JB's New Growroom with Graphics

JSB99

JSB99

Well-Known Member
ttystikk said:
Mine! The one I already have, and who knows? Maybe future upgrades too?
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I'm going to have my hands full for a while, but after I've got everything rolling, that's be cool. I would be more inclined to build a future design. Kind of like a blank canvas. In fact, I was floating the the idea of be a Grow Room Design Specialist, where I'm provided the room dimensions and other information, and I could design different layout options based on the space and budget available.

Wow, that was a long sentence. But I did a dab right before i got on here so that would explain a lot lol

Anyways, maybe down the road a little bit. I'm learning a lot with Sketchup by building this layout. I really like it and I'd rather keep designing stuff than lose what I've learned. So we'll see. Maybe in a year. I'll know in February if I'll have the funds available to build this, or if i can raise the money via FundMe.com :-)

Catch y'all later
 
ruwtz

ruwtz

Well-Known Member
Amazing work. I can see the hours put in here, having done it all myself on SKetchup, albeit on a quicker scale before I started the actual build. In my sig if you're interested.

It's definitely a useful way to organize and design and anticipate issues. You also seem smart enough to realize you can't plan for everything. So much more is learned in practice, so much about growing has to become intuitive and can only come from experience.

That's how I'm feeling anyways as I come towards the end of my first indoor cycle in my purpose built setup. So much of my original design ended up changing as I used it and found better ways to work.

One thing is for sure, if you have the same application to growing as you do CAD engineering then you're gonna do just fine!

Good luck. I'll be sticking around for sure.
 
JSB99

JSB99

Well-Known Member
ruwtz said:
Amazing work. I can see the hours put in here, having done it all myself on SKetchup, albeit on a quicker scale before I started the actual build. In my sig if you're interested.

It's definitely a useful way to organize and design and anticipate issues. You also seem smart enough to realize you can't plan for everything. So much more is learned in practice, so much about growing has to become intuitive and can only come from experience.

That's how I'm feeling anyways as I come towards the end of my first indoor cycle in my purpose built setup. So much of my original design ended up changing as I used it and found better ways to work.

One thing is for sure, if you have the same application to growing as you do CAD engineering then you're gonna do just fine!

Good luck. I'll be sticking around for sure.
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Thanks, I really appreciate that. I'm definitely going to check out your shed thread tomorrow! I'm real interested to see how you did everything. I have so much to learn, but it's just for fun. I'm really glad i had gotten to where I could work fairly well in SU by the time I was considering growing again. My skills have increased quite a bit by having a project with a lot of learning and problem solving in order to get the layout that I really wanted. There were a lot of things that i could have glossed over, but I really wanted to learn even the little things. The little things often are necessary to accomplish some of the more difficult tasks. Habits from the programming days :-)

Look forward to talking to you a bit more.

See ya
 
qballizhere

qballizhere

Well-Known Member
JSB99 said:
Hey everyone!

Got some stuff figured out in my room and I finished laying out the air lines to the reservoir and buckets. I also raised the air pump higher than the waterline, as recommended.

I secured the window with 3/4 plywood. I may or may not laminate it. It's going to be there for many years so I might go through the extra effort. After all, I do plan on painting everything the way it is in the renderings. I've been gathering info on how to paint pvc, since pvc is so finicky with everything. I'll leave a gap on the ends for pvc glue as well. The strips around the edges are screwed into the wall to secure the board.

I'm going to be using a 5,000 btu window a/c and dehumidifier. The majority of the year here in Oregon is fairly cool. I keep my house around 66 in the Winter. I won't have to use the a/c much, but I think it'd be okay to run it as a dehumidifier in the Winter. Can anyone tell me if it's the same, better, or worse doing that would be compared to using a dedicated dehumidifier?

Something odd that I'm noticing is the size of the air pump. When I made that, the water pump, and the chiller, I didn't bother going through the effort of making it look exact. I just built boxes using the size of the item it represented. Amazon states that the Alita AL-80 air pump I'll be using is 7.3 x 8.8 x 11.2 inches. I can't seem to find any other sources with the dimensions. I've had a pretty hefty commercial pump, and I don't remember it being that big. Could that possibly be the measurement of the box? Not that it'd change my mind about the pump or anything. Just wondering.

The way I laid these out, it follows the path of the air lines to the manifolds. I'm going to be pumping some serious air, but really, it's the recommended size pump. That's from the advice I got here, as well as Alita recommending the AL80 for 80 to 95 gallons.
Everyone enjoy
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I saw you mentioned painting pvc will furniture grade pvc not work for a hydro system? Can get it in several colors https://candsplastics.com/ or https://formufit.com/pages/color-pvc-pipe-and-fittings
 
JSB99

JSB99

Well-Known Member
qballizhere said:
I saw you mentioned painting pvc will furniture grade pvc not work for a hydro system? Can get it in several colors https://candsplastics.com/ or https://formufit.com/pages/color-pvc-pipe-and-fittings
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No, looked into that. Furniture grade will leech chemicals from the paint because the inside is painted as well as the outside (they dip them). Plus, PVC glue won't work unless the surface is bare. When I paint them I'll be pre-cutting the PVC to size, then taping the ends off to leave room for PVC cement. I'll just take my time prepping the surface and set up a temporary clean room with poly plastic for painting.
 
