Welcome to the group. I suspect you caroused the forum before joining so you know that there are lots of folks here that are committed to this awsome hobby, and you will find we are very passionate about growing and helping others who wish to grow.
That being said, There is a lot to know about growing hydroponically, but at the same time, I believe it is easier than growing in soil. The great thing about growing in hydro is everything happens fast and is micromanagable. The bad thing about hydro is that everything happens fast and is micromanagable. :hubba:
The first step is to learn all you can(read, read, read) about growing MJ as it is never as simple or easy as sooomany people think. MJ is a finicky but tuff plant, and once you learn how to read the plant, you will be ahead on growing it.
The second thing is to decide how big a grow you want to have. You say you want to use a 12sqft area by 5ft high? That will work fine but it will take some work to stay short with the plants. The grow planters at the bottom and lighting fixtures at the top will limit you to about 3ft of vertical grow space. Still quite doable.
There are several options for hydro, since you said DWC I have to assume you have already looked into the different types and like DWC for its simplicity. I grow in a variation of DWC myself. There are several things to decide on. The first is the type of medium(hydroton, leca, cococoir, Rockwool). Most folks who do DWC typically use rockwool cubes in hydroton or leca.
The next thing is lighting. You will need blue spectrum(6500K) lighting for veg and orenge/red spectrum(2000-3000K) lighting for flowering. You will need to give them at least 3000lumens of light energy for veg, and at least 5000lumens of light energy for flower. This means that for your 12sqft you will need lights that produce at least 36,000 lumens of veg light and lights that produce 60,000 lumens of flower light.
A lot of us have found that the new T5HO flourescent light fixtures work very well for vegging, and you can get them in fixtures from single 2ft units all the way to 8bulb fixtures 4ft long that produce 40,000lumens.
And for flowering a most of us use high pressure sodium lights in ventable fixtures so that the bulbs can be cooled. I would recommend that if you really want to grow some short potent plants then you need to get one 600wHPS in a "cooltube". This will produce between 80-95,000lumens which will really do it nicely.
Next, you will need to see about ventilation. To be successful, your plants need to breath fresh CO2 filled air that is between 70-80*F when lights are on. The HPS lights produce considerable heat and must be vented to prevent damaging heat buildup. At the same time you have to have fresh air flow into the growspace and exaust air from the growspace. A lot of people will use one exaust fan to pull the hot air from the light to the outside of growroom and have the other end open so that it also pulls the air from the room through the light, then have a passive intake that allows fresh air to be drawn into the room.
You will want to either paint the walls of your growroom with flat white paint or buy reflective mylar so that you reflect all of the light back to the plants at all times. Mirrors and aluminum foil do not work well at all for this. Depending on the growroom, you may have to insulate the walls as well in order to maintain proper temp ballance.
The next thing is your nutrient brand for feeding you plants. In hydro as you may already know, there is no nutrients available in just water, so you have to decide if you want to use an organic tea to feed with or use chemical nutes for feeding. This is where it gets tricky... A lot of people use the General hydroponics 3part or 2part chemical ferts with great success. I would recommend that, even though I don't use it myself. It is very important for you to read all of the stickies at the top of this thread that talk about growing in hydro as it can get fairly involved.
I am sure I haven't answered all your questions and there is something I am sure I have left out. So don't be afraid to ask, as you can tell we love to talk about growing. It will not be long before you are as addicted to this hobby as we are. Happy growing and we look forward to seeing your progress :icon_smile:
