So originally I was going to divide my closet into a veg/flower grow room. It is 5' wide 2' 6" deep and 8 ' tall. It was suggested I make a seperate place for vegging and keeping mothers. So my Dad unwittingly brought me the very thing today. It is an old buffet. Approxamatily 80" wide 20" deep and 32" in tall. I ripped out the shelved portion already, and took a 1" unibit to the upper corner, to get a cord in for light tests and as a future area for a fan. Those are 1.5 gal buckets I hope to be able to keep mothers in, trim the roots if someone can point the way for that. It is pretty slick closed, matches some of my furniture in my man-cave. Already light proofed it, have to wait another week or two until my brothers mother is big enough for a clone or two. I will order some seeds soon as I've played with his clones a bit. Not sure if I am going to flower under cfls first just to get a solo grow under my belt, or set up the big closet with a 400-600w hps. I plan to carbon scrub exhaust to the attic. Will keep this thread updated as I get the walls lined in white, and get it properly vented as well. Oh..and a plant or three in itassit:
Thanks I think it will be as well! Right now I am heading out before work to try and find some mylar wrapping papper to line my walls with.
Sounds like a plan... Good start. Couple of things from a cab builder/grower. 1st off. You don't have enough space to warrant 1.5gal pots for mums. It's can be tough to wrap your head around at first. Mums can be super tiny. I personally have a much smaller flower space than you are planning... But I'm always finding myself with more clones than I can flower. I'd never keep a mum in a pot that big...in a space that small. I went and got ascending sized square pots 5 sets ranging from the little square pots you get starts from the nursery in to about 3/4 gal. Root trimming is something you probably don't want to do more than every 6mo. They need attention every other day minimum to keep them healthy. Other factors that spring to mind looking at your raw spaces... Ever consider rigid insulation? Or better yet, white Styrofoam panels? If you lined the walls of the buffet with Styrofoam it would take care of reflectivity and considerably dampen noise. My first grow enclosure was made from underlayment panels...they have a foil-like finish rather than the bright white but they are really versatile in DIY projects. The doors on the big closet are gona be the weak spot there. How you gonna seal them? Those doors (IME) are not light poof, not air tight, and not at all sound proof. IDK how concerned you are about stealth if you are getting a Med card...I'd think you'd still want to be careful just how open you were about your grow. The first thought that comes to mind in addressing this is building an enclosure inside the closet so that when you open the door you are looking at the wall of the box inside of the closet. You know some thing that is like 1" smaller than the dimensions of the closet interior. Second idea, remove those doors altogether and put some custom doors on there (that don't slide) that will seal well. I guess if you don't care about noise or light leaks then the doors as they are might represent enough of a passive intake that you wouldn't have to think about that part Lot's of potential there man. Any idea what strain your brother is working with? Hope the tone of this post is helpful...that's truly my intent. Not tryna be a know it all or a downer. It's too early for me to tell how it's coming off. assit: Grat
Wells fine..I guess I will just go fist myself and my inadequate closet! Kidding. First, I have been kicking around removing the doors all together, and building my own frame flush with the outer wall, or even a few inches out, then enclosing it in vinyl or something. Then I could make a light proof door. The 1.5 gal pots were just a present for my brother, as he had transplant needs and he and I chip in on his grow. I felt weird about just showing an empty cabinet, so I stuck those in there for the photo op. I will use smaller pots like you said, I am totally open to ALL suggestions This is an old buffet, with thick walls, I don't believe sound will be an issue at all, other than from the exhaust fan, which will be the weak spot in light/sound proofing. My bro just started out with some bag seed. Two strains, ones clone did not take before we flowered it, sadly it was bad ass, early flower, insane smell, harvesting it here soon, and the other we have a healthy mother of whom he is going to clone soon, and I can start. After I do a little practicing with the clone he is giving me, I am ordering two strains, he will raise one and I the other, then we will trade clones.. When I have a grow or so under my belt, I hope to keep two mothers of different strains in the cabinet and veg clones till I throw them in my closet. I just went and bought four reflective survival blankets that reflect light and heat I think. I am going to try to apply them directly to the walls of the buffet, does anyone think it would be better/easier to mount the material on cardboard or something, to make sure its smooth.
