T-8 shop light(only) grow

[split kooks]

my girl's dad did this with 3x4ft 2-bulb fixtures....the end result with 10 bagseed females were an average of 4ft tall bushes that each pulled 1/2-1 oz dry bud.only tap water was used with 1 feeding of kelp i gave them to correct some deficiencies

albeit the bud was foxtaily and had a bad leaf-to-calix ratio - it got me super baked, smelled like some poopy-resiny-pine-bud. and gave me a gooooooofy grin for the remainder of the high.

good to do if you dont really care about results, maintence, or any real particulars.... Edit: I GUESS....

 

[BlueberryTerry]

interesting to see what comes of this... best of luck to ya.

 

[mrred]

you wont need to lst them becase the sidelighting will brance them out.

 

[magiccannabus]

So you think I should just let it grow vertical and not train it at all? Should I still FIM?

 

[mrred]

someone posted a link to a grow jst like this setup, its a good read

i think the light are to tall so i'd lay them on the sides and have 4 bulbs up and down so i could flower from rooted clones and not waste energy vegging ,the first mistake i made on my first grow was i vegged to long

I'd use 1 set for vegging clons and keeping moms so youre left with 7 sets to flower with

 

[magiccannabus]

My unknown nug strain is called "Purple Haze", but I'm not sure from which breeder.

Edit* For reference, I have a veg side as well. Two 34W 2' T8 shop lights with 4100K tubes in it(tubes came with the fixtures). About 68W of veg light in about 1 square foot of grow space. I could put more in too if that doesn't seem to be enough.

 

[magiccannabus]

Here are some new photos.

First off, here is the ceiling of the flowering chamber. I took foil tape and covered the ceiling with it. I know aluminum foil has a bad reputation, but I suspect this stuff was made with a vapor deposit process, because the surface is extremely uniform and much more reflective than kitchen foil. I am not sure if it's as good as Mylar, but I can see my reflection in it. My reflection would even be high quality if I could get it on a flat enough surface.




Next is my ventilation system. I have the front part of the side of the vent off so you can see in there. That's the Stanley blower gasketted into place. When this panel is put back on, the air is forced through this duct and out of the room. I am not entirely happy with the noise levels though. I have glued some pieces of packing foam in there to quiet it down, but it hasn't been enough yet.




Last but not least is a full shot of the room so you can see the veg and flower sides next to each other. I have all the wall panels off so you can see what's up.

 

[mrred]

youll be able to grow one hell of a plant in there

 

[magiccannabus]

Does anyone know how I can calculate the intensity of my T8 lamps? I currently use 2' and 4' bulbs. No part of any plant in my cabinet will ever be more than 8 inches from a light source. I want to somehow calculate the raw saturation of light per cubic foot in here. Does anyone know how to do that? I will have 5 plants, which will have from 2-4 vertical stalks on each. They're in 8 inch pots, and the plant itself won't grow more than 38-40" tall and 8 around.

Here is a revised image of the profile I want for each plant. With this much side light, I can't decide how many vertical stalks to train each plant to. I finally have my clones and my seedlings going. It will be about 3 weeks before I have plants ready for the flowering cabinet though

 

[magiccannabus]

Big update here. I have a few pictures at least.

This is my new drawing, it's a really crude concept drawing of how I want to train these babies. I plan to veg them under top-down light, and then when it reaches half the height I plan it to finish at, I will cover the top of the plant with a baggie and then spray it down with kinetin, a synthetic plant hormone that encourages branching, reduces root mass, and slows vertical growth. That should make the sides really branch like crazy but let the top continue it's upward march during flowering stretch.

Here's my seedlings! Colombian Trainwreck, and Purple Haze

Here's a view of the veg chamber from the doorway

 

[khaleel]

looking good, glad you've got things moving - that's the best time to figure things out i think, on the fly. well, maybe not the best, but at least where i do most of my figuring out lol

 

[magiccannabus]

Yeah I'm an 11th hour worker lol

My cuttings are struggling a bit. I think they'd be dead if they weren't in a bubble cloner, because keeping the humidity up has been a huge challenge. I have been trying though. The cloner is surrounded by containers of water and it's stuffed in a cabinet near my furnace for warmth.

