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Stealth Insulated Attic Build
- Thread starter Bender
- Start date
Bender
Member
We are also doing an attic room.
Ours is roughly 6'6"wide x 6'tall x 16'long A-frame.
We are still in construction stage
sub floor down,drywall hung, electric, and A/C installed.
Couple of questions as we are doing this all this based on books and forums read on here-
I noticed you guys also bought a window unit-did you get one for each?(flower/veg)
How well is it keeping up?
We bought a new 8000btu LG for our room. We are very concerned whether it will be enough. We did totally insulate the entire room with R30 10"thick. But as you know attic temps can really get up there. We did install a whole house fan in the attic floor which draws outside air into the attic; that has dropped our attic temp tremendously and we hope it helps that window unit keep up.
I see you have a nice door between flower/veg-how do you get cool air to both rooms?
We also have a small fortune wrapped up in this project-really hope it pans out!
It sounds like you have a nice space to work with. I'm glad to hear you put effort into insulation as well. We have an 18K that doesn't break a sweat keeping the room cool and we're probably going to end up buying a nicer 15K to replace it in the future. That being said - I'm not confident that an 8K A/C would be able to cool our room. Our average exhaust temp is about 120 and it's pushing a huge volume of air. Where are you exhausting your A/C?
We have an 8" H.O. Can Fan drawing air from the flower room - through the carbon filter - and into the veg room. We have the fan on our beloved Variac but I don't remember how many CFM's we're pushing through it at the moment. The veg room has a passive exhaust back into the flower room. It keeps the air in the veg room smelling fresh (which is important because you enter into the veg room). I wouldn't suggest anything smaller than this for a similar setup. The 8" fan exchanges the air between the rooms very quickly. It's fun to smoke near the ducts and watch the smoke get sucked into them.
And yes, it costs a lot of money to grow in the attic. Completely worth it for us, I hope it works the same for you.
Thank you. Got the building part under control and it's been fun learning how to grow.
What a great growspace, nicely made and perfectly cleaned up and designed!!
only idea I have is maybe you can raise those plants nearest to the camera in the pic higher up to the lights? if you cant lower the lights maybe you can put something under them to get them closer?
I'm going to add it to my list of stealth grow methods (check my sig!)
Thank you for the compliments and the inclusion on your list. We're still working on the room and most likely another big upgrade by the end of summer.
You're completely right about the light height. Closer is almost always better and our hoods are cool to the touch (thanks to our Ram-Air intake from the A/C! Pictures of that soon).
I half-ass looked around for some decent blocking material to get all the plants up but I decided to be lazy and just let 'em stretch. We're packing a lot of plants in our 24sqft footprint so I figure maybe it's not the worst thing to let them get a little tall and lanky for this run. I don't have my notes with me but off the top of my head I believe there's 61+ plants flowering right now.
Thank you!
C
Cozy Amnesia
Very clean, well done!
wow...
wow...
i found your thread after checking out your gallery...wow.
you both have put in lots of planning and lots of $$$, that is obvious!!
i was curious about how you transported water, but you answered that in a post...very cool!
very well done!!
can't wait to see more from you both!
wow...
i found your thread after checking out your gallery...wow.
you both have put in lots of planning and lots of $$$, that is obvious!!
i was curious about how you transported water, but you answered that in a post...very cool!
very well done!!
can't wait to see more from you both!
Right now it's Buckets.. 15-25 gals every 2 days. oh and soon we'll have it plumbed (cold water+drain) floors plans are changing. we're also doing something about a screennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. don't want to spoil the pictures. our makeshift velcro door isn't working out quite so well. gonna actually have to build a more robust door.
we're starting towards a hydro solution. baby steps
growshower
Member
bender, were you on riu? i can't remember if i remember this thread from here or there, i swear i have seen this before though, either way, it is a great setup regardless, tagged and k+
Bender
Member
So much time has passed and another update is in order. I'm sitting here with Kerosene and we're smoking some of the best weed we've had in our lives. Been too busy to share details about various strains and smoke reports but we'd like to give you a peek at what the flowering room looks like today.
