LED for 1st grow??

[Satchitananda]

Just now, Ecto said:

Looks awesome, I’ve ordered autos, hopefully will be easier for 1st time, was going to try coco/perlite as medium, what did u use? Do you have a intake fan too?

 

 

I used passive intake, I grow in compost, sometimes Plant Magic and sometimes a general multi purpose.

[Superstealth]

@Ecto 

 

Hi fellow shed grower here, my shed was insulated when I built it 12+ years ago but I stupidly didn't use kingspan as the whole thing 4.8m x 3m was built for £600 and it didn't fit the budget at the time ( I dont use the whole area to grow as over half of it is an office as I work from home ) 

 

I will warn you now of all the problems you are likely to encounter

 

Heat - To hot in the summer, to cold in the winter

 

Solutions - LED in the summer and run as many hours as possible at night, photoperiods rather than auto's will be easier as you are going to need to run lights during the day with Auto's and the cost of the electric will be higher.  Use a HPS and run it at night in the winter or switch to Auto's then, its better to use electric to power lights than a fan heater and far cheaper.  Insulation is your friend, I would look to build a tent using 100mm kingspan as this will also save you a fortune in the winter compared to a tent, its also cheaper depending on the size of the shed to make an insulated box than to insulate the shed

 

Bugs - Make sure you get a bug filter on your intake fan to stop any getting in, there quite easy to get bugs but a damn site harder to completely get rid of them.

 

Equipment wise I would suggest getting either some type of quantum board style LED suitable for the space or one of the 200/300 square bar style ones that Lumatek and Maxibright make. As others have said you can get away with probably 4 plants in an 80 x 80, this will lesson the time needed to veg keeping your electric bills lower, you can do 1 but you will need to veg it longer to fill the space.  A good filter and ideally a back up one on standby as well for when yours starts to fail unless you have a growshop that you can race to if its needed.  Speaking as someone who has multiples of every size fan from 4" to 10" I would suggest getting the biggest and best quality equipment your budget will stretch to and then using controllers to down power it, growing is quite addictive and it wont be long before you decide to look at ways to do more, if your equipment is larger at the start than it needs to be then you can just up the power, if you buy just enough to do your current size you will need to replace everything, also things like extraction fans work far quieter if they can be run at say 50% than flat out, my mate has a 10" fan and how on earth his neighbours don't hear the bloody thing in their garden I have no idea, it sounds like a jet engine starting when it kicks up to 100% power

 

Good luck and I hope it goes well for you, if you start a diary their are tons of helpful people on here that will try to help you

 

 

 

 

Edited April 21, 2022 by Superstealth

[Ecto]

On 21/04/2022 at 3:14 PM, Superstealth said:

@Ecto 

 

Hi fellow shed grower here, my shed was insulated when I built it 12+ years ago but I stupidly didn't use kingspan as the whole thing 4.8m x 3m was built for £600 and it didn't fit the budget at the time ( I dont use the whole area to grow as over half of it is an office as I work from home ) 

 

I will warn you now of all the problems you are likely to encounter

 

Heat - To hot in the summer, to cold in the winter

 

Solutions - LED in the summer and run as many hours as possible at night, photoperiods rather than auto's will be easier as you are going to need to run lights during the day with Auto's and the cost of the electric will be higher.  Use a HPS and run it at night in the winter or switch to Auto's then, its better to use electric to power lights than a fan heater and far cheaper.  Insulation is your friend, I would look to build a tent using 100mm kingspan as this will also save you a fortune in the winter compared to a tent, its also cheaper depending on the size of the shed to make an insulated box than to insulate the shed

 

Bugs - Make sure you get a bug filter on your intake fan to stop any getting in, there quite easy to get bugs but a damn site harder to completely get rid of them.

 

Equipment wise I would suggest getting either some type of quantum board style LED suitable for the space or one of the 200/300 square bar style ones that Lumatek and Maxibright make. As others have said you can get away with probably 4 plants in an 80 x 80, this will lesson the time needed to veg keeping your electric bills lower, you can do 1 but you will need to veg it longer to fill the space.  A good filter and ideally a back up one on standby as well for when yours starts to fail unless you have a growshop that you can race to if its needed.  Speaking as someone who has multiples of every size fan from 4" to 10" I would suggest getting the biggest and best quality equipment your budget will stretch to and then using controllers to down power it, growing is quite addictive and it wont be long before you decide to look at ways to do more, if your equipment is larger at the start than it needs to be then you can just up the power, if you buy just enough to do your current size you will need to replace everything, also things like extraction fans work far quieter if they can be run at say 50% than flat out, my mate has a 10" fan and how on earth his neighbours don't hear the bloody thing in their garden I have no idea, it sounds like a jet engine starting when it kicks up to 100% power

 

Good luck and I hope it goes well for you, if you start a diary their are tons of helpful people on here that will try to help you

 

 

 

 

Great reply, thank you! Will do a diary once I find how to do it on here