Seeking Critique on Vert Colosseum SOG concept.

[Anti]

Today's revision might just be the ticket.

Slightly wider (2ft 8in vs 2ft 6in) and slightly shorter (6ft 4in vs 6ft 6in) with 92 total plants. (So I could have 6 moms to clone from and still be at 99 plants except for 2 weeks every 8 week cycle when I'd have 100 or so clones in addition.

Each plant is in a square 4" space. the planter is only 2.5" so there is a bit more horizontal space per plant than in the first design.

I also added the shelf for the plants to sit on. (Now the cutout only stabilizes each plant and keeps it from toppling over.)

As always, your thoughts and/or criticisms are appreciated.

The last pic is a bulb's-eye-view perspective, just for fun.

The backs of the plants in the corners are (at maximum) 2 feet, 4 inches away from the center of the bulb.


So my questions at this point are:

How high does the "roof" need to be?

I intend to extract from the "roof" and have the carbon filter and extraction fan be external to the room.

If the "roof" were right above projected plant tops, the whole interior space would have a volume of 36.66 feet cubed.

If I add height that number will go up quite a bit.

Thoughts?

 

[TruthOrLie]

I wonder if your root zones would get high temps because of such small containers?

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

I wonder if your root zones would get high temps because of such small containers?

His present design does have panels protecting the pots from direct light. My concern is keeping up with the hand watering if these plants take off. Not much volume in those treepots.

 

[Anti]

In current cab, with temps in the mid to high 80s, by the end of the cycle I only water once every other day. At the beginning of the cycle you can go 3-5 days between watering.

Submersion watering is about the most thorough watering method I can imagine.

(You dunk the entire tree-pot UNDER WATER until it stops bubbling. Then you pull it out, allow it to drain, and put it back in its spot.)

 

[Maj.Cottonmouth]

In current cab, with temps in the mid to high 80s, by the end of the cycle I only water once every other day. At the beginning of the cycle you can go 3-5 days between watering.

Submersion watering is about the most thorough watering method I can imagine.

(You dunk the entire tree-pot UNDER WATER until it stops bubbling. Then you pull it out, allow it to drain, and put it back in its spot.)

Well if you are building this from scratch have you considered using buckets as the rack? I am thinking some rubbermaid type rectangular tubs with a lip inside and use steel rods for the containers to rest on. Put valves on them and you could fill the tub and then drain it into a bucket or whatever. Just a stoned thought. Mmmmm C99.

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

Ebb and Flow

Ebb and Flow

I'm growing small plants in a 6" x 5" room on a 6" x 3" table using three 2" x 3" mortar tubs for an ebb and flow system. My job requires me to be away, so I need non-manual watering. I 'm considering an identical pot arrangement to Anti's here using two rectangular doughnut shaped Ebb&flow trays. Plastic rain gutters I've looked at are a bit too narrow. Considering building each tray, screwed & glued out of real wood with a rubbery trailer roof coating to waterproof. Each tray is a level in the colosseum.

So two different sized trays shaped like a rectangular doughnut. Some supporting framework underneath. Rests on my table. Each tray would be fed by its own pump and have its own drain to reservoir. If you have room build a third, maybe a fourth tray if you can have it taller and wider. It could be on a floor if I just wanted to fill the tray with a hand held hose.

 

[DHF]

Well Rabbit....I was waiting for the final design to suggest automated feed , and there`s none better/easier than the ebb and flow setup where the containers/tree pots sit in juice and wick the difference up above flood level , then pump cuts off and gravity drains everything not kept in treepots back to rez FTW IME......

I can tell yas this Anti.....I`m worried about your thoughts on each plant only needing fed like you`ve been doin in the past , since smaller containers with coco do considerably better with regular timed feeds while allowed to dry out between feed cycles.......but.....

CFL`s even with temps in the 80`s are totally different from HID lighting , even with minimal 400`s , and then CMH`s produce more heat than HPS`s , so it`s definitely something to consider as far as automating your feed with 92 plantlets.......