I never thought of that. Sounds good in theory. I'm pretty sure it's not crucial to be fully smooth. Mine had the fold lines from the "blanket" package. Glad you didn't take offense. Good Growing! Grat
Umm...you mean just keep the lights going 24/7 now? Its really small still, cool SUPER crystal buds little buds...hmm. How would be the best way to go about this? As bag seed goes, this stuff seems incredible.
Tonight the doors, tomorrow all inside. Ok, I read the forums, Skunky, if you see this, what is "veg" forumula? Was that just nutes for vegg state, not flower, heavy nitrogen? Or was it for hydro folks? Anyway, I got a new bong tonight, couple rips and I got the doors covered on my cabinet. Once I got a system down the stuff went on smooth. Due to the shape of the bracing inside, I will be using cardboard covered in this stuff, just to recess it back nicely. This stuff is fairly strong, still debating on doing the floor in the same. Thinking the wear and tear of moving plants in and out will be rough, but I am saving all the cut pieces for patches:bongin: the pic is huge, will reshape my camara sizing.
Nice start. Are you thinking of lighting the buffet with CFLs and ventilating it with some PC style fans perhaps?
haha. Precisely. Think I found one in town for a couple bucks, have the cfl ballast already, not ballast persay, thin profile light fixture with three socket plugs facing opposite directions, courtesy of my brother from some demo being done on a job. I plan passive intake through the back, exhaust through the back also, thinking of putting a little fan inside to give a little breeze. Huh, I just realized I ALREADY run an oscillating fan in this room all the time. I will have to shut it off to listen for the other sounds:laughing1: ..not to mention my loud ass xbox 360 fan..yea..this room produces some sones even before I put a light up. high. So I am now going to do everything possible to save the plant he currently has budding. Will get a picture tomorrow of it, it is currently having a little trouble for some reason..not that it needs one..it was abused I tell you. Bastard, red headed step child etc.
Off today, finshed lining my cabinet. Much brighter now. Took about two hours of sweating and cutting to get it in. Lower red will be the passive intake, left it uncovered, upper right is were the fan will be exhausting. So like yea...looking for a fan today, old pc fan should work? Barring that...need to put a plant in there.
Ok, so I got to radio shack early this morning, intent on finding a fan. The cute, helpful lady opened early and let me in. I found my fan, its a 3 inch, brushless 12vdc cooling fan. It can circulate 33cfm at 10% max power. I used an adapter I had at home, slightly lower volts than its rated for, and wired it up. It ran very smooth, not loud at all. I got it for $17 plus tax. I will install it tonight or tomorrow. Then wait on my brothers mother. Its is looking pretty decent in my opinion, he still wants to wait a while longer : ( His chamber Top shot. Light slipped down and burned some leaves a bit ago. Profile shot
Here are some more pics. I got the holes cut for the fan and the intake. Most likely going to goose neck to pvc elbows painted black for the intake..may just leave it open. The Fan Whole Cabinet with holes cut. Sideways close up of the passive intake, two inch and one quarter holes. Close up of cut exhaust hole for the fan. Fan will mount in the square area. It progresses.
Light How many watts of cfl are you going to have in the flowering area? You should consider adding an HPS fixture, even it's just 70w it makes a big difference. Since adding hps to my cfls the plants stay shorter, are more dense, and yield more. If you want to just use cfl then try to get the biggest bulbs you can. Home Depot has 42w for $10 and 65w for $15 each. Wal-Mart carries 42w. Whatever you use make sure the color temp is around 2600 Kelvin.
