Hi Everyone

I've been lurking for a few weeks looking at ideas and I'm now in the serious planning stages for my 1st grow.

I have a metal cabinet in my garage that I'm looking at turning into a grow area. It is 36" wide x 18" deep x 36" tall. I would class this as a tinyish space so I hope I've posted in the right forum.

I'm looking to do a Blab style LST or a scrog so I don't think the height is too much of a problem. As I said, this is my 1st grow but I am a model maker and have the patience of a saint with things like this.

It has to be super stealth as not even Mrs A must find it. (She doesn't go into the garage and my motorbike will be parked in front of it anyway). I also live inbetween a copper and a nosey parker! As such, everything has to fit inside the cabinet and filtration ha to be perfect.

My idea is to partition the cabinet off vertically to for a chamber about 10" wide at one end to house the CF and electrics. This would leave me just over 2 feet by 1.5 feet as a grow area. (3sq ft).

Lighting is a question I have for you... Would a 200w envirolite be enough for this area? I don't really want to get into HPS at this moment in time, mainly for stealth reasons. (I can't have a huge fan running to keep it cool). If I can I'll probably make allowances to have two envirolite fitted. Would a 125w blue suffice for veging and then add the 200w red for flowering?

The centrifugal fan I'm looking at has a rating of 25cfl/hr and the growroom tools says I only need 10cfl/hr. Will this be a problem? I'm going to be venting through a DIY carbon filter made out of some sort of paint can or similar (to fit in the 10" chamber). Am I right in thinking that too high an airflow will negate the effect of the CF?

Next question. Will I need to insulate the cabinet as the garage is unheated and this will be running over winter? I have also allowed in my design to have a low power tube heater installed if neccessary?

Can someone reccomend a good LST suitable strain for a newbie to grow? I'm looking (possibly dreaming) for 2 - 3 oz dry per cycle. Would 3 plants fit in the space I have or would 2 be better? and on that subject, how many seeds do you usually have to germinate to reasonably guarantee 2 or 3 females?

I'm sure I'll think of more over the next couple of weeks but thanks for any answers in the meantime?

Cheers guys

A

check out Blab's diary's , as mentioned tho your gonna have problems with heat ,airflow etc in a metal cabinet , if I were you I would try 2 125 watt enviro,s first , I think 2 200's would be way too much in that space ..veg with the blue and use blue and red for flower
a good strain I think would be black domina or Afghani #1 with a scrog net

Blabs diary is my inspiration for this project.

Metalworking is one of my talents so making ventilation holes isn't an issue. My main concern with it is keeping it warm enough overnight during the winter.

A

Have you lights on period at night when its coldest so your plants dont freeze.

I know the odorsok aint the best in the world but I found the small 4" version great for my veg cabinet, its very small only 12" long

http://www.uk420.com/boards/index.php?s=&a...t&p=1069255

you can get some very low powered heaters. most tube ones are aimed at the job.

metal being a good conductor you can loose a lot of heat just by pointing a fan at it.

buy a propper filter. the copper could have a friend, with a dog. he will perhaps know the smell aswell. there not that expensize really.

big fans good. you can run it at lower speeds where it will be much quieter than a smaller one flat out. instructions are on the site for speed controlers.


you will probably get away with a 150w sodium. just the one. you may decide to raise that to a 250 for flower in the future though. A 250 will be 'stacks' of light.

with that height, you may want to find a female and chop it up 4 cuttings. for refference, many indica domanent cuttings wont reach 12" and will return 10g or so in the space of a 5" pot. easy 3oz, maybe 6.

Thanks for the response guys. It's making me more confident I can get this project off the ground.

Filtration and noise are my two biggest problems. I was going to build a large volume carbon filter using some sort of container. I'll be using proper carbon filter refil granules so I think that should do the job. The reason for building it myself is that it needs to fit in the space available. I cannot have anything outside the cabinet.

The fan is a fairly new vent-axia lo watt centrifugal unit. It will pull around 25 m3/hr (not cf/hr as I stated above) in trickle mode and upo to 150m3/hr full blast. It will also do this through 50m of 100mm ducting so I don't think a filter will give it any problems. At it's trickle speed it only give out 23db(A) so nice and quiet. It has ball bearings, comes with a 5 year guarantee and is designed to run 24/7 on trickle mode.

So, filter issues aside, is it possible to overventilate (ie too many air chanes per hour) as far as the plants themselves are concerned?

If I did go for a HPS lighting setup I'd definately be looking at a digital ballast. Can anyone recomend a good 150w one incl lamp etc? (budget is an issue too). I'm still leaning towards 125w Envirolites at the moment though.

As far as night heating goes, I had though of night lighting but I will need to be attending to gardening duties during the afternoon so I'll be needing lights on about 2pm at the latest.

As for seeds I quite like the look of White Satin from Mandala seeds. Any comments on this?

Anyway, thanks for the input. It is very much appreciated.

A

i got you something while i was out
Click to view attachment

that how not to mount your reflector. it is however a 150 in the same kinda space. it seems to reach a foot ok, so with the plants more together and the lamp above with the reflector actually doing something.. you might get good buds. really thats just sufficient growth to be capable of performing under 600s for flower though. flowering at 150w levels, i just dont know. i would hazard a guess its something like this though.
Click to view attachment
there lit at 45 degrees, a meter from a 600. it was an experiament with 6 cuttings in various stages of rootedness and there all within say 12-16 inchs, plus the pot. wood lats are 38mm so there perhaps 5 inch. you would have 14" to get your lighting in.
there actually surprising results. its No1, 75% sat. Ive always thought of it as being more indica than that though. A cronic would be much shorter flowered from clone. 12" max im told. there not going to stretch any further though.

its just something ive seen done, so thought i would share. the net is perhaps the better idea, it guarantees your height without having to know the strain intermately. get into flower early though.

