144w CFL Doghouse grow "Plan-B"

Some of you may have glanced over at my "Haggard doghouse grow box" post and some have seen what i'm doing. For those who are clueless to what I'm doing, I've made a grow room out of a tin doghouse. My babies are in dark cycle atm, and as soon as they go into their light cycle, I'll take some pics of the setup, and my Lil babies.

So I have about 12 sprouts at the moment. I'm hoping for at least half of that to be females. Mind you i'm not expecting a ridiculous amount, because the seeds, are some decent mid-grade quality. This grow setup i am new to, so for practice, i used the mid-grade seeds. If all goes well, i will re-invest into more lights, new fans, proper PH measuring tools, and nutes. AND If it does go well, some of the re-invested money will go into some really good seeds from attitude seedbank. Been eyeballing the "Barneys Farm 'LSD'" and the "Barneys Farm 'Vanilla Kush'" along with some others.

Here are a few pictures of what i've completed, and current progress.
Sprouts as of today, are 5 days old. Looking great so far!

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Lighting:
x2 26w @2700kelvin
x2 46w @6500kelvin
(I plan on having at least 8 (total) CFL bulbs in 26w @2700k for my flowering. But again, this is my first time practice run, not wanting to go overboard, but learn and apply what it is i'm getting into.)

Light regimen;
18/6 For the first 3 weeks, then switching to 12/12 for flowering.

Ventilation:
Some ventilation fan i tore off my old water heater when we replaced it. Jerry-rigged it to suck air out of my grow room and spit the exhaust outside. Fresh air comes in through the top, above the door. Right now there's no filter on the incoming fresh air.. dunno how to do that up, if i even need to? Also, having a bit of a problem with heat. Stays at about 86-91 at any given time.

Plans:
-NEED to control the temperature somehow!
-Get some shitty, but decent PC fans and a power source to work them...
-Get more CFL Bulbs @2700k
-Get proper nutes (next grow provided this one turns out halfway decent)
-Get a dinky soil and/or water ph meter
-Get some halfway decent soil.


Thanks for tuning in! Questions, comments, criticism, or curiosity is all, of course welcomed! Show me that CFL love!

haha this doghouse grow is fuckin legit man. very creative. how did you germinate your seeds and how long did they take to pop outa the soil? just curious.
i have a seedling box that has a PS2 fan and a PC fan and i hooked them up to a cellphone charger and they work great....the hard part is stripping the tiny-ass wires.
lookin real nice so far.
subscribed
peace

To solve your heat problem, make the fresh air come in through the bottom, and SUCK the heat out of the top. That should lower it at least a couple degrees. Those temps are going to be a problem in the long run if you don't take care of em.

Otherwise lookin good bro!

tranquility said:

haha this doghouse grow is fuckin legit man. very creative. how did you germinate your seeds and how long did they take to pop outa the soil? just curious.
i have a seedling box that has a PS2 fan and a PC fan and i hooked them up to a cellphone charger and they work great....the hard part is stripping the tiny-ass wires.
lookin real nice so far.
subscribed
peace

Click to expand...

Actually a buddy of mine did the ol' "drop a buncha seeds on a soaked paper towel and throw the whole she-bang in a zip-lock band and toss in a dark place for 3 days.." It worked, he gave me a bunch of the seeds that were starting to grow THROUGH the paper towel! Just put them in soil, and not even a full day after throwing them in the soil and lighting them, they had popped up! So about 4 days total.

HookdOnChronics said:

To solve your heat problem, make the fresh air come in through the bottom, and SUCK the heat out of the top. That should lower it at least a couple degrees. Those temps are going to be a problem in the long run if you don't take care of em.

Otherwise lookin good bro!

Click to expand...

I'll do just that man, and if that doesn't work.. i can somehow tube into my central-heating & air and have it blowing 73-degree cool air right into the thing. Now that i think about it, i would have to make some sort of valve on it, to cut the cool air off at times because it'd kill the humidity that's in there. (Love the southern states humidity levels!!)

So I need to invest in some fans, and a power supply unit to go with. Where would i start looking, for bottom dollar?

Thank, much appreciated.
6string

EDIT:
Found some cheapo-fans "long life" supposedly..
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6251749&sku=S457-4003

Cheapo power supply:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=935375&sku=D15-1013

Can spend 28 bucks on 4 fans and a ghetto PSU.. Is this all viable though, have any of you done something like this with fans? If so how successful is it?

Wondering if there's anything cheaper than a PSU just for the fans....

102 views.. cmon guys!

there are a bunch of threads on computer fans.The computer fans will work.I have 2 of them inside a cardboard box. you can find a old cell phone adapter lying around the house to wire them up. very easy!!!!

i found this thread real quick that should help you out. read threw it. https://www.rollitup.org/indoor-growing/51841-wiring-computer-fan.html

Yes they're quite easy to wire. You've gotta realize tho, that they were only 28 CFM... lol, but your growing in a rather small area. So that may work just fine

Fuckin sweet! Had no idea you could wire up a cell phone charger to a PC fan.. I've got a few fans lying around, and more 12v DC cords around here somewhere. Thanks for that info guys!

