DOG Kush LED Grow Journal

I would use conduit for the whole run.

Use Romex and no conduit. Its OK for building code should be fine here. Run it in the walls. You can open them up in places and then do dry wall repair. Run the Romex to an outlet box as seperate circuts and plug into those. Conduit is for external (outside of the wall) but Romex is rated for this too.

Thanks guys! Really been worryin about this shit lately. I dont like pushing the electrical system of this old ass house.

Theres actually an "access panel" of sorts in the room right above the breaker box. So hopefully ill only have to drill one hole in the floor/ceiling after that!

And the main reason i wanted conduit was to make it look official if it wasnt running through the walls in case someone came in and saw some random wires runnin up the side of a wall. haha

Cant wait to get started on this!

One plus side is that even with running 2x 20 amp lines about 25-30 feet the 12-2 wire is a good amount cheaper than if i ran 1 10-2 line.

My only concern with romex is when somebody drives a nail into the drywall and goes into the romex.

You could use the wall mounted wire channel like they use in cement buildings. I used it to install a ceiling fan in my daughter's apartment. When she moved out I just took it all out and you couldn't even tell it had been done.

Mohican said:

My only concern with romex is when somebody drives a nail into the drywall and goes into the romex.

You could use the wall mounted wire channel like they use in cement buildings. I used it to install a ceiling fan in my daughter's apartment. When she moved out I just took it all out and you couldn't even tell it had been done.

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I feel it. We own the house and i basically do any handyman work around it. It would also be running in a spot where i couldnt think of anything that would need to be drilled/nailed there. But that is a good concern ill keep in mind.

And i think i know what youre talking about with the wire channel. We put in 2 lights in our basement that way and they looked clean. That might just be the ticket depending on our final plan.

ALRIGHT! We got a little over 8 zips off the last harvest. Which is pretty consistent with HPS lights. But about 1/2 the heat and multiple fixtures so i the light thrown is significantly more evenly dispersed.

Ill throw some pictures up when i can. Its just chopped, dried, cured, then gone so quickly its hard to take pictures of it all at once so ill just show some of my take. haha.

So its about a zip and a half ish off each plant which was to be expected still running all 4 phenos.

Transplanted all of our veg plants about a week ago and were gonna throw them into flower today. Probably somewhere around 7-12 plants will go on there.

5 of them will be my short keeper pheno and the other chunk will be the taller keeper pheno that im probably gonna give to my friend to hold onto.

Today were installing the T8s that we got into the veg area. Its about 320w of power with 2x 4-bulb fixtures. Just cleaned out the LED lights with some duster and paper towels. Then finally movin all 3 LED panels into the flower tent!

Also rearranging the room. Gettin rid of the dresser we used for all our nutes and supplies and gettin some nice skinny tall racks to put against the wall. With the new tents in there theres not too much room to walk. We have a 5x5 and a 4x4 in a room thats probably 10x12 MAX haha. So about half of the area of the room is taken up by them. Hoping ill be able to angle them sideways so i can get into all the access panels to water the back rows and shit.

Pictures coming soon!

Put in work bud

Been a while so heres a picture of the new ~1000w of leds in the 5x5. I might get 2 more panels for the back and bring it up to ~1500ws. thatd be amazing! Id be able to fit a solid 12-16 plants in there after that VS the 10 plants i have in there now and soon to switch over to 8 plants.





And heres some cured buds from the last harvest.



Super frosty as always.

Looks great in there 1500 watts in a 5x5 would be bright as hell.

Dr.D81 said:

Looks great in there 1500 watts in a 5x5 would be bright as hell.

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Its not nearly as bad as HID lighting. Theres a lot less stray light to go places kinda hahaha. And its mostly of red which i think needs the most intensity for us to see. I think. haha

I love havin all the different points of light. Probably best thing about having panels VS single bulbs. Id probably be able to run 2x600w HPS/MH in there but that heat would be NASTY and the light still wouldnt be as even as 3 or 5 panels in there.

I think i might even make those panels that SomeGuy made. Ive also been talking to the grow evolution guy about making white panels as well as possibly being able to swap out the current LEDs for some white ones in the future. Im pretty sure id just have to get a similar bridgelux chip like ones ive already been lookin at online.

Ill figure it out eventually!

Whole room about a week ago. I think this was week 5 or 6. The stacking just started after these pictures.




DOG #1 (keeper)




Even canopy. You can see why the short DOG was picked over the lanky ass #5 DOG.





DOG #5 (tall pheno)




Gonna be choppin in about a week. Day 59 i think. Wanted to take em to day 63 like usual but the tall ones are extra floppy and i wasnt able to screen em so theyll just come a lil early.

Nice. Looks like those panels are doing the job. Ill be growing normal with tomato cages next round with the leds in a 4x4. I wonder how those lights and white cobs would do together.

SomeGuy said:

Nice. Looks like those panels are doing the job. Ill be growing normal with tomato cages next round with the leds in a 4x4. I wonder how those lights and white cobs would do together.

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Yeah ive been tryin to get the money together for tomato cages but havent wanted to just yet. With 3 or 4 of those 4 cob bars id be set! I really wanna make them instead of buying more.

It will be a bit before I can build another led fixture. I have to save up like anyone..LOL next one will be with vero 29 or cxa3070. My goal will be 300 or so watts for a 3x3 foot print. I am going to try and do the whole think with connectors and no soldering etc... This way when I do the walk through on the build It will be easier for others to replicate. The vero-18s are rocking the party though.

Hell yeah ill be watchin closely! I wanna build them so bad! I need a solid 1500w to truly power this 5x5. Maybe even do 1800. 900 on each side. How many watts do you have each one powered to?

the three cob bars run at 150w and the 4 bar at 200w. so 500w total. Really with the Cobs you shouldn't need more than 30 or so watts per sqft. I am way overkill in the small tent at 68w psqft

Nice dogs budbro! Looks like some fire your buds come out nice and solid under the leds. Most of mine did great and the ones that did not get nice and hard was the just how the plant was. I have rounded two going now with some known clones i can get a good comparison on. Them cobs are where i am taking my led garden too when i can. Going to get sg to teach me as much as he can. Electrical engineering is not a subject that i know much about

SomeGuy said:

the three cob bars run at 150w and the 4 bar at 200w. so 500w total. Really with the Cobs you shouldn't need more than 30 or so watts per sqft. I am way overkill in the small tent at 68w psqft

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Yeah in my old tent i think i had about 600w in a 4x4 which was around 35-40 w/ft
then bumped it up to 900w in a 4x4 which put me at about 55 ish w/ft
Now im in a 5x5 with 900w so thats about 35 ish w/ft and im really only growing in a 3x5 foot area within the 5x5

I wanna expand into the rest of the 5x5 and using the light style i am now would take about double the lights i have since theyre so close together. But if i was to switch over to the DIY light bars i could probably get away with just 400 more watts. Id honestly like to fully convert to the DIY light bars but id need a minimum of 4.

Whatd you say it cost per bar?? The 4 light ones? Also have you considered any reflectors of any kind like mine use? Maybe do a side by side grow. I know the reflectors are just cheap plastic so it wouldnt be costly for you to test it out.

Dr.D81 said:

Nice dogs budbro! Looks like some fire your buds come out nice and solid under the leds. Most of mine did great and the ones that did not get nice and hard was the just how the plant was. I have rounded two going now with some known clones i can get a good comparison on. Them cobs are where i am taking my led garden too when i can. Going to get sg to teach me as much as he can. Electrical engineering is not a subject that i know much about

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Thanks man! I just wish they were a little further apart so the light could be spread mroe evenly. Its pretty compacted in there. This rounds almost over and the first run of JUST the short DOG will start in about a week or 2. Glad you finally got your DOGs locked in. Honestly id just follow his original design unless his new one has a better color spectrum. Because as far as efficiency goes theyre already approaching the limit.

Another question for SG. Whats the difference between the vero 18 and the vero 29?

Same with the crees too. Whatre you looking for with the different spec sheets that tells you either color temp or cri or output that makes one better than the other? Is it the architecture of each chip and its ability to throw light/throw heat efficiently??