Perpetual grow room build (Pictures Included)

This one is a bit of a time investment.... I hope some of you enjoy following as I finish designing and implementing my new grow room. You may notice that this room has not been designed for quantity. I am not going to have huge yields, im hoping for a pretty self sufficient system that will be alot of fun to grow with, and is able to consistently produce high quality bud.

The set up is as follows:

Bedroom closet converted to mother space, I hope to have mothers for 4 to 5 strains.

2 Grow cabinets

Each cabinet is 30"x5 feet long, and over 4 feet of vertical growing space. Each cabinet will contain (2) 2x2 ebb and flow trays, and 2 inline 400 watt lights. Each cabinet will run for 12 hours a day, which will mean sharing 2 ballasts between 4 bulbs and reflectors. combined with 1 400 watt light for the mothers @ 24 hours a day for a total of 1200 watts running 24 hours a day, this will even out my lighting load, and take advantage of a eliminating a load pattern, along with saving me the cost of purchasing 4 ballasts for the 2 cabinets.

The 4 lights in the cabinets, and 1 light in the mother room will all be in series, with an inline fan boosting the exhaust out of each separate station.

Everything in this room will be controlled via a Programmable logic controller. It will monitor temperature, humidity, and adjust an air conditioner, dehumidifier, rehumidifier, and the venting. It will control all the pumps, and top off the water to keep nutrient levels in all 4 resivoiurs adjusted. The only thing i plan to do for the first year of operation is monitor ph, until i can finish developing the automatic ph adjustment.

CO2 WILL be involved.

The pictures that follow are the beginning of this grow room! Construction has already began, and I hope to finish within the next month and start searching out the perfect mothers.

Enjoy, and feel free to ask questions, the electronics may certainly entertain some of you when I get that far. And as always, suggestions are appreciated.

My co-engineer is pictured, so you can see how tall these cabinets are.

Fuck the setup whos the girl hahaha just messin you lucky man

Looks like a high school chick. Or am I just really old?

potsticker said:

Looks like a high school chick. Or am I just really old?

Click to expand...

She's 20, and whats mine is hers

ITS TIME FOR SOME TECH PORN LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.

I present the BRAIN.

This is an allen bradley SLC 5/04, with an average scan time of 4 milliseconds. This controller will run the entire grow op. You can see its not finished yet, but it is ready for programming, which I have started tonight.

You will also notice a 6 inch touch screen. This screen with be a 100% configurable user screen. All adjustments, times, and values recorded for monitoring purposes will be present on this screen.

There will also be an e-stop installed, or what I would like to newly dubb, the "OH SHET SHUT HER DOWN" button... by pressing it all ventilation and HPS lighting will shut off, and back up flourescent lighting will kick in, rendering the room silent.

ENJOY! and I'll try to update those of you following as often as possible.

Any questions, just ask.












The outlets on the bottom of this box will control all "light duty loads". Large loads will be controlled via a high voltage control box. The "Heavy Load" box will do the switching between the 2 ballasts, and 4 bulbs. Other loads contained in the "heavy duty loads" box will include the A/C, and Dehumidifier.

Wow dude, you can tell from that first set of pics that there is already like a 5 and a half foot female growing in your cabinet there. She looks to have some dank ass red hairs and blue under carriage. I can't wait til she starts showing her buds!!!

Thought said:

Wow dude, you can tell from that first set of pics that there is already like a 5 and a half foot female growing in your cabinet there. She looks to have some dank ass red hairs and blue under carriage. I can't wait til she starts showing her buds!!!

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When should I harvest?

I'd start cloning that female ASAP! LOL Send one my way?

Back to the setup, man i love the PLC nerds (I mean that in a good way). Almost all of our Co-op grow rooms are PLC controlled and i must say, when you get a couple programmer nerds, a electrical engineer, a plumber, a electrician, and some idiot with 2 semi usable hands (thats me!) you can build some really effective setups.

Looks real good. I'll be reading.

I love tech porn.

theycallmeoj said:

I'd start cloning that female ASAP! LOL Send one my way?

