. A 3x8 sheet goes a long way for a DIY'er like moi.

You are spot on with your assesment of my airflow/heat situation. There is a looping of the exhaust getting back into the cab and increasing temps. I plan on segregating it soon. Good eye

 

[hoosierdaddy]

I have made an upgrade to my cab that I want to share.
I have for a long time been considering changing my current light and reflector set-up to a vertical rig. I have seen many verticals of late, and it is obviously the way to go. Vertical provides the very best utilization of space, and with a cab that is uber important.
As mentioned before, I have a home-made reflector using 2 $20 econolight 150hps'

With a total of about $50 for a 300 watt HPS light, ballast, and reflector set-up, I feel that what I had did a great job. But...I felt that a vertical cooled tube had to be better. So, I went ahead and constructed a DIY cool tube using my 2 150hps'

I have a grow going in the cab at the moment and I was pressed for time when building this. I had to get a hole drilled and get the thing ready for install right after lights on, so I didn't take the time to get shots of the building of the unit. So, I have sketched out the thing in detail in case anyone else would want to build this little jewel.
And yes, some may call my rig "ghetto"...LOL....but that is fine by me. I suppose you could call my whole cab ghetto, but it is growing bud and works fine...and cost me lots less than others doing the exact same thing.

So without further ado..
Kewl Toob #1

​

The dual light tube is going to allow me to not only keep my cab temps down, but it will let me finish out both short stature indicas and long, lanky hazes at the same time.


The glass tubes are hurricane candle globes purchased at Hobby Lobby.
They are $6 each, and I got mine for $3 on sale. (I love sales)

I used 3/8" x 3/4" closed cell auto grade adhesive weatherstrip from Home De Pot to line the ends.
I overlapped the weatherstrip so half of it is adhered to the glass on both ends.

I used common hardware strap to make the hanger brackets.
This stuff bends easily by hand, and tight corners can be made easily using a pare of pliers.
This is basically the shape that needs to be made so it can be clamped to the tube on one end.

Some tubes will have different diameter openings and will dictate the dimensions of this. Trial and error took me about 15 minutes to figure out.

I fit the strapping around the weatherstripping and then used a 5"-7" pipe clamp (pipe section Home De Pot) to clamp the bracket to the unit. You don't want to tighten this down bull tight, it only takes a bit to squish the rubber a bit. I then used a long cable tie to keep the bracket close to the glass. This shouldn't be real tight either, it only needs to keep the bracket in place in case the clamp or weatherstrip would fail for any reason. The bends in the strap will keep it there when tied in this manner.
I then screwed the light socket to the strap bracket using two 6-32x 1-1/4 socket head cap screws, split washers, and nuts.

This is what the first tube looks like when bracketed and the light in. I used hardware chain from WaldoWorld to hang the unit from the roof of the flower chamber.

I connected 4" flexible duct to the top of the tube using aluminum tape.

A single tube would get the job done, but I opted to do two of these and connect them together using aluminum tape only. This also serves as an expansion joint...although there is very little heat in that area.

This is the current sketch of my cab with the Kewl Toob in place.

Kewl to the touch!

 

[hoosierdaddy]

I am going to finish the current grow with the kewl toob as is. But the next grow I will be doing a vertical ScroG.

There will be 4 of these units in the cab. 10" x 24" screen area with 88 sites per screen, giving a total of 352 bud sites. The buckets are 2 gallon each.
It may be a bit optimistic to think I can fill all the sites up, but we will see.

 

[tngreen]

wow! i love what you have done with the place. keep us updated on this grow, great job!

 

[stke_fingas]

lookin good!
how much did it effect your temps with positioning the light vertical?

now that you have your light hitting so many of your bud sites, check out the way the cola's form. they become heavier on the side with the light. nothing unexpected right?.. i just don't know how much it affects the plants to have their fan's removed. if at all in a negative way. i had so many fans blocking the light and i had to do something about it. i pulled what ever i could to the back of the netting and chopped what was required. now at the end of week 8 and the bud's all look the same.
all i'm trying to say is that i feel that it's better to trim the fans over having them block light to the bud sites. (i know i'm going to catch heat for this)... if in direct light, something in the plants cause every nug to grow like a top(fat even growth), same type of thing happens with lst how every branch is about the same in weight. cause each branch thinks it's top dog.

could be my genetics i work with. tell me what you think after a run. maybe do one of your nets with no fans and the other with. i say the side without fans and the full light exposure with weigh out more and have even cola's all the way down.

welcome to the club! i see bountiful harvests in your future. lets see those things full!

 

[petemoss]

Very nice! meticulously planned and executed! Your pipe strap bracket was particularly ingenious. I'm going to use your design for my own DIY cooltube. Just a question: how did you run the wires from the socket out of the flexible duct? I was planning to poke a hole through the flexible duct and seal it up with aluminum tape. Or perhaps use a "starter collar" on the end of the tube and drill a hole through the collar and put a strain relief grommet in the hole. I'll try to get a pic of a ready-made cooltube to show how they did it.