my first growroom

[the_noobiest_noobster]

Feel free to give suggestions if you know of any way I could make my room better or more efficient.
I'm gonna be doing a Super soil grow. 5 gal pots for veg. than transplanting to 7gal for flower. Im gonna plant 12 plants per month so I harvest monthly. I wanna spread out the work since I have a full time job.
The room size is about 20' x 12'. I'm building a wall across 1/4 of the room with sliding doors giving me a veg. closet with interior dimensions of 4 1/2' x 12'. the closet will have three 600watt lights. That leaves me with a flower room with dimensions of 14 1/2' x 12' and there will be six 1000 watt lights in there.
All the lights will be vented with two 6 in 435CFM fans.
In the winter the heat from the lights will be vented into the house through ducts and vents. in the summer ill suck cool air from the basement and exhaust It outside.
To cool the room ill have a 14000BTU ac unit in the basement. There will be three 6in fans on thermostats to suck air from the basement up too the room. In the ceiling of the grow room there will be vents to let hot air to rise into the attic.
This is my first room actually designed for growing. so let me know if I missed anything important.

 

[Grower13]

How long have you been growing mj?

 

[the_noobiest_noobster]

Lol I gave it a go once. Grew some beautiful plants but this was back a few years. I moved around the country and couldn't grow for a while. just in the past year I moved back home purchased a house and now I'm going all in. But for growing plants I have been gardening since I was a kid. I'm 26 now.

 

[Grower13]

how many strains are you going to run at the time?
You going to hand water?
you going to be doing plant work in the flower area?

 

[the_noobiest_noobster]

Ill be doing one strain until I get the hang of everything.
Ill be hand watering until I can afford a drip setup.
Plants will be on wheels for easy moving and the room is off the kitchen so ill be doing the plant work there.

 

[Hushpuppy]

I think you are reaching tooo big for just starting out. With the size flower room you are looking at lighting, you will need at least 6 1000w HPS lights. Even doing 1 plant per month will get very involved by month 6. You will also need a good drying and curing space, a cloning, and a good work space. I would cut the spaces down some.

I don't know how you have the space configured but I would make the first room you walk in to, the work/clone/veg space. Then have a doorway to the flowering space so that the flowering space isn't disturbed by your coming and going to get to the veg/clone/harvesting work. You won't need the 4.5'x12' space for vegging as you will have no more than 2 plants at a time vegging in that space (unless you have 10' ceilings and plan to grow small trees). However, you can use 4'x3' for vegging, with plenty of space, and have the rest of the 4'x9' space for a work/cloning space.

I would also look at building easily movable, reflective partitions to close off the plants into individual areas of 4'x4' for flowering. As the room is filled, you can move the partitions back to allow better air flow. You are looking at a very significant electricity usage when it is running at capacity. Is this going to be for personal and local sale? or are you going commercial? Legal grow state?

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

I agree with everything that hush has said. In addition, I want to talk about how much time and effort it takes to grow on the scale you are talking about. Every single plant needs individual care. Working full time, I just don't see you having the time to take care of 50+ plants. This is not like growing veggies or ornamentals--cannabis can be tricky and there are a hundred things along the way to trip you up.

I am not trying to discourage you from growing, but like hush said, I would scale it back, especially as you are a new grower.

 

[the_noobiest_noobster]

I think you are reaching tooo big for just starting out. With the size flower room you are looking at lighting, you will need at least 6 1000w HPS lights. Even doing 1 plant per month will get very involved by month 6. You will also need a good drying and curing space, a cloning, and a good work space. I would cut the spaces down some.

I don't know how you have the space configured but I would make the first room you walk in to, the work/clone/veg space. Then have a doorway to the flowering space so that the flowering space isn't disturbed by your coming and going to get to the veg/clone/harvesting work. You won't need the 4.5'x12' space for vegging as you will have no more than 2 plants at a time vegging in that space (unless you have 10' ceilings and plan to grow small trees). However, you can use 4'x3' for vegging, with plenty of space, and have the rest of the 4'x9' space for a work/cloning space.

