Question about lighting tall slender vert cab

[budelight]

Hey hush,

I built a NGB style cab last year and had to make a lot of critical decisions like you are currently considering...

I'll upload a pic to show you my system later (on iPad) but esentially I did the same design that jbonez is suggesting and it treated me very well. In my case security was the #1 priority, with discrete looking & quiet, #2 and #3.

Think about having 3 chambers (modifiable to 4)
Top left chamber = electronics and air filtration/exhaust
Bottom left chamber = vegetative with floro lights (pll or cfl)
All righ side = flower area with adjustable lamp OR floor...
OPTIONAL: below bottom left = additional forth compartment for storage

I used my fan in this order:

Plant chambers (Smelly air) -flow-to-> electronics room/carbon filter (air gets clean) -connected-to-> fan intake (pulled through fan) -flow-to-> exhaust port (outside box, dryer vent flaps to close hen fan off)

Will post more later,
Budelight

 

[hush]

Okay I've done some thinking about this. Lots and lots of thinking...

My original goal in setting this up was to have another area for me to, I guess, have some fun, experiment a little, grow plants I otherwise can't justify in my main garden, and to provide just that little extra amount of medicine over what my main garden yields, so that I can be more liberal with it, and share more often.

See, I have a main setup, which will ultimately be steadily providing my wife and me with the amount and variety that we need for our various ailments. That is a project unto itself which I have, frankly, only just begun, and is going rather well! I am currently growing out a handful of strains that will provide me with a few mothers that will be maintained in a tent of their own, under a 250w CMH or a bank of T5s (haven't decided yet), and there is already space in the closet for this tent.

Also in this closet is my flowering tent, which has a 400 watter in it. Right now I am flowering out the seed plants that will ultimately become the mothers, but once this grow is finished, this tent will be used for mono-crop SOG grows, 16 clones at a time. I've already done the math, and extrapolated from all my previous grows, and can safely say this will be all my wife and I need.

But then there's that place beyond what we need where it would be nice to just have a little fun, try out new strains from time to time, experiment with growing old strains in new ways, that kind of thing.

So I originally thought about it, and the first thing that came to mind is that I want to grow some pure sativas, or at least like 90%+ ones. Then it hit me that I have an old armoire still that I used to grow mothers in a long time ago. I dusted it off and realized right away that the entire right side is perfect for a single, tall sativa to grow in, and that meant I could also finally give vert a try! But at the same time I have always wanted to be able to grow plants in their natural shape, without contortions or chop jobs. That's why side lighting is more desirable to me, in this small chamber, than a vertical light down the middle of the space that a plant would contort to grow around.

But then I also realized I had that multiple tiered left side, and that I might as well do something with that, too, and instantly I thought that it would be perfect to test an idea I've had for a long time, which is to try flowering 4 small clones right underneath a vertical 125w CFL and see what that single bulb will do. I even have an old Garden of Ease hydroponics system from Sunleaves that fits perfectly in this little chamber, and the CFL fits snugly right in between and above the 4 plant sites, like it was made for it.

So, after all this pondering, I've decided I like the idea of being able to use both sides of the armoire for growing. That being said, I need to make it work with a 4 inch inline fan. Because I need it all to fit inside the cabinet, not outside of it.

So what I think I will do is replace the power compacts in the sativa chamber with T5 strip lights, just like Crusader Rabbit recommended on the last page. CR, you were right and I was wrong, that really is a better idea in here, cuts the heat in half. Thing is, I will also try top lighting with a 150w hps with remote ballast, in a mini cool tube. I'm going to attempt this all with a 4 inch fan and see what happens.

If that doesn't work, I will remove the hps from the equation, and that should work fine no problem.

I think.

 

[hush]

Well I was cleaning up some stuff in my backyard storage shed, and I found a long-lost Dayton blower inside of a long-lost grow cabinet! It's one of those 265 cfm blowers, and it still works. I plugged it in last night and it's nice and quiet!

I then mounted the fan inside of the armoire, sealed the output flange to the exhaust hole, and fired it up. I turned on the 125w CFL in the indica chamber and then closed the armoire doors. The first thing I noticed right away is that, even though the doors are warped a bit, and I will need to install some magnets in strategic places to make sure the doors close all the way, THERE IS NEGATIVE PRESSURE! So the doors will actually pull themselves closed on their own, but it won't seal properly because of the warps. But anyway I left it alone for an hour and came back, and the temperature inside was only about 6 degrees warmer than ambient. I'm thinking that once I seal things up properly, and make sure ALL the air being exhausted came in from the bottom of the cabinet, that this will help bring the temp down a few degrees.

As I said before, the doors are warped so I had to lean against them to make sure my body weight pressed them all the way closed against the cabinet, but once I did this, I could tell that this was working. I had a plastic grocery bag nearby, so I placed it, flat, on the floor in front of the intake holes. Sure enough, the bag got sucked right into the intake holes on the right side, the sativa chamber, causing the sound of the fan to get ever so slightly louder.

So I think this dayton might work!

I still think, though, that I will be using T5's instead of the PLL's. I'm the kind of person who looks for signs in the world around him, and the fact that I found this fan right after deciding to go with T5s is like a very clear sign to me.

Now all I need to do is go get some more of those magnet things in the cabinet hardware aisle, and fix a few last light leaks, then this thing will be ready to seriously