How much did you spend on your grow room?

LBH said:

I run a grow group here in RI, 64 growers strong now. When I announced that I bought a new place and we were planning some big rooms (wifes sister has a gbm brain tumor, we needed to make a phoenix tears facility) I found out that many of the folks in my group had "other" (lol) jobs like ....carpenters, e;ectricians, dry wall, hvac, etc. I knew about lots of them as the group uses them as "grow room safe" utility people, we help each other out. Anyway,..when I announced we were planning a 10k room with a separate 3k veg room,.......they came filing out of the woodwork like army ants and built me a room of rooms!!! Karma goes a long way, I spent years setting people up and teaching them once RI became a legal state, it was payback time and man, I cant tell you how cool it is to have people show up at ur place WITH MATERIALS to do free work.

In short, the room ended up costing me about $10k for a $35k room. Powertrip donated all the hardware at cost, that was huge. Lights, fans, drying tents, everything down to the ductwork. My hvac guy made me 2 custom stealth box scrubbers, badass.

All in all, we had 7 people come do their part and it took about a month to get it all done. Only thing we need to add now is co2 but I wanted to run the rooms for a year or so and get the environment nailed down solid before introducing gas.

To the Jessyca's Jungle Dream Team, ...... We will never be able to thank you folks enough!! (some of them are RIU'rs)

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Twohearted said:

Thanks for sharing your story, it is very inspiring to me. I live in MI, I grew a little when I was younger, and when medical went legal I decided to get back into it. I would love to try to build a network of cooperative growers here in my area like you described. I feel like I have started to lay the groundwork just by meeting people, talking about grows, trading genetics. Any tips you have for building a better more effective network would be welcomed sage advice to my ears. I also love that you are using airpots, they are so amazing, and I can't figure out why no one uses them, hands down many time over the best pots I have ever used. They are the only pots I have used that seem to actually make a major positive effect on the grow, any other pot is just a pot. I tried to start a thread on them a while back, but I think I got one response before it got buried. Any how....now I am rambling, thanks again for sharing. Great story, amazing setup.

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hydrocropper420 said:

this is what you get for $100 in my bookView attachment 2539742

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LBH said:

One sentiment to the folks looking to keep a grow under $100 and it's not an insult or put down, just a comment based on my experiences from doing this for many, many years,.......here goes,...cue up your dads voice........"You get what you give"

Now that may be JUST FINE for many of you who are just dabbling and having fun with a cool ass experiment but if you are planning to provide yourself with a sustainable source of smoke for yourself, ........remember these words.

Grow 'Em Up!

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Brushog said:

I would like to know your cost on how much you spent to complete your grow room. I can tell you I spent about 100 to do my room. If you can post a pic. Fancy grow rooms don't do any better than cheap grow rooms..

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LBH said:

Sounds like you are primed for setting up a group like ours.....

I basically started when I knew about 5-10 growers that I had become friends with. Open a group n f/b and assign it as "secret". This means no one can see the content if they are not a member of the group. We all made specil face book names, just for Canna related discussion on f/b, keeping our normal ID's away from all that. We use the group every day but ESPECIALLY when someone is having an issue or when mother nature is calling....

-we share generators where applicable

-We share genetics

-Brainstorm issues

-help new growers

-network

to be added to the group, you have to be recommended and we stress to members not to recommend someone they don't know well or who's grow you havent actually seen for yourself. To be in the group, you MUST have a grow and be a RI'r.

We have members now from the dispensary, local shops (who have special discounts for group members), and all walks of life, all ages, both sexes. In fact, we have one person (melissa) designated as "House Mom". She arranges all our "meet n lights". Being RI, we are all close to each other so every few weeks, more opften in summer, we call these meet n lights where we will just all meet up at a certain place like a park, sometimes a members house (one has a ranch) and we have a nice 1/2 hr session. Some folks use that time to trade clones, etc. In winter, someone brings the party thermos of hot chocolate with rumple minz and whipped cream,...its tradition now,lol.

