Hi,

I had the need to move into a warddrobe for growing a while ago and have the basis of a growdrobe now.

I am now trying to convert my original design to make a complete light/sound/smell proof growdrobe as it needs to be situated in my bedroom.

Before I unveil my new plans i'll show some pics of the current situation and how I got there.

Here are some pics of the current growdrobe

And here's one of the plants that are just finishing off in there, 2 Kali Mist. Quite small but should still get a 1/4 oz off each.

Now, i best explain my plans...

It needs to be completely light/sound/smell proof, light proofing should be fairly straight forward, with sound proofing proving to be the tricky one.

I am hoping to house everything in one cupboard; flowering plants, vegging plants, clones and bonsai mothers. To do this i'll divide the cupboard in 2 down the middle; with the left side for flowering (as there will be slightly more height on this side), the right side will be split with the top for clones and mothers and bottom for vegging plants.

Lights
I'll be using a 200W and 125W flowering envirolite in the flowering area, 200W veg enviro in vegging area, and 2-6 20W energy savers in the clone/mum area.

Light Proofing
The light proofing consists of a wooden frame just inside the doors with long 2-3" wide wood. I then got some cheap sticky velcro and attached this all around. Doubled light proof material (black and white i think) was then cut to size and velcro stuck to the edges of this.

Only problem is the velcro was cheap and a lot of it has come unstuck. So i'm in the process of using no more nails to stick the velcro to the wood, and hope this problem will be solved.

RVK Box
I'm going to build a box for a 4" rvk which i've had lying around for ages.
This will use 9mm mdf with holes for intake and outtake, with the box size being 32cmx32cm. The rvk will be wrapped in bubblewrap inside the box.

Carbon Filter Box
I'll also make a box to hold the carbon filter from the advice on a wellknown equipment suppliers website for extracting from two areas.

Silencer
After the air has been extracted through the filter and through the fan it will pass through a homemade silencer before leaving the drobe.
This will be made out of a 50cm long piece of thick plastic tube, with 22mm and 6.5mm holes drilled all over. This will be covered with the insulating layer from acoustic ducting.


The plans for the growdrobe are attached. I haven't put heights on everything but can give any measurements on request. each square is 1cm. The top of the plan is the top view of the drobe with the front view below.

I choose the name for the drobe 'The Crystal Ship' after a song by The Doors.

"The crystal ship is being filled, a thousands girls, a thousands thrills. A million ways to spend your time"

looks sweet as mate,keep us posted as 2 what ur gonna do...plans look well thought out,like i said b4...let us know how u get on...peace.

yeah looks good man !! you know you don't really have to split the veg, mother & clones they can all go in
1 area !!! and with this i reckon u can get away with just the one 125 watt of enviro for this section of the drobe !!! just depends how big u vegg before u flower !! with this set up you can split your drobe horizontally ( using maybe 1.5-2 ft of space for the mother,clones and the other larger section for flowering !! the more space u have for flowering the better i think !!! and maybe look at getting another fan to bring more air in and how about an hps/hid light for flowering ??

good luck

I think i may use different light cycles for the bonsai/clones (20/4) and the vegging plants (18/6). though need to think about this somemore. Also with the different areas i can use less light for the clones/bonsais that don't need it and a big light for the veg's.

If i split horizontally I would only get plant+pot height of 55cm for each area, which would probably be a little too small. Also to sustain myself I only need a cycle of 3 plants in/out every 4/5 weeks. I'll write more about my grow cycles later on.

I may get another fan, dependant on how well the ventilation works when setup. I figure there should be enough suction for a passive intake to work well.

I do have a 400W HPS, so when it's all setup and ventilation is working well then i'll bung the hps in the flowering room for a day to see what happens.

Cheers

having looked around i think the best cycle for veg is 20/4 thats why im saying put mums,clones and veg together , however i agree this can cause height probs for the flowering section !!! but u need to get that hps in
if your gonna grow 5 foot bushes in your flower section enviros just dont cut it for big grows ....!!

all the best man im sure ur gonna have some primo shit regardless .......

Hello again,

I've had a busy few days constructing my rvk box.. and i'll tell you a little of my tale...

Ok the idea is, I make a mdf box to put my 4" rvk in with a load of sound proofing stuff (more to discuss later), which then will suspend in my growdrobe. (see pics of the plans)

First is a picture of my prototype cardboard box, it did reduce the sound a bit with pillows inside.

