PC grow 100w pll, bubbler

[D.I.trY]

day 5

I fixed the smell problem by using 6 layers of the carbon cooker filter stuff instead of the 2 i was using! I think it restricts airflow less than carbon pellets and its useful stuff to the microgrower.

BAD advice. The smell came back in about a day. These carbon impregnated cooker filter pads DO NOT WORK. I had to cancel plans and stay at home and build something that would bloody work

At the end of it though, I am pretty damn pleased with the results:



I went down to a big hardware store and bought looked around the metal work section. I think the picture pretty much explains it all. i used rivets and washers to secure an extruded steel mesh to the metal U shaped thing that came in 1m lengths. The metal was a ripoff but that wasnt going to stop me.


For the price I paid for the extruded steel you would think I would get the right size mesh so the carbon didnt all spill out - nope. First i tried to tape ladies tights (pantyhose to you yanks, right?) to hold the carbon it. What happenned was it spilled out over a few minutes leaving a clear airway at the top, and a bulge of carbon at the bottom. I figured if i alligned another piece of mesh just right i could hold the carbon pellets in i used garden wire and some more rivets to hold it tight and in correct alignment. Worked splendidly.

The is a double layer of rubber draft excluder as you can see. This creates a perfect seal as explained in this picture.



the L bracket swings down so i can remove the whole unit very easily and replace carbon when the need arises. The bottom part has no draft excluder because I can easily get my fingers in there and tape up the gaps.

The result is a perfectly sealed carbon filter that has ELIMINATED all smell. I still can't believe I built it, it fits too well and feels manufactured. Air flow is also excellent. It took many hours to build and i couldnt be sure that it was going to work or its effect but my god it was a good use of time.



I just had to tie down the plants, one of which is for sure a male and i chopped it down to a measly bottom branch and fed it to the cat ( still thinking about making a few seeds). Not sure of the sex of the rest just yet - the preflowers are just so small.



I also made a little fan holder for an 80cm noctua fan that blows from right to left and for the time being I have ditched the glass and well see. I just bent some of that thin aluminium sheet used for reflector




again i used the silica gel aiti vibration fan strips. The noctua fan also comes with some micro rubber dildos but they didnt really do it for me so i mounted the fan with them instead



I got a bad feeling there are at least two remaining males and im going to have a pretty bare screen.

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Awesome work there!

Easy access will make for quick, clean changes

 

[Aerohead]

Wow nice job on that scrubber, If I needed one I would copy those plans for sure! How are your temps now that you got rid of the glass? Thinking good thoughts and you will have 2 girls and a full screen...

 

[D.I.trY]

Hydro, Aero - hello to you both.

Temps are hard to measure. The ends of the bulbs closest to the carbon filter are still too hot to hold my hand on. It feels comfortable to the back of my hand at just 1 inch, but the plants will provide the definitive test. the rest of the bulb I can touch comfortably.

Thanks for telepathicly feminising my plants!

 

[ScrubNinja]

Great case man. Great scrubber. I love that pic with the cat! I think you'll do pretty well out of this.

 

[D.I.trY]

Hello beautiful micro growers of ICmag

They have been in flower for about 2 and a half weeks now and stretch has stopped. flowering is just beginning in earnest, allbeit a little late. I changed to bloom ferts a few days ago.





I got a little 25W heater in there. res temps were as low as 18C with lights off - far too low. This means the plant is now tethered to the bloody pc of course but i can still take it out.

Cat gets extremely excited when i open the pc up. Purrs like a motherfucker and eagerly anticipates some fresh salad. I have several of these critters and the others take no interest - she's also the one whos most paranoid! haha





About a week ago i unplugged the spreader which the fan is installed on not realising what i had done. I openned the case to find i had steam cooked the bloody things but thankfully they've recovered just fine. Now Fan is on the same spreader as the lights!

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Awesome looking!

Keep your pH up around 6.0-6.1 for the next week or two. It will make that yellowing go away on the new growth tips.

I'd suggest next time switching to bloom about a week or at least a few days before switching to 12/12. The girls need the bloom nutes when setting those budsites

Keep it up. Looks like you're going to do great!

