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A Tribute to JonJaffer - 4K Vertical PVC Stadium

C

Cheeb

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^ no need apply - Help NOT wanted. This thing practically runs itself until scissor time..which I'm dreading.


UPDATE - Thanks for the kind words all!

Up above things are chugging along just great. Everything is filling up nicely and leaning inwards. Hopefully my trellis will hold everything up in the weeks to come. Minor tip burn letting us know we were feeding right around where we wanted to be. Swapped out the 1K MH for a 1K HPS because leaf damage was occurring around the MH - imagine its because they run a tad hotter as that was the only area affected.

Unfortunately down below the one side was leaking like crazy. Got progressively worse until water was no longer dripping out, but running full stream. Reservoir (because its auto topped w/ RO) was diluting rapidly so the system was running at 2.-.4 EC every time we went in.

Going down to the 1050GPH pump wasnt enough so a 600GPH was swapped into the system today which was enough reduced flow to stop the leaking completely. EC brought back up to 1.6.

Water is moving through the system significantly slower so hopefully there is still enough DO present from the waterfall back to the res to keep root rots and the nasties away.

Aside from all that mess I'm still hoping for a good pull. Going to put a dehumidifier in there right away as we wont be defoliating the LEMG side even though its pretty thick in there. What are your inputs here?

LEMG (left) - EW (right)
Funny I used to think the LEMG (left) was the better side, but now I'm liking the way the right is filling in and cola-ing up.
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The only thing needed in the nutrient department. 16lb MaxiBloom - will get the 50lb when this is gone. My hydro store has got to hate me...
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Questions, Comments, whatever ya got is welcome...

Take it easy all.
 

DevilWeed

Member
That setup is looking just fantastic Cheeb! Wow!

I was testing Maxibloom w/ Blumats in coco and recently switched to Jack's Professional Hydro (5-12-26) and Calcinit. So far I like it a lot. Pretty sure it's even cheaper than Maxibloom. Never again will I use 8 different bottles to mix up 50 gallons of water.
 

DevilWeed

Member
Cheeb, what's your humidity at now? I defoliate plus I'm running at 45-50% 70/78f night/day and just got hit with PM on one plant. It's a friggin wind tunnel in my room and I still got PM. Go figure...
 

Yes4Prop215

Active member
Veteran
god damn you vertical guys are killin shit.....this setup is dope. make sure to show us those final harvest pics...
 

!!!

Now in technicolor
Veteran
How the hell are those chains holding up your walls of bud, plants, roots, pvc, water?
Definitely an underrated grow.
 
I noticed u said u had to use a hps instead of mh because of burnt leaves. Three days ago I hada hps bulb burn out an only had an extra mh bulb to replace it. Luckily its a switchable ballast so that wasnt a problem, but anyhow I changed the bulb an come back in my room 3 hours later an all the plants around the mh bulb are jus completely scorched. Im talkin all the plants around that bulb are like fried.

It doesnt make sence because alot of them were 2 ta 3 feet away from the bulb, an my hps bulbs have plants growin right up to like 18 inches away from them. Im thinkin it must be the extra UV put out by mh bulbs. Anybody got any opinions about it? Thnx.
 
B

Bob Smith

I noticed u said u had to use a hps instead of mh because of burnt leaves. Three days ago I hada hps bulb burn out an only had an extra mh bulb to replace it. Luckily its a switchable ballast so that wasnt a problem, but anyhow I changed the bulb an come back in my room 3 hours later an all the plants around the mh bulb are jus completely scorched. Im talkin all the plants around that bulb are like fried.

It doesnt make sence because alot of them were 2 ta 3 feet away from the bulb, an my hps bulbs have plants growin right up to like 18 inches away from them. Im thinkin it must be the extra UV put out by mh bulbs. Anybody got any opinions about it? Thnx.

MH bulbs burn hotter than a comparable HPS.
 

RicoT

Active member
Just when you think you've seen it all... truly amazing, and definitely tagging along with this one til the end. :tiphat:
 

mdk ktm

Member
Its final, im going to convert one spot to stadiums. The results are just too good, and this grow is just too sweet. I am guessing you will hit 1.2-1.3 GPW... Maybe more. I will probably do recirculating drip hydro in hydroton for a first run though.

My question is, how many feet are the shelves spaced apart? The first row and the second row? That is the part that is giving me trouble. I might try building shelves on wheels so I can move them in and out as they grow.

Cant wait to see some pics right before you chop.
 
C

Cheeb

Welp - something got f'd up.

I was absent from visiting this spot for nearly 2 weeks and I guess the live-in caretaker wasn't paying much attention either. I guess its easy to do when a system nearly runs itself. I noticed that some fans were curling up a hair (like a canoe) but I attributed this to heat stress from the 1K intensity which are very close (and cannot be moved any further away).

