Seeking advice on my first medical grow room design

[peartech]

Hi all,

I am designing my first room and would appreciate any input on efficiency and if I will be able to meet my goals. Please allow me to first list my goals (by priority):

1. Yield 4-6lbs of an indica-dominant strain, every two months
2. Sound and heat insulate the room as best as possible
3. Stay under ~3,000W (total)

The room in question is 10'7" x 9'10", but for simplicity, let's call it a 10 x 10. The room is inside of a house that I own, upstairs, and at the very end of a hall. There will be little to no foot traffic. I do live by myself. However, the reason for Goal #2 (sound insulation) is because I occasionally have guests over and obviously prefer a discreet grow.

A problem that I know I will run into is that the room can reach up to 90F in the Summer. This is the only spare room I have, so I do not have any other room options. I do have central AC, but would rather run a smaller unit inside the room itself.

I have an idea (and please educate me if this is a terrible idea) to upgrade the insulation on the outer-facing wall, cover the window with drywall, and build a room (possibly 9.5 x 9.5) inside the existing room. My hope is this will help keep the room cooler as well as help with noise.

Below is the layout of the room:

-The blue on the north wall is the door to the hallway inside the house
-The blue on the south wall is a 5ft wide window, which faces the front of the house.
-The two blue lines in the center of the room will be internal doors which lead to their respective rooms.

I figure I can build a vegetative and flowering room (with the flowering room slightly larger) and use the attached 2 x 4 closet as a cloning area.

Given my goals, is this an appropriate setup? If not, how would I best utilize my space?

I plan to run 2000W-2400W HPS in the flowering room, 600W-1000W metal halide for vegetative, and T5 for my clones.

This will be my very first grow, so I understand that I will likely not meet my yield goals, which is fine. I soon hope I can reach my ideal yield after a few harvests.

Here is the empty room:

Thank you in advance! I figure it's time to stop lurking and time to start posting.

 

[peartech]

I forgot to mention that I will be doing a soil grow.

 

[Easy7]

Your not going to yeild all that in such a space. Basements are better. Running 240v is best for lights. I'd run 4 black dog led's at 240v on a Titan controller helio's 4. Then you'll get 4 pounds or more while creating less heat. Gonna need 120v for your fans, a/c and dehumid.

 

[peartech]

Thanks for your input. How much could I expect to yield, given my space limitation?

 

[HarvestMoon303]

Going to need more light (3k+ in flower), more cooling (90 degrees+ & 3000w HID to cool), and you might be tight on the sq footage with room to move/water/walk/feed @ ~36sq ft total.

At 3k lights, with appropriate temps, and a 2nd circuit to run most of them on, I can see 2.5lbs with little experience and the right strain.

If anyone is pulling 4lbs "or more" with 4 x 240w LED's in a similar space, I'ld love to see it.

 

[onavelzy]

can it be done?

probably. maybe. would require expense, time and effort to optimize the approach

suggestions (don't anyone get all riled up, just options, not the only way):

strain: want a vigorous strain with good yield and market value and that grows well in the style needed to maximize this grow. suggestion: Gorilla Glue #4

space: currently shows as approximately 4x6 of veg and 6x6 (36 sq ft) of flowering space. actual flowering space will be closer to 24sq ft due to the need for room to maneuver in the flower room. Suggestion: expand the flower room by taking two feet from the veg room to make an 8x6 room to give two 3x6' rows with a 2' walkway between them. This would increase your flowering area to 36sq ft, a 50% increase.

lights: want to maximize yield and work with 8 ft ceilings present in most homes. Suggestion: two Gavita 600/750 DE lights per 6' row (four in total)

growing style: trees v SOG v SCroG. max yield per KW usually means SCroG or SOG approach. GG4 is an ideal strain for SCroG

individual pots vs beds. some large scale growers use beds to maximize yield. can be done by hobby/home growers too. Suggestion: two 3x6' Botanicare trays, each holding two 3x3' smartpot liners set up as drain to waste beds with low tables to maximize canopy distance from lights at end of stretch, 4 to 12 plants per 3x3 bed, depending on size of transplant. consider vegging in the beds if running the full room each grow. note: see JACKMAYOFFER thread below for details on this approach.