 

[D.I.trY]

thanks a lot hydro! Do you think i've sacrificed yield already by doing so (veg ferts)? or just delayed it. Its been a while since ive done this but thats how i used to do it if i remember. Ive ALWAYS had the yellow tips, especially at this growth stage. You should have seen how bad the yellow was a couple days ago before i put that heater in there

Its getting better and im gonna take ur adive on the ph. Cheers buddy

 

[teerull]

wow... And I thought my pc had a jungle in it!
top stuff there D.I.try!
and I'll second what Hydro-Soil said about the Ph. apparently keeping it around 6.0-6.1(2) will allow the plant to use more Mg which is needed the most at the beginning of flowering.

Can't wait to get a hydro setup running myself already!

peace,
T

 

[cork144]

in regards to how your going to collect pollen, when you kill your male, take lotsa clone like cuts off him, put the stems ina glass of water, flip to 12/12, the branches will show the sex and then drop the pollen, use a paintbrush, apply pollen, hey-presto!

 

[D.I.trY]

hey guys.. so Mg huh. I think im going to give them a spray with epsom salt mixed with a bit of bloom fert. I did spray some epsom salts on them and it has gotten better but i changed water temp too!

cork144, about the males. Ive changed my mind - I want seeds badly but im going to kill the males and try to make feminised seeds by revegging and cloning when done. Ill then use the sts colloidal silver technique. Theres a really good thread on here somewhere about making it easily with electrolysis and for next to nothing. Ill just be crossing my fingers it works

Like many micro growers I cant be dealing with clones/mums... this whole thing is about stealth for me and i want to keep just to the pc! I dont ever want to have to give so much room to males ever again in that cramped space - its so inneficient. So one batch of femmed seeds next grow and ill be sorted and by all accounts, on that thread, it should be fairly easy to do!

Thanks for the help. I got a dilemma whether to chop them and let the large rootmasses rot in the res or keep it alive, trimmed back to one lower branch -as it is now. I just pick off the balls of which there are basically none. They get no light down there and are looking very unhealthy!. Maybe it will keep alive just until harvest to stop the roots decaying. who knows? Just another added problem of no clones or non femmed seed in this setup.

 

[D.I.trY]

Bad news guys! I'm going to have modify the pc again as there is just too much blasted heat.

Its having a terrible effect on the plants, and making them stretch and stretch forever without even making bud! AAAAAAARRRRRGGG. Still when i put my hand close under the glass theres just a bothersome amount of IR, feeling not nice!
. My reflector does a fantastic job of beaming IR from a friggin hot bulb down at my plants.

Ive got a plan , im going to get a more powerful ac fan, still 120mm pc stylee, but 38mm thick - its going to deal with the backpressure better. And im going to seal the airflow from carbon filter to lights, acting like a cool tube - plus using a thicker 5mm piece of glass instead of 2mm. All this shit i have got to get and the work is neverending. The other day i spent 1 hour training the little cnuts because they are so wirey and stretchy. Stretching should be well behind them already!.Right now im in the kind of mood where i can laugh about it - but at the time...!!. Tops are also turning YELLOW and the leaves scrunch up like they dont want to open and after some initial bemuzement im sure its the IR.



Ive gotta get those fucking bulbs cool to touch. They get so hot and over such a large area that i wonder if the old adage "CFL produce less heat than hps" still applies! I think using only pc fans, a small hps bulb would be easier for me to cool because its a tiny heat source- at least I could blow on all of it with just 1 or 2 pc fans and id have room for them - the fans that is!



Once i've got the cooling sorted (please i pray it doesnt become too noisey) this thing can finally start to impress, but i apologise folks - its not going to happen this time. Too late, methinks

 

[ScrubNinja]

Ahh too bad. I never really understood the airflow on this one. What did you mean by "And im going to seal the airflow from carbon filter to lights, acting like a cool tube"

What I mean is, if you're not utilising the glass as a cooltube, you're sorta wasting your time with that. I think you are doing that tho? If so, where is the "cooltube" section getting it's air from? Also, it looks like you have the intake at the rear bottom, it goes to the front of the case, then up, way up! To nearly the lights? Or is that feeding the cooltube and you have another intake for the grow section? Because if that's the intake for the grow section, well, there's your probable problem - always have intake low, ie the very bottom, and exhaust up top. On my first PC I tried both and got a radical difference in heat. I thought it'd be way cooler with the intake right in front of the bulbs, and the exhaust at the top rear - the air is flowing right over the bulbs. But this was not the case in reality. The intake at the bottom and exhaust opposite and top covers the whole cab diagonally and the whole cab has a better (much better) flow.

