Blueprint for stealth closet with fluorescent tubes

[anemyr]

Hello. Im new to both this forum and gardening at all. I am going all in on stealth, and i dont know where to start. I will live in a 200 feet rental aparment which non-smokers will visit, stealth is everything on this one! It can't smell at all, nor may you hear the fan.

I will grow northern lights in soil.

The closet will be about 2 x 2 feet floor, sorry for not showing depth in the pictures... Also, in the drawing i used t8's which are a bit thicker than t5's.

Reasons why i use vertical fluorescent tubes:
With less heat i can have a silent fan. And as they are vertical i can make sure the plants get light all over. I believe this will be the most efficiant use of space.
Problems with my usage of the vertical fluoros is that the plants will have to grow very tall (3 feet) in the flowering stage to make use of all light. I am hoping that the northern light is a tall growing strain (without topping out the closet).

Another problem with the vertical tubes is that they will reach the floor thus easely short circuiting when i water the plants. Im hoping on getting some real help on this one.

The tubes will also be a obstacle when watering. Im solving this by using a long funnel when watering.

I think about using several lighttrap/ventilation between grow- and flower room as this will minimize cost of space.

Please ask, or comment. I need all the help i can get!

 

[ceylon]

maybe that's interesting for you

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=196405

 

[anemyr]

Thank you!
Nice thread. He is using PL-L vertically. Aproximatly 20" flowering.
His results are 4,5grams per plant, 8 plants 5750 lumen per plant
I was hoping on bigger harvests per plant, 3960 lumen per plant, also much of my light will be wasted in the ealy periods of flowering. At harvest my plants should be twice as high in the same horizontal area.
But i can see how a good over head reflector will be a must. I probably need to find a 10 cm higher closet. (i will not use the full length of the tubes as the space is limited, also the tubes will dim over time)
I'll steal his DIY reflectors for reflecting horizontally. Vertical space will be limited so ill maby use thin stainless steel ontop of the tubes.

Does anyone know if it's possible to use oilcloth as a reflective drape? Im thinking about the "odour free doors"

How fast will the northern lights grow? Im hoping they will go from 20" when starting flowering, to reach the roof as soon as possible. Of course this is individual, but in good pots and providing about 4000 lumens per plant.

Also, all this is based on my theory that the buds will make use of the photosynthesis in the rest of the plant

 

[Tilt]

That guy in the vert PL-L thread ceylon posted is an idiot. He is only getting 32 grams a week every week. Thats only ounce of smoke all to himself. What a loser. What a maroon. A HID lamp is what you need.

Seriously though your design could work T8 lamps are kinda of dim though unless you overdrive them. For the same cost in ballasts you can run pll lamps. I have used T8 ballasts to run pll lamps FWIW.

 

[anemyr]

I haven't called you anything but awsome, although i didn't put any attention on the fact that your harvesting dope every week.
Still, if i am going to make MY (read: this) growroom worth my while i was hoping on 10grams dry per plant, harvesting every 3 months. I will use the same theory as your grow; less lumen, but the light is hitting every single inch of the plant.

It took me until today to read that 1 + 1 = 1 regarding to lumen. So i think it might be a good idea to use PL-L 55w, as the baserate lumen will rise with 36% (3300 to 4400) . If CFL i'm hoping that 4 up to max 5 CFL's will be enough as the heat still will be a very big issue. Remember i will have to use a 30-40 cfm computer fan as i will have unknowing guests sitting right outside.

Still, i have a lot of vertical space. Will this vertical space be useful? Will the plants grow from 1,5 feet to 3 feet in a short time after beginninging their flowering?

 

[Moots]

Light hitting every inch of your plant may or may not help production. I had a good haul on my first grow, even with beginner mistakes, and one side of each of my 6 main branches got alot of light, while the other side received dappled dimmer light, using 3 cfls.

The effect? The bud sites filled out equally on both sides regardless. I think what helped, and what will help you is that you want to run a vertical. Mine was a pretty ghetto accidental vertical just because of how the plant grew. So you could probably reduce the amount of bulbs to help with heat. One in the center should be ok.

As for the light/Water/plant moving issue? Don't have the lights go all the way to the floor, that low down you'll just be shedding light on the side of the pot. Also maybe re configure the way you have it set up.

Keep the side lights there, go with one light in the middle. Use a similar pot set up except move the back one to the front, and put the 2 on each side in a straight line. With just the one light in the middle you should have no problem removing the front pot and sliding the 4 side pots straight out.

You could center out that middle light to be more central to the 5 pots. But putting that fifth pot in front instead of back means you can take it out easily, and if you space the pot and side lights out right you'll have plenty of room to slide them forward/out.

I'll draw up a simple ms paint diagram to show what I mean in a moment.