Below is the mission statement I made for the group way back and every word still applies. Its loaded under the "about" section on f/b

This is a private group I have formed. The group is designed to function like a union. We are all growers with the same concerns, dilemma's and roadblocks. By working together, we can save each other in emergencies, share resources, share genetics, save money, share ideas and hopefully,...do it better, safer.

Now this group has rules so if you aren't interested, no hard feelings, just ;let me know and I'll gladly remove you.

1. Pay it forward wherever you can.

2. Keep an eye on the board and assist in any "Union Alert" emergencies that you think you can help with, i.e., a grower blows a light and you have an extra 600 you arent using. Loan it for a week till his replacement comes and save his cycle. Karma says, this will all come back to you.

3. Believe in Karma. We're all adults here, figure it out. Do the right thing.

4. Participate/share. This includes the sharing of genetics, knowledge, time if you have it, supplies if a guy in ur town needs a few tablespoons of something you have a bottle of. Participation includes on the board.

5. Members need to be willing to help grow some strains that we will provide. Your efforts will be directly related to your patients' infliction. You would be doing trait isolation as part of a group effort to develop a purely medical line up.

6. BE nice,lol. Sounds simple but some folks aren't capable and that's ok, but not if u want to be a part of the group

Thanks for participating everyone!!

ok,...now for the air pots.

Air pots, great stuff but I've come to prefer the smart pot type bags for my grow style. This is my reply in a recent air pot thread here.

"There are +'s and -'s with both but I personally, went back to smart pots (root pouches-same thing)

These are my findings

-same growth. Both employ air pruning which definitely builds a better capillary system than a standard pot

-When growing on a cement floor, the air pot has a nice bennie of keeping the medium a few inches off the surface (+)

- Because they are "off the floor" they cannot absorb any spillover from feeding. Big negative for me. (-) I feed very light and very often. ROughly 1 gallon a day to a 10 gallon pot (assuming plant is full grown). I purposely like spillover because that all gets absorbed by the roots at bottom of the bag which do not get the same access to water due to my feeding technique.

-With air pots, you have to feed VERY slowly or your spillover comes out the side holes. (-) Seeing as how it is not re-absorbed, you now have no idea exactly how much food they just got. (-) Secondly, you have a water build up issue in your trays now. (-) Gnats, etc, yuk

-Smart pots you dump the feed in and move on to the next, much quicker and neater (+)

-Smart pots can be washed in straight water at the laundromat. I do them every other run. (+)

-Air pots can be stored flat (+)

-With air pots having a screen as a base, all "finer" material in your soil gets rinsed through. This leaves you with a poor draining medium about 1/2 way through the grow. Turns into "duff mat" (-)

The idea of air pruning works, there's no denying it but I never noticed a difference whether one did it better than the other. My yields never suffered using wither of them. With that said, I went back to smart pots because they are cleaner, easier and faster to feed with the same results. I wouldn't go back to a standard pot after a few yrs of playing with air pruning gear.

A general note about wet pots. They ain't good,lol. If pots are staying wet too long, you could be over watering. A good rule to remember is you are watering per root mass, not pot size. If your plant is still small and is in a 10 gallon pot, don't go dumping 2 gallons in there to ensure all 10 gallons of medium get wet. 1/2 gallon at the base of the plant is all you need. Keeping soil too wet with young plants inhibits root growth. The plant needs to experience DRY soil to initiate sending out those search roots. If it never gets this experience because it's never dry, those roots are never formed.

If anyone is interested, I have probably 25 or 30 five gallon air pots I'd be happy to sell (if this is against forum rules, please erase and forgive, just trying to save some experimenting grower a couple bucks) "

Sorry for getting off topic folks. 2hearts, pm me if you have more questions and we'll let these folks get back to room talk.

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Bigby said:

the useless fucking dealers round here have anything right now accept shitty soap bar hash).

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adower said:

Although you ha e good intentions your "group" is a bad idea. You already broke rule 1. Someone outside of your group knows you grow no mater what you say.

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