Next to that is my rough sketch of my dimensions.

So there's 6 pieces of mdf, 4 of the size 311mm x 302mm, 2 of the size 320mm x 320mm.

The four sides go in the way shown by the rough image on the left, 2 will have holes in for the ducting. covered on back and front by the 32x32 pieces, one of which being the way to open it.

The pic in the middle is the mdf with my new toy lazer tape. I actually didn't like using the lazer and found it easier without.

And the pic on the right is some wood with measurements on woo!

funny i thought ya ment the strain named crystal ship killer plant by the way but good luck with your new grow stank

So here are the 6 pieces of wood cut to size. using; saw, measuring tape, metal rule, compass, pencil, couple of splifs.

And on the right; The lines drawn for the holes on two of the sides.

as each side of the cube (not a cube but 3d rectangle can't remember the word) is 32cm made up of a side of wood 31.1cm and and end of another side 0.9cm the whole should be make slightly of center of the piece of side wood...sorry hard to explain.

As the total length is 32cm the center of the hole needs to be 16cm in from the piece of side leaving 15.1cm the over way.

I used a compass from a cheap maths set to draw the 100mm hole

Now to make the holes...

I don't have a jigsaw so I used my new b+d drill, nice.

Using a 4/5mm drill bit i made lots of holes around the circle, being careful to get the edges just touching the line, takes a little while to do.

Then I drilled a few of the holes together to make a hole for my leatherman's saw to go in. Then just used the small saw to cut out the hole.. leathermans are great!

Then I cleaned up the edges with a file and sanded with sandpaper, not completely well rounded edges but they'll do for me.

Next to glue and screw!

I first glues the four sides together taking care to put the right pieces together..

I drew a line along the edge of the piece to be screwed to the top of another. This line was half the distance of the mdf thickness, so half 0.9mm, 0.45mm so that the screws would go in correctly.

I then glued the top of the piece standing on its end with no more nails type adhesive and stuck it on. Then i used the drill with a small drill bit to make holes for the screws, just to make it easier to put them in. Then screwed it in three places.

Then with 2 L shaped pieces of sides, i glued and stuck these at the same time to make the second pic.

Next i glued and screwed the back on with a 4.5mm line around for the screws.

Turned over you can see the box. The open part will be the bit facing you when you open the cupboard, so really it's on it's side. I have left this open to put the wrapped rvk inside, and it will only be secured by 4-8 screws around the edge and some gaffa tape so that the box can be opened fairly easily again, and whilst hanging up if needed.

Then I sealed the inside with sealant using my cartridge gun which cost about £1.50. Yeah its not a very tidy job but it'll do.

Now I'm at the point where I need to decide what to put in the box with the rvk to reduce the noise and vibrations....i have a few ideas;

Bubblewrap - fairly cheap few quid for a few rolls

The stuffing out of some cheap pillows - 5-10 quid prob?

thicker sponge from sofa cushions - if i drive round i'll surely find an abandoned sofa.

or loft insulation - the only type i've found is either the thick stuff in a huge bag - or the stuff in a roll called space blanket i think which comes in 100/150/200 mm thickness. this is £8-13 however.

or polystyrene sheets - about £2 for a about 3m square i think

some kind of multi layered inside - eg carpet/polystyrene/thick sponge/stuffing/bubblewrap together!?

or,

Expanding spray insulating foam stuff? - I have heard this idea discussed before but haven't seen anyone saying they've actually used it. If I fill the box with expanding foam equally around the fan and ducting will this work well as it'll take all the room in the box entirely? perhaps wrapping it in a couple layers of bubblewrap then foaming it?

I am thinking of glueing a layer of carpet to the outside as I've heard carpet is good for this.

The rvk box will be suspended from the top of the cupboard on bungees

Please any feedback on sound/vibration insulating would be great. What have you used that works well? What doesn't? Has anyone done some experimenting and tried a few different things?

Cheers

S Monkey

Great looking plans, wish you well with it.

Sound-Proofing - I think the carpet is supposed to go inside the box, to soak any sound vibrations. Not sure if that was what you were intending to do ??...........As by the reading of what you wrote, it sounds like you are talking about using the carpet on the outside ????

