Ogof said:
Sorry for the confusion Stoney Bud. I will try to attach a drawing file I did in AutoCad. In case it does not work I will explain the best I can. The interior of the closet is 10 feet. The doors are 4 feet times 2 equals 8 feet. So I have an 8 foot opening to the closet. If the doors are closed it is 2 feet deep. The is a 1 foot section to the left and right of the doors.
Hey man, that was excellent! I can see it clearly now. You've got a perfect place to do the deed.
Step one: Build a solid wall in the middle of the space. It has to be light tight. You need to be able to open one door without any light what-so-ever getting into the other space. Do whatever you need to do to accomplish this. Test it when it's nice and dark in the room. Absolutly no light leaks when the door is closed on either side. You will be alternating the veg and flowering sides so this is important.
Step Two: Paint the entire area on the inside with Flat Pure White. I use "Behr" number 1050, Ultra Pure White. It works great. Make sure you put several light coats on. You want a pure white, evenly painted surface. No need to paint the floor unless it's a real dark color. It won't hurt anything if you do paint it. Paint the inside of the doors as well.
Ok, now for the equipment.
You'll need two stong, good quality plastic containers that are about 18 inches long by 12 inches or more deep. The manufacturers make em all about the same width for those dimensions.
One will be in one side of the area and the other will be in the other side. Yes, I know more would fit in the space, but you'll be using LST to fill every nook and cranny in the grow space so your hydro grow chambers are only needed to feed the plants, not to fill the space they're in. One per/side will be plenty.
I would suggest puting the resevoir into another room where it is easily accesible no matter what the crops are doing. This can save your ass later if you have to work on your nutrient or pump. More on the resevoir later.
Go to Walmart and in the garden center, you'll find decoritive landscaping rock. Flori-Stone, white river gravel, 1/4 - 1/2 inch is what I bought there. It's full of sand, dirt and god knows what else, so you'll have to give it a bath and make damn sure you use only the large pieces that won't foul your pump. More on that later.
Hand fill one of the containers to two inches below the top with the cleaned rock. You want to use your hands to prevent any possibility of damage to the container. If you get a pinhole leak later, it can seriously **** up your life. Move the rock around so that it is seated well. You don't want it to move later and break roots. Pack it in. The roots will be growing between the rocks.
Now, fill the container with water right to the top. Make sure you measure the water you add very carefully. This is radically important.
The reason you're filling it to the top is to allow for some overkill on the resevoir. It'll make sense later.
Ok, now write down how much water it took.
Multiply that amount by four.
This is the amount of water your resevoir needs to be able to hold. It's enough to fill both of your grow chambers twice. Also keep in mind that when the plants are full grown and fully flowering, they will be using around a gallon of water for each container/per day. You don't want to have to add to the resevoir every day. I try to plan mine so that at full usage, I top it off once each week.
Now something most Hydro people forget.
You'll need to know how much water your supply and drain lines will hold. This needs to be calculated into the resevoir volume. First, we need to know how long these lines will be.
Let's figure out the exact placement of your resevoir in relation to your growing chambers. It makes no difference where it is, except for the fact that the bottom of the growing chambers need to be slightly higher than the top of the max-fill line in the resevoir. Measure this exactly. It's very, very important later. The grow chambers need to be as low as possible in the grow space to give you all the height you can get for your plants and lights.
Try to buy the lowest, biggest resevoir you can find. It needs to have a lid on it that you can drill holes into. That's why another room is a good place to put it. Damn things take up a lot of room.
Once you've found your grow chambers and your resevoir, let me know and we'll go from there. Keep in mind that your resevoir will be full of water. It'll need to be strong enough for this and the place you're going to put it needs to also be strong enough to hold it with no problems.
The resevoir can be disguised with a table cloth and junk on it and around it when the repair guy comes over.