 

[Moots]

OK, Here ya go. It's pretty crude but should get the idea across. Yellow circles are lights, green triangles are plants, and the arrows just show you the direction you'd slide out pots.

There is alot of space in the back middle, you could put a fan back there, cords, thermometer, etc.

Hope that helps.

 

[StupidBoy]

I agree with Moots points and diagram. Pun intended LOL. I'd go with shorter bulbs if you can. Or eliminate your veg chamber for now. Also, you really don't need much in the way of reflectivity when using tube fluoros. The light isn't that intense, that's why you can put the plants right up next to it. Just paint the inside of the cab flat white. I imagine you're going to disassemble your tube light fixtures??? and put the ballasts outside your bloom room??? An idea to keep the lights from shorting out is to just put the bottom of the bulb in any thick plastic container. Even a soft drink bottle cut in half. One more thing, you shouldn't choose an exhaust fan based on it's cfm rating. Especially if you're going to be pushing/pulling through some kind of carbon filter. What's more important is the fans pressure rating in mmH2O. Try to find one in the 7/+ range. If it's too loud, you can always DIY a small muffler.
I also agree with what Tilt said. You'd have less power consumption, just as much stealth, and better yields if you went with a small HPS. Just my 0.2. Good luck.

 

[anemyr]

Thanks for the posts guys!
If going with tubes, Moots setup will be the obvious one. I was determined to let my 5th plant live in solitude behind the two life giving fluorescent bars. I could put a single HO lamp in the middle or something like that, even though it has got worse lumen/w i wouldn't waste it into the other lamp.

mmH2O is noted.
But isnt that a measure directly related to CFM? From what i have read, if i have understood >>>>THIS<<<<< correctly i should (on 35cfm basis) use a 1mm H2O fan. With your 7+ atleast 185cfm. Which would exchange my closet air 19 times every three minutes, if i would slow that beast down to more acceptable speeds wouldn't it burn up like a meteor in the atmosphere?

I haven't calculated the carbon filter though, but with a quick google i found gas masks with less than 3,5 mm H20. I will build my filter according to this guide which at least take CFM into account, and probably will be more open than a gas mask.
Or is your 7+ tip related to sound levels?

I have considered HPS but as of reading Moots journal i got inspired to continue on the fluorescent/PL-L journey. If HPS is just as good with my stealth requirements, and grow more, then HPS it is.

Questions About Lumen
I have a 4 feet fluorescent tube rated 3300lumen at 35w. I cover one half in light absorbing duct tape from NASA. Will the other 2 feet have 3300 lumen or
1750 lumen or something in between?

If 3300 lumen there would be good reasons for vertical fluorescent tubing, as what ever happens to my poor plants they are always guaranteed spheric lightning. If <3300 lumen, the loss of light the from worse than bad roof reflector will waste half my wattage. Meaning vertical PL-L would be preferable.

 

[Tilt]

LOL I have a tendency to make fun of myself. If you grow sativas filling that space will be no problem. Something like northern lights probably wont stretch into that much space unless vegged for quite a while which will increase the size of your veg area. pruning and training will help a bunch

 

[Moots]

An HPS will definitely grow more, but isn't as stealth. You gotta put the ballast some where and what have you. Though many around here have super stealthy setups with HPS'.

I go with CFLs, but will likely make the jump to PLLs soon, maybe another grow or 2, just for something new, and I think they have a cleaner look than a bunch of CFLs, that isn't to say I have been unhappy with the cfls. They exceeded my expectations, after you read people bashing them alot.

Stealth is a big reason I go with CFLs. Easy to contain, use, and replace. Very low cost. Safe. My forty watt bulbs browned leaf tips when they rested on the bulb so you can get em close. The 23 watt bulb doesn't even brown tips in direct contact. So low heat is also nice.

I dinged a CFL half way through flower. Wouldn't start up. Needed a new bulb. Walked to store. 9 Dollars and a 15 minute walk to replace. For me personally, in my lifestyle, and not to mention income, that is far more desirable than a couple hundred and a trip to your nearest grow shop. Of course the down side is likely smaller yields.

 

[anemyr]

Questions About Lumen
I have a 4 feet fluorescent tube rated 3300lumen at 35w. I cover one half in light absorbing duct tape from NASA. Will the other 2 feet have 3300 lumen or
1750 lumen or something in between?

So im answering my own question here.
Lumen is meassured in a spheric box that meassures all the light. Hence my tube would theoretically have half (1750) lumen.
Based on this knowledge we now know that it would not only be a huge waste of lumen to have half a tube without plant to light, the plant might get less light than from a less luminous lightsource as a 2900 PL-L.

Now, it's not decided yet. There is reason to believe that the plant will photosynthesize more when growing 4 feet and absorbing all light from the tube. Although, i personally don't think this difference will outweigh the fact that the plant FROM WHAT I KNOW will go weeks without full 3300 lumen.

