Anti's MicroStealth Cab Design (Dr. Bud Method)

[Anti]

Hi Anti,

This thread is fantastic, so much useful info here. I'm interested in building a system very, very similar to yours, but my problem is I am not going to be able to water my plants every day as I pretty much will only have access on weekends. I was wondering if you had any ideas on how I could modify your design so that this wouldn't be a problem. Some kind of automatic watering solution? Or am I just not going to be able to do this type of perpetual sog grow? I dont mean to hi-jack the thread or anything but I figured this question might help someone else out too. Thanks again, this thread is already helping me a lot in figuring out how to get started

In order to water once a week you'd need a medium that retained water VERY well or you'd need some kind of alternative watering method.

I know many people here rave about Blumat auto-watering spikes. I have zero experience with them, myself.

It also occurs to me that you could do some kind of "mini-hempy" pots but you'd need to design your cab to allow for extra height for your water rez.

I'd be surprised if there weren't some hydro SOGgers out there. You'll just have to search and read and search and read until you find an idea that makes the most sense to you.

Watering every other day is simple enough for me. I've gotten away with watering every third day when I was in soil, but as plants got larger, they'd be pretty droopy by the third day, so now I typically water once every 48 hours.

 

[zbenjii]

Blumat seems too complicated with all those tubes. Dr. Bud put his pots into a larger container and filled the larger container with water when he would leave his grow for prolonged periods of time. I think it's possible to implement something like that with coco. Also there is the wick style grow like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-bydzRzT9Y only with a more aerated growing medium and smaller containers

 

[Anti]

Doc Bud recommended that as a way you could get by if you had to leave for a stretch. He advised no nutes, plain water with lots of aeration. I recently took a weeklong trip and kept my motherplant alive with this technique, but I think if you wanna do it long-term you really need to think about hydro, since that's what you'll be doing.

 

[zbenjii]

Doc Bud recommended that as a way you could get by if you had to leave for a stretch. He advised no nutes, plain water with lots of aeration. I recently took a weeklong trip and kept my motherplant alive with this technique, but I think if you wanna do it long-term you really need to think about hydro, since that's what you'll be doing.

The technique isn't really all that new. It's called bottom feeding. I've done bottom feeding with basil and would definitely recommend feeding it with nutes. I mixed equal parts of perlite soil and coco so that in between waterings, I can dry out the pots without any salt craziness.

 

[Anti]

how do you dry out the pots when you are leaving them partially submerged in water all the time? Won't the wick action of the perlite, soil or coco keep the soil at maximum saturation?

 

[Kirby_Tokin]

Love your cab Anti....!! FTW..!
Have you seen this yet? Know if anyone have tried it in micro yet?
http://www.smarthome.com/3109/Claber-8053-Oasis-Self-Watering-System/p.aspx

Kirby

 

[Panama Red]

Polymer water crystals mixed into the soil can extend the interval between waterings.

 

[zbenjii]

well i just fill the basin with water and after about a week and a half the basin is empty and the pots are dry and light.

 

[Anti]

Right on. I wasn't recommending the technique because I have no experience with it, except to use as I have already described.

Are you using airstones in the water?

 

[zbenjii]

no, i might have some level of root rot. usually the basin will be filled with water or wet for 3 or 4 days. i figure that if the plants can soak up the water within 3 or 4 days then the roots will be healthy enough to do their job. The roots are not white. but then again old roots are seldom white unless you've using dwc or aero. The roots are a biege color. they look pretty healthy though.

 

[pho]

Nothing to add other than a lot of admiration for your work. Wow!!

I fortunately have a nice hidden room that I'm growing in, but once my family expands I may lose this luxury. Studying the art of cabinet making and growing though. In fact, I'm trying to see if a friend would be willing to start their own grow so I can build a ballin' cab for them LOL

 

[cosmik debris]

Use to start several thousand vegetables under T-12's using standard nursery trays and soil blocks made of peat, compost, perlite and good organic top soil that had been kind'a half ass sterilized in the sun under clear poly. Had soil block makers that would make a small 3/4"x3/4" block for germ, and then a bigger 2 1/2" or 3" block w/ a 3/4" square dimple in it would accept the smaller block for transplant.