I would also look at building easily movable, reflective partitions to close off the plants into individual areas of 4'x4' for flowering. As the room is filled, you can move the partitions back to allow better air flow. You are looking at a very significant electricity usage when it is running at capacity. Is this going to be for personal and local sale? or are you going commercial? Legal grow state?

I have 6 quantum 1000's for flower and 3 quantum 600's for veg. Drying and curing will be downstairs. Cloning is a small space and I can work in the kitchen. The rooms door is an exterior house door and its right off the kitchen. I'm living solo so I wont have to listen to a nagging girlfriend lol.
I'm getting a new 200 amp service installed and a time of use meter. It should be right around $250/month to run the lights.
I'm in a medical card state. The room will be tight I know this but ill be planting 12 a month so if on month 3 the plants are to big I will stop planting. Or I can swap the bulbs in the 600's and use that to flower a few plants.

 

[the_noobiest_noobster]

I agree with everything that hush has said. In addition, I want to talk about how much time and effort it takes to grow on the scale you are talking about. Every single plant needs individual care. Working full time, I just don't see you having the time to take care of 50+ plants. This is not like growing veggies or ornamentals--cannabis can be tricky and there are a hundred things along the way to trip you up.

I am not trying to discourage you from growing, but like hush said, I would scale it back, especially as you are a new grower.

I know growing is a lot of work. But tending to the plants needs I thought was actually easy. The part im worried about is when 12 plants need to be cut down then 12 plants need to be transplanted. After transplanting 12 plants need to be pruned, then I need to clone some of those cuttings. Then 12 rooted clones have to be potted. After all the plants are good I have to mix up 4 new batches of soil and deal with the drying plants. And everything in between from maintenance and cleaning to re ordering and picking up supplies.

So making a nice schedule trying to break all that down over a period of time is what Ill work on.

 

[zem]

I think that caring for such a scale grow is possible after you get experienced a little bit, maybe try a couple of grows with a couple of 600w then scale up, but for an experienced grower, i see no trouble taking care of such a size grow in one's free time

 

[yarddog]

I won't lie, my 5 girls ran me ragged a few times.

 

[sunakard2000]

yeah what Yarddog said... my last grow was only 12 plants, i rotated 3 a month and boy was it a total pain in the *** to keep up on at that point, honestly if you only have free time and no assistance i wouldnt rotate every month, do it every other month so you arnt run ragged before the room is even full, what ever you choose to do just remember it IS a lot of work and it does take dedication so if you start to get overwhelmed, take a step back and scale down a tad, 12 per month is kinda crazy to do all on your own especially once you start to harvest and have to take care of new/existing plants in flower, it gets crazy quick

 

[thursdaythunder]

Hey Noob, Welcome to MP. I too recently got back into indoor growing after a brief sabbatical, and a move. I quickly realized the larger scale ops just weren't feasible for me anymore. Twice the equipment, twice the time, twice the energy, and twice as many things to go wrong!
I decided to downsize my grow by half. I now find myself enjoying it a lot more with better outcome. Althought it sounds like you have a pretty good plan at hand...I wish you the best.

 

[bwanabud]

I won't lie, my 5 girls ran me ragged a few times.

You wouldn't want to hang out with me

 

[Hushpuppy]

:yeahthat: He speaks from experience on the larger grows I can tell you from my personal experience, I had 2 veg spaces and a clone space. I had 2 5x5 tents and one 4x4 tent that were used for flowering. I was running 9wk flowering plants so that I was rotating the 3 flower tents, one every 3 weeks. It was a full time job that was exhausting for me AND I had help with the harvesting and trimming.

I thought you were saying that you would start only 1 plant per month If you run 12 plants per month, its going to run you into the ground doing that and working ANY other job. Please take our advice, even if you want to go big and quit your job in the future, right now start out slower so you don't crash and burn. The learning curve on this is quite large and rocky in places, and it WILL throw you some inside curve balls along the way and have you swinging for the fences. Starting out slow will make it easier to get around the curve without crashing.