I'd first peg it as nutrient burn, but the system began to leak on the one side again (even with the smaller pump which led to the res constantly being diluted with RO - thus lowering the EC so I dont see how it'd be nute burn. We were trying to keep it around 1.6, but then it would get diluted down over the course of the week. Its never been over 1.6 - 1.8 EC to my knowledge.

My last visit here the pH was a bit too high but instead of adding more nutes I just decided to give the res a splash of pH down. We have no idea our water volume so a splash it was. Waiting a bit then re-tested and all looked good...around 5.6 or so. Well a few days pass and I get a call from by buddy who says the pH is really low..like around 4.0 or so. I told him to allow more RO into the system to try to bring it up a bit as we didnt have pH up on hand (never needed it). I hear from him next day or so and he said it didnt bring it up enough.

I swing over few days after that conversation and this is what I find. Crispy fan leaves affecting upper leaves. Yellow/ orange spots, ect. Had more of a negative effect on the left (Lemmon G). Aside from the crispy fan leaves the tops of the Lemmons are foxtailing. Overall room temps are not hot at all, but these ladies may just be too close to the lamps.

I'm bummed big time, but hopefully we can still salvage this crop as the buds still look OK. The affected leaves did not go up into the colas.

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this pic shows the damage the best - see the odd foxtailing tops. ??
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- -

Do you guys think I'm correct in my thinking of low pH plus being too close to the lights?
or do you think that they experienced a really high EC for some time? Either my pal aint telling me the truth.. or the EC was too high - but then was diluted down before we took our reading. (system needs to circulate for a bit before we get actual EC reading)

Welp.. I believe we are a few weeks from hack then we'll try it again.

Next round will be 1 strain / flipped a tad sooner..and strict watch over pH and EC. Going to toss a nutradip constant monitoring meter in here so we have readings at a glance. Also going to prune undergrowth more next round as bottom row blocks alot of the lower upper row so I'm sure its all loose garbage up in there.

- -

Another question - this room is cooled simply by passive intake in the door (pulling very cold winter air in) as a 14" MAX exhausts to another area of the basement. Lights on temps are great, but we have no way of controlling light off temp thus we are pulling in very very cold air. I cant exactly turn off our exhaust as odor would get out of hand. We run our exhaust 27/4 and ice sickles are forming on our passive intake.

Whats the simpliest / cheapest solution to this when not running a sealed enviroment. I typically pull instake air from surrounding basement and do not have to worry about this normally.

Thanks all for following - I feel I've let you down here by effing up this stadium weeks before harvest.
 

250wscrogger

Active member
this is why I run pro-mix.... much easier to control PH and EC.....

For the exhaust I would suggest running a variac on a relay circuit which allows full (full speed) or partial voltage (reduced speed) depending on time....this way it wouldn't be too cold during lights off but you would still maintain odor control/negative pressure.

(much thanks to grow nerd for explaining how to do it) https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=197611&page=2

This is what I'll be doing with a 14'' max in my 4k stadium to keep humidity and odor down without getting too cold during lights off...
 
B

Bob Smith

Relax bro, worse things have happened - you're still gonna pull some quality smoke :)

As far as your questions go - putting your fan on a speed regulator would be a good start, although it sounds like you're gonna have to totally redo the ventilation for this system - really depends on the budget how high/low tech you wanna get with it.

Although I'm sure the EC/pH issues didn't help, pretty easy to see from the pics that the plants closest to the lights have the most "lightening" going on - pretty clear case of bleaching (most likely coupled with heat stress - any idea what temps are for the fans that close to the 1Ks?), IMO.
 

whodare

Active member
Veteran
Another question - this room is cooled simply by passive intake in the door (pulling very cold winter air in) as a 14" MAX exhausts to another area of the basement. Lights on temps are great, but we have no way of controlling light off temp thus we are pulling in very very cold air. I cant exactly turn off our exhaust as odor would get out of hand. We run our exhaust 27/4 and ice sickles are forming on our passive intake.

Whats the simpliest / cheapest solution to this when not running a sealed enviroment. I typically pull instake air from surrounding basement and do not have to worry about this normally.

Thanks all for following - I feel I've let you down here by effing up this stadium weeks before harvest.



i have the same problem. i picked up a cheap heater a home depot for 45 bucks its the lasko ceramic tower. it has an led readout so you can dial the temp in. you could also get another fan and filter, smaller than what you have, and have it just recycle air in the room. at night.
 

StupidBoy

Member
Well, despite the pH troubles I think they're lookin pretty darn good Cheeb :respect: Did you do any trimming/defoliation of the lower parts of the plants?
Props to you Man and Happy Holidays :ying:
 
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