The watering system was pieces of 2" PVC sloped and banded across the fronts of several 40' x 4 tier shelf runs. The PVC was run through a band saw to sort of cut the top off, leaving about an inch wide slot removed along the length of each 20' pipe section (looked like the letter 'C' when viewed from the end). A cap was glued on one end and the other connected to a rez w/ a float controlling a dedicated Eheim aquarium pump sitting in a central 55 gal. poly drum. The float maintained the level of water in the pipe "troughs", and then a piece of polyester fabric the width of a tray was draped over the edge of the tray and its end was laid into the bottom of the trough. The fabric was cut to run the full length and width of the nursery tray and the soil blocks were set right on top of the fabric. I had seen someone else set a large greenhouse up this way using vinyl gutters and special wicking matts, but the PVC was a lot cheaper, easier to add fittings to, and we was seriously po'.

The feeding that I recall (weekly) was liquid seaweed, fish emulsion and something called Roots, and that wasn't started until everything was setting true leaves. The lights were nothing special and 4 tubes crossed the width of each tray. Short domes were placed over the trays to germ and then removed for more and more time each day after first true leaves sprouted. The fabric was nothing fancy, just whatever roll ends we could get cheap. The cotton was easiest to work with 'cuz it would disintegrate by the time we were ready to start hardening off to transplant outside. The synthetics could be reused several times.

Pretty ghetto, but cheap as hell and pretty high tech for some starvin' kids just tryin' to feed themselves almost 30 years ago. Once it was all set up there really wasn't much to do but raise the lights. Every couple of weeks I would open valves on the stand pipe that connected the pipes on each shelf and flush the whole thing out with water and run a modified toilet brush down the troughs. Actually made the smell of the fish emulsion almost tolerable. I do recall making all of those soil blocks was a serious PITA, but it all worked and we never had any problems with over or under watering ever again. Just had to be careful 'cuz everything grew so much faster that we ended up with plants that out grew their space several weeks earlier than in previous years.

Back then we were still footloose (probably had a lot to do with why we was po') so we would take off back packing for a week at a time and the watering system never let us down.

In looking at the Blumat I didn't see anything particularly earth shattering. For a small micro grow my attitude is basically that the good Doctor has shared a very reliable, pretty idiot proof system that I can probably only find fifty ways to fuck up...but I think I'll try to stick with his methods.

 

[cosmik debris]

Wanted to drag ya back to the pot size and soil mix change again. I seem to recall that Doc Bud's original comment on his container size was that the depth was the most critical factor in controlling the finishing height, particularly with such a confined space. Re-reading your results I'm still a little stupid about whether you can attribute the improvements strictly to that mix or could the bigger pot size still be in play...or did I just straight up miss something altogether. Sorry.

 

[BigBlack81]

Wanted to drag ya back to the pot size and soil mix change again. I seem to recall that Doc Bud's original comment on his container size was that the depth was the most critical factor in controlling the finishing height, particularly with such a confined space. Re-reading your results I'm still a little stupid about whether you can attribute the improvements strictly to that mix or could the bigger pot size still be in play...or did I just straight up miss something altogether. Sorry.

I would appreciate some comment on this as this is a decision that will determine how I am to grow going forward. I'd like to do a sort of passive hydro SOG thing with a modified version of Soma's beds as a plantlet but I'm somewhat stymied at the idea of the right shape of pot to use for this.

Anti, your fabulous pic of your containers have me thinking a long skinny container might be more to my liking but would a slightly shorter, fatter size yield a bigger rootball for the slight increase of mass volume?

 

[cosmik debris]

Just thinking on it some more, and I'm not certain that this all relates, but other than the obvious...that bigger pots yield bigger plants, I'm wondering if outdoor plant growth would explain part of this.