Hi all

I've had a slight rethink on the layout of my cabinet. Instead of the vertical partition I'm now thinking of using the shelf at a high position about 8" from the top of the cabinet and putting all the ventilation & electrics above it. This will reduce my growing height to about 28" but as I'm going to scrog or lst will this matter too much? The reason for this is that it gives me a larger horizontal plant area. I now think I can get 3 or 4 plants in the area 36" x 18".
I'm almost certainly going to go with enviros with this setup which is what I was leaning towards anyway.

What are your opinions on these revisions?

Many thanks

A

hi wow this is really similar to the drobe ive just set up mines also a stealth special i started with a 125 blue enviro then i used a 200w red enviro on top of that. im just starting to flower and about to install a 250w hps i was tempted by a 400 but i think my plants would fry. i extract with a 10cm rvk in to a carbon filter no smells at all a bit of a gail force wind sound when the fan is on. the 200w would keep your ladys warm at night but if the garage gets really cold in the day too you might have to think about heating your intake. ive had more problems with high temperatures than cold but mines in a heated room well i try to keep it cool. i threw myself in at the deep end and adjusted the environment as i went but if i could do it again i would have measured temperatures before i put any plants in.

good luck with this i love a drobe project

hey ANON, why dont you buy feminized seeds? saves you the bother of eliminating males, what is it? 1 out every 100? and i think you sould use the rethink.

have your filter inside the room, connecting to the fan which will sit on the shelf. you could also have your intake fan in there too, and use ducting to direct it to the bottom of your room.

and yeah i think 2 x 125w enviro's will be great in there, just use 2 blue for veg, and 1 of each for flower.

a few little things that i would do to save space tho;
use sqr pots to take up more floor room, i think youl get 10 - 15, 6" square pots in there,
tie them down around the inside of the pots (an inch from the rim itself) &
use a net to do a ScrOG, and loop the tips back into the net if they protrude more than 2 or 3 inches.

have you got a pic of your metal cab?!? it would be better to help if you could get 1 up

good luck DIV

Hi Guys

I have another dilema.

I have three lighting options which I'd like you to comment on please.

A ) For vegging fit two 125w blue cfls end to end and then change one of them with a 200w red cfl for flowering. (will be a tight fit but I think just about possible) (and most expensive option)

or

B ) Stick with the 125w blue cfl for vegging and then add a multitude of 20w cfls (aprox 12 or so) evenly spread across the growspace area for flowering.

or

C ) Use a load (20 or so) of 20w cfls (2700k) for the whole grow. (not much blue light)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I only have a growspace height of 28" so I think HPS is out of the question so please don't suggest it.

Many thanks

A

gotta go with A, but you could also cram a few cfl's in there too.

Hi again guys and girls

My new cabinet is coming along very nicely. I've finished the custom made filter box and cut all the vent holes in the back of the cabinet. All I have left to do is finish the lighting rig (which consists of 1x 125w enviro in blue and 8x 25w cfls in red), mount the extract fan (a centrifugal bathroom one) and wire it all up.
The whole thing is demountable so it can easily turn back into a normal storage cabinet. The filter, fan and most of the electrics are mounted on the top shelf and all the rest of the electrical stuff (heater, lights and thermostats all plug into the underside of the shelf.
I'll post a pic or two soon.

My next question though is about actual growing strategy. I've had two conflicting bits of advice. I'll be growing from seed to start with so should I;

a ) go for 3 or 4 larger plants using lst and/or scrog (not forgetting the 28" of available height)
or
b ) go for 10 smaller plants and just flower them early (letting them grow straight up naturally)

Also, is it common to have worries about actually starting to grow? I've built the cabinet with no worries etc (and absolutely noone knows of it's existance apart from you guys....shhhh) but the thought of actually having the plants in there is niggling me slightly. I'm sure once it gets going I'll be fine. The thought of having a dealer free supply of green is what's driving this project along.

Many thanks for any helpful advice

A

Update

Just got the lighting reflector and the cabinet insulation to do now and all should be ok to start my grow. I'll post a pic or two of my creation once these two items are finished.

In my previous post I asked a couple of questions about growing strategies ( no of plants, lst and/or scrog etc). Has anyone got any advice regarding this please?

Many thanks

A

Hi Anon, I am doing something fairly similar to you. But in a space quite alot smaller!

SOG or flowering direct from seed/small cutting. Has the advantage of lower/no veg time, no fiddly training.

The disadvantage is, you're pretty much at the mercy of the plants genetics as to how tall it gets and how many budsites it produces. For this reason, it is only really advisable when you either have alot of headroom to play with, or you know your genetics inside out. And of course, higher plant counts (4 per square foot is minimum for sog).

SCROG/LST or training your plant. Has the advantage of potentially higher yields (if you get a more even canopy). With the downside of requiring more work. There is also the risk that if you find out you've got a male amongst the ladies. You could lose a significant amount of effort, removing the male from the net. And leave your floor area less well filled (10 plants 1 male, no biggie, 2 plants one male and you've lost half your yield).

I plan on going SCROG and trying to force a cutting or two to show me sex before I flip to 12/12.

For reference, I'm using T5 striplighting. Which is the most efficient fluoro on the market currently. I would still suggest a 150W HPS, its more efficient than Enviro's.

hey up matey sounds like a decent grow your doin any chance of them pics you were gunna put up(leepy)

Hi again

My christmas plague has gone and the cupboard is now finished.

Pics are available here.

I need some beans now. Any suggestions for this cabinet's size etc? Also, what is the longest you could leave a normal compost grow unattended as I have a short holiday coming up in a few weeks time. I may have to wait until after that to start the grow?

Any more answers to my previous questions would be appreciated. Thanks Uglykittens

A