So my new plan is to use vertical 55w PL-L ala tilt. 220-275w in total. I can make a good moveable reflector, but now i have to make sure the plants dont grow too high, which actually is something that is controllable.

Now i'll have to read up on PL-L's as i don't really know how their ballasts work.

 

[Moots]

It's tough to find info on using Pl-Ls but I am digging around right now. I'll post anything I can find, I am pretty sure the ballasts are smaller, and far less power hogs than the HID ballasts.

Found some info on Fulham Ballasts (The workhorse series seems to be popular, particularly the 7 and 8, each supports multiple bulbs I believe)

-Some basic wiring will be needed, but looks like most of it is almost plug and play, and quite simple.
-I think they all fall into the 1-2 amp range, so much less than the big HID ballasts.
-Gonna go hit the local hydro shop, see if they can help me out.

 

[ceylon]

read this and this

 

[Midnight Rudy]

PLL or Tube or cfl... just doesn't matter really. What you need to be concerned about is the light produced per watt of energy used and then find a way for that light to hit a plant before hitting a wall. PLL bulbs and t5 HO bulbs generate more intensity per given square inch of bulb face, but that doesn't mean they are better. With more intensity comes more penetration but also more heat and then you can't get as close to the bulb, so whatever ability your more intense lighting has to penetrate your plant area is squashed by having to back the plants off. At the end of the day it is likely a wash with all things being equal.

So, in optimal use, your bulbs will have a plant on at least 2 sides to maximize light efficiency, but penetration, which is important for an overhead lit grow is potentially less important in vertical if you are growing a single row. Arranging your bulbs in some staggered/symmetrical pattern is not making the best use of the light. There is no need to light all sides of the plant, and even with lower intensity t8 lamps you can easily get 4 or 5 inches of penetration which is likely enough for a single row of tallish cabinet plants.

Personally, I would design the cabinet so that I achieved about 2-300 watts per foot of depth of the cabinet. Base your tube length on the cabinet height you have over the height of your pots so you aren't just heating up root space. I would build a center panel for the cabinet that housed vertical appropriate bulbs nearly touching sides from front to back of the cabinet. You can get t8's now with the 700/800 series phosphors that are 90+ lumens per watt, which is in line with pll and t5ho. Having a wall of light through the center of the cabinet will allow for a single planting row on each side of the cabinet where you can maintain a distance of only a couple inches with your plants. You can then either tie your plants to the side walls to keep them out of the lights or use hardware cloth in front of the wall of light and just let them grow into it.

My personal plans if I ever find a way to sneak another cabinet into my house, is to do a cabinet 1.5'w x 1.5'd x 7'h with the wall of light using 3' t8 tubes like this one and 3 @ 2litre bottle sized planters on either side. In this case you could run 12 or so of the 1", 25w, 2250 lumen t8 bulbs for 300w and a total of 27,000 lumens. the big advantage to vertical is how efficiently you can use those lumens. In this case you could run 6 3' tall plants within a couple inches of your light for near perfect coverage of the plant and near perfect use of all available light.

Based on the availability of light to the plants and the containment of that much light in a small area, I think this could be a 1g per watt setup once you found the proper flowering height for a given cut. I also think that this could likely be cooled from the top with a simple carbon tray and a beefy but quiet 120mm PC fan. The cabinet could have an insulated dead space open at the top to serve like a muffler for fan and filter and be over the view of peoples eyes.

I personally would make the center panel(s) so that they slid out like a rack. I would make one for veg and one for flower unless I had a veg area that was tall enough to work in which case I would run perpetualy from side to side. I would make them from a wood frame and drill holes in the top and bottom plate to hold the bulbs, with the bottom hole undersized and only allowing the wires to pass through. I would solder all the bulb connections instead of using the sockets and make a series of quick connects to facilitate bulb changes. As was said before, you will need more ballasts if you run a higher number of lower wattage bulbs like I am suggesting but that isn't a real big expense. Most people push the limits of a Fulham workhorse8 ballast by running 4 55w plls. You can run 4 @ 25w t8's off of a single workhorse 5. A workhorse 8 is about $50 and the workhorse 5 is $30. Per my design you would spend about $90 on 3 ballasts for a 300w setup.

With putting the bulbs into the corners and lighting the cabinet walls like the drawings above show, you loose a lot of light. as soon as light has to bounce off something it looses strength and the light loss from distance to the sources is exponential. The heat is also reflected back toward the bulb from the corners which isn't ideal.

Good luck!

 

[anemyr]

Thanks! Great ideas!
I will probably grow vertical with the tubes in the middle as you proposed, probably less tubes. It won't be in the proximal future though. I have to change job, study for a big exam and maby get a new appartment. So i don't think that i will have time for this for a couple of weeks/months.