Patient in need of grow room advice -please help

I desperately need my daily meds to function but, the dispensary is getting expensive. So I need to grow my own meds.

I was originally thinking about tents because they seem like hey are very "plug and play" but, after researching on this site for a few weeks I am starting to wonder if that is the best route.

The main limitation of the room is that it is 5ft 10" in height.

this is very new to me and I am scared to waste my money by not doing this right.

I am looking for any guidance but, right now my main questions are:

should I grow with tents or should i outfit the room? What can I do to deal with my height limitations?

my budget is $1800. I will be starting off with 12 plants.

I have attached a layout of the room.

I really appreciate any and all help to help me stay well while not going bankrupt.


Thanks!

I would seal it up tight and add c02 to the grow. But your first issue is how to deal with the heat from the lights. Are you planning on running air cooled or open reflectors?

chuck estevez said:

I would seal it up tight and add c02 to the grow. But your first issue is how to deal with the heat from the lights. Are you planning on running air cooled or open reflectors?

Click to expand...

Hey Chuck: i am planning on running air cooled. I am thinking I will start small because I am worried that I will mess something up and I don't wanna waste $. I'm splitting the room 70/30 for veg/flowering stages. Thinking of starting with a 1000hps light but I don't know if my room is too short for that much wattage

thanks so much for the help.

you can grow your plants any height. you may want to look at a scrog. with an air cooled light you can get it close to the plants and raise it as they grow. You just have to account for the stretch the first 2 weeks of flower.

if its a basement and you can drill into the beams for the floor above you you could put 2x4s up and get some black and white polly to make personal sized grow tents.

they even have zippers and the b/w plastic is pretty cheap.

i personally run 600 watters because i like the efficiency and can get them alot closer than a 1000 watt.

id recommend 600s because you could have 2 lights that you could place closer.

good luck with the grow!

great advice chuck

I think it might be a bit short for a 1000 watt.

I like my 600 watt hps in a cooled reflector to be about 14" from my plants. The reflector is going to be about 10" thick. That is 2 feet right there.
12" pot and give or take a few inches and you have less than 2' 10" to grow unless you want to push them up against the lights.

You may want to go with 2 400 watt hps, in cooled hoods with the limited height. You could pull over a pound with that once you figure out what you are doing.
I would go with soil, possibly scrog and three gallon buckets and not grow 12 plants. More plants is more work.

What are your goals? (How much weed and work do you want?)
Do you have access to clones or seeds?
Do you need a veg room?

I like high tech garden supply. If they are near you call and ask if they will give you internet prices at the store.

The main starting issue you have I see is deciding where you will veg. plants and that they will need to be light proofed from the flower room. Weather a tent of closet using tarp you can buy at walmart in the paint section in rolls. Using that might help.

Get a T5 for veg. or 400 hps. depending again on the are/size? Are you sure a room in only 5ft. tall? must be a closet of basement? 5ft. is good for vegging plants and you can do it for flower but you will be working very hard to keep em low. You need the 8 ft. tall area or more to give some space.

For flowering, prices from htg:

2 x 400 watt hps with 6" cooled reflector $400 ($64 extra for digital ballasts, which run cooler)
6" tallboy fan/filter combo fan 424 cfm $200 (clamps, 6" flexible ducting, about $35)
2 x light hangers $28
timer $15

about $650

you still need soil, pots, fert, thermometer/hygrometer, watering can...

get a 100 ft roll of panda film,

2x 600w HID

1x t5 4 bulb

and 1 400w HID

plastic out your space

use the T5 for clones
use the 2 600w for flowering
use the 400w for veg

your going to need fans and some ducting

a propogator and seedling mat

pots and good soil, i recomend fox farm soil as i have tried alot of others and most come with free bugs

OH!! dont forget your seeds!!!

start off simple and upgrade as you go and learn.

basic enviormental things to think about is temp, lighting (which the lights mentioned above should do you justice) and humidity. bring some fresh air in from outside and Co2 suppliment shouldnt be a issue right now and might be something to add later.

start off with 6 plants, 12 is alot of time and money to waste if anything goes south.

experiment with cloning.

READ ALOT, not just here but everywhere and pick up a few decent grow books to read.

growing herb is not that hard, people make it sound like some sort of rocket science but its not. keep good air circulation, good ventilation, good humidity and good lights and you will be fine.

Relaxed said:

The main starting issue you have I see is deciding where you will veg. plants and that they will need to be light proofed from the flower room. Weather a tent of closet using tarp you can buy at walmart in the paint section in rolls. Using that might help.

Get a T5 for veg. or 400 hps. depending again on the are/size? Are you sure a room in only 5ft. tall? must be a closet of basement? 5ft. is good for vegging plants and you can do it for flower but you will be working very hard to keep em low. You need the 8 ft. tall area or more to give some space.

Click to expand...

my grow room is 6 ft tall and i have plenty of room in there for my flowering plants, you dont grow huge plants inside

to the OP your going to have about 5 ft of space to grow your plants as your lights will occupy the 10" easily

Wow, thanks so much for all the help. I am involved in several other forums on various subject matters and this is a very nice welcome to a discussion forum by any standard.

Incoming air should come from another room, then you get a nice circulation going. If you can exhaust upstairs or outside that would be good. the nice thing about the basement is it is cooler. It is much easier to deal with low temps than high temps. You want to stick close to 75 when the lights are on or off.

If you exhaust into your dryer fan, you should put some sort of flap on both out hoses. You do not want hot/wet air being pushed into your grow room and you do not want to push your grow room exhaust into your laundry room.

Legal or not, you want a good fan filter combo to destink. You house will really smell if you do not clean the air. If you exhaust outside, your neighbors will smell it unless it is cleaned.

2 400 watt lights will pull 800 watts, which is less than a space heater or hair dryer (1500 watts). That being said, designated lines are a good idea. I have my 600 watt on its own breaker. every thing else runs off a different breaker.

I think it might be a bit short for a 600 watt. Personally, I would go with 2 400 watt hps and a T5 for veg.
You can get a 400 watt hps much closer to plants than with a 600 watt.

If you grow 12 plants in soil, it is going to be very time consuming.

I have found that in my 3x3 tent, that two plants scrogged produce about the same, but more better quality buds.
I grew 4 plants in my tent, didn't scrog them. More popcrorn/frizzle frazzle buds.

I like scrog in my small space. You could set up a screen and still move around it on all sides. You could go with 4 plants.

If you want more yield and quicker pace, you could go with a sog set up. You have the room for a veg area. sog is a lot more work. You are pretty much constantly curing buds, moving plants, trimming.

Are you concerned with staying legal? Plant counts are a concern. A doctor's note saying you can grow more plants doesn't help much. With the new amendment and two adults in my house, I am allowed 6 mature plants and 6 immature. That is a bit tight for a sog system, but more than enough for a scrog.

With my scrog tent and a 600 watt hps, I pull near a pound about every 3 months. (Time and weight depend on many factors. I just changed my veg area into a fem seed crop area. That slows me down as I can't really veg in anticipation of harvest)

With 2 400 watt lights, I bet you could pull near .5 grams per watt on your first go, more when you dial your environment and nutes in.
400 grams is near 15 ounces. 5 ounces a month should hold you. I go through maybe 2 a month.

If you are in a state with a high tech garden supply, call and ask them if they will honor the internet prices. Then take a list with you with the prices on it. Here in CO, the prices in the store are the same as the internet if you ask. They do not have name brand gear, but it works great. If I am pulling about a pound with their gear, it must work okay.

I love scrog for my space. It holds the big buds up and lowers the amount of small crappy buds. It is a bit time consuming weaving the plants in and out of the screen, but for your height limitations it might be the way to go. Most indicas are going to double in height during flower. Many sativas will triple in height. Keep that in mind or you will be tying buds sideways to the wall.

Unless you are shorter than 5'10", get a stool/chair on wheels.
Your power bill is going to go up.

What he said above.....lol. Id also look hard at the The Lumatek LK600 600W digital dimmable ballast for MH or HPS lamps. You can work it depending on the temps. from 400-600. Go for quality with this pick.

Good call. Get two of those. If it gets too tight you can switch down to 400 watts.

I stole a few extra inches in a basement by removing the drywall on the ceiling, insulating it a bit, then attaching the light pulleys high up on the joist.

I was actually looking at and wondering about the 600w adjustables. Thanks alot again to you both. It tried to rep you both again but it won't let me.


I am now adjusting my plan and will put up a diagram for review. I still need to do a bit more research to do about where to put my filters and fans

Based on all your help here is what I've come up with so far. Look good so far?

you got it
filter on the ceiling to pull warm air, far away from the intake.
vent the intake on the floor

is the intake from crawl space?
if the intake is from outside you might want to rethink it. the outside temp varies so much

kewl - Gaining knowledge! This is fun already....

Intake is coming from a nearby storage room for just the reason you mentioned - more stable air temps as opposed to pulling from outside where we wil have snow soon and then a hot/humid summer to follow.

Trousers: To answer your earlier question, YES I am very concerned about staying legal. I am a family man and I can't take any chances. That is why for now, while I am my own cargiver I want to start with 12 plants. By the time the babies are ready to flower I plan to be the cargiver for 1 other person allowing me 12 plants in veg and 12 in flower.

So scrog will increase my yeild while working within my height limitations? From what I am hearing scrog is the way to go. I am sold on that and am going to begin drawing up a scrog design. You also say 12 plants in soil is going to be lot of work/time consuming. What is the time consuming part? I anticipate an investment of time, I figure this will be another hobbie I have under my belt. I work from home 2 days a week so I can work on them during my lunch breaks and after work the rest of the days. I would estimate I have about 1 hour a day I could dedicate to the room. Would that be enough?

THANKS!

an hour a day should cover you
I don't grow in soil indoors, so I am not that familiar with it. Outside I water every day, you won't have to inside.

12 plants will take up a lot of space. I would recommend getting all the strains you want to grow and just grow one of each.
More plants is not always more buds. I get about a pound from two plants in a 3 x 3 tent.

Update: walls are framed and almost all the way dry walled.

Rest of the drywall will be finished on Sunday. Starting to look like something!