I`m waiting ta see how they do with 4" spacing with 2-400`s....Talked to a Growbro yesterday I helped last yr with Heath`s design and increased plant numbers , and he upped his wattage to 75 per for the budsicles with "amazing" results according to him , and he`s old head like me , so there`s no bullshit conjecture/hearsay involved , only dialage........

IMO , if yas automated the feed , and put 3-400`s @ 19" , or 2-600`s in place of your 400`s on center , the results could possibly rival Heath`s results once monocropped and dialed environmentally.......but.....more heat to extract.....

If extraction`s not gonna be directly above the lights , then how will you control heat gain ......

If the 92 plant setup with mom`s help yer head with the 99 plant rules , then that`s the perfect setup ......Gotta be ableta sleep at night with increased plant numbers and smaller plants.....

I`d loveta see yas pull 3 lbs off 2-400`s...or 4 lbs off 2-600`s like Heath...but.....92-1 oz budsicles is 1/4 lb short of 6 lbs......AK-47 FTW dialed with automated feed and controlled environment...........

Now get ta work damnit...LOL....

Good luck Bro.....DHF............

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

Well I logged on to apologize to Anti for sending this off on a pipe dream, but instead...

The above idea would be so much simpler to construct as two stadiums, then place a single short Marlo style plant/scrog at each end. At least for me. I'm limited by ceiling height if growing on a table.

Anti's submersion technique seems to be working for him, but I can't depend on always being there to water on time. The treepots I have (3" square bottoms) will just wedge snugly into a quart yogurt container. For Anti's present set-up, if you found a container just big enough to hold the treepots, then every plant could sit in it's own bottom pot/saucer. That might give you another day between waterings. I think you'd need to glue? each one to the colosseum horiz shelf or else it would cascade into disarray. I need to take a treepot to the building supply stores and see how it really sits in a plastic rain gutter.

If a person had pots which were stable (unlike treepots) then the plants could possibly be rearranged in the trays according to the size of the plants. If you needed more room just remove a plant. You could also do a perpetual and have different rows of growth stages. Have close packed spaces in the first row for the first month... then harvest the top/back row... and move everyone else up a shelf... and place your new clones in the front row. The upper rows could have older/taller plants. Upper rows of a colosseum have more space for plants, so they can spread out some too

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

and then CMH`s produce more heat than HPS`s

I thought CMH's ran cooler? Anyway, I've been using CMH's 400w, and I've encountered problems from UV exposure while working on plants, even with dark glasses and wearing a hat. I'm considering stronger filtering glasses, and I sometimes get a "sunburn", though I try to avoid sun exposure so my skin is probably more sensitive. I think that with several vertical bare CMH's blazing away in front of me at eye level I'd have problems. I'll either turn them off to work or use HPS.

 

[DHF]

Way back when bare bulbs were bein hung , the first rule of thumb was "welders glasses" to prevent eye damage from the 1kw`s.......

*5`s were the choice in either goggles or safety glass styles.......

Ya`ll be careful with your vision , no shit....as far as metal halide bulbs running cooler , I`ve never seen it......bigger bulbs/more gas/more heat IME......per wattage....

Peace....DHF...........

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

My treepot fits perfectly into the bottom half of a half gallon plastic milk jug.

 

[Maj.Cottonmouth]

I thought CMH's ran cooler? Anyway, I've been using CMH's 400w, and I've encountered problems from UV exposure while working on plants, even with dark glasses and wearing a hat. I'm considering stronger filtering glasses, and I sometimes get a "sunburn", though I try to avoid sun exposure so my skin is probably more sensitive. I think that with several vertical bare CMH's blazing away in front of me at eye level I'd have problems. I'll either turn them off to work or use HPS.

I have 3x 400 watt CMH vert and I use these, cheap and effective

 

[justwatchin]

DHF those aren't regular MH's. They're metal halide gas inside an HPS bulb. The CMH run a hell of allot cooler than HPS and throw considerably less heat towards the plants, but still I only like them for the first and last 2 wks.