Have you considered proper sound reducing stuff??....like what they use in studios etc.
I was looking at some studio supply site last week,(can't remember which one, sorry) and they had fairly thin sheets of this fire-proof sound absorbing material stuff, I thought that would be great for a grow-room, but never saved the link....doh Can't remeber either if it was expensive...doh
Try google and see.

I have had a look for proper sound proofing material on ebay yet it'll cost around £20-30 for the amount I need.

I do have however some Duralay that a chippy left when doing our kitchen floor (identified as duralay by a uk420 member, thanks). This is apparently good at sound proofing, so i'll line the inside of the box with this.

I think I may do a bit of an experiment with different materials and combonations to find the most quiet. I'll try this with just the cheaper options. If it's still too loud once it goes in the drobe, i'll either sound proof the walls, roof and floor of the drobe (unfortunately I threw out loads of the duralay and don't have much left now) or try some expanding foam in the rvk box.

I'm going to carry on making other parts of the drobe for now and will post details soon.

If a mod reads this I have a quick query..

Should I keep the details of how I make each part of my drobe eg. Carbon Filter in a box, rvk in box, silencer > diy kit... and the rest of the setup of the drobe in this thread?

Or shoud I keep all of the details in this thread?

thanks

ok i'll talk about all the parts in this topic...

Whilst I put the rvk box aside for a while whilst pondering sound proofing methods, i'll make a start on the carbon filter box

Carbon Filter Box

The carbon filter will be placed in an air tight box with one hole through which the carbon filter is connected and two further holes to extract from each grow area.

I have drawn a sketch of it but my camera has run out of batteries so i'll post that tmrw.

First here are the pieces of mdf that I have cut for the task

What about cotton wool?

Cotton wool, yeah not a bad idea. I may add that to my experiment. Keep those suggestions coming.

On the left if the rough sketch plan of the carbon filter box with measurements, refer back to the main drobe plan to see where it goes in the drobe.

Ok so now i've cut the sides of the box I need to cut the three holes, which have been measured out on the right wall and front wall of the box.

I had to work out exactly where the filter sat in the box to get the holes lined up correctly. more tmrw...

ps. Cheers to everyone elses drobe designs on uk420 they have helped me plan my upgrade alot. with thanks to Church for his velcro and sheeting light proofing just behind the main door, i use this in my drobe currently.

Next I drilled out the holes using the same method for the rvk box (see above).

I am going to use some plastic tube to fix in the holes to make more of an airtight fit with the ducting. So the hole connected to the filter and the hole that leads to the veg area needed to be slightly over 104mm i think it was. The third hole draws air from the flowering area in which the carbon filter is placed so will not have any ducting attached to it (unless i find i need to, to create equal suction from both rooms..we'll see).

The left pic is just the sides balanced to show the 2 side holes and box together.

Next I glued some small pieces of mdf to the base of the box to hold the carbon filter in place

Now i'm going to move onto the tube that will connect ducting at various places in the drobe.

I'll be using plastic connecting tube so that I can get the tightest possible seal between areas, as i'm worried if I just have ducting trailing through the joining parts that there may be tiny gaps.

One larger piece will connect the rvk and carbon filter through the divide. Another will connect the extracting ducting from the carbon filter to the veg area to ensure a light proof seal.

I will also need to use two bits of tube for the carbon filter to have an air tight intake from the veg area and an airtight outtake to the veg area where the rvk box is.

I also need to use 2 pieces of tube for the silencer. As the silencer is made of water pipe/tube which is 110mm wide the ducting will not fit over this so I will have to connect some 100mm tube to the 110mm tube (and they fit perfectly), so that the ducting can be attached.

One piece of tube is for where the ducting from the silencer leaves the back of the cupboard so that there are no light leaks out the back.

The red on the diagram shows where the tube will be used.

I used a 350mm white tube which was a ridiculous £6.50! it's only a bit of plastic!

anyway

I divided this up into the lengths needed, with the one joining rvk and filter being longer as it needed to attach ducting both sides of the divide whereas the others only attach one piece... all except the one connecting the hole on filter to ducting outside the filter which needs to be bigger.

so 7 pieces in total.

And here's the pic of the measurements, I pushed the tube threw one of the holes in the carbon filter box to draw the lines for the holes as measuring and drawing was a lot easier this way.

