My Evolving Grow Room

Hi everyone, my name is Ryan and I am just getting into growing, but as with every project i get into I like to dive in deep. Currently, I am at week two of flowering of my first crop in soil, but i have bigger plans. I have always been big into projects, so this is an exciting one for me. Personally, I don't really smoke too much, but my roommate and my girlfriend do and we all have cannabis cards and are able to grow up to 99 plants legally in our house. In the past, other projects that I have tackled have been turbocharging two miata's, building my gaming PC's for myself and friends and building a killer all grain brewing setup with which i made some great beer. This growing thing is just naturally up my alley Over the next few hours, I will be updating this thread with pictures of my current setup as well as plans for the future. Stay Tuned


BTW, Comments and questions are welcome.

Here is What I have right now: 2x 1000 Watt Lights, 9000btu AC, Some pots, some plants, some organic nutes, and a lot of thoughts in my head. Ultimately, I want to contain everything in the room that I have dedicated for the grow. It is a 10x10 room with a 2.5 x 5.5 closet that I have removed the doors from. Comes out to around 115 sq ft. of room to work with. Anyway, enough talk. Here are the Pictures:


here you can see the Carbon filter and one of the lights. The other 1000 is unused at the moment, but I have some GDP clones that I am vegging out for the job. Current setup is pulling air from the room and venting it to the attic. it is inefficient because it is removing the cold air that the AC is making, but it does pull in fresh air and C02. It is the best I can do with what I have at the moment.


Here are the plants under a 1000w Light. It is crowded, but I figured that I am not wasting light this way.


Here you can see the AC in its current location, but it may need to be moved in the future depending on what I do with the room. You can also see, on the right hand side, a 16 site aeroponic hydro setup. I plan to use that to veg plants in, and then transfer them to 5 gallon hydro buckets in the flower room. My main issue, though is that it will be rather crowded, so I am not sure how well that will work out. I figure I'll cross that bridge when I get there. For now, I am growing in soil


Here is where the heat is escaping


Storage


View from doorway


A bud is forming, 15 days into flower



Some leaves are dying, found out that I should have used veg nutes for the first few weeks of flower, oh well.


Here you can see the layout of the room and how I plan to eventually have it set up. I want to get one more 1000w light and line that back wall with plants. Half would be early flower, and half would be late flower so that i can get a harvest roughly once per month. I am very close to ordering a 4x4 tent to run my clones, mothers, and veg in. Have a 210W h6 fluorescent setup which I overcharged by adding another ballast, and I would guess it is pulling 300 - 320W. I am also looking into going Hydroponic, but cant decide what setup to choose. I am pretty sure it will be an ebb and flow or a drip system type deal.

Eventually, I would like to go Hydroponic for my setup. I realize that the nutrient needs for early flowering and late flowering will be different, so it would require two different reservoirs. I just cant decide between weather to do an ebb and flow set-up or a drip system style set-up ... and i am looking at other options as well, such as DWC variations, but I am pretty sure that this isn't for me.

Ebb and flow:

Nutrients are flooded into the grow container in regular intervals. The reservoir would be maintained with an air stone and the proper nutrients. When it is time to flood, it would fill the second reservoir with solution, which in turn would flow into the grow pots via gravity. When the flood cycle is turned off, the pump that is putting stuff into the second reservoir is turned off and the excess is pumped back into the main reservoir. As the second reservoir is emptied, the grow pots would drain out to match the level via gravity. The level of the second reservoir would be controlled with timers and float switches.



Drip System:

This would be similar to the Ebb and flow setup, but there would not be a flood cycle. Nutrient water would be pumped into a drip system to the top of the grow pots from the main reservoir. The pots would be slightly elevated to enhance the effect of gravity, and as the water flows through the pots, it would exit through a tube in the side and flow to a secondary reservoir. When the level of the secondary reservoir reaches a certain point, a float switch would activate a pump that moves the water back to the main reservoir and complete the cycle. The secondary reservoir in this case would act only as a place to collect the excess drip water and make a pool deep enough for the pump to work properly.




Obviously, My drawings are very oversimplified, as they only show the flow of the nutrient solution. Oxygenation, nutrients, and other issues were not included, but it is the basics. Anyway, I think that is all for now. I may update this thread from time to time as my room evolves and as I have ideas. I mainly wanted a place to air my thoughts and keep track of where I am going. Thanks to all of the old timers who have given me so much stuff to read these past few months!

For cloning, my friend has loaned me his 60 site aeroponic cloner. I have had very little success with it so far. When my friend brought it over, he said that he had cleaned it and he helped me get it set up. After a few days, I started noticing some slime on the stems, so i added a little bit of bleach to the reservoir. A few days later, I was still having issues so I took a closer look. Turns out the nozzles were clogged with gunk from previous use. I took the whole thing apart, cleaned it out, bleach bombed it and had another go. I have lost about half the clones at this point and i have no roots to speak of my other major issue has been heat. With summer here, the room that the cloner is in is often around 85* during the day, and the reservoir gets a few degrees above that. To help with the heat, I have the pump on a timer at 30 minute intervals, which is the shortest period I can do. When my 4'x4' tent gets here in a week, I will be able to control the heat much better, because i will be able to use the enviornment of my flower room, which maintains temps between 72 and 78*




Here you can see my overdriven T6 setup. It puts out a good deal of light now that I added the extra ballast. For the clones, I am only running one bulb though. This guy will be hung in the 4x4 vegetating tent, possibly with a few CFL bulbs to suppliment if needed

So, I might as well share what I currently have in the flowering room. I have 7 White Widow's (6 smaller ones and 1 big one), 2 Blue Moon Rocks, 2 Godfathers, and One Nostradamus (reminds me of a Christmas song )

Blue Moon Rocks: This one grew sort of wierd, slowly and odd leaves. It is a variation of the Blueberry plant, and I've heard that that plant often is mutant. Despite its short stature, it looks like it is going to produce some nice buds.



White Widow: The big one was vegged out for a month, and the little ones were vegged for about 2 weeks.



Godfather: These plants made me happy, they grew so much and I have high hopes for them.



Nostradamus: I don't know anything about this plant, but it is looking pretty nice.



One big happy Family, flowering together under 1000 Watts HPS:

Dude that looks pretty sweet. What is your growing medium, and what kind of nutrients are you going with?

Dude that looks pretty sweet. What is your growing medium, and what kind of nutrients are you going with?

For now, i am using Happy Frog, straight from the bag. Plants are fed with Advanced Nutrients Flora Grow and Flora Bloom along with 200ppm tapwater and a touch of silicate and cal-mag. I think the plants were getting nutrient locked or overfertilized (lower leaves yellowing and dropping at an alarming rate), so leeched (small flush) last night and i saw an explosion of growth in less than 6 hours Future grows in soil, I may add some perlite for better aeration and dolomite lime to buffer the PH. Eventually I would like to go Hydro though, because I am going to get sick of watering each pot individually and worrying about the run off getting on the floor and all that jazz.