Having said all that, I'm high and probably just misunderstand something.

 

[ScrubNinja]

This is how I reckon you should run 'ting. Altho I forgot about the res. Basically chop out that whole intake duct and have your intake either where it is, or just above your res, like at the bottom of the plants. You are just fighting the laws of....physics? I dunno, whatever that law is. But physics sounds good. Does this make sense or no?



Seal all the glass etc up airtight and I'd be very surprised if it didn't work.

 

[D.I.trY]

Hi scrub, thanks for the replies buddy! Basically what i mean by sealing it is that in its current state most of the airflow bypasses the bulb/glass cavity and rather passes through the plants- I gotta get all the expelled air to pass right over the bulbs instead. I didnt want to do it initially because its gonna put even more pressure on my noctua fan which i dont think is up to it. I feed the intake from the ducting into the lights ( thats the purpose of it), but i cant watch how the air flows inside with it closed! and the air must leak away from the lights.

ahh well, ill explain it with pics when i'm done. much easier.

Oh, and i been thinking about your idea about getting rid of that bottom and side duct but the problem is I dont really want all that airflow going through the plants, sure i want some airflow for the plants, but i want to suck the shit out of this time and thats not going to be good for them i feel.

 

[Aerohead]

What are the temps in your case? I'm not so sure it's the IR because my plants have come less than an inch from my bulbs before training a couple of times already with no signs of problems. I really think you need some kind of centrifugal fan at the base of the bulbs, noisy they are but they will also push through a scrubber. Also, how much oxygen are you feeding onto the res via air pump? Don't give up on this project just yet it's too cool!

 

[D.I.trY]

Thanks aero! dont worry i wont give up ive put in too much bloody work to get to this point haha. I really do think its IR because i get very misleading temp readings. A thermometer is good for air temperature but this is radiant heat, if anything is shaded its cool - plus it feels much harsher on the back of my hand than real sunlight. The bulbs get real hot and emit alot of IR which also gets reflected real well downwards onto your hands (with that reflector i built)! A simple test, take the side of the pc off and use it like a fan to replace all the air in the pc, put your hand back in and its still like putting the back of your hand near a heat lamp.

The airpump used is an Eheim 3702. It definately has lost its initial umph! I think the airstone is clogged by being absorbed into a dense rootmass. I went through 3 brands of airpump. tetratec airpump was SHIT - so loud. Eheim really do make outstandingly quiet airpumps. Ive gone though quite a bit of money just to find this out. Nothing I found will be completely silent unless you position the pump very well (supended under bed, behind couch etc.)

 

[rave420]

don't worry too much about temps bra.
Get into the safe zone, and your plants will get used to it. Safe zone is 75 - 80 degrees, this will work just fine. From experience, i can tell you that even 85 degrees won't stop the plants from budding and growing fine, it is the drastic temperature changes that bothers the plant. Don't forget that plants can "sweat" and reudce their temperature by about 5 degrees. I recommend you get one of them IR Laser Thermometers (buy it at the autoparts shop, they use it for measuring engines etc) and aim them at the Leaf. My room temp is 80 degrees, the temp ON the leaf reads 75 degrees, if i stop my exhaus fan the temps go up to 95 degrees, but the leaf is still at 86 degrees.

I'd maybe seal the lights off using some sort of glass encasement construction, and suck the air through there, then through a scrubber and then trough the exhaust. This would have the same effect than a cooltube does.

As far as airstone goes... I have one of them bubble wands as well and i use them in my cloner, i tell you it's the stone that cloggs. Just take a needle and poke some 100 holes in there, it will be like new. The salt and mineral deposits in the water clogg the stone over time, but i'd say it's fine as long as there is still a satisfying amount of bubbles comming out. But it's nice how they dampen the sound of the airpump though, eh?