CO2: yes if possible. burners a bad choice for home so use tanks vs one of the natural systems using CO2 producing organisms. growers describe 30% or more increase in yield with CO2.

Sealed room: would be needed for CO2. using sealed room would probably allow you to minimize noise and smell risks.

Separate cooling from home system: yes

Electric: spare no expense here. get the room wired with the best breakers you can. it's your home

safety: multiple fire extinguishing systems: automatic and hand held. its your home


there's plenty of people who have shown gg4 grows achieving well over 2lb per KW of light. getting there would take a lot of commitment of money, time and effort but its clearly achievable. if you even got 1.5lb for KW that would be 2.25 per 3x6 and 4.5 for the room. at 2 per KW, you'd have 6lb for the room

GG4 is usually run as a 9 week (+/-), strain so you could run those pots in a perpetual approach or an all at once approach.

just food for thought and discussion. it's feasible but may take much more than you want to sink into it

if any one wants to look at what can be achieved with beds and scrogs, check out the warehouse grow thread by JACKMAYOFFER. the page i linked has pics of the bed right after he planted the clones. search the thread for pics of the beds a few weeks later. mind boggling. while the thread is about him using APTUS fert products, he says several times his results are not due to APTUS alone and in fact he no longer uses it. the point of looking over the thread is to see what can be done when every aspect of the grow is optimized. If you do want to look it over, when you do a search, select for his threads and his posts only. there's a ton of BS posting to wade through otherwise.

 

[onavelzy]

just one more shot. This one is of GG4 grown in beds. as the caption says: vegged for 5 days. @JACKMAYOFFER is clearly great at this but plenty of others have done 1g/W in a variety of approaches. just takes some work at getting it dialed in. Good luck

 

[Easy7]

Going to need more light (3k+ in flower), more cooling (90 degrees+ & 3000w HID to cool), and you might be tight on the sq footage with room to move/water/walk/feed @ ~36sq ft total.

At 3k lights, with appropriate temps, and a 2nd circuit to run most of them on, I can see 2.5lbs with little experience and the right strain.

If anyone is pulling 4lbs "or more" with 4 x 240w LED's in a similar space, I'ld love to see it.

Sorry, didn't mean 240 watt but 240 volt. Black dog runs 750 watts or 595 watts for the two bigger lights. All black dogs can handle 240 volt.

 

[peartech]

can it be done?

probably. maybe. would require expense, time and effort to optimize the approach

suggestions (don't anyone get all riled up, just options, not the only way):

strain: want a vigorous strain with good yield and market value and that grows well in the style needed to maximize this grow. suggestion: Gorilla Glue #4

space: currently shows as approximately 4x6 of veg and 6x6 (36 sq ft) of flowering space. actual flowering space will be closer to 24sq ft due to the need for room to maneuver in the flower room. Suggestion: expand the flower room by taking two feet from the veg room to make an 8x6 room to give two 3x6' rows with a 2' walkway between them. This would increase your flowering area to 36sq ft, a 50% increase.

lights: want to maximize yield and work with 8 ft ceilings present in most homes. Suggestion: two Gavita 600/750 DE lights per 6' row (four in total)

growing style: trees v SOG v SCroG. max yield per KW usually means SCroG or SOG approach. GG4 is an ideal strain for SCroG

individual pots vs beds. some large scale growers use beds to maximize yield. can be done by hobby/home growers too. Suggestion: two 3x6' Botanicare trays, each holding two 3x3' smartpot liners set up as drain to waste beds with low tables to maximize canopy distance from lights at end of stretch, 4 to 12 plants per 3x3 bed, depending on size of transplant. consider vegging in the beds if running the full room each grow. note: see JACKMAYOFFER thread below for details on this approach.


CO2: yes if possible. burners a bad choice for home so use tanks vs one of the natural systems using CO2 producing organisms. growers describe 30% or more increase in yield with CO2.

Sealed room: would be needed for CO2. using sealed room would probably allow you to minimize noise and smell risks.

