First Stealth Chamber/First Time Grower - Please Grade my Rough Draft

[SuperTechy]

OK, this will be my first run in with growing in my home. Just ordered my first set of seeds from Nirvana, and am trying to get my rough draft built before they get here.

I have x5 femalized White Widows, and x5 femalized Full Moon coming as long as customs doesnt steal them on the way. I will be growing two of each together in my new chamber.

I wanted to keep this simple, efficient, and inexpensive, and get the most possible from my harvest.

I have attached what I came up with:


Hopefully this is clear enough to make out, its a quick photoshop job. Items I plan to install:

• Window A/C unit (this guy is cheaper than an intake fan at $50 used)
• 600 watt HPS w/ glass plate
• Hydroponic tank with mist sprayers, air stones, and Nutri-Mist fogger
• Charcoal carbon odor filter
• Inline fan for the exhaust

The A/C unit will be seperated air tight from the grow chamber, and pulling air from outside the cabinet in the back. The cold air will flow into the light fixture, as well a custom air duct into the chamber. The custom air duct will have 3 air vents that I can open, close, and regulate. The light fixture lines will be adjustable to allow me to keep my light directly above my plants thoughout the entire grow process. The exhaust will be pulling air through the scrubber before exiting the chamber. I will also be covering the entire inside with mylar, just didnt want all the extra photoshop work on that one.


Please throw me any critique you can think of, or anything that a first time builder/grower may run into.

Being that I have never grown before, I am still only 50% familiar with what the hell to even do from the point of seeding, so I am sure these plans may change a bit before I buy supplies...


Thanks everyone!

 

[bluealein56]

interesting. I like the ac vents. But im not sure if you will need that much air coming in.
I mean its not gonna hurt anything, just might be a little overkill if your gonna be cooling your lights too.
How big is this cabniet? thats gonna determine what type of fan and size filter you need.

 

[Clandestino]

I like the design, very creative. Contrary to what blue said I am not sure the extra air will be over kill, only because the chamber walls are metal and will heat up quick. Be careful not to fry your plants. You might want to consider some sort of insulation on the inside to prevent the plants from coming in contact with hot metal walls. Its hard to say cause then you will have more heat build up too. Good luck!

 

[kalikisu]

that is a sweet closet Techy. Once its up and running I cant wait to see the flicks.

 

[DonJones]

Supertechy,

Maybe I'm misreading you plan, but you can NOT use a window or through the wall AC inside an enclosed area like it appears you are doing in the sketch. You have to mount it through the wall so that the condenser coil and vents are outside of your box and the front vents and evaporator are inside the box. There is a nearly solid divider that runs between the 2 halves of the AC. It is designed to take warmer air into the front of the AC, pass it over the evaporator and transfer heat from the air to the freon inside of the unit and exhaust cooled air back out the front of the unit. Then it sends the heated freon through the divider and through the condenser where outside air passes over the condenser and transfers the heat from the freon, cooling the freon for the next cycle in the process, to the outside air and exhausts heated air outside. An AC does NOT cool air, it extracts heat from the air inside the room and transfers it to the air outside the room and if the AC is used within the room, then all it does is make part of the room cooler and the other part hotter but since the air is moving around it remixes and you haven't accomplished any thing.


Pleae check the trhead by monkeybusiness titled Window AC conversion for an enclosed space for more information and details.

To use your set up, you will have to cut an tight fitting opening through the back of your box, which I think is a metal storage locker, and mount the AC through the hole so that the openings with louvers on the sides are sticking through the locker wall out into the room and the openings on the front are inside the locker. the next problem is you can't sit the locker up close to the wall in the room becaus the air has to be able to blow out the back of the AC and mix with the surrounding air in the room. Now you have just moved the heat problem from inside your locker to the room outside and you still need to get rid of it, either by venting it outside like monkleybusiness did or by cooling the room someway.

The other problem is that the window AC is NOT designed to supply freshair but to remove heat from the air in the enclosed air and recirculate it. You still have to intake fresh air and exhaust stale air or your plants will run pout of CO2.

I need a lot more information on your proposed operation to be able to make suggestions on how to make it work, but right now it is going fail, destroy your AC unit and kill your plants.

If you don't want to post the more detailed explanation for your operation then you can PM me and I take a look at it. I'll post the kind of infor we need later today. I have to go buy some HPS lights right now.

Good luck and welcome to the forum.

Don Jones

 

[DonJones]

Supertechy,

To really advise you properly we need the following information.

1. Where will you box be located, in a bedroom, shop, garage or where?

2. Will your operation HAVE to be stealth to avoid legal problems or just to keep the public from knowing what you are doing?

3. Can you make alterations to the building you will be growing in, IE cutting holes in walls, running new electricity?

4. Do you have a remote ballast that will let you mount your ballast outside of your box and put the hood/reflector inside of the box?

5. What are the dimensions of your box including the distance between the bottom and the shelf and between the shelf and the top?

The reasons for many of these questions is different situations limit your options. For instance my son and I both grow legally for medicinal purposes, but he lives in a rented house so he can't make permanent changes to the house whereas since I own my own home, I can actually build a permanent grow setup with at least 2 separate rooms created out of the current family room. I can run new electric service to the rooms and make alterations to my home heating/air conditioning system, which he can't do. Therefore, even with both of us working on building both grow setups, they are very different in design. About the only thing they have in common is both of them will use 2 separate rooms inside of a house. The heating/AC solutions and lighting systems will be completely different. For example he has a 220 v extension cord running down the hall from the beaker box to a portable breaker box that splits it into 2 110 v circuits. Mine on the otherhand will have 220 v hard wired directly into the rooms inside the wall/ceiling structures.

Also, I think you are going to find that trying to grow 4 plants in that type of a box will probably be way to much. My friends growing Hydroponically figure on a minimum of 2' x 2' of floor space per plant and I can almost guarantee you do not have that kind of room in your box. Also by the time you hang you light I doubt if you are going to be much over 3.5' from the floor to the bottom of the shelf. That isn't going to going to give you much room for the plants after you set your hydro equipment up. You may get real good quality but for a beginner, you're probably not going to get much in the way of quantity. Until you know that you can handle more I would stick to 1 or at most 2 plants for the first grow.

Also, you really need to try to get something other than the HPS for using during the veg stage. I would suggest trying to get one of the MH "conversion bulbs that will work in a HPS system. That will be a lot cheaper than getting another MH system. If you have newer electronic ballast you may be able o use either a HPS or MH bulb with it. Check the literature or contact the manufacturer to find out. If you have the older magnetic ballast you are stuck with a conversion bulb.