Deviant420
Member
I have been a long time reader of these forums, first time poster obviously. Just thought I would share an experience from a previous op. that might give someone that "idea". Unfortunately, I have no pictures of said op.
It all started with the usual "hey, lets grow some so we don't have to buy" situation. A buddy of mine had a townhouse in a typical neighborhood of them; They were wall-to-wall strips of 15-20 townhomes. Also, it was of typical design: main floor had a living room, kitchen, bathroom and closet, upstairs was two bedrooms and a bathroom. If you took the floorboard off of the closet in the main floor, there was a storage crawl space. The crawl space was the focus of our attention, although at the current time there was only 2' of head room.
We took two months to dig through the hard earth that was the floor of the crawl space; It was all dirt. The only other thing down there was the HVAC system. We dug out enough for a (LxWxH) 4x4x4 veg room and a 7x4x6 flowering room, while leaving at least 3' of undisturbed earth next to the foundation. Dirt was not removed from the unit, merely thrown to the side of the foundation. I spent roughly a week framing up the rooms: 2x4 studs and 4x8 sheets of OSB. The flowering room was painted flat-white.
The roof of the flowering room was moisture-barriered for a good seal along with all joints of the flowering room being sealed with Liquid Nails. A small squirrel cage fan was used to bring in cool air from outside the flower room and blow thru the 1000-watt HPS. A 8" can fan and carbon filter pulled air openly from the flower room and kept the odor-factor at a minimum.
The first grow was a single soil plant, likely of Diesel genetics, that yielded me ~3/4 lb dry weight. Something is to be said about reading, reading, reading, and then reading some more before you do, although it was likely the by-product of a single female enjoying a 1000-watt all to herself. Subsequent grows used a home-built aeroponics tub (50-gal Rubbermaid) with room for 6 females. There was another 50-gal Rubber that was used for 24-hour water holding to evap off any contaminants like chlorine.
For a water source, we taped the main-water feed into the aparment (USE MAPP GAS TO SOLDER FFS LOL) and put in a outdoor hose fitting so we wouldn't have to use a likewise fitting on the kitchen sink and run hose into the crawl space every time. The water holding tank would be filled up the night before and used to top off the aeroponic setup, which I would then adjust to PH and TDS.
If I recall, Ionic nutes were used alongside CalMag and Liquid Karma. The limiting factor, unfortunately, was flowering room height. With the light at minimum droop, there was only room for ~3' tall females using the aero-tub. So, yields on the aero-tub with 6 females fell in the same range as my first soil plant, ~1lb dry weight.
I forgot to describe the veg room. I used 4 2-slot Floro's from DePOT that ran 20-w bulbs (one cool white and one natural white?) I ran converted an ebb-flow (3'x3') tub to run drip system to my net pots. Medium used was Hydroton. I recieved average root growth on the drip sys (maybe above avg.) but the homemade aerotube produced ASTONISHING root mass. We are talking RDWC-esque root mass.
As to why that operation went out the window, well, maybe you'll read about it if I post the story over in Security today.
It all started with the usual "hey, lets grow some so we don't have to buy" situation. A buddy of mine had a townhouse in a typical neighborhood of them; They were wall-to-wall strips of 15-20 townhomes. Also, it was of typical design: main floor had a living room, kitchen, bathroom and closet, upstairs was two bedrooms and a bathroom. If you took the floorboard off of the closet in the main floor, there was a storage crawl space. The crawl space was the focus of our attention, although at the current time there was only 2' of head room.
We took two months to dig through the hard earth that was the floor of the crawl space; It was all dirt. The only other thing down there was the HVAC system. We dug out enough for a (LxWxH) 4x4x4 veg room and a 7x4x6 flowering room, while leaving at least 3' of undisturbed earth next to the foundation. Dirt was not removed from the unit, merely thrown to the side of the foundation. I spent roughly a week framing up the rooms: 2x4 studs and 4x8 sheets of OSB. The flowering room was painted flat-white.
The roof of the flowering room was moisture-barriered for a good seal along with all joints of the flowering room being sealed with Liquid Nails. A small squirrel cage fan was used to bring in cool air from outside the flower room and blow thru the 1000-watt HPS. A 8" can fan and carbon filter pulled air openly from the flower room and kept the odor-factor at a minimum.
The first grow was a single soil plant, likely of Diesel genetics, that yielded me ~3/4 lb dry weight. Something is to be said about reading, reading, reading, and then reading some more before you do, although it was likely the by-product of a single female enjoying a 1000-watt all to herself. Subsequent grows used a home-built aeroponics tub (50-gal Rubbermaid) with room for 6 females. There was another 50-gal Rubber that was used for 24-hour water holding to evap off any contaminants like chlorine.
For a water source, we taped the main-water feed into the aparment (USE MAPP GAS TO SOLDER FFS LOL) and put in a outdoor hose fitting so we wouldn't have to use a likewise fitting on the kitchen sink and run hose into the crawl space every time. The water holding tank would be filled up the night before and used to top off the aeroponic setup, which I would then adjust to PH and TDS.
If I recall, Ionic nutes were used alongside CalMag and Liquid Karma. The limiting factor, unfortunately, was flowering room height. With the light at minimum droop, there was only room for ~3' tall females using the aero-tub. So, yields on the aero-tub with 6 females fell in the same range as my first soil plant, ~1lb dry weight.
I forgot to describe the veg room. I used 4 2-slot Floro's from DePOT that ran 20-w bulbs (one cool white and one natural white?) I ran converted an ebb-flow (3'x3') tub to run drip system to my net pots. Medium used was Hydroton. I recieved average root growth on the drip sys (maybe above avg.) but the homemade aerotube produced ASTONISHING root mass. We are talking RDWC-esque root mass.
As to why that operation went out the window, well, maybe you'll read about it if I post the story over in Security today.