I then used a junior hacksaw to cut up the sections and sanded down each edge to made it smooth so that it doesn't rip any ducting.

More tomorrow...

I just noticed the ducting from the filter and rvk don't join up in my original blueprint so I have corrected this, here is the updated blueprint

S Monkey

That's a nice looking settup, I love the name as well (a 1000 girls and a 1000 thrills ). Have you thought of filling the box full of that expanding foam stuff? I've seen a few boxed RVK's on here being silenced that way.

Good luck anyway, all looking good

quality drobe mate. good luck

i'll be back to see the updates

Try here mate, this site specialises in sound proofing materials. You can get foam matting and acoustic foam filling spray and all sorts. The prices are quite cheap considering studio soundproofing foam costs hundreds of pounds. The site sells all sorts of soundproofing materials. Although I forgot to look where you are based and this site is in the UK

http://www.noisestopsystems.com/buy_soundp...amp;x=6&y=3

Cheers for the ideas everyone. I have saved those suppliers and may need to use them in the end.

first I will try cheaper alternatives (eg. bubblewrap, foam, etc.etc.) then if I don't get the desired silence I will either then use expanding foam and/or line all the walls, floor and ceiling with acoustic underlay. Also adding a layer of mdf to the back as the back wall is only a few mm thick.



Now to the carbon filter again,

I glued a small section to the front of the filter box, this will for where the ducting is connected from the veg area. I used a cheap version of no more nails.

I did the same for the right hand side hole where the ducting meets the outside of the box and where the carbon filter connects to the inside of the box. This section of tube is larger than the other as it needs to have a ducting connection on each side of the mdf.

I also glued and screwed the base and right hand side of the box, using the same method as with the rvk box above.

Next I sealed both around where the tube meets the mdf for each tube. Using normal cheap sealant.


Then I glued and screwed the left side and top together, followed be glueing and screwing where the two sections meet together to form a frame. This frame will then have a board on the back and front.


The back was then glued and screwed to the frame.

(the tyre mark is there because i got the mdf from a neighbour who had it on his drive)

Waheeh! getting there, I then sealed all the inside and outside edges.

This was using a cartridge gun and a cheap bottle of white sealant

Nice one S Monkey

Can't wait to see the results of your CF box.

I posted a theory of mine on http://www.uk420.com/boards/index.php?show...80625&st=10
for how an external inline CF could possibly be created.

If yours works then there is no reason why my theory wouldn't work.

I'll be watching this with great interest.

Abraxas

And now the final two stages of the carbon filter box... wooo

I cut a piece of the aluminium ducting to size, which was quite small as the gap between the filter entrance and where the plastic tube enter the side is about 3mm.

The ducting was actually cut down to half that length after one unsuccessful attempt at putting the filter in the box.

I secured the ducting to both the filter entrance and tube with jubilee clips, which cost £3 for two.

I took a while getting the ducting and filter into place and I carefully used a screwdriver to push the ducting around the filter connector.

...and finally...

I screwed the front of the box in place, using only 6 screws and no glue this time, to make easier access. The front was sealed around with duct tape to hopefully block any air gaps.

woo done!

Cheers Abraxas, my carbon filter box will be inside the flowering area extracting from there and the separate veg area. So it didn't really need to be airtight for this as any air drawn through gaps would be from the flowering room anyway. However if I need extra height I should be able to move the carbon filter box on top of the cupboard (hidden in/by boxes and junk) and use it as an external carbon filter.

I start on the homemade silencer next...

now for a smoke

Homemade Silencer

Now to make my homemade silencer.

It's going to be slightly smaller than shop bought and other DIY silencers (75cm > 120cm) due to lack of space. My silencer will be 50cm long, so I hope this will work.

It will be made from a water pipe which is 110mm in diameter.

I have decided to drill 2 different sized holes. I have done no research into the science of acoustics, however have made a guess that 2 different sizes may help absorb different frequencies of sound (if anyone knows anything about this please enlighten me). Further thinking to my design is that normal silencers for motorbikes and other things probably have only one size hole, however the size of this hole is probably related to the frequency of noise the object makes....as I don't know the attributes of the noise my fan makes, it may also be best to make 2 different sized holes to account for this.

I also wondered whether placing the holes in an ordered symmetrical fashion or randomly would affect the absorbtion of sound. I have decided to order my holes, however not strictly measure the placing The two sized holes will alternate, this may help, i'm not sure.

