Potty Time! Bathroom to Growroom

[NiteTiger]

So, new house since my first grow, and with many lessons learned, and a lot more research done, it's time to get down to business.

In our new house, we have two bathrooms. Well, kinda. See, the second bathroom is off the laundry room, and is extremely cramped, and appears to have been an afterthought when the garage was remodeled to a Den and Laundry room. It's a pain in the ass, and noone uses it.

The original plan was for a two story barn behind the house to be my 'hobby room', but a closer insepction after move in revealed that while the barn had been used as a growroom before (burnt out HPS bulbs, holes cut for ventilation, fans, ducting, and empty nute bottles), it had been seriously neglected since. Resurrecting the barn as a grow room would have taken extensive labor, time, and money. I'm lazy, busy, and broke, so that wasn't going to happen.

After going back and forth with the wife about possible alternatives and coming up with no options, I got frustrated and made the comment that 'Well, I'll just take over that second bathroom, it'd be perfect'. Her surprise answer was 'Go ahead, I hate that damn bathroom, and I'll never use it.

And so it began.

If you check the pics, you can see the bathroom is a pitiful arrangement as a bathroom. However, as a grow room, it couldn't get much better.

First off, it is off is the obvious advantages. Water taps already in place, not to mention an exhaust fan and GFI plugs. But it gets better. The bathroom is off the laundry room, which was built out of a garage remodel. All of the electricity in that area is run off of a seperate panel that is broken into much higher amperage ratings than is usually found in a standard bedroom. Also, with the laundry room being there, any hot air vented out could be easily run to the dryer exhaust, which is a perfectly normal place for a thermal hot spot on a house.

So, the plan is this. Tomorrow, the bathroom fixtures come out. Toilet and pedestal sink are off to spend some quality time in the barn. In place of the toilet will go a 30-50 gallon resevoir, plumbed into the toilet water connection, and using the float valve from the toilet to maintain constant water level. An Emergency overflow tube will make use of the toilet drain.

The Shower area and linen closet will be light proofed using poly, so that they can be used for seperate purposes than the main area. The plan right now is to use the shower as an exhaust pre-process area & Drying room. The linen closet shelves are adjustable, so this makes a natural place for moms and clones under fluorescent lights.

The shower dying area will serve two purposes. First, the treatment of exhaust air. Air will be drawn into the shower two ways. One will come directly from the lights in a modified cooltube fashion, and the other will pull general room air. Mounted in the shower will be a homemade carbon filter box that will pull the exhaust air in, thru the filters, and exhaust into the sewer via the shower drain pipe.

Obviously, sealed of light, with great warm airflow, this will be an excellent place for some drying racks. I plan to mount these above the filter. The only concern I have there is the plants drying too quickly.

Some questions for IC-

I'm debating wether to use the shower as described above, or use it as a seperate flower room w/ a 250 HPS. Thoughts?

Is exhausting via the shower drain going to be a problem? I know enough about plumbing to feel comfortable removing the fixtures, but I'm unsure about the drain. My concern is the Plumbing vent, and insuring the exhaust does indeed flow out to the sewer system, and not out the Roof vent.

Pics come tomorrow, and will be posted during breaks in the renovation. So tune in tomorrow, and you'll be able to watch the room take shape in near real time

Once the conversion is done, and the seeds arrive (care package from PlanB Collective, thanks a ton guys!), I'll link to the grow thread.

 

[Korhash]

Nice setup

 

[Guest]

I'm on my second bathroom/growroom right now.

The first time, I removed the toilet and put my res in its place. However, I sealed the drain off with a cap because the res was sitting right on top of it.

On the plumbing - remember that water in the trap below the drain is what prevents sewer gas from coming back up into your house (this applies to the toilet as well as the tub). If you exhaust into the pipe, make sure you keep positive pressure always going out or you won't like what you smell! You'll want to put a cup or two of water down the toilet drain every week, too.

In both of my renovations, I've used the tub as the flowering area. (See my build thread for details of the current arrangement; link is in my sig block.) I like the safety factor of having the tub drain to catch any leaks - bad enough if I have to fix a problem, I don't need to be cleaning up the room & repairing a damaged floor too! In the first one, the small tub prevented me from putting my res inside directly under the garden like I did this time, so I built a shelf unit in the tub to keep the garden above the water level in the reservoir.

Your shower is probably too small to use the way I've used the tubs, which were both a bit over 4' wide and a bit over 2' deep.

In both grows, I built a framework over the tub and covered it to make a light-proof "tent" for the flowering garden. I've discovered that Reflectix insulation is wonderful to building the tent - it's lightproof and helps prevent excess heat from getting to the walls (since LEO likes to use infrared heat detectors to find grow rooms). I also used the bathroom exhaust fan; this time I built ducting leading from the scrubber to the exhaust hole (I removed the useless bathroom fan from the hole first so it wouldn't impede air flow).