Separate cooling from home system: yes

Electric: spare no expense here. get the room wired with the best breakers you can. it's your home

safety: multiple fire extinguishing systems: automatic and hand held. its your home


there's plenty of people who have shown gg4 grows achieving well over 2lb per KW of light. getting there would take a lot of commitment of money, time and effort but its clearly achievable. if you even got 1.5lb for KW that would be 2.25 per 3x6 and 4.5 for the room. at 2 per KW, you'd have 6lb for the room

GG4 is usually run as a 9 week (+/-), strain so you could run those pots in a perpetual approach or an all at once approach.

just food for thought and discussion. it's feasible but may take much more than you want to sink into it

if any one wants to look at what can be achieved with beds and scrogs, check out the warehouse grow thread by JACKMAYOFFER. the page i linked has pics of the bed right after he planted the clones. search the thread for pics of the beds a few weeks later. mind boggling. while the thread is about him using APTUS fert products, he says several times his results are not due to APTUS alone and in fact he no longer uses it. the point of looking over the thread is to see what can be done when every aspect of the grow is optimized. If you do want to look it over, when you do a search, select for his threads and his posts only. there's a ton of BS posting to wade through otherwise.

Thank you for your advice.

A more practical goal would be closer to 4lbs. I do like the idea of decreasing the size of the vegetative room to increase the size of the flowering room. The only concern I have is if there will be enough space to add a door to the veg room, now that the wall is 24".

Would it make sense to ditch the perpetual grow and just use the entire 10x10 so I can fit more lights + plants? What if I used my closet for clones and moved them all to veg/flower in the 10x10 area? Of course, I'd need floor space to work and for my dehumidifier + AC + CO2, so maybe I'd have 80 sq ft?

Again, thanks for the input. I appreciate your help!

 

[vostok]

Whatever you decide ..keep your option open ....like with computers are of open architecture, so should your grow space ...so you may move that wall...door or shelf 18 inches back and forth until it suits your grow requirements,
Yield is more to do with your grow style and how your education, gear, and strain all fit together, it may take 2-3 grows before you get it all dialed in,
floorplan is OK, but look to your electrics plan for an expense ...lol

 

[onavelzy]

Whatever you decide ..keep your option open ....like with computers are of open architecture, so should your grow space ...so you may move that wall...door or shelf 18 inches back and forth until it suits your grow requirements,
Yield is more to do with your grow style and how your education, gear, and strain all fit together, it may take 2-3 grows before you get it all dialed in,
floorplan is OK, but look to your electrics plan for an expense ...lol

^^^^^
agree.

Unless you've already been doing some growing on a smaller scale, consider some initial runs on a scale that is less than the full build out of that room. the easiest way to do that and keep the door open for expanding as you work out the bugs and get the growing optimized might be to get a tent to flower in. That way, if the process is a struggle and isn't turning out to be what you'd hoped and you want to back it off a bit, you dont have to deconstruct a bunch of drywall, fill in vent holes, pull out insulation, etc. You just unzip the tent and disassemble the supports and put it in the carrying bag. If you do want to ramp it up and maximize the room, you can use the tent as a veg space or resell it on CL.

 

[ganjourno]

I agree, you can totally hit 4lbs with 3kw, but start with 1kw air-cooled, and work your way up from there to 3-4kw with CO2 and AC

 

[Easy7]

What do you have for existing power lines in the room? Can you even run more lines for circuits? I think you could use the closet as a veg/ clones. I'd use gorilla tents. A 9 x 5 gorilla tent against our bottom wall (according to your pic, the bottom). And w 5 x 5 gorrila in the extra space. Use black dog 750 watt lights in the tents, 3 total. Have a dehumid in a corner, veg mostly in the flower tents and sog it out. You just don't have space for all the tricks of the trade. You really need a 20 x 20 basement with special dedicated circuits for the grow for a little of all the trade (male's, veg, flower, drying and axillary equipment.

If you only have a 20 amp breaker for that room at 120v, you can squeeze some on that. Then again there could very well be more than one room on that circuit. I do not know what the house is wired like. You might have to take a lot of dry wall out to run new wire. Even on a 20 amp you can grow enough headies to keep a stable stone. A pound or two every three months is better than zero home grown headies!