Back to the setup, man i love the PLC nerds (I mean that in a good way). Almost all of our Co-op grow rooms are PLC controlled and i must say, when you get a couple programmer nerds, a electrical engineer, a plumber, a electrician, and some idiot with 2 semi usable hands (thats me!) you can build some really effective setups.

Looks real good. I'll be reading.

Click to expand...

An only child, so i can't even send you similar genetics



PLC's are so much cheaper than buying stand alone controllers. I thought about building custom applications "for sale" but decided instead to concentrate more on my own endeavors. For someone with enough time on their hands, learning plc's could be a lucrative venture.

Fully customizable, and scalable, from the smallest applications to the largest.

Micrologix controllers can be bought for as little as 100 dollars, and once programmed do the job of 400 dollars worth.

The controller pictured above is capable of over 4,000 Input/Output points. I have installed an analog input card for my 4-20 mah signals, and a basic (c++ / basic ) module for doing complex math related to the algorithms I developed for accurately adding nutes.

I have as much fun setting up the electronics as I do growing!

I am subscribed...

This will be nice...

and the babe is a deff. plus...

I hope we keep seeing her...

Oh, I got to suscribe to this grow. Fantastic job so far.

9,000 BTU dual hose a/c will handle any suplimentary cooling that the inline ducting can't handle. I made sure to buy a dual hose so that I could isolate the room entirely from the rest of my house.


Pictured also is one of 4 high voltage relays. You may ask "why high voltage?" and for those of you who may not have intimate knowledge of how a HPS light works, when the bulb is igniting the initial strike can require up to 2 thousand volts of electricity, and because my relays are on the output side of my ballast, voltage is very much a concern. I will wire BOTH sets of contacts on each relay in series with each other, to help create a redundant switching system. It will help to ensure that when the plc says "lights go off" the lights really go off, before it switches the ballast over to the other cabinet.

A switching application like HPS lightbulbs require a relay that can really handle a pounding. After a HPS passes ignition the danger of welding contacts greatly reduces, but I didn't want to risk the chance that during a change over I could have a ballast potentially trying to light 2 bulbs if the relays contacts had welded.

These relays are almost a little over kill... but you'll never hear me say my ballast exploded when my contacts failed to open.

9,000 btu ac



This relay has about a 2"x2" foot print... its a big sucka.

I'm about to do something very similar in configuration, although slightly less techie Subscribed, and I'll be very interested to see how you set of your growing chambers as my space is identical (closet, finished bedroom w/ carpet and drywall). Best of luck, bro!

Infamous Zero said:

ITS TIME FOR SOME TECH PORN LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.

I present the BRAIN.

Click to expand...

Now that is some interesting sh1t! Very interesting. You should post a DIY on setting up that controller. You'll fill your rep meter in like 2 seconds!

potsticker said:

Now that is some interesting sh1t! Very interesting. You should post a DIY on setting up that controller. You'll fill your rep meter in like 2 seconds!

Click to expand...

I have thought about doing tutorials, and/or putting together quotes for persons interested in custom applications. After I finish my outdoor grow, and the indoor setup is finished and things are growing I will definitely consider all of my options for helping out the RIU community, this place has taught me so much of what I know beyond the electronics. I may know how to control a grow op, but learning how to grow great bud came from many of the dedicated users here, including Gypsybush.

My hat is off to you Zero, subscribed

That is very kind of you to mention me...

I was just looking over your pics of the controller and thinking... boy! I could learn a lot from this guy...

We ALL have something to contribute... just as we ALL have tons to learn...

Keep it up bro... I'll TRY to follow along.. but I am still in the "analog age"...

Most of this stuff goes waaay over my head...

All my shit still works by beating on it with a hammer....

I love this geeky stuff. I was working on a temp sensor for my cab that would send me a text message if temps went out of a certain range but got distracted installing a webserver on my TIVO.

I had thought about using a PLC, but I figured why not just build my own custom solution. So I am working on building a system that uses a PIC microcontroller. It is a lot more work, but in the end, I might be able to market it cheaply.

One of my biggest "wants" is a CO2 ppm meter and controller, since these things are so damned expensive, I think I can get the cost down significantly.