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

I know growing is a lot of work. But tending to the plants needs I thought was actually easy. The part im worried about is when 12 plants need to be cut down then 12 plants need to be transplanted. After transplanting 12 plants need to be pruned, then I need to clone some of those cuttings. Then 12 rooted clones have to be potted. After all the plants are good I have to mix up 4 new batches of soil and deal with the drying plants. And everything in between from maintenance and cleaning to re ordering and picking up supplies.

So making a nice schedule trying to break all that down over a period of time is what Ill work on.

No--You are starting out with a misconception. Tending to the plants needs is not easy and it is time consuming. Plants really need to be looked after and cared for on a daily basis. You are talking about having 24 plants in flowering, at least 24 plants vegging and probably about 50 clones. That in itself is almost a full time job. We here are all speaking from experience. And be aware that no matter how much you try it is very hard to keep a schedule like you have planned. I also encourage you to start smaller. Like I mentioned before, this is not like growing veggies or ornamentals. Seriously Zem you think someone can work full time and take care of 75+ plants?

Even though you are in a medical state, that seems like a lot of plants to have and still be legal...

 

[zem]

Seriously Zem you think someone can work full time and take care of 75+ plants?

LOL yeah well THG I think it will be overwhelming for a newbie, thats for sure, but with someone who knows how to setup a reliable auto feeding system and with the right setup and management, yeah I think it is very possible to tend to 75+ plants at a time with one or one and a half hours per day on average. I had my greenhouse filled with 105 plants of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, and had my indoor growroom running, and I was able to maintain that for a while. tomatoes and cukes, need a lot of work, more than mj, but with the flood and drain systems that never failed, and raised beds and ease of access, i would walk around my gh and just trim and tend them like for fun.

Don't get me wrong Mr. Noobster, you need to listen to experienced peeps and scale it down

 

[bwanabud]

Noob you have to walk before you can run, take the sound advice and learn to grow...before you expand. It's far more complicated than having time, you have to dial your room & methods first...or be very disappointed in the results and hard work.

 

[the_noobiest_noobster]

I work 4 days a week. So that gives three full days to do work. The days I work I will have 2 solid hours to water and check on them. I have a laid back job and can take a day off whenever as long as I get my days in. Also my job involves me sitting on my *** for 48 hours a week so the last thing I wanna do at home is sit down.

If I get held up after 2 months with 24 plants I will put a hold on cloning. Actually I just got 10 Waikiki Queen seeds yesterday in the mail. So I wont have a full 12 my first go around. I was kind of thinking of doing 8 plants per month to make the room a little less congested. Maybe ill just do that. 8 per month.

I'm doing super soil so I only have to water straight water. Some say a small feeding at the end but by the sound of it they were using the same dirt from veg through flower. Ill be transplanting mine between cycles. That takes all the feeding scares out for the most part.

Back when I tried out growing the first time I grew one lady under reptile lights lol. she was fairly ugly. I cut her down and made 6 and grew them into some beautiful plants under a 600watt light. I was growing in dirt and not at any point did I find it labor intensive. I pruned them and cloned them. Trimming the bud is always time consuming but I will have help with that.

Ill make sure I don't over do myself. Thanks everyone for your input. Ill be posting pics once I get the dry wall installed. Should be this weekend.

 

[Rosebud]

Welcome to MP. You have had some great advice from some great growers.

The thing about growing is something always happens in each grow. It could be thrips, spider mites (we call the borg), white fly, powdery mildew, too wet, too dry, plants becoming hermaphrodite, etc... I could go on like, timer breaks, lights fall on plants, i mean something happens every grow. And it spreads... so you have to be at the top of your game to catch stuff early and they only way to do that is to start out smaller. So you can really get to know each plant. So, I am glad you found us.. Greenest of mojo for your new grow!