Looking at your diagram with the DWC units where the sink currently is, I have to ask if you are you going to have room to get in and work on the plants once they have done some growing? It looks pretty cramped!

I don't know that I would choose to "waste" the square footage of the shower area on just the air scrubber & drying. Drying is only a week or two every couple of months; I'd rig up a cardboard box with hanging lines and holes for ventilation and only put it in the room when needed.

Since the buckets need to be above the level of the reservoir in order to facilitate draining, why not build a shelf above the res for the plants? This would work really well if you grow SCROG. I'd use a larger shallow container for the res (similar to one of the under-bed plastic tubs; they're only 7-8" tall) - that would give you more height for growing room. Some of the under-bed tubs have wheels built in, so you could wheel the res out if needed for maintenance.

For the air scrubber, you could build a shelf at the top of the room to hold the fan & scrubber, then duct the air out to your laundry room or out the exhaust fan. Since you are planning on putting fairly large lights in there, you need to duct from the top to get rid of the heat.

Oh, this is IC, not OG

Good luck & good growing!

 

[NiteTiger]

Korhash- Thanks!

Ambre- Great input! You're right about the shower being too small to be the primary grow area. At best, it could hold maybe four buckets, and since it's one of those one-peice shower type inserts, it robs me of vertical space both at the bottom and the top. Plus, being the insert type, the floor is sloped toward the drain, and I'd have to build a shelf to level it, losing even more vertical space.

As far as space, that's going to be probably my most prescious commodity. In actuality, there is probably enough room for 3 more buckets in the area, but I chose to forgo those just so I would be able to get in there

As far wasting the shower, yeah, I'm still debating with myself over that too. The best I could get out of it though is four more buckets under a 250w. And those 4 buckets would be quite cramped, and a pain in the rear to get to when the main area gets into late flower. I'm thinking of staggering the buckets in the main flower area so that i'm pulling three buckets approximately every 30 days, in which case a dedicated drying area makes more sense (but not much). I'm torn

Thanks for the tip on the positive pressure I really don't want the sewer using my bathroom as a vent LOL.

And yeah, I got caught with my Copy and Paste showing on the OG thing, fixed

 

[Guest]

Another thought is to use the shower area for early flowering and then move the plants into the larger area. This would expand your space to possibly a 3-cycle rotation; 3 small plants in the shower and 3 medium & 3 large plants in the main area. When you harvest the 3 large plants, move the small plants out & put 3 more in the shower.

You could also use smaller buckets in the shower area and swap the net pots containing the plants into the larger buckets when they move into the main area.

If you are only harvesting 3 plants at a time, your need for space for drying is not as great. As you mentioned, the plants might dry too quickly in the shower area with the setup you are contemplating. I usually use a cardboard box with string run from side to side to hold the branches and holes cut for ventilation. The ventilation holes are only cut out on 3 sides, using the 4th side as a hinge so openings can be closed to reduce air flow when needed. You could set the box on top of the reservoir when it's needed to use the filter for odor control. I find that the branches are usually dry enough to move into curing in around a week (I don't let the branches completely dry; I prefer to use a slower curing process to improve the smoke).

Can you tell I like designing growrooms?

 

[NiteTiger]

Hey Ambre! Yeah, I can tell you're like me when it comes to room design. I've gotten hooked on the challenge. Gimme a space, I'll figure out how you can grow in it

I actually thought of doing a 3 slot rubbermaid DWC in the shower earlier. i'm still giving it some thought. I'm just not sure, I really like the idea of venting out that shower drain. Of course, I have the sink and toilet drains readily accessible to vent thru, should I decide to make a #2 flower in the shower.

Decisions, decisions

Here's a pic of the bathroom, and a bit of progress.

 

[resinryder]

Looking forward to seeing what kind of "shit" you grow in the bathroom. lol

 

[NiteTiger]

It's even funnier when you think about what nutrients I'm planning on using

 

[Guest]

The problem with the multi-plant Rubbermaids is that the plant's roots end up tangling and you'll damage them trying to separate them. I have my mother plants in Rubbermaids and the roots are very tangled! I thought of using fiberglass window screen to separate the root areas, but the roots are so fine they just grow through the screen.

So, share the joke - what nutes are you planning on using?

 

[NiteTiger]

Yeah, the root tangling would be a problem, except, as stated in my first post, I'm lazy

If I use the shower as flower #2, the plants will stay in there until harvest. If they get moved into the big room, it'll be in the same container, not from the Rubbermaid into seperate buckets.

The nutrient joke, heh, well, I'm planning on using urine. I know, I know, a lot of people take exception to this, but I've used it, I've seen it save grows, and smoked the weed from those grows. The plants love it, it's nigh impossible to nute burn them, and it's about as cheap as you can get

So, if ya wanna argue urine as a nute (not you Ambre, I'm just speaking generally here), we'll take it up in the grow thread, but not here.