Also last night, i took HoC's advice, and vented some cool air into my doghouse, straight from my house. It HAS managed to drop temps a little (about 4-5 degrees) which is still about 85 degrees F. Still too high for my liking..but i think the exhaust fan I've got on there now is a little too weak. I'll do some tinkering to day, and see if i can come up wit ha decent fan setup. .

Went to a couple places and found some decent nutes.

Peters "20-20-20"
Schultz "Bloom Plus" (10-54-10)

I know to use them during the the beginnings of flowering phase (which i'm nowhere near yet) at 1/4 strength every OTHER watering.. Want to know if it'd be safe to use both nutrients at the same time? Or one batch of nutes, then the other?

-Still working on lowering cab temperature... fuckin 89-90degrees F still...

Thanks guys, 6string

Installed some shitty-cfm fans..

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Here's some of my little ones at day 6.
It's mid-grade weed seeds, but already i can tell there's a few indica heavy, and a few sativa heavy.. but that's just a guestimation. Could all be from the same bag of MJ.. Won't know till a bit later on..
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Dude, wheres the dog gonna sleep!!! haha no seriously, that is a sweet setup. did the new fans make it any cooler in there?

stoneyluv said:

Dude, wheres the dog gonna sleep!!! haha no seriously, that is a sweet setup. did the new fans make it any cooler in there?

Click to expand...

Only 2-3 degrees.. I think the fans i used are crap anyway, that barely pull a light breeze. Besides f i remember right, i tore them out of a dead PSU. Plan on finding me some sort of an "DC" adapter for these fans.. right now they're working on an old charger that spits out "AC" not DC... idk how it's working and not overheating.. meh if it works!

I notice on a bunch of old adapters i've got, they have an "Input" and an "Output." I look at the output: 12v. Some of them don't work.. But just one does, at least for now.. Temps are still way to high for my liking.. I even vented into the house, to pull the cool air out of there, and into my doghouse.. But even with those little exhaust fans on and kickin, it doesn't pull much out of the house. Fucking, airflow in a tin box is funky as hell!

Silly question.. but i wonder if the curvature of the roof, combined with lack thereof "reflector plate" on the lights... Look at the pic..

Nothing is on the lights, to direct the light downward.. should i jerry-rig something up to reflect the light downward? Is it that important?
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(NOTE: This is an older pic..)

from what I understand, reflectors are very important. I don't have a hydro shop or anything like that near me and I am a DIY kind of guy. I have made my own reflectors from some aluminum roof flashing from lowes and a little spray glue and some shock blanket as a liner. I'm not sure what the difference is between mylar and shock blankets. I do know that shock blankets reflect 98% radiation, I'm not sure how much "special" mylar reflects. like I said, I can't buy it where i live so what I have will have to do! Putting up reflectors should help in keeping that top air in the peak of your house a little cooler. I know it's always cooler in the shade... here are some picks of my DIY reflectors:

stoneyluv said:

from what I understand, reflectors are very important. I don't have a hydro shop or anything like that near me and I am a DIY kind of guy. I have made my own reflectors from some aluminum roof flashing from lowes and a little spray glue and some shock blanket as a liner. I'm not sure what the difference is between mylar and shock blankets. I do know that shock blankets reflect 98% radiation, I'm not sure how much "special" mylar reflects. like I said, I can't buy it where i live so what I have will have to do! Putting up reflectors should help in keeping that top air in the peak of your house a little cooler. I know it's always cooler in the shade... here are some picks of my DIY reflectors:

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Click to expand...

Hey thanks stoney!

Yea, i'm a big DIY-er myself. And i have some good news for anyone thats been checking up on my thread!

News:
-Dug up a AC/DC adapter that spits out 12v and a buncha mili-amps... Anywho,, i turned off my lil PC fans for like a few mins, disconnected the 12v AC adapter i had on the fans.. wired up the new-er AC/DC adapter, and what a difference it made in power on the 2 fans.. they pull MUCH more CF/m!

-Noticed my temperature dropping substantially when the lights are off.. to something like 84-85-ish.. (mind you i took that reading before i changed adapters on the fans.. I'm gonna check the temp in a little bit when the light cycle comes on.

-I've got some old tin roofing material, that was left over from when we re did our roof to a tin roof. It's the piece of tin that rins dwon the middle of the roof, to prevent water from coming in through the pinnacle of the roof. It's red-ish maroon colored on one side, and tin colored on the other, and pre-bent at 90degree angle. I'm 100% sure i could slap some left over mylar on it, and make a ghetto reflector hood.

I'll update y'all in a little bit!
6string

you're on to something now 6string! GL... keep us posted..

Here's a few updated pics.. Day 9

Plans in the works for a totally different grow room.... Also tested the "tap" water i've been using.. about 7.8-8.2pH. Then tested some rain water i captured just yesterday. Under 6.5. Manageable right? Just watered the pups before i took these shots.


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Lookin good so far.

Update: Day 14

Moved the "tomato" plants to a more temperature-suited location. Bought another 2 26w 6500k bulbs. Totaling 4 bulbs 26w 6500k.

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Is the curling of the leaves anything to be concerned with?

Two of them look questionable... Hoping to see some growth here in the next week?

Gotta love rain water! Shit like a miracle from the sky.

yeah you need ventilation in flower or you will have serious issues with 91degrees, i have a space roughly the same size are your dog-house and i use 4 pc fans wired to a 12v adapter and it works fine