I got an HPS universal included with my order because of a late magnetic ballast arrival, so I'm able to swap.

Sorry if off topic Anti

 

[Anti]

No sweat about off-topic.

Using E&F is going to drastically change the design. Now I have to go to Targmart and look at plastic containers. And HomeLowePot to look at gutters.

Please keep in mind (i'm more impatient about getting started than ANY of you are) that I won't be in my new location for another month. Gotta work out the kinks in the idea before I build it. I've built 4-5 projects (not all MJ related) after sketching them out first and had great success with it. Allows you to "see" the finished product and "build" the product (I build it one board at a time, like in real life, to scale) for free so you can fix any stoney mistakes (which I make a lot, see lighting spacing earlier in thread) BEFORE you spend money on materials.

I'll be tinkering with E&F/F&D ideas for the next few days and I will post my questions and ideas as they come. Then I'll likely have to go back to the drawing board to account for any modifications to the design this requires.

I really appreciate you guys being so involved in this. My only experience with growing under HID was when I accidentally selected a male "mom" and made 40 clones of "her" and put them under a 400w HPS for two weeks to find banana city.

(My first ever grow. 6 or so years ago.)

I laugh at myself so that you won't feel bad when you do it.

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

Somehow I got my measurements wrong earlier. Just climbed a step-ladder outside the house, and my treepot with a 3" square base fits nicely in the plastic rain gutter.

 

[Marquis de Sod]

i dont have much to offer other than i used those tree pots for a long while and they sucked because: they tip over, duh! so what i ended up doing was this. they fit perfectly inside a milk crate. but in order to get a square pan that fits into the milk crate you have to buy a small platter of those peat discs for clones. then, after all that PITA you get plants waaay too close together to put nine in a milk crate so, ... next thing i did was
put about three nice rocks in the bottoms of each before i put the dirt in. that kept the center of gravity nice and low. but if you hit them you still knock them over. i quit using them.

you mention the rain gutter. i think that is great, but you will have to have something on the sides to keep them from falling over again. at one time i would put four of them into the milk crate and fill the other spaces up with the small 3x3 plant containers. maybe you could put a couple of those in between your tree pots, just for stability, however maybe duct tape laid flat across the gutter will hold them too. either way, i skipped a couple pages of this thread and hope someone suggested that you have more separation between plants. i think that if you have a tree pot, and six inches between the next ones, you will do well, have lots of air circulation and light get in there.
btw i also used flora nova at that time. i got giant buds like you only one time and then i must have f'd up everything. up till recently. (i am still doing horiz. trying to work up the nerve to go vert. got to get some goggles first as my eyes are shot already. i do think flora nova is a great product tho. mandala seeds recommends it, as it has low NPK amounts.

AND ANOTHER THING! i wrapped my rooms in mylar about three years ago. after a while (last month, haha) i noticed how frikken dirty it was. after i cleaned it, which sucked, because it kept streaking, it was dirty again really soon. i just got rid of it and painted my room brite white. i think it is better.


but also, i dont really see any advantage to doing a SOG in vert over horiz. with small plants and all i think the light will reach. my reason for going vert is to veg my plants longer and taller, and then let the vert light shine and create good buds all the way down the plant. a friend is doing just that. i am amazed at the size of the buds on the lower branches. i mean the size of his tomaters... his plants are all four feet tall.

i forgot to mention that all my growing is done at my friends house, who has a green card. not MY house. and i'm growing tomatos, NOT pot. in fact i don't even smoke pot. in fact i thought this was a tomato web site. my bad!

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

The basis of Anti's design is to hold treepots firmly, one in each hole. To automate watering with ebb & flow, underneath the top board with its pot holes would be an ebb & flow tray made of vinyl rain gutter. Each level of this coliseum could have a rectangular gutter doughnut, or you could break that doughnut into several pieces to allow the coliseum to come apart. Each tray will need its own reservoir pump.