The irony just tickles me though

I ran into a problem, and was about to post it, but stopped to resond to your post first. Gimme a minute to get some pic uploaded, and I'll be back.

 

[NiteTiger]

Ok, so ran into a little problem. Well, not so little.

It seems there was a little leakage problem with the toilet. instead of investigating and making the very minor fix, our intrepid previous tenant blithely ignored it. The result?

The bolts holding the toilet to the floor were welded fast with rust. What should have been a few simple turns of a wrench turned into a lovely dance with a hacksaw in extremely tight quarters. Fun fun fun.

Also note the mold on the wall right above the toilet tank. This was not a recently developed issue.

The problem? Turns out the fill hose inside the toilet tank had come off it's nipple. As a result, instead of a nice controlled flow of water filling the tank, it sprayed out everywhere, including the lid of the tank. The water on the lid quickly ran to the joints, and caused the wonderful situation you see in the pictures.

All because someone couldn't take the time to open the toilet tank, and reconnect a hose.

*sigh*

Needless to say, I'm running behind schedule. But, as you see in the last pic, I did finally win the battle, and we're moving forward.

A quick note on the fan in the last picture: that's blowing down into the sewer line, to keep a positive airflow going out. Most homes have a check valve built into the main line to prevent backflow of gases into the home, and mine is probably no exception. However, when it comes to the words 'sewer gases' and 'flow', better safe than sorry has never been more applicable

 

[immortal]

Looks like a very nice setup in the making. How about using half the linen closet for veg and mums and having a drying area in the other half? Just an idea for you to ponder over. Make sure you link us over to your grow thread. What strains are you planning on growing?

 

[NiteTiger]

Funny you should mention that immortal, I was just looking at that linen area, and thought 'Ya know, I could use the very upper two shelves for drying and scrubbing the exhaust...'

So, it is definately a possiblity. But that shower area, man, it's giving me fits. It'd be perfect as a drying/scrubbing area, but unless I run the flower room at it's full 9 bucket potential, it's an inefficient use of the space.

The flip side is that if I use it as a number two flowering area, I'll only be able to have 250 watts in there. Using 250, I'd pretty much need to scrog it to get full potential. Getting in there to work the scrog (did I mention I'm lazy? ) while the main room is in late flower will be nearly impossible. However, it would allow me to setup with a harvest every 30 days instead of every 60, which is a big enough redeeming factor to cause me these fits

The beans are coming from the guys over at Plan B, and will be whatever strains thier generosity provides (Thanks again PlanB, big props!). I can't think of a single strain of there's I wouldn't crawl over broken glass for, so, I'm rather thrilled. I am hoping for some of the Texas Heather in there, as it sounds like what my sponsor is wanting.

The first in though will be some bagseed. I just can't stomach the idea of putting great genetics into an untested room. So we'll call them the Canary seeds

 

[immortal]

Well good luck whatever you decide to do. I know how having so many options can just give ya a figgin headache sometimes. Its always good to have some bagseed to play around with before you really get into it.

 

[NiteTiger]

ok, we're going to pick up today where I left off last night. I was hoping to have it all finished in one day, but that idea went down the toilet

Just woke up, so gimme a few to get going, and we'll try to finish this up today.

 

[Harry Gypsna]

Just a thought, but that shower cubicle could make a nice vert grow.....

 

[NiteTiger]

Eh, I've been lazy today. not that I haven't done anything, just that i've been limited in what I can do.

The Wife and the mother decided they were going to get some scrubs today. Hey, while you're out, grab some white spraypaint or a roll of white dropcloth I say, thinking it'll be a coupla hours at most.

What was I tihnking??

So, when they returned 7 hours later with one 10x6 absorbent dropcloth, there wasn't a whole lot I could do.

I did manage to get the toilet out of the room, and clean things up. Treated the mold caused by the leaky toilet with a full onslaught of caustic chemicals. So we're ready for paint/poly tomorrow. It'll probably be Middle or end of week before I've got the cash to get the ventilation stuff.

That works out though, because that will give time for the seeds to arrive (went out Friday, big huge ass-kissing thanks again to the guys at PlanB, you guys rock), and the light as well.

So the goal now is looking like midweek for room completion. The Canaries will go in immediately, and I'm looking at actually having the good beans ready to start veg by beginning of next week.

Here's a pic of the Canary seedlings, to tide ya over.

 

[NiteTiger]

Iv'e actually been following some of the discussions on vert grows Harry. It's definately an idea I'm considering. Just got to learn more.

I'm thinking there's not enough space though, the shower is very, very small.

 

[guineapig]

i've seen a couple of awesome bathroom setups.....the venting into the sewer is awesome! odors are the biggest culprit.....

just wanted to say hello!
gp

 

[NiteTiger]

Hiya Guinea! Hopefully this'll be another awesome setup to add to your list, not one to be added to the 'Man, I saw this thread once where a guy completely destroyed his bathroom...' list