Another newbie cabinet

[cheechako]

Hey all. Really getting tired of mystery product and paying for packaging, so I found myself a cheap beat up cabinet and made a bunch of trips to the home improvement stores. I also made a trip to a local hydroponics gardening store (got coco and Botanicare nutes).

The cabinet is 2 feet deep, 3 feet wide, and 4 feet tall on the outside. Inside is around 21"x32"x41" once I cut out the base for the drawers at the top (as shown in the upside down picture.) The cabinet has an adjustable shelf - you can see the support rails along the sides.

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At first, I was going to leave a strip of wood and cut out a hole, then mount the drawer fronts back in place. I decided to take a more clever approach to make full-height doors but in retrospect, I should have went with plan A. I would change a bunch of things next time. Oh well - I think this will work. I forgot to take pics step by step so I'll just jump to the finished cabinet:

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I was going to make a custom light (CFL) support that could be raised, but because of the cramped space and limited height, I attached bulb sockets directly to the top. The ventilation system is a basic 4" vent fan and some ducting, exiting out the back. I have some holes in the floor and front base with light baffling for passive intake of fresh air. There is a constant hum from the box, but the house heater (you can see a vent on the floor) makes more noise when it kicks on. If you look real close at one corner of the door, you can see a tiny speck of light. The power strip is up there, so I may re-do that. However, even in the dark room at night, you have to look real close to see that bit of light.

Since I can't adjust the height of the lights, I kept the adjustable shelf. I'll cut holes to suspend my pots, and have a drain tray (hand water and runoff whatever the acronym for that is) on the cabinet floor. I know it will be a pain to adjust the shelf when the plants are growing, but I'll just have to deal. Ultimately, I want to build a bigger second cabinet, and keep this one for stage one, or even use the shelf to split it into two sections.

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The shiny stuff goes most way down the sides. The large bulb is a 68W (300W eq). If I use four of those during flower, that should be plenty. With those lights on and the fan off, the cabinet got up to 96F. With the vent fan on, the cabinet stays at 71-73F. There is no filtration as of yet. I designed the vent system (poorly) to be able to retrofit something later on. If this winds up as a cloning cabinet, I might not need anything.

I germinated two different fem nirvana seeds in paper towels - they only took a day. They were just moved to cups of coco in the photo. I plan on attempting SCROG or LST - I can tie down to the adjustable shelf the cups are sitting on and the pots will sit in.

 

[randy leopard]

I like the cab. Ill be watchin.

 

[cheechako]

Thanks. This isn't my first crafty project. I had a 40 gallon reef (saltwater coral) tank for a while - custom stand, 30 gallon sump, and light hood. Before that, I had some freshwater planted tanks with custom lighting and even DIY CO2 injection, although the largest FW tank was only 29 gallons.

I saw at least one other thread in this stealth forum mention fish tanks. I think they can make a good addition to a stealth setup. Running a filter or some pumps and maybe a fan in the light hood can mask fan noises and whatnot coming from the cabinet next to or under the tank.

In fact, now that I'm doing this, I thought about getting another tank. That hobby was so was so similar: RO water, measuring and adjusting pH, nutrients (for freshwater plants) and additives (for saltwater), etc., etc.

 

[GrowinSmoke]

You might consider HID lighting for a space like that. I have used 150 and 250w HPS and CMH lights in cabinets of equal and smaller size. The whole setup, even with a DIY cooltube, would probably cost you around $100, but you will potentially have a better harvest.

Even if you dont use HID's, you probably want around 200w of CFLs. At that point, using HID lighting will likely result in cooler temps.

 

[cheechako]

200 real watts, not the "equivalent wattage"? If I put four daylight bulbs in, I can get 92 watts (@23). The large soft-white (2700K) bulbs I found are 68W each, for 270W total.

And if a DIY can cost around $100, I have to assume double the cost. Expenses here are expensive, and nothing bulky ships for free regardless of what Amazon says. However, it is definitely something I will research for my next cabinet.

 

[GrowinSmoke]

Real watts. I don't go by the "equivalent-to-inefficient-outdated-incandescent-lamp-watts" standard. If you can stick with the 23w-26w lamps I would. They are slightly more efficient and cost effective than the bigger ones.

I got a 250w magnetic ballast for $45 shipped. A Bake-a-round cooltube is about 20 bucks. Lamps can range from 20-60 depending on if it's a horticulture bulb or not. It's tough to do, but especially if you aren't in a rush it is doable.

My 250w is in a 36"x18"x34" cabinet and was holding steady at about 83F in my 73 degree room. I ended up reversing my cooltube to use cold attic air, then directed the cooltube exhaust towards my intake. The air is still cold, so I have a 68F cabinet.

 

[cheechako]

I know comparing CFLs and HIDs are almost like comparing apples and HIDs. One's a light and one... well.

4x68w is 272w but that is nothing like your 250w HID. But comparing CFLs to CFLs, why is 4x26w better than 4x68w?

