New Grow Room - Start to Finish

[Weird Jimmy]

Before I start, let me say many many thanks to IC member GreenWithEnvy for his help with this project. These rooms would not be what they are right now without his help!!!...

So I'm moving into a new house, and the first thing on the to-do list was figuring out my new grow spaces. The basement was sort of finished with some new carpet and a whole lot of beige paint, but there were no defined rooms. The obvious first step was building some walls...

Here's the wall of the flower room all framed in. We used a double top plate because the boards we bought were just a bit too short.

This space under the entrance way will make the perfect veg spot. It's a little bigger than the tent I'm currently using now.

1/2" drywall

doorways cut out..

 

[Weird Jimmy]

Inside of flower room after mudding the walls. At this point we also had the door frames and doors installed in both rooms.

Once the walls were constructed we cut the carpet out of both rooms, and the next major thing to tackle was the electrical work. The panel in the house was basically full. There was a spot for an electric range, but luckily I already own a gas range, so that breaker would free up a 220 spot.

After the range spot was free, I came up with an idea to put a 100 amp breaker in it's place and run a service wire to a new subpanel. Here's the new 8 spot 16 circuit board, and the 100 amp breaker I picked up from Lowes.

and here are some 20 amp 220 breakers that I picked up, but ended up returning because I ended up wiring things a little differently than I originally planned.

 

[Treetroit City]

Off to a good start. What is the finished specs you're going for? You know, wattage, dimensions ect...

 

[Weird Jimmy]

the flower room is about 11' x 8' ish. For now, the plan is to have 3x 1000w Gavitas, but I only have two of them right now. I'll have the third in a month or so. Eventually I may expand it to four, but I think three will rock in there.

 

[Weird Jimmy]

Here's a shot of two of my 220 outlets with 12-3 wire (you really only need 12-2, but I had the 12-3 left over and was going to cap the extra "neutral"). This is when I planned to on using the two 20 amp breakers to run four outlets. I changed course a little bit and decided to run three outlets to a single 30 amp.

Since I decided to change up the breakers and how they were connected, I also had to switch to a bigger wire, so that's why the wire changes color from yellow (12-3) to orange (10-2).

 

[gtotoys1]

Love watching these builds from start to finish. Good luck

 

[Weird Jimmy]

I also added three dual 110 outlets around the room. They're wired with 12-3. Each outlet has a hot and a common wire, and they're pigtail'd in the box and all connect to the same breakers.

 

[FunkBomb]

Very nice looking build so far. Great pics too.

-Funk

 

[clstclandestine]

What kind of light timers are you using? I'm starting to do a bit of research for my next setup and they look cleaner than building some intermatics.

 

[Weird Jimmy]

more outlet pics...

 

[Weird Jimmy]

thanks Funk...

The timers are standard analog Titans... All those timers are made in the same factory, so brand name is negligible.

 

[Weird Jimmy]

the last electrical thing that needed to be done was running a switch and a couple ceramic fixtures, so I could have some green lights for working after hours. The lights and switch were ran with 12-2 wire. (I also used a different switch box than the one in the first pic)

 

[Budsworth]

What kind of light timers are you using? I'm starting to do a bit of research for my next setup and they look cleaner than building some intermatics.

I bought Solistek Matrix ballast last year. Timer is built in. We're working on getting our OPCL and doing a large warehouse grow...and that Solistek is so awesome...it's the ballast we plan on using in the warehouse.

To the thread starter:

Looks fantastic. Good to see people building the right way.

 

[Tyga]

Bad... Fucking... Ass! Tagged for sure

 

[Weird Jimmy]

^^^ thanks for the love...

From the other pics you can see I painted the walls white. I only used a couple coats of primer to save a little cash, but I'll try and find a more reflective paint in the near future. The floor was hit with two coats of epoxy-seal concrete paint. A customer of mine told me about a two part epoxy paint that's virtually chip resistant, but it's expensive.

 

[Weird Jimmy]

After the final drywall mudding, the next thing was to paint the drywall, and to cut and install the trim.

 

[Treetroit City]

So cool! I'm building out a pole barn right now, looks about the same size. You can check it out here if you want.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?p=5572164#post5572164

Definitely will stay tuned to this one!

 

[Weird Jimmy]

This isn't a sealed room, so I'm using the window for fresh air intake/cooling. The window pane was exactly 3/4", so we cut a piece of 3/4" mdf to fit, and it fit's so well it slides back and forth in the track and there's absolutely no air leakage (props to GreenWithEnvy for his nifty saw work on that one). After the piece was cut to size I cut used a jigsaw to cut a 6" hole to mount a flange. After the flange was mounted I used an Ideal Air 6" noise reduction clamp to couple the flange and fan together. Then a Horti Control (big ups to Horti Chris) Dust Shroom to cap it off for intake purification. The other side of the window got foil taped. I thought about painting it, but didn't want to ruin the window in case I wanted to use it in the future.

 

[Weird Jimmy]

I have two 1000w Gavitas and plan on adding a third as soon as possible. I also installed wall mount fans on the window wall and the "green light switch" wall.... and plants.

Other than the third Gavita, I plan on adding an exhaust fan and carbon filter (that'll be mounted between the center joists), and probably a day/night temp control for the intake fan.

 

[OldSSSCGuy]

A couple of questions if you don't mind....

1. What about exhaust?

2. Why use individual mechanical timers instead of just timing the whole power run?