JSB99

JSB99

Well-Known Member
I'm going to preempt every post where I talk about working with electricity with:

"WARNING! Do not do what I do with electricity unless you are an electrician or have adequate skills and experience! I cannot stress this enough! Electricity can kill you real quick, and without warning. It's very easy to kill yourself messing with electricity! I am telling you NOT to do this and I won't be responsible for your actions."


I gathered all my power necessity info for the dedicated 120v and 240v lines I'm going to run. I wanted some extra eyes on this. The cost each month is based on max load, which would only happen on the hottest days of Summer. With my old 600w RDWC, I think my bill jumped about $40 or $50 a month. But that was smaller (66"x30"), my pumps weren't nearly as robust as the pumps I'll be using this time, I'll have a dedicated ac (which probably won't run much), a 1/4hp chiller, and an extra fan for the active intake. I know I haven't got the calculations correct for the cost increase. It's way too much. Could you give me some direction? My increase is probably way out of whack. I've probably got it calculating for every hour of the month (lol). I've just never had to calculate to cost of my power usage.

I haven't heard any negative feedback on the equipment I'll be using. Not sure if that's a good thing or if people aren't interested in glancing at it. I'm pretty sure I've chosen some real quality and high performing equipment, but I think I was interested in hearing if any of it's overkill. Like the air and water pumps. If you've read this much, could you provide a little feedback? Just a "looks good", or "that Alita air pump is overkill". I'd appreciate it.



 
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JSB99

JSB99

Well-Known Member
I'm probably going to run the AC from the room's power. Both rooms on the breaker are empty. You're supposed to run them on their own breaker. I suspect because of the compress kicking on and creating a heavy initial load. The room's on an AHCI breaker. I know they're prone to tripping, but with the small AC, I don't thing that's going to happen. With the other breakers, I'm well below the 80% threshold. 120-15a and 240-20a.
 
ruwtz

ruwtz

Well-Known Member
I will also say I hope you're ready to blow the budget. It's the way these things go. Any project at any scale is prone to it.

I put together a 3 part budget, phase 1 build and phase 2 fitout, and a final phase for starting up (consumables etc).

This took a shit ton of research, based off my design and config, to price every last nail and nute bottle into enormous spreadsheets.

Then I ran expenditure on a sub sheet, totally itemized, and I can tell you the build one in particular is at least twice as big as the original budget. I planned for $6k, and spent more like $15k by the time I called it finished. Totally blew it.

Now I know this has a lot to do with my amateur building skills; I was going to Home Depot 3 or 4 times a week - sometimes twice in a day - for this thing or that item etc. a proper builder would know better but I had to learn as I went along.

Yet still, the budget went out the window, purely in favor of a mindless determination to do every last little task as good as I could manage.

All for one end game: great plants.

Work in progress.

You seem to be similarly minded and very motivated, to whatever end.

Just watch them pennies, friend. They'll slip away and no mistake!
 
JSB99

JSB99

Well-Known Member
ruwtz said:
I will also say I hope you're ready to blow the budget. It's the way these things go. Any project at any scale is prone to it.

I put together a 3 part budget, phase 1 build and phase 2 fitout, and a final phase for starting up (consumables etc).

This took a shit ton of research, based off my design and config, to price every last nail and nute bottle into enormous spreadsheets.

Then I ran expenditure on a sub sheet, totally itemized, and I can tell you the build one in particular is at least twice as big as the original budget. I planned for $6k, and spent more like $15k by the time I called it finished. Totally blew it.

Now I know this has a lot to do with my amateur building skills; I was going to Home Depot 3 or 4 times a week - sometimes twice in a day - for this thing or that item etc. a proper builder would know better but I had to learn as I went along.

Yet still, the budget went out the window, purely in favor of a mindless determination to do every last little task as good as I could manage.

All for one end game: great plants.

Work in progress.

You seem to be similarly minded and very motivated, to whatever end.

Just watch them pennies, friend. They'll slip away and no mistake!
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I've blown my budget on so many projects :-)

I'm sure I'll go over all this because there are so many small items (screws, hooks, brackets, etc...) that I haven't listed on my price sheet. But all of the major things are online and when I get ready to start buying stuff, I'll research the best prices one last time. It will have been 6 months or longer between when I was looking up prices and when I actually buy them. So heatsinks, COBs, and other things very well may have dropped in price over that time.

I'm going to search for the right method of calculating energy costs with this room. Not that it would discourage me from building it or anything. Its just out of curiosity. I'm guessing an average of around $50 - $60 increase each month to run this tiny beast.

The more things I can buy on Amazon the better. I've got Prime and I get free 2-day shipping on everything! Of course, most places offer free shipping anyways.
 
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