Construction of the gutter trays would be greatly simplified if it was a stadium design with simple straight sides. Just a length of gutter under a top board for each step. Grow a short bush at each end. Turn this into a coliseum with end units and you're up to eight reservoir pumps for a two level coliseum ... at least by my reckoning.

The big disadvantage of the treepots is their instability, requiring a rigid spacing design to the coliseum. Solid ebb & flow troughs which would hold more stable plant containers offers the most flexibility, but then are you getting too much spacing for budcycles?

 

[DHF]

Hey justwatchin.....Thanks for that insight on lower heatgain from the cmh`s.....Sounds like a good product that could be swapped to hps`s after end of stretch for the better spectrum till end of cycle.......

Anti....I totally respect your thoughts on dialing a setup with all pertinent changes needed for it ta be a grow machine , before it`s actually set up.......

Your sketchup`s are by far some of the finest/well detailed I`ve ever seen on weedsites , and I`ve seen 1000`s....Heath`s so-called "autcad" skills consist of "stickman" type drawings LOL , but show exactly what he`s got goin on ftw.........

His plastic gutter setup underneath his plants that were topfed/recirculating continuously had gutters on all levels on all 4 walls connected to a downspout in 1 corner tied to all levels above and below , as well as all levels pitched toward the downspout for faster flow/drainage/recirculation.....

My thoughts for your setup is if yas could let all the treepots sit in the plastic gutters on the support shelves , then you could have the top and bottom shelf with their own downspout back to rez , with a feedline up through the downspouts with a 90 degree elbow that would flood the gutters on both levels while draining it back down the downspouts for "perfect" overflow protection from anything ever flooding.......

IOW......Let`s say with a 3/4" feedline inside a 3 or 4" gutter downspout , the feed pump runs until all the treepots get sufficient juice to be totally saturated , then kicks off and all residual juice drains backta rez via gravity.......

Simple....babyshit......with complete overflow insurance since the juice is draining back down the spout as the feedline`s still flooding the gutters for dialed treepot saturation.........

The only variable is being there to run the pump and see how long it takes for total rootzone saturation that you`re happy with....Once that "X" factor`s eliminated , then it`s plug pump into timer , set it , and forget it....

How many times per day the pump needsta come on and flood the plants for optimum growth needs dialed as well......Just takes seein how fast they dry out , ta know how many times lights on they needta be fed ftw......

Totally automated feed system once dialed.......Hope thing`s work out in new location Bro.....

Peace.....DHF........

 

[Anti]

Somehow I got my measurements wrong earlier. Just climbed a step-ladder outside the house, and my treepot with a 3" square base fits nicely in the plastic rain gutter.

Homie, the thought of you climbing a rain gutter with treepot in hand gives me the grins!

Love the dedication, though!

I know mine will fit in a regular rain gutter. My question is whether or not the rain gutter will be able to hold a large enough volume of water (without overspill) to be a feasible solution.

Here's my (total newb) understanding of E&F:

The "flood table" (rain gutter) has a small drain on the lower end. As it fills, it is also slowly draining. So I put the pumps on a timer and they kick on and I time how long it takes to for the gutter to fill to the brim with treepots in place. Then I kick the pump off and it all slowly drains. I set up timers to kick the pumps on for the required time-period and then turn them back off. At this point, the system auto-waters itself at whatever duration I set on the timers.

Does it sound like I have a handle on the basics?

 

[Anti]

but also, i dont really see any advantage to doing a SOG in vert over horiz. with small plants and all i think the light will reach.

In a horizontal grow with reflector, about 25-30 percent of the light is "direct" from the bulb to the plants with 70-75 percent of the light being "reflected" from the bulb to the reflector to the plants.

The advantage to vert (AFAIK) is that nearly ALL light that leaves the bulb is going directly toward a plant surface. Less reflection means more penetration. No reflectors means less heat buildup.

(It also means not having to layout $250 for a couple of Super Sun 2s because they won't be needed.)