Ok, so my idea of a perfect growroom is one that is very low maintenance, does not require handwatering or manual labor on any regular basis. I always try to avoid moving parts whenever I can, so there are fewer parts to break and replace/maintain.
I know there are a lot of threads in here on what's the best bulb/hood/ballast/growing system etc, so I thought I'd throw in my $.02 on these things and see how much shit I get for it
I'll try to keep specific sizing on things like AC and dehumidifiers vague since everyone runs different amounts of light, but since I like to do things big most of this will be appropriate for rooms 6KW and up, though it can easily be adapted much smaller if desired.
So the idea will be to pick all of the "best of breed" parts so we can design an electrically efficient, high-yielding system that requires little to no maintenance. BTW< I will do a lighting thread in the future, but even with *Mistress"s help there is a ton of data to gather on electrical efficiency, par watts and ballast efficiency.
The room:
I've always had a hard-on for basements, stable temps, concrete floors, and usually good access to water, power, and often they have sumps and floor drains. If you want to get into one just use basement as a search term on Craigslist rentals, worked for me.
This room will be well insulated and sealed so CO2 can be implemented. Walls and ceiling will be insulated with mylar-faced rigid insulation (styrofoam) and taped together with aluminum tape to keep the vapor barrier intact. The edges on the top and floor sealed with Great Stuff spray foam to seal any cracks/leaks.
For water, we need clean pure water in most cases, so a large Reverse osmosis system should be employed to keep the nutes consistent. See the link in my sig for automating reservoir top-offs and float valve/reservoir setups that won't flood/overflow.
To water the plants, I'm going to recommend the Tropf Blumat auto-waterers for all plants except the clones. Non recirculating, gravity-fed, drip to waste on demand. Once they are dialed in, they will keep the overall moisture level in every pot exactly what you want it to be. If the reservoir is kept full, your plants will NEVER run out of water, even if you happen to be gone for a month. A small catch tray under each pot helps catch any accidental runoff. This system will use no water pumps and no timers, it is all gravity feed. There is a good thread on them in the Growers Forums.
For medium, and just to keep it very simple, use either good soil or good coco, the above waterers will work with both and allow you to feed through them. If you want to do hydro and trays, well, go for it! But then you have to have pumps and timers, which means you're watering when YOU want to, not when the plants NEED it.
For security and safety, I like hard-wired camera systems inside and outside the grow, as well as a dialer to call or text me when water is on the floor or temps get too high. Many companies make these systems now and they are pretty affordable generally. Smoke detector in every room, CO detector in the flower room, and at least 1 Halon fire extinguisher per 4KW. Deadbolts, secure doors and windows are important too of course, but I don't want to get too involved in a detailed security thread here. If someone knows of one they want me to reference add the link and I'll paste it here.
To keep a self-contained and self-sufficient grow room, we need a handful of separate rooms. This will keep it so the only thing that ever leaves the room is some occasional garbage, and some pre-packaged, odorless bags of dried bud and trim.
1 small room as an airlock, where no light can escape when the outside door(s) are opened. This is a good place to put a small fan with an ozone generator so any air lost in a door transition only smells of ozone. No plants or loitering in the airlock! Ozone is bad for you and plants in high concentrations. Tarp zippers over Panda plastic are my favorite!
1 room for trimming and packaging, equipped with a small carbon scrubber/fan combo, comfy chairs, trimming tools and a FoodSaver vauum sealer. A radio or TV is nice so you and your friends don't get bored on big trim jobs.
1 room for drying, I like to keep my drying room at 70*F and 40-50% humidity, so an exhaust fan and a small (45-pint) dehumidifier would be good here. I like the hanging net bags, they hold about a pound per shelf (4-5# per unit) and can be easily flipped over to "stir" the drying product. They go for $20-30 at most hydro shops now. THis room only needs to be big enough to house all of the above, or it could be combined with the trimming room if space is at a premium.
1 room for mothers/clones on 24/0 lights, all T-5 lighting at 20-30wpsf. Dehumidification isn't usually necessary if it's a dedicated room for these, as high RH isn't often a problem. A small intake and exhaust fan (blowing into the flowering room) where there are significant climate control devices is typically sufficient for cooling these rooms. An oscillating fan for moms is a must. A simple temp controller can run the fans.
The size of this room depends on the size of your grow, but I figure 25% of the flowering space unless you can put in some big steel shelving for trays of clones and moms. This room can be combined with the veg room if needed for space reasons.
1 room for veg on 18/6, very similar to the above room in terms of ventilation, but I'll add a small 45-pint dehuey and a second oscillating fan. I'd recommend 400MH lighting for veg over a 4X4 area, or about 25wpsf. Use digital ballasts with SunSystem II hoods, air cooled if you can. 130CFM per hood.
I like plants vegged about two weeks, though this depends heavily on strain. Avoid sativas and their strong hybrids if you want to produce maximum yield. A simple temp controller can run the fans.
The veg room typically takes about 30% of the size of the flowering room.
1-2 rooms for flower. 12/12 lighting of course, and due to their electrical efficiency, I'm recommending Gavita/Agrosun 600W HPS bulbs with the built in reflector for their superior lumen output (90K vs 80K for most.) Also using SS2 air-cooled hoods (130CFM per hood, pull from outside and push outside) and digital ballasts on 240V power, this will give you maximum lumens on the canopy while using less electricity than 1KW lights. Each 600 can light a 3X3 or 3.5X3.5' area, but keep the plants under 3' total height at finish so you get good penetration to the lower branches.
If you want to run two rooms do it on a flip flop, this keeps your power consumption even all day long, but can be difficult to manage due to the schedule.
For simplicity I'm going to recommend 1 large flower room, but harvesting half of the room every month. This gives you the following advantages:
Better side lighting from all lights on at once
Easier schedule to remember (easier maintenance)
Two stages of the room (for reservoirs) so you can move plants from the "early flower" side to the "late flower" side without having to change nutes.
No flip flop box to buy
Power is usually cheaper at night, and extra cooling won't be need in the "day lights on" room.
For environmental controls, I'll heartily recommend the Sentinel CHHC-1. It does day/night temps, day/night RH, night device and CO2 control, with fuzzy logic for you tank-CO2 guys.
A mini-split or split-AC is the best bet for most sealed grow rooms, Excel air makes some do-it-yourself kits, even a Stealth line that has the noisy compressor indoors in a sound-insulated box. Pretty slick! For day (lights on) temps, I would keep it at 85*F and 50% RH.
A sufficient dehumidifier would be needed, I'm getting a Santa Fe Max Dry shortly that does 150 pints per day, but uses the same amount of power as the 45-pint units. Plumbed to drain into the sink or the reservoir, your choice.
For CO2, the water-cooled HydroGEN unit is hard to beat in terms of output, price, and heat reduction. I've seen them for $300 online, and should be plumbed to tap water, not a water pump. Drain to waste. They won't run very long at the max settings, and they claim 86% of the heat is sent out with the waste water. They can produce 36K btu of heat/co2, so that is 12K more than the GreenAir/CAP/Sentinel units available today, and for half the money. See my thread in this forum on the "How to's and why fors of CO2 supplementation for growers" for more detail on CO2.
2-3 reservoirs would be dedicated just to flower, but I like to keep all of my
reservoirs in one spot so I can do easy tank dumps, add nutes, and monitor all the meters in one place. One of the aforementioned security cameras can point at a bank of meters, so I can watch them remotely as well.
A pH doser is nice, but if you need 5 of them this can be an expensive add-on.
For odor control, big carbon scrubbers, I like a CAN150 per 4KW of light with a speed-controlled 12" Vortex per. No smell.
I also use 1 oscillating fan per 1KW of light too, hard to have too much air movement in a big room.
I don't want to get into nutes and genetics in this thread, since it's more about room design, and there are as many opinions on each as there are members here.
So there we have it, no light leaks, no heat problems, no humidity problems, high CO2, automated watering and res top offs. The only thing that would need to be done manually is add nutes to the res, manual res changes, and manually rotating plants every few days (which isn't the end of the world if it gets missed for a week.)
With proper genetics and nutes, there is NO reason a room like this couldn't hit 1GPW every 60 days, maybe even more.