Also, stuff generally does not qualify for free shipping to here. Paying to ship a single ready-to-plug-in unit can save me money compared to shipping individual bits and pieces. I like DIY, but I have to be able to drive to Home Depot to get most of it.

 

[GrowinSmoke]

I know comparing CFLs and HIDs are almost like comparing apples and HIDs. One's a light and one... well.

4x68w is 272w but that is nothing like your 250w HID. But comparing CFLs to CFLs, why is 4x26w better than 4x68w?

Also, stuff generally does not qualify for free shipping to here. Paying to ship a single ready-to-plug-in unit can save me money compared to shipping individual bits and pieces. I like DIY, but I have to be able to drive to Home Depot to get most of it.

I meant the 26w is more lumens per watt. You may need more sockets, but you are getting more light for the money spent on bulbs and power.

 

[cheechako]

With my current design, I don't see how I could add more than four bulbs without tearing out the whole exhaust. 12x26w would be more efficient than my 4x68w, but I don't have that choice any more. A 250w HID would be much, much better but that's not happening either - Bake-O-Round or not.

This cabinet is experiment one. I've never attempted a grow, so there's a lot I need to learn and practice here. It is one thing to read about SCROG and LST, but I'm sure it will be quite the experience to actually work at training a plant.

I think once I've had hands-on experience with a grow, I can start to look at better lighting - especially LED.

 

[technical dan]

then go with the higher wattage bulbs. You wont be quite as efficient but you dont need as many sockets. I would also like to switch out the cfls for an led in my micro-cab at some point.

 

[cheechako]

I'm a long way off from needing anything more than I have. But I keep thinking about that, of course. Odor control is no really built into my design other than the fact I can stick a small jar of ONA somewhere. I really over-engineered the exhaust because I was concerned about the light.

I've had a brainstorm about that using a home-store part I passed up before. This should allow for a better DIY carbon filter and still hold in the light. It should also let me add more sockets and use the smaller bulbs. I have to get the part first. I think I can easily build it and then retro-fit the unit to the cabinet. Pics to come when I actually do it.

My goal is to SCROG or LST in coco, and then turn off the lights but not the venting to dry in place. From what I've read, that can be done. If I can learn to do it, then I would like to replace this cabinet with two or three identical cabinets - taller but a smaller footprint, for one SCROG or LST plant each.

 

[cheechako]

To everyone who has read and/or replied, thanks. You know how it is - want to show off a bit, but gotta be careful because word gets out and so on. Here, we can have a bit more freedom to show off. Cool. I hope that won't be an issue soon enough in all the states.

Anyway, looking up at the ceiling of my cabinet - it sucks. All that tubing and venting to baffle light takes up a ton of available space. That's why I went with only four lamp sockets and fixed their position. I saw some angled dryer vent in the home improvement store which I passed on earlier. I thought that would take up space too. However, my cabinet only needs to be semi-stealth. Now that it is operational, I can hang it off the back.

So off to the store with a plan in mind. However, after a bunch of time standing in front of the vent parts and wandering back and forth to different departments, I came up with a much simpler idea. I attached the exhaust fan right to the back of the cabinet, using my shiny material to make a custom vent tube. A simple vent cover is over the exhaust hole. The fan is much louder (that's OK), and puts out a lot more air, keeping the temps even cooler - upper 70's instead of mid-eighties.



I still need to fine tune it. This also opens up space for a DIY carbon filter which is mostly complete. As you'll see below, I am not at the stage of needing carbon. I am thinking of mounting a baffle on the back of the cabinet, which will basically add about 2" or less of depth to the cabinet. However, the light in a totally dark room is less than a nightlight, so I may just skip it. In any case, future work on the outside should be much easier than ripping out the guts again.

In the picture of the vent you can see a timer and an outlet along with a mess of cord. That's the other major change that went along with the new venting, and in part was a reason for the whole re-build. I found some rather nifty clip-in lamp sockets and drilled a hole in the backs of PVC electrical boxes. The digital timers I have are nice but huge, so they take up a whole outlet. There's just not enough clearance to plug in the top unless I lower the boxes more, and outlets are the cheapest component in the whole project.



The last photo above shows that mass of vent tubing I removed. Not the cheapest of DIY creations, but I like it. Now I have 4 lamp sockets - just like before. However, my next upgrade will be to mount some of the original fixtures back inside the cabinet, and I will easily double (or more) the number of bulbs I can fit.

So what I have, as of now, looks a bit like this:



Ignore the ugly shelf - I have a plan to replace that in the works. Of course, once I move out of cups, the shelf will be way down in the cabinet, and I won't store anything down there anymore.

The thermometer is hanging between CFL bulb bases, so that's close to the hottest spot. You can see a sensor for a remote thermometer to the left of the cups.

Since my cabinet is small, my biggest screw up might be drilling the holes too low in the boxes. Even my gigantic 68W bulb has a couple of inches clearance. I may get new boxes later on and re-drill. That's less than $8, so not an expensive screw up. I spent more on all the venting I trashed.

 

[Admin]

testing photo upload