The two sizes of holes will be a 6.5mm drill bit and a 25mm flat wood drill bit.

The 2 pics on the left are when I had only just started, the two on the right are once all the holes had been drilled (without been filed however).

a really well illustrated guide i made my cf box out of the box it came in i seen it done in a thread of mu's many moons ago but the wood method dould be more efficient and durable, good work s m

You Rock Monkey!

Really Good Work! (-_-)

Thanks Noam and Pushprocess.. hopefully this will all work well when i finish

As the 100mm ducting doesn't fit around the 110mm tube (I hadn't measured the tube before I had been given it and started to use it). I found out that a piece of the ventilation tubing (about 104mm i think) fits snuggly into the water pipe (silencer). As the ducting fits to the ventilation tube this has solved the problem.

If that makes sense

Originally I thought I could use cheap funnells cut to size to make a reducer, which may have worked but the ventilation ducting solved the problem.

So next I cleaned up the silencer using a file and sandpaper. I then glued two pieces of the plastic (ventilation) tube to the silencer (plastic water pipe) using a cheap equivalent of no more nails glue.

The full silencer is now 56cm long.

Quality carpentry! A craftsman at work

Nice baffle ain't the holes too big though?

Very Nice DIY Skills!

B&Q Will Be Proud Of You!

Keep Us Up Dated On How They Work! (-_-)

I've been waiting to see what progress you've made S.Monkey,looking very good mate.

Will your CF box you made keep the veg and flower parts light-tight to one another ?

I'm going to have to make something like this myself,and i can do it OK but the only bit that had me stumped was the light coming down the ducting from veg and flower.

I'm presuming you're using ducting of course.

I was told an S-bend in one of the pieces of ducting should stop it.

How have you approached[and hopefully solved] this problem S Monkey ?

Thanks for the replys, thanks for highlighting that Deanbo, i've had an idea and drawn some pics.

I've drawn a diagram showing the flow of air between the rooms. It's not to scale, and I've altered the position of objects to display things easier.

(the hole extracting from the veg area will actually be a little higher than the hole from filter to rvk, and the hole blowing outside the drobe will be in the back not the right handside.)

Light may come from the veg area through the area shown in the yellow circle on the 2nd diagram, yet i could attach some ducting to the flowering area extraction hole in the filter and hopefully solve this potential problem.

Light may also come through the intake, yet I will be designing a light baffle bringing in air through the veg area and separating into the two areas. This will take a fair bit of design but will be one of the latter things that I do, as I need to sound proof first and this may take up extra width on all walls of the drobe.

Not sure really, I hope they aren't and it still works. Anyone know whether 6.5mm and 12.5mm holes are good sizes to use?

Next I covered the silencer in one leg of some tights, then cut and tied the end of the leg. This is being used so that none of the insulation material gets sucked through the holes and blow out the end. This idea is based on Rudders advice here;

http://www.uk420.com/boards/index.php?show...amp;hl=silencer

Now I'll need to cover the tube in some acoustic ducting material and then with some white and black sheet to keep it airtight. I may use a larger solid plastic tube to cover it, if I think it is needed at a later date.

I'd have thought the smaller the holes and more holes the better but I never made a baffle before.Your making a decent job can't wait to find out how quiet your fan sounds as i'll be doing mine soon.

Those are the guy's I was on about in my earlier post.
That matting stuff on the roll looks good to me, comes in 3mm and 6mm thickness. Fairly cheap as well.

Now I decided to cut the end of the tight material covering off, this is so that the ducting can be taped to the ends properly as I found the duct tape sticks to the tights and not the tube. I stuck the tight material to the tube with duct tape.

I then cut a section of acousic ducting surround to 50cm, leaving room each side to stick to the tube.

Next I fixed a bolt through 2 of the smaller holes at one end. This is so that some chain can be fixed to the tube for hanging in the drobe. The tube will be hung vertically in the drobe. The two bolts are not opposite each other as the tube will be hung in a corner and the bolts may get in the way perhaps.

Then using some washing up gloves I pulled the ducting cover over the tube. I was worried about getting crap from the insulation in my hands, hence using the gloves.

Next I made tiny holes in the insulation and cover and poked the bolts through. Also adding a piece of duct tape which will stop any rips developing and provide a bit of a seal.