The cabinet is my mother/veg chamber, it currently has two 65w cfls going in, room for another two. The closet is my flower area. Its still in the "what if" stage but bare minimum I hope to have a 400w hps in there. Possibly a 600w if it would not get to hot. Exhausting it with a 250 cfm or something fan, carbon crubber, etc to the attic. The attic is large with lots of vents.
So today I put the finishing touches on my cabinet. I still need to put in my cfls, I have a normal bulb in for testing right now. Oh..and I need a plant of course. So here it is. Intake at the bottom left brings in fresh air, it help some paper to it, I am impressed. The fan is mounted to the outside, really quite. The light can move up and down, and side to side thanks to a flexible neck, there is another power socket in there for a similar light. It was tight manuvering in there so I decided to mount the fan on the back. I nailed it tightly in place, then sealed the outside with some foil/adhesive tape to really make sure its sealed and can't wiggle. Might build a mini hood like /|\ to bring the little bit of light shining out down. The light I mounted up with plumbers tape, just thin metal perforated with holes so you can hold things in place against walls. I used 1/4 zip screws to seal them in place. A word to the wise, use a pair of pliers to secure straps of metal ALWAYS when working with a screw gun and metal. You don't want them to spin out of control on you and slice your fingers. So this is a shot of the room kind of dark with it closed. The light is barely noticable unless you are eye level with the cracks. I plan to fix that anyway. I am going for unobtrusive rather than stealth I guess. So much more to come. I will have a plant in here in a week or two, and very soon after that I will start my flowering closet. Thank you everyone. This is a really simple chamber, but I could not have done it without the suggestions and help I found on growking...I mean growkind assit: :bong2:
this is a nice looking setup you're starting there. I don't think I have any worthwhile input for the veg cab... looks like it's ready to go. my one suggestion: closets are tricky to ventilate, especially with big lights in there. you can put a 400w in there, but its tricky. a bigger light will probably definitely need to be vented from the reflector, as well as some other serious ventilation going on. if you're taking the doors off, then you'll have that vinyl surface you can cut through to run ducting, but with the doors on you'll have to live with it being not light-tight or particularly stealthy smell or sound wise. so long as you keep your room lights off and don't let people go in there, neither is really a problem... I use my closet as a veg chamber with sliding doors still on. I have a medical friend with a closet grow, and how he keeps it cool is to leave the closet door open while the lights are on (and closes it every night before bed), and runs a huge fan in his doorway to circulate air in his apartment, another equally large fan (about 30-36") pointed in a 45 degree angle up directly on to the cheap, open 400w HPS, and a third standing oscillating fan providing wind for his plants. its highly inconvenient, but he managed to do it with just high strength regular fans instead of using any inline fans at all, which are relatively expensive and VERY noisy... but I imagine that some sort of big fan is necessary to cool a HID bulb inside a closet regardless. I use a 4" inline fan by vortex I wanna say for a space slightly larger than yours, and it works great. a fan/scrubber combo is like $165 after shipping off ebay from HTGsupply... might be worth looking in to. it will up the convenience factor of a closet grow quite a bit. I thought of something else. hydro stores will have Pandafilm- basically plastic made for grow room walls tbh. it's reflective, $1 per foot, and probably will work better than vinyl. the one I go to in the spokane valley also sells tarp zippers, which allow you to make a zippered, mostly airtight doorway in said panda plastic. I personally used both of those on my flower cab project, and was even happier because it was all available pretty locally (for me, anyway).
I have been reading on panda film. I am thinking of just building a pvc tube structure within the closet door frame after removing the doors. Sealing it, so the closet is still open inside, with a new air/light tight door. I hope to use one of the vortex fans to ventilate the attic. A Zipper door would be cool. And a scrubber is a must. Whats your take on just going to Canada to get some good genetics vs. ordering them online?
Monolith When I was a kid we had an entertainment system that looked like that. It had a turntable, 8 track and tuner. Weighed 400Lbs