 

[Aerohead]

I would certainly get a better air system in there. I think part of what is keeping my plants healthy is the 7 watt air pump (whisper 700) feeding 2 X 24 inch air bars coiled up in the res. It's hard to plug that much surface area for air to escape. The sump is literally roaring with bubbles and PH is solid 5.8-6.2 at all times. Try getting lots more air in there and see what happens, as Rave420 said, I don't think temps are a prob as long as they are close to 80 but not much over. Your grow still looks good and I'm sure you could recover from this problem in no time. As far as the males go, My solution for aero systems with males was constantly trimming the males down until they were barely alive and the roots would usually remain mostly alive causing minimum rotting in the sump. This was also with 30+ gallon res so I don't know if it will work in a micro system.

 

[D.I.trY]

Hi everyone, first of all hope you are all well. Its been absolutely fanstastic weather-wise over here lately and my veges are loving it outside.

Meanwhile, in the PC case things are going well too and this project is going strong. I sorted out a sealed cooltube with a little brainstorming from scrubninja (thanks!), and upgraded my ventilation without allowing any more noise.

I ditched, completely, that ducting on bottom and right side. This also gives me some much needed height and more room. I've done a little sketch up of how air moves through the case. Now is probably a good time to mention i showed a buddy the case months ago and he said that ducting was nonsense. Here's some credit for you too - i should have listenned earlier.



I seriously recommend the fans i am currently using. I got rid of the noctuas- they just dont move enough air with backpressure. They are (I use two) Sunon A2123 120mmx120mmx38mm AC 240V fans. A 120V version is also made called A1213. I found out about these fans from some great information over at silentpcreview forums.





They are connected in parallel with an AC fan controller. These are not simple potentiometers and they cost about £30. Why they are so expensive i dont know. Very simply, if its cheap it not suitable to dim AC fans - this is a dissadvantage of AC fans, but there are advantages... Please do not use a variable resistor to dim the fans! I think the heat dissipated in the resistor could be quite dangerous.

First i tried installing the 2 fans side by side to pull trhough the carbon filter. When i was told on another ventilation thread that they would pull air through backpressure better installed on top of each other - Comme Ca:



...i was skeptical, but low and behold they definately pull more air per decibel of noise installed this way - thanks! Honestly, I probably wouldn't have even tried it: speak volumes. INBETWEEN the fans i use that draft excluder which is a very nice soft rubbery material. I also used this stuff inbetween fans and case, and all of it is mounted together using those little silicon/rubber fan mounts/pins.

With the fans dimmed with the variable fan controller I achieve remarkable airflow that is very quiet. The quality of noise is very good - people wont ask what the fucking annoying noise is, should they even notice it. Improper mounting of the fans, however, will make an unbearable humming noise even with the fans dimmed right down. Its imperative to stop the two fan's casing vibrating against each other, and the fans vibrating against the pc case. The weight of them was pressing against the case and the noise was worse than any pc fans could ever generate. It was BAD. Luckily the draft excluder works perhaps better than those silicon fan gaskets, plus its so much cheaper i think i might apply more. That stuff has been up there with aluminium tape in the useful stuff list!

Before with a noctua pc fan operating with backpressure I would put my hand on the outflow to gage airflow and air would fling out from the edges of the fan with little air coming from anywhere else - whereas these guys connected like this create a homogenous breeze. Airflow per decibel is really remarkable and i'm very happy. There you go - I hope this is useful to somebody. Sorted me out!

Here is where the pc lives, next to the couch. The metal box housing ballasts is under the couch. The airpump actually is suspended on elastic underneath the couch. Its an eheim and i can honestly say that from underneath the couch its silent. Some airpumps are shit, however - i only believe eheim when they write extremely quiet on the box!



I had my window cleaner clean the window just to the left of the pc just yesterday. No smell, almost no noise - he hadn't a clue.


For the cooltube i used some clear acrylic that i bent with my toaster to support the piece of glass above.



The ugly as sin tape is masking tape, because i have run out of aluminium tape, and tape is only temporary because i am going to cut a piece of aluminum sheet to size as soon as i can be arsed.


Ok guys, thanks, questions/suggestions welcome.