Good Evening RIU!!! Been pretty inactive over the past month, but thats for good reason!! The Laundry cabinet got a pretty big overhaul during january. In the end, running the three SIP totes worked out great in the cabinet, but just felt like it got a little too chaotic and too many issues that i had to fix on the fly. The idea of doing a living bed SIP started early on during the test run of the cabinet. Been thinking about it ever since lol. The very day after i chopped down the Francos Lemon Cheese, i got to work on cleaning up the cabinet and building shit haha.
A lot of searching for a reservoir large enough to fit the entire bottom of the cabinet, but kept coming up empty handed. Soooo I built one out of birch to fit snug in the bottom of the cabinet. The dimensions ended up being 35" W x 18"L x 6"H. This should be large enough to hold about 15-16 gallons of water for the wicks to sit in. The entire reservoir is covered in flex seal....a lot of flew seal haha. Put a water level sight tube on the front so i know when shes full. Ran some tests of its ability to hold water and every one went well and never leaked a drop.
Next up, a custom fit Grassroots Living Soil Bed. Contacted the company and inquired about having a custom dimension bed made for the cabinet. Excellent customer service and speedy overall process. Within a week of contacting them i had the bed on my doorstep and awaiting install!! Two 7" tall 5"x5" nursery pots make up the wicks, which were doubled up so i could sandwich the fabric that i cut on the bottom between the two pots. i then drilled a shit ton of holes lol. This will allow the wicks access to the water. The bed sits on top of the reservoir with added support from the pvc stand i built for it. The dimensions for the bed are 35 x 18 x 18, which will allow me to fit about 40 gallons of soil with plenty of room for top dressing and reamending once i harvest.
i remote mounted my drivers for the Viparspectra lights to the ceiling and also fix mounted the lights to the ceiling as well. Hoping this gives me enough headroom with getting everything as high as possible.
Also built a scrog screen that can be swung down once its ready to start tucking. i liked mainlining, but i still have a soft spot for scrogging and have decided to go back to it haha.
Figured out a different way to mount my fans using a tension bar in the upper area of the cabinet.
This cabinet will really only be for flowering now. hoping to get a perpetual going, now that i have the small little veg cabinet. Along with all grow are upgrades, i started doing some work up top in the storage area of the cabinet. Thats still under construction, but ill make a post about whats going on here soon. thats all ive got for now!!
Cheers!!