If you look at a typical plant growing wild out of doors, the roots that are responsible for the majority of ionic exchange and nutrient uptake are the finer feeder roots that grow and exist out near the plant's drip line. That is to say, along the edge of the plant's canopy where rain water is most likely to accumulate in greater abundance. Is it a function of the skinnier pot that by constraining the outward spread of the root ball the plant canopy is also somehow genetically programmed to be likewise constrained as a sort of survival mechanism? And would it also be a function of a deeper pot, that allows for good moisture and nutrient uptake in spite of the horizontal root constraints, that by providing more than the plant needs for spread - that it instead puts its energies into vertical growth?

I think I mentioned something about this to Anti a while back wondering just how far we might be able to take that idea. Neither of us was really focused on testing the idea at the time but he may have done something with it since (this was probably only a few months ago). I wonder what happens with 2" square 10" tall pots vs. 3" square 8" pots for example? Maybe I should be growing in bud vases? Then on the other extreme, Infectualize did a shallow fat root ball in soil with his HighPod project. Big fat azzed bush that yielded mucho nuggage (like over 5 z) from a single plant in a garbage can full of CFL's.

 

[Anti]

I wonder what happens with 2" square 10" tall pots vs. 3" square 8" pots for example? Maybe I should be growing in bud vases? Then on the other extreme, Infectualize did a shallow fat root ball in soil with his HighPod project. Big fat azzed bush that yielded mucho nuggage (like over 5 z) from a single plant in a garbage can full of CFL's.

My first run were in 3"x8" containers. I can't tell you exact weights because my scale is broke.... but the 2.5"x10" definitely out yielded the first run. First run was in soil, this run was in biobiz light mix.

It took two jars to jar up one of those AK47s this time. First round, in the 3x8 it took one jar and there was some room for wiggle in that jar.

 

[cosmik debris]

So have you run the biobiz light mix in a 3" and 2 1/2" side by side - same strain clones, etc.? Would you expect the biobiz to work better in any given container size or could you expect another big production boost by switching to a 2"x12" deep pot? Maybe a little of both?
Not trying to be obtuse, just tryin' to order my variables.

 

[cosmik debris]

Just finished re-reading this bad boy for the third time. Not that you don't get it a lot but Thanks Again.

Had a couple of tips for your development as a cabinet maker.
Try a build using 3/4" Birch P/W. It's more expensive but has less interior voids than the AC and BC pine/fir plywoods that the big boxes sell. You can paint or stain it any color you like with good results, and most importantly - once the edges and both faces are painted or sealed it remains very dimensionally stable.

Any wood panel that is sealed with paint, laminate or stain and clear on one side and not the other is going to absorb and release moisture at different rates from the opposing sides. This causes the wood to start warping and swelling and all sorts of other nasty stuff. Ideally any wood should be sealed on all edges and faces to help mitigate that movement and make it more uniform. This is also why you want to be careful about mixing woods with different moisture contents in a build.Too high a moisture content prevents good glue adhesion as well as messin' with the quality of your finish, all on top of the shrinking and warping issues. Wood is just a big ole sponge (cellulose) and as such will continue to act like one as long as it is exposed. Plwoods and engineered wood products are less prone to these actions because they have less wood fiber and more glue in them, but they can still suck up the moisture until there are sealed.

Pressure treated is usually the worst, and shouldn't be used indoors or around consumables anyway. Regular framing lumber, and even the "Kiln Dried" studs are next, and finally the more stable plywoods and finished lumber. In today's world of last minute inventory replacement, the 2x4 that you buy at H.D. this morning may well have been standing on a mountain in Canada last week. There are also grain and wood type issues that can cause problems when attempting to use framing lumber for furniture projects. It can be done obviously, but it brings a lot of complications with it that ultimately represent something of a false economy. That's another part of why the Birch plywood can be a great way to go in spite of its added weight. It's also still lighter than melamine or MDF and infinitely better at dealing with moisture.

