Garage Grow: 400w in a spirally thing a la Heath

[GoozMan]

Hi everybody, welcome to my grow. btw I'm a retard and can't correct my sideways pictures. The flower room is in the back of my garage...



Can you see it? Its in the back and it looks like this



Heath's thing that looked like this for me seems like a gold standard for convenience and efficiency. I got the idea to replace the rigid pipes with this flexible stuff from another member a couple years ago - don't wanna steal credit - I've had some mediocre runs in here, always some problem, but this time it feels like its gonna be a big one. Just put plants in tonight, straight to flower from the homeade aerocloner in my backyard. All the plants are clones from a single seed, a strain I've grown before but have yet to do it justice. I don't have that many grows under my belt, crossing my fingers for enough of a harvest to keep my away from the delivery guy from here on out. Ooh and harvest day is scheduled for right around 4/20! Meant to be.

 

[jd4083]

super cool, in on this one! Have you thought that you might need a 2 bulb stack or is the one enough to cover that whole area?

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

What a wonderful design! I'll be watching this for sure.

 

[GoozMan]

JD and CrusaderRabbit, thanks for dropping by. JD, I totally agree. I'm just waiting to get a reasonable harvest out of there to justify the extra expense, but I did build it with a pair of 400s in mind.

 

[Bennyweed1]

wow, I just had one of those "why didnt I ever think of this" moments.

Great design man, super simply but really effective.

You for sure need two 400s to utlizie that space, fire it up man!

 

[Chunkypigs]

It looks really cool! what are the dimensions of the frame?
how many plant sites? that looks like a great low budget setup.
good luck!

 

[GoozMan]

Bennyweed, yeah I wish I could remember the name of the member here who built a room like this using this flexible tubing stuff, struck me as genius. Thanks for stopping by.

Chunkypigs, thanks dude, footprint is 4'x4', about 8' tall i think, right now I've only got 8 plants in there filling the bottom slots, with a few more in the cloner waiting their turn, all in all there are 24 plant sites but that goes all the way to the top of the spiral, I won't fill in those top slots until I get a second light going. Ideally with one light I'd like 12-15ish plants in there.

Since moving into this house with the garage I built this garden a little half-assed, maybe 3/4 assed, and had a couple of blah grows in there, each time some problem requiring some solution, but now the room feels complete. Ventilation is the only thing I haven't bothered with - I have the gear to build a carbon filter, I'm just waiting for a grow that's good enough to require one.

I'm using RO water with GH 3 part (minus the green bottle). My first grows I overfed and ruined many plants - since then I've been underfeeding by a lot and the plants seem healthy enough to me. Also included: Cal-mag to boost the RO water, SM-90, KoolBloom every once in a while, and a neem oil concentrate to keep the bugs away (which works great - got rid of my spider mites quick!). I got some mycorhizzae recently, tried it once and it seemed like my roots just exploded. I think that's it for the res... the tub holds 15 gallons nicely. Temps are very under control in my neck of the city, so I just have a little fan in there blowing up at the light, just to keep the air moving I guess.

Some pics of my veg setup. Seedlings and moms go in a cabinet in the laundry room




and then get chopped up for the aerocloner in the backyard



Trying to keep it low key while growing enough for my hungry hungry lungs. Peace.

 

[GoozMan]

quick update - plants are still alive



and my picture-loading skills are improving - now this one's upside down!

Actually I'm down from 8 plants to 7, one didn't have much for roots when I put it in, crossed my fingers for her but in fact the roots were not long enough to reach the nutrient stream and she died but the other 7 look great. As you can clearly see in my awesome picture.

 

[Chunkypigs]

...Trying to keep it low key while growing enough for my hungry hungry lungs. Peace.

if you want to do right by your hungry lungs put some of your babies in conventional dirt. if trouble hits that system you probably will lose it all.

your system looks cool but i think it will be more work than it's worth.

I totally get the McGuyver appeal tho…

I hope I'm wrong and you kick ass but a couple in dirt on the side could save the day. good luck!

 

[GoozMan]

Neverrrrr!!! (in kind of a pirate voice)

 

[Grownomenal]

I can't wait to see how this turns out! Looking good so far!

 

[ghostmade]

Good luck.im along for the ride

 

[GoozMan]

Sweet! Welcome guys, I hope the show is nice.

 

[Oti$]

Wow! I love it! what are you putting the plants in (net pots?) is the water continuously pumped to the top?...I wanna sees that thing filled to the top. I'll be lurking

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

Did you drill the holes for the plants, before or after you mounted the corrugated pipe to the 2x4s?

 

[GoozMan]

Did you drill the holes for the plants, before or after you mounted the corrugated pipe to the 2x4s?

My planning skills are not good enough to have drilled before hand, but that probably would have made things easier. The system is easy to run now but building it was a real challenge - getting that ~30' length of piping coiled into that little space had me working up a serious sweat. The framing is built from 2x2s, i figure its not going to hold that much weight. Haven't had any issues with flooding so far but that could just be because I haven't had a grow with all the plant sites filled yet... we'll see.

 

[GoozMan]

Wow! I love it! what are you putting the plants in (net pots?) is the water continuously pumped to the top?...I wanna sees that thing filled to the top. I'll be lurking

Hi Otis, yes the water pump is always on, right now the plants are in small netpots with the bottoms cut off, held by a strip of pool noodle. Thanks for joining.

 

[Foreman000]

Looks cool as hell. I've seen the rigid like you said. And thought to my self no feffin way. Hope it turns out great for you

 

[BlackBuds]

Hope you get this down GMan. Very cool idea and build. Someone really stoned must of thought that up...I bet it works too. Would love to see it filled with my cornstalk Sour Bubble.

 

[GoozMan]

Hi Foreman and BlackBuds, welcome to the show, thanks for the well-wishes, I'm gonna need them. And yeah Blackbuds, one of these days I'm gonna get some good seeds and do it up right. For now i gotta practice my skeez yo. Word to your mama. Peace.