Before the pictures I'll share some details. The large beautiful plant is our prized bag seed and we're on our 3rd run. She's over a year old and we've kept cutting her roots and repotting her. She's been vegging in a 7 gal and we just up-potted to a 12.5 gal container for when we switch to 12 hour light at in the next week or two. She's in 50/50 coco/ffhf with 1" of hydroton on top to keep surface evaporation at bay. The coco/ffhf mix has been incredible and the only reason there's any yellowing is because we're trying not to feed her while the rest of the room catches up.
(So I can write less: Bay 1 has the house bag seed mother. We'll identify her and her clones as HBS. She's an 80-90 day sativa leaning, foxtailing, delicious hybrid we've come to love.)
Bay details left to right:
1: HBS x 1 12.5 gal SCROG
2 Upper: CH9 Jack x 5 in 12.5 gal
2 Lower: HBS x 1 in 7 gal
3 Mixed: CH9 Jack, AK47, SSH, Barney Farms Blue Cheese in 3 gal
4 Mixed: Double Strawberry Diesel, AK47, CH9 Jack in 3 gal
Lights are still 400W HPS. Bulbs are on their second run. Temp swings from 68-78 at canopy. C02 is at 1000ppm for now. Lights are 18/6. Watering pH'd straight water and letting them consume the FFHF before we switch over to the PBP Bloom/Liquid Karma/Cal Mag+ regiment.
We plumed the room and can fill our 55 gal poly tank on demand and there's a 550gph pond pump feeding our 3 foot water wand. Hauling 5 gallon buckets upstairs was.... well we're not doing that shit again.
And if you're wondering about the screens: We're vegging the large HBS plant in bay one under the screen until the flip then we'll let her grow up and fill out. The rest of the screens will be removed after the bays fill out. There's too many strains right now to SCROG the other bays.
Hope you enjoyed the update!
Before the pictures I'll share some details. The large beautiful plant is our prized bag seed and we're on our 3rd run. She's over a year old and we've kept cutting her roots and repotting her. She's been vegging in a 7 gal and we just up-potted to a 12.5 gal container for when we switch to 12 hour light at in the next week or two. She's in 50/50 coco/ffhf with 1" of hydroton on top to keep surface evaporation at bay. The coco/ffhf mix has been incredible and the only reason there's any yellowing is because we're trying not to feed her while the rest of the room catches up.
(So I can write less: Bay 1 has the house bag seed mother. We'll identify her and her clones as HBS. She's an 80-90 day sativa leaning, foxtailing, delicious hybrid we've come to love.)
Bay details left to right:
1: HBS x 1 12.5 gal SCROG
2 Upper: CH9 Jack x 5 in 12.5 gal
2 Lower: HBS x 1 in 7 gal
3 Mixed: CH9 Jack, AK47, SSH, Barney Farms Blue Cheese in 3 gal
4 Mixed: Double Strawberry Diesel, AK47, CH9 Jack in 3 gal
Lights are still 400W HPS. Bulbs are on their second run. Temp swings from 68-78 at canopy. C02 is at 1000ppm for now. Lights are 18/6. Watering pH'd straight water and letting them consume the FFHF before we switch over to the PBP Bloom/Liquid Karma/Cal Mag+ regiment.
We plumed the room and can fill our 55 gal poly tank on demand and there's a 550gph pond pump feeding our 3 foot water wand. Hauling 5 gallon buckets upstairs was.... well we're not doing that shit again.
And if you're wondering about the screens: We're vegging the large HBS plant in bay one under the screen until the flip then we'll let her grow up and fill out. The rest of the screens will be removed after the bays fill out. There's too many strains right now to SCROG the other bays.
Hope you enjoyed the update!
Last edited:
roor smoker
Member
can't see the pic
man this is a serious grow man excellent work
looks good bender!...i love the space that your using!
...only thing i dont like is that net/scrog screen.
if its for a scrog, that screen is too tight, blocks alot of light right now (may be a non-issue in a cpl weeks)...but the white coating in kind of nice....
for my scrogs ive always used livestock fence...it's cheap and easily available, and perfect sized for scroggin.
do your thing bro...looks great!
...only thing i dont like is that net/scrog screen.
if its for a scrog, that screen is too tight, blocks alot of light right now (may be a non-issue in a cpl weeks)...but the white coating in kind of nice....
for my scrogs ive always used livestock fence...it's cheap and easily available, and perfect sized for scroggin.
do your thing bro...looks great!
Bender
Member
Thanks for stopping by man. I wouldn't recommend this screen for a cookie cutter scrog for sure. It blocks a little bit of light and it's a bit dense. Though the nice thing about it is that you can easily cut it to size and even enlarge the holes with only scissors. I've fit a rabbit fence scrog once and that was enough.
We're only flowering one plant with it(used it temp over other areas to control grow rates before switching to 12/12) and I chose the screen specifically for her. I'll have to take a pic soon to show you but I can tell you I kept her under the screen throughout the whole veg and let the tops all have their own hole for the stretch. I'm hoping for a sog/scrog hybrid of sorts. Plus she's in 12gal of coco/ffhf to support a sea or large colas. Hopefully all works out.
We're only flowering one plant with it(used it temp over other areas to control grow rates before switching to 12/12) and I chose the screen specifically for her. I'll have to take a pic soon to show you but I can tell you I kept her under the screen throughout the whole veg and let the tops all have their own hole for the stretch. I'm hoping for a sog/scrog hybrid of sorts. Plus she's in 12gal of coco/ffhf to support a sea or large colas. Hopefully all works out.
SkilledGrower
Member
The grow looks solid. Great use of space and well designed room. How did the first harvest turn out? Yield?
So Mistakes were made. I take responsibility because I was gun-ho. Usually I try to listen to Bender because. i have a track record of wanton catastrophe and he's circumspect in everything. But I was on a mission from god dammit. so after a failed hash experiment and some ...... its supposed to be cannabutter, we were down 8oz. and lost some more later on due to mold.
Long story short, we smoked for about a month at leisure (as if that's any indicator of room yield?) The strains were delicious and floored most of our friends. We felt that our first grow and cure wasn't prime enough to really do them justice. I'll spare the further embarassments. But lessons have been learned! And .. oh time to say good morning. bye
oh. thought i'd also share my fortune, i picked up some PBP Bloom the other day and 1gal was 10 bucks because they were discontinuing the line (wasn't expired so was bittersweet)
Long story short, we smoked for about a month at leisure (as if that's any indicator of room yield?
) The strains were delicious and floored most of our friends. We felt that our first grow and cure wasn't prime enough to really do them justice. I'll spare the further embarassments. But lessons have been learned! And .. oh time to say good morning. bye oh. thought i'd also share my fortune, i picked up some PBP Bloom the other day and 1gal was 10 bucks because they were discontinuing the line (wasn't expired so was bittersweet)
hi guys - i thought i would mention something about your scrog screens (although you may have worked this out by now)
it appears that you have the lights hanging overhead and then the screens at a diagonal to the lights. whilst i can see this is a convenient way to fix the screens the whole point of scrog is to have the buds growing at the optimum distance from the bulb/reflector.
so if you want the screens to be on a diagonal you should re-fix the lights so that the screens are parallel to the reflector, or move the screens.
nice attic setup you have - my cab is in an attic without aircon but i duct the air up from the house to keep it cool.
stay safe
V.
it appears that you have the lights hanging overhead and then the screens at a diagonal to the lights. whilst i can see this is a convenient way to fix the screens the whole point of scrog is to have the buds growing at the optimum distance from the bulb/reflector.
so if you want the screens to be on a diagonal you should re-fix the lights so that the screens are parallel to the reflector, or move the screens.
nice attic setup you have - my cab is in an attic without aircon but i duct the air up from the house to keep it cool.
stay safe
V.
Quick note: we got new rails for the lights to hang on, so now there is full movement range. we angeled the lights, but they still need little fishing weights to balance them out right. I'm generally inept at forums so forgive the lack of proper quoting. We should have a decent update. We vegged our plants for a month and holy balls . Bender was obscured behind .. a plant or two? its so sexy up there. Cocoa is awesome.
. Bender was obscured behind .. a plant or two? its so sexy up there. Cocoa is awesome.
Bender
Member
Yep, worked out long ago. I hate taking pictures during development.
The room is filled wall to wall with flowering plants right now. I don't want to make silly claims but I think it'll be surprising for a 1600 watt grow.
Hopefully pictures soon.