When you build with the 3/4" material all ya need are some coarse thread drywall screws, some finish nails and some regular old yellow wood glue. A bead of glue on a butt joint, then a couple of finish nails every 8" or so, followed by a screw in a pre-drilled hole every 8-12" and you end up with a bullet proof joint. The wood glue is stronger than the wood it joins, the finish nails and screws are basically just a little extra to hold everything in place while the glue cures. Borrowing an air or electric powered finish nail gun makes it way simple 'cuz you don't have to try and hold everything steady while you try to drive a nail. The wood glue is slow to cure so if ya have to move something it's very forgiving, and you can clean up most of your squeeze out and drips with a rag and some warm water. Just don't forget to scrape or sand your spills before finishing or you'll end up with a leprous looking finish. You can also use dowels, biscuits, dominos or pins to assist you with aligning and joining your panels. These are all variations on the same basic theme and too complicated to address here, but the are very simple to learn to use and produce amazingly effective and strong joints.

Another nice thing about the 3/4" material thickness is that it allows a lot of flexibility in terms of hardware selection. Where you were wearing out you back panel screw holes for example, you could drill a 3/8" hole and screw in a brass insert. This is a chunk of brass that has coarse threads on the outside, two little notches in its end for a special spanner bit to engage it and drive it into its hole, and the inside is tapped and threaded for a variety of different fine thread sized fasteners (1/4x20 for example). Once you drill your hole, put in a dab of wood glue and use the spanner bit on a drill motor to drive it into the hole. You now have a recessed hole that is threaded with metal that you can run a bolt or cap screw into and out as many times as you like without wearing out. You can also use Confirmat screws, which are a kind of stepped profile two stage screw that IKEA favors, Barrel bolts or cam locks and posts - also very popular with IKEA - to make your shit knock down capable. Thus solving the weight issue when ya move, and storage issues if you need to tear down for a bit. The added thickness will also make piano hinge or more descrete Euro hinges simpler to install. By rabbeting your door edges you can create more naturally light proof doors, and by rabbeting the back of your box you can let in a thin back panel that will make your whole build rigid and keep it perfectly square. A lot of this is stuff that you might pull off with 1/2" goods, but it would be a trial to say the least. With the 3/4" you can make everything out of the same material if you wish, from your doors and shelves to the base and back - thereby using up most of your scrap and minimizing the head scratching while planning.

Check out some of the wood working forums or Google 'Face Frame' or 'European Style' cabinet construction. They represent the simplest prevailing styles on box building and might inspire you to buy a router and a proper saw. On the topic of tools, take some of the money you're saving and invest in Festool from now on. With their cutting system just about anyone can produce professional quality cabinets working on a pair of saw horses. Pretty trick shit. Check it out. Just ain't cheap...but ya get what ya pay for. If you don't see yourself ever using them again, put'em on Feebay. Their shit typically sells for at least 80% of retail even well used, so it's almost like renting them if you decide not to keep'em.

Regarding MDF and melamine. Both are abundant, cheap and workable. Both require special finishing materials, techniques and to some degree fasteners as well. Although people use them all of time for this type of thing I personally wouldn't recommend them mainly because of their weight, but also becasue if their edges get a bit wet they will swell like one of your frosty buds and you can't make it go away again. In a stealth cab a few swollen cabinet corners will instantly tell someone that you've got something wet inside. Not good. Other than that, it just doesn't hold up well over time to moving and relocating, etc., but to each his own.

Anyway, keep up the great work. I'm a fan.

 

[TommytheCat]

Anti, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Great job! I'm a cab grower myself, and yours does the job of both of my cabs. I'll be building something similar for my next cabinet.

 

[Anti]

Anti, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Great job! I'm a cab grower myself, and yours does the job of both of my cabs. I'll be building something similar for my next cabinet.

Everything I know I learned right here at IC! (Well I have also watched every video I could download and every book I could find at Borders.) I haven't even scratched the surface of what is possible to learn in these threads.

Love the name... I'm a big Primus fan.

Thanks for stopping by!