first grow-cab---thoughts wanted!

[JohninWI]

Hello folks
I collected what I think would make a decent chamber. Yesterday I bought 2 200W HPS from a local home-improvement place and have several flours that I can use.

I decided a 3x4' by 3' tall box would do me pretty well--that growing 10-12 little girls at a time would be ample for personal use and not seriously crank up my power bill.

Anyway, from what I can gather, around 20-50W/ft squared is optimum. In my case, we're talking 360-600 W. I hope that the HPS at 400W would give the majority of the lighting, while some CFLs hanging within the foliage would provide the rest. And maybe a 4' tube mounted on the side on the front and back.

For ventilation, I found a nice squirel cage fan from a junk water heater. It really blows! I want to run it through a kind of baffle made from 2" PVC pipe that is perforated with holes and placed around the back/bottom of the cab. Then some light-blocking vents up high to exhaust stale air.

Finally, the same home-improvement store had white elastomeric roofing paint which I understand is excellent for reflecting light (they claim 94%).

Other than that, I plan to put the lights on a timer, but everything else will be operated by hand. Hand watering the soil, turning the plants if needed to even out growth....

Another point--I'm on the second floor and own the home. I wondered if I could skip the odor control, and just vent right out under the eave--right into the second floor great outdoors? I nearly always have a breeze and think it would dilute odor very well before it got to ground level and gave me away.

Anyway, I'm a little nervous---after all these years, it's my first semi-serious attempt.

Thanks guys
Any green ju-ju you can send my way would be much appreciated.

 

[POTUS]

I have to ask.

From the floor, up, you have containers for the plants. How tall?

Then the plants will get how tall?

How tall are your lights?

How much space between the lights and the tops of the plants are you going to have?

When all of this is added up, how tall does your grow area need to be?

 

[Cole]

Im not sure if you want to mix HPS with CFLs.

 

[JohninWI]

Im not sure if you want to mix HPS with CFLs.

Why not? I thought the issue was the "color" and the lumen output. I thought by combining the HPS for output/color, and cool white CFLs, I could encourage growth under the canopy by hanging them below the top growth of the plants

 

[DaveTheDingo]

CFL's are fine to mix with hps. its just extra light. A good idea with CFLs is to cut out the top of a coke can, cut a semi-circle at the top and bottom, with a vertical cut in the middle, a dremel type multi tool is good for this or a heavyduty sharp knife if you're careful. Bend the flaps out and you have a really good DIY reflector for free. I'm about to start using them under the canopy, lighting upwards as an experiment.
My advice on the smell thing would be always use a carbon filter. Kind bud REALLY stinks as its growing. Ever had your house stunk out with a bag of bought mj? I have with as little as a quarter ounce.. think of that x 500.

In the UK where i live, kind bud, sensi types are all called "skunk" after the original skunk plant because they all reeeeally stink. A while back a kid on my street, at the other end of a long street grew one plant with no smell filters and you could smell it on my driveway.

 

[Mutt]

2 things I've noticed over the years.
Spectrum and penetration=best buds
Best grows online I've seen has been with BOTH MH and HPS over an even canopy. But adding some blue spectrum to an HPS setup always worked out better than not adding. More light more spectrum...PAR and overall spectrum is what your after IME
HPS of course being best for flowering, but notice peeps using HPS for vegt have more males. Add em on IMO

While the lumens measurement is based on the sensitivity of the human eye to light, PAR Watts objectively measure the total watts of Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) emitted by the lamp. It accounts for the nutritional value and is a direct measure of light energy available for all-important plant photosynthesis.