Wise-Jamba's 1st Grow; low ceiling 400w ebb & flow scrog

[wise-jamba]

Hey Guys,

Great forum first of all! It's certainly been a mass help over these past few months i've spent seriously researching this project.

In a few weeks/months time i will be acquiring some space which i'm planning on using for my very first grow, but there's a few restrictions to work around. After many a night spent researching and pondering, i've decided on the following set up, which i've also been drawing up as the idea's been taking shape. Sorry for the MASS essay, but i have a massive plan, too excited for it - gona keep a full journal!

There are a few loose ends i'm not sure about though, which someone might be able to help with?


General:

Firstly the grow needs to be stealth, so the usual smell & sound tackling issues apply.
Secondly, i'm limited to the number of plants i'm allowed to have (politics!), the maximum ultimately being six, but currently only have the funds to do four, so i've been planning the room in such a way that i can extend it for two more babies at a later date. The main aim here is to maximise the yield per plant!
Most importantly, the roof height i have to play with is only 4'4"!
The grow will be a 6' x 8' x 4'4" room built within a larger low-level basement, approx' 10' x 20'
4No plants, not certain of strain just yet, wanting indica for short bushiness and will be growing from clones, so will be dependant on what clones are available from my local supplier. (White Widows sounds appealing upto now, but also kinda modelled the grow where possible on the ridiculous NBG 450gr per plant journal, so if i was going to go from seed, i would have used serious seeds chronic!)
About this; i think i'm pretty much clued up from vegitative stage, but not sure exactly about going from clones to veg. Firstly, are clones the same as cuttings?? From what i hear, it's cuttings which are available in my area. Could i expect these to come already rooted, ready to plant?? Or will i need a rooting device??? Also, not quite clear about pot transfer & when etc...
The plants will be scrogged of course, aiming for a 2' x 2' square screen per plant, exact dimensions & layout can be seen in the grow plans/drawings.
Plan is to LST during veg, veg 75% of the screens then flip & trim all undergrowth 1" beneath screen


Lighting:

Going to use 1No 400w HPS/MH bulb in air cooled supernova hoods, per plant. Running maxilight digibright ballasts (positioned outside the grow room), MH for veg (any reasonably priced bulb reccommendations?), Sylviana grolux HPS for flower.
Like the sound of the gas lantern routine schedule for veg; 12/5.5/1/5.5, then 24 hours no lights before flipping to 12/12 for flower for two weeks, then using diminishing lighting routine, knockin half an hour off weekly until i'm finishing after 6 weeks on 9/15. I read that using MH for veg and then a further 2 weeks into flower, after 24hrs dark, reduces stretch, anyone have any views on this?
I read that total darkness for the last 2 days of flower before harvest increases resin production, so going to do that too, however, a potentially stupid question about that; i also read not to feed the plants during lights off, so, during the 24 hrs dark before flower, and the last 48hrs before crop (which will also be straight water flush, do is till continue the water/feeding cycle as normal???


Fans/Filter:

I'm planning on using a Rhino Pro 6" (150mm x 600mm, 900m3/hr) filter. I'll be running 2 paralell lines of 2 (3 at later date) x 400w air cooled lights in series, so will need to split the ducting before and after the lights.
Fans, i'm going for RVK 6" L1 (150mm, 660m3/hr) for outlet & RVK 6" A1 (150mm, 420m3/hr) for inlet, both on a syscom twin fan controller to keep temps as constant as possible (heard of RVK & syscom buzzing problems when used together, seems to happen to some people, but not others??? Suppose i can only try it and see. Any Feedback?).
The inlet will be sucked from outside, through the basement wall via some sort of double airbrick. I read an inlet filter is best to stop mites or other nasties from being sucked into the grow. Are there any suggestions for which filters are best & most cost effective for this?
The outlet will be filtered outside the grow room, into the basement room, where i'll be putting another air brick or two at the opposite end so air can move/be pushed freely outside, hopefully diluting any escaping smell in the large room area. As a backup, if smell is still noticeable from outside the basement, i could use an ozone device thing in the basement room (outside the grow room). We'll have to see about that.
To keep sound to a minimum, i'll be using the carboard box filled with expanding foam trick to dampen the sound of the fans. Hoping the 6" L1 & A1 fans will handle the workload nicely enough not to kick out too much noise... again, we'll see.


Medium/Feeding/Nutes

Grow medium will be a few inch of hyrdoton at the bottom then filled with hyrdoton cubes with pebbles on top to keep the light off & prevent algae.
Wanted the grow to be as low maintainance as possible, so opted for an ebb & flow feeding system. Obviously room height ruled out gravity fed, so going to use an outlet & inlet pump from a single 120l resevoir on timers. The plan is to set up a main outlet hoses from the res, via an 88gph pump which then splits and runs to each pot individually, and then the exact same set up running from each pot, back again.
Each pot will be in 2 x 25l rubber buckets, one with holes in, sat within the other with the hoses run into the bottom for flooding & draining.
I'm going to use the full Canna Aqua nutes range, i've found my tap water conductivity from my water supplier to be 0.5EC, Canna have a useful nute calculator which i'm going to follow. Also going to try and avoid flushing the resvoir any more than i have to.
Looking at the feeding schule, i'll be flushing the resevoir once following stretch, when switching from Aqua Vega to Aqua Flora, and then again at the end of flower, after the use of Aqua Flora. However, for anyone who've used these nutes, two things i'm not quite sure about;
The schedule includes a weeks worth of PK13/14 mid-way through flower. This would mean adding it for the week, then flushing after and adding all the other nutes again without the PK. Is this really necessary, or rather, is it worth a full resevoir flush & re-adding the other nutes for the benefit of a weeks PK13/14???
Also, the second flush will be towards the end of flower, during ripening, when Aqua Flora is no longer used. The only nutes reccommended then are Zym and Boost. I know i need a water only flush period for about 10 days before harvest, but, would this 10-day clear water no-nute flush come after this stage, or is Canna reccommending to use Zym & Boost right up until the very end??? Any advice here would be great.


Thanks for reading Guys! Any help or feedback would be much appreciated!!! Can't wait to get this baby up and running!


Peace out!!!

Wise

[PeterGriffin]

I've used <5 feet space for a while, just needs snapping or tying up when it gets stretchy, I don't think any seed will stay under 4,4 especially if that's from floor and not top of soil. It'll need persuading. Looks good tho - do you have something to move air around, outwith your extraction set up? Monster PC fans can be handy...