It's only running about 60-65 in the veg chamber right now. It's just too hard for it to compete with the cold outside. It's brutally cold here right now. If there was no Mylar in there, I don't think things would be going well at all.

Now I'm just praying the clones make it. I've had a lot of experience with bubble cloners, but I've never used one on cuttings from flowering plants. I really wanted to get them before he switched them to flower, but such is life....

 

[khaleel]

dude if cold is your issue, add more light!!! lol hmm, i know your area is small, but there has to be someway to do that. get a higher-intensity shop light spectrum (buy a hotter burning bulb) something... it's usually the other way around, heat is the culprit. i'll go take another look at you setup and see what comes to mind.

 

[khaleel]

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs...langId=-1&catalogId=10053&productId=100652093

put a couple two or three or four of these puppies in there... fixtures will be cheap, whatever size it is.

 

[magiccannabus]

Yeah this place has poor insulation. In the summer heat will definitely be an issue. I've been looking at that other thread about the bent T5HO CFLs, PL-L format or something. Those looked pretty incredible too. I may put in more light, but I'm already at 250w per square foot. Per foot of fixture surface area this works out to roughly 2300 lumens per square foot. At floor level it's closer to 23,000 lumens. With so many overlapping fields though it's hard to say. Since none of these lamps will be further than 8 inches from a plant, and not even the side ones will be more than 1 foot from the middle of the cab. I literally have to remove one of the shop lights every time I want to take my plants in and out. At least I have it rigged so I can just swing it up and out of the way....

 

[khaleel]

dang my picture posting method isn't working anymore. i removed the post so as not to confuse anyone. well thanks for telling me how you got it to work, i'll have to do that

 

[magiccannabus]

haha that's ok... Not much going on here yet anyway. I have a purple haze seedling that is starting to turn purple, that's fun, but it's tiny still. My bubble cloner is sustaining the cuttings I got, but I'm not getting the results I am used to, and the setup I was forced to use this time isn't ideal at all. There's been a sort of milky slime looking stuff. Looks sort of like really hard water, and it's sort of forming halos around the ends of some of the cuttings, but only some, not most. I put some peroxide in there, in case it's bacteria. We'll see how that goes. I'm not used to trying to clone when the humidity is so crappy!

 

[bakelite]

Magic,
Excellent thread! I like to see people using store bought stuff to make a their setup from. I like your innovative grow room design too :smile:

I've got a second grow cab made from OSB that I want to utilize as my current cab is filled to capacity :smile: Right now it is setup with 4 sockets that I had used with 4x42 watt CFLs with less than stellar results. I'm bouncing back and forth between switching to either a single 150 HPS (16,000 lumens) or 3x55 PL-L fluoros's (14,400 lumens)

The HPS throws more light, but I like the idea of Fluoros as they are a more evenly distributed light source (point vs. distrubuted, I'm getting tired of turning and rearranging my plants every few days). Plus fluoros allow you to customize/tweak the color temp depending on the phase of your plants.

-bakelite

 

[Young Giver]

Very interesting.

 

[whitebox]

haha that's ok... Not much going on here yet anyway. I have a purple haze seedling that is starting to turn purple, that's fun, but it's tiny still. My bubble cloner is sustaining the cuttings I got, but I'm not getting the results I am used to, and the setup I was forced to use this time isn't ideal at all. There's been a sort of milky slime looking stuff. Looks sort of like really hard water, and it's sort of forming halos around the ends of some of the cuttings, but only some, not most. I put some peroxide in there, in case it's bacteria. We'll see how that goes. I'm not used to trying to clone when the humidity is so crappy!

Hi Magic,

you don't know me as i'm a noob on ICmag but, i read your threads for a while and it have inspired me deeply , yes, yes...

, then after read one more time and check the dimension of the roof of my kitchen cupboard, i decided to make a grow and flow space with both t5' and cfls.

you convinced me with your show , in terms of consuption and low-heat generating. that's the new space i need to improve my small urban setup and without to invest a buck to fight with temps (wich is the major issue in small grow/flow setup), only have to close this space with 2 wood or something of ,2 sides walls and a double sliding door (wood or plastic )

thanx man, really.

maybe if you would, i'll ask some question to you about electric connections or so... when i'll progress in the building of the setup.

i keep an eye on your babies , stick to this thread !!!

Well done.

.WB.