Ok, now let me have it!
I know there are a lot of threads in here on what's the best bulb/hood/ballast/growing system etc, so I thought I'd throw in my $.02 on these things and see how much shit I get for it
I'll try to keep specific sizing on things like AC and dehumidifiers vague since everyone runs different amounts of light, but since I like to do things big most of this will be appropriate for rooms 6KW and up, though it can easily be adapted much smaller if desired.
So the idea will be to pick all of the "best of breed" parts so we can design an electrically efficient, high-yielding system that requires little to no maintenance. BTW< I will do a lighting thread in the future, but even with *Mistress"s help there is a ton of data to gather on electrical efficiency, par watts and ballast efficiency.
The room:
I've always had a hard-on for basements, stable temps, concrete floors, and usually good access to water, power, and often they have sumps and floor drains. If you want to get into one just use basement as a search term on Craigslist rentals, worked for me.
This room will be well insulated and sealed so CO2 can be implemented. Walls and ceiling will be insulated with mylar-faced rigid insulation (styrofoam) and taped together with aluminum tape to keep the vapor barrier intact. The edges on the top and floor sealed with Great Stuff spray foam to seal any cracks/leaks.
For water, we need clean pure water in most cases, so a large Reverse osmosis system should be employed to keep the nutes consistent. See the link in my sig for automating reservoir top-offs and float valve/reservoir setups that won't flood/overflow.
To water the plants, I'm going to recommend the Tropf Blumat auto-waterers for all plants except the clones. Non recirculating, gravity-fed, drip to waste on demand. Once they are dialed in, they will keep the overall moisture level in every pot exactly what you want it to be. If the reservoir is kept full, your plants will NEVER run out of water, even if you happen to be gone for a month. A small catch tray under each pot helps catch any accidental runoff. This system will use no water pumps and no timers, it is all gravity feed. There is a good thread on them in the Growers Forums.
For medium, and just to keep it very simple, use either good soil or good coco, the above waterers will work with both and allow you to feed through them. If you want to do hydro and trays, well, go for it! But then you have to have pumps and timers, which means you're watering when YOU want to, not when the plants NEED it.
For security and safety, I like hard-wired camera systems inside and outside the grow, as well as a dialer to call or text me when water is on the floor or temps get too high. Many companies make these systems now and they are pretty affordable generally. Smoke detector in every room, CO detector in the flower room, and at least 1 Halon fire extinguisher per 4KW. Deadbolts, secure doors and windows are important too of course, but I don't want to get too involved in a detailed security thread here. If someone knows of one they want me to reference add the link and I'll paste it here.
To keep a self-contained and self-sufficient grow room, we need a handful of separate rooms. This will keep it so the only thing that ever leaves the room is some occasional garbage, and some pre-packaged, odorless bags of dried bud and trim.
1 small room as an airlock, where no light can escape when the outside door(s) are opened. This is a good place to put a small fan with an ozone generator so any air lost in a door transition only smells of ozone. No plants or loitering in the airlock! Ozone is bad for you and plants in high concentrations. Tarp zippers over Panda plastic are my favorite!
1 room for trimming and packaging, equipped with a small carbon scrubber/fan combo, comfy chairs, trimming tools and a FoodSaver vauum sealer. A radio or TV is nice so you and your friends don't get bored on big trim jobs.
1 room for drying, I like to keep my drying room at 70*F and 40-50% humidity, so an exhaust fan and a small (45-pint) dehumidifier would be good here. I like the hanging net bags, they hold about a pound per shelf (4-5# per unit) and can be easily flipped over to "stir" the drying product. They go for $20-30 at most hydro shops now. THis room only needs to be big enough to house all of the above, or it could be combined with the trimming room if space is at a premium.
1 room for mothers/clones on 24/0 lights, all T-5 lighting at 20-30wpsf. Dehumidification isn't usually necessary if it's a dedicated room for these, as high RH isn't often a problem. A small intake and exhaust fan (blowing into the flowering room) where there are significant climate control devices is typically sufficient for cooling these rooms. An oscillating fan for moms is a must. A simple temp controller can run the fans.
The size of this room depends on the size of your grow, but I figure 25% of the flowering space unless you can put in some big steel shelving for trays of clones and moms. This room can be combined with the veg room if needed for space reasons.
1 room for veg on 18/6, very similar to the above room in terms of ventilation, but I'll add a small 45-pint dehuey and a second oscillating fan. I'd recommend 400MH lighting for veg over a 4X4 area, or about 25wpsf. Use digital ballasts with SunSystem II hoods, air cooled if you can. 130CFM per hood.
I like plants vegged about two weeks, though this depends heavily on strain. Avoid sativas and their strong hybrids if you want to produce maximum yield. A simple temp controller can run the fans.
The veg room typically takes about 30% of the size of the flowering room.
1-2 rooms for flower. 12/12 lighting of course, and due to their electrical efficiency, I'm recommending Gavita/Agrosun 600W HPS bulbs with the built in reflector for their superior lumen output (90K vs 80K for most.) Also using SS2 air-cooled hoods (130CFM per hood, pull from outside and push outside) and digital ballasts on 240V power, this will give you maximum lumens on the canopy while using less electricity than 1KW lights. Each 600 can light a 3X3 or 3.5X3.5' area, but keep the plants under 3' total height at finish so you get good penetration to the lower branches.
If you want to run two rooms do it on a flip flop, this keeps your power consumption even all day long, but can be difficult to manage due to the schedule.
For simplicity I'm going to recommend 1 large flower room, but harvesting half of the room every month. This gives you the following advantages:
Better side lighting from all lights on at once
Easier schedule to remember (easier maintenance)
Two stages of the room (for reservoirs) so you can move plants from the "early flower" side to the "late flower" side without having to change nutes.
No flip flop box to buy
Power is usually cheaper at night, and extra cooling won't be need in the "day lights on" room.
For environmental controls, I'll heartily recommend the Sentinel CHHC-1. It does day/night temps, day/night RH, night device and CO2 control, with fuzzy logic for you tank-CO2 guys.
A mini-split or split-AC is the best bet for most sealed grow rooms, Excel air makes some do-it-yourself kits, even a Stealth line that has the noisy compressor indoors in a sound-insulated box. Pretty slick! For day (lights on) temps, I would keep it at 85*F and 50% RH.
A sufficient dehumidifier would be needed, I'm getting a Santa Fe Max Dry shortly that does 150 pints per day, but uses the same amount of power as the 45-pint units. Plumbed to drain into the sink or the reservoir, your choice.
For CO2, the water-cooled HydroGEN unit is hard to beat in terms of output, price, and heat reduction. I've seen them for $300 online, and should be plumbed to tap water, not a water pump. Drain to waste. They won't run very long at the max settings, and they claim 86% of the heat is sent out with the waste water. They can produce 36K btu of heat/co2, so that is 12K more than the GreenAir/CAP/Sentinel units available today, and for half the money. See my thread in this forum on the "How to's and why fors of CO2 supplementation for growers" for more detail on CO2.
2-3 reservoirs would be dedicated just to flower, but I like to keep all of my
reservoirs in one spot so I can do easy tank dumps, add nutes, and monitor all the meters in one place. One of the aforementioned security cameras can point at a bank of meters, so I can watch them remotely as well.
A pH doser is nice, but if you need 5 of them this can be an expensive add-on.
For odor control, big carbon scrubbers, I like a CAN150 per 4KW of light with a speed-controlled 12" Vortex per. No smell.
I also use 1 oscillating fan per 1KW of light too, hard to have too much air movement in a big room.
I don't want to get into nutes and genetics in this thread, since it's more about room design, and there are as many opinions on each as there are members here.
So there we have it, no light leaks, no heat problems, no humidity problems, high CO2, automated watering and res top offs. The only thing that would need to be done manually is add nutes to the res, manual res changes, and manually rotating plants every few days (which isn't the end of the world if it gets missed for a week.)
With proper genetics and nutes, there is NO reason a room like this couldn't hit 1GPW every 60 days, maybe even more.
Ok, now let me have it!
till I knew why, I can't stand mysteries!
