I'm on page 134. Been reading every thread for the past 4 days while home on breaks and such from work and play.
well,
you're a glutton for punishment.
Should I add an additional fan at the attic level somewhere?
Good call. Air has mass and a column of it from basement to attic may benefit from another blower inline, the attic's a good place. Use a centrif blower on the exhaust down in the basement. If it's a good quality centrif, you might get away with only one, but leave room in your plans for a second blower. Also consider dumping air into the attic instead of through the roof. Will muffle fan noise and dissipate air through several existing attic vents.
If I do need to do this (adding the additional exit fan) and plan on having a inline carbon fliter on the room exhaust venting, would I want this before or after the filter.
You can get carbon filters which mount inline, but most have a duct flange on one end and pass air through the sides of the barrel. Filters of the latter type can have air pushed or pulled through them. For accessibility's sake, you'll probably want to have your filter in the room with the exhaust puling air through it.
(I'm saying carbon filter but I think its actualy the charcoal filter
The material is activated carbon aka activated charcoal. We know what you're talking about.
Just don't make the mistake (like one poor noob a while back) of thinking the material was coal instead of charcoal. Bit of a difference.
I'm seeing lots of different kinds of HPS lamps out there. What kind of qualities/attributes do I want to look for when selecting lamps. I know I want the reds and oranges, but is there more to it than that? Efficiency is important. watt/lumens. Anything else?
Most HPS lamps of a given power dissipation generate similar amounts of luminous output. The exception are the very cheapest Chinese generic HPS lamps, which can put out significantly lower output than you expect. Don't go with the very cheapest lamp tube if you can avoid it. Brand named lamps (GE, Sylvania, Sunmaster, etc) will deliver good durability and will make the output you expect.
I really like your drawings you have. They really help a lot. Your grow room looks pretty efficent and well maintained and organized. I was wondering if you would do a blue print type drawing of your SOG op.
I'm nobody's idea of an artist or a draftsman, so this is as close to what you want as you're gonna get!
The width dimension is about 9', the depth is about 8' and the room is about 7' from floor to ceiling. I've only showed the plants schematically. The mum tray holds 10 plants, each flowering tray holds 23. The clonebox is located outside the grow room.
There seems to be a good debate on MH vs T5s on cloning and vegging. I totally understand the cloning reasons for using these types.
There's no debate, at least among people who know their lighting. I would not mess around with T5s. They may be relatively bright fluoros but they're still fluoros, so they have pissweak intensity compared to any HID light- no matter what any well-sold T5 evangelist will tell you. They're too big for a clonebox and not powerful enough to grow mums with the speed and vigor I need. They perform poorly in lumens/watt compared to HID lighting.
You'll get much more bang for your buck (both purchase and operating cost) from a small MH or HPS for veg. Clones don't need to be pounded with light, so CFLs or 24" cylindrical fluoros are fine for the clonebox.
What strategies do you suggest on obtaining the seeds?
Times have changed since I last ordered beans, which was back in 2002. Customs is intercepting beans much more regularly these days. I had mine sent to the house of a non-growing friend who had just moved into a new place. The beans were addressed in the name of the previous occupant and when received, put on a shelf for a while. In case anyone came knocking, the cover story was that the pkg was received and since not addressed to the current occupant, were due to be RTSed, but simply had not been posted just yet.
I was hoping they would turn out better than CFLs... but I am not too disappointed....
Ah, OK, now I remember. I would have expected better out of them too, but as you note, those are among the very lowest output HID lights you can get. I usually would not recommend using anything smaller than a 150HPS.
hey al what are your thoughts on using UVA-UVB to increase thc production? i have never heard any conclusive results on this.
That's because there
are no conclusive results on the issue. Presently classed as 'wives' tale.' Most plants which make a sticky substance or neurotoxins/psychoactives do so to dissuade browsing animals or marauding insects. Cannabis is indigenous to temperate latitudes where UV levels are not very high. It's hard to argue that the plant makes resin or the THC in the resin as a response to UV exposure at such latitudes.
also some one told me that if you remove the glass sheilding in a hallogen work light(i know they cant be used for growth) and expose the radiation from it to ur plants for 10 mins a day it is effective what do u think about this?
Chalk another bit of bad info to 'someone told me.' Patently bad idea. Halogen lighting doesn't make any UV, with or without glass covers. Halogen lighting is incandescent, meaning it makes light from a hot wire. The main output from halogen (>80%) is IR heat and red-yellow spectrum visible light. If you want UV, you need lighting that produces light from an arc, not a glowing filament. HPS & MH make lots of UV, but MH makes about 2x as much as HPS.
I would not waste any time or money adding UV lighting to a grow until someone comes up with some conclusive, peer-reviewed data proving that cannabis responds in
any way at all to UV, and at present, such does not exist.
ok pic #1 yellow spots on 1 leaf..otherwise plant looks very healthy
Looks overwatered. I see saturated RW, too.
pic #2 i need you to get YOUR glasses out for this one..if u look closely u can see the stem,but theres no leaves on the stem..just a stem growing!! WTF??
I can't see anything but a partly saturated RW cube. With no leaves, it won't last long.
I was curious if you had any new ideas for your grows to increase yield or make things easier/simpler? I would guess adding Co2 would be next addition if the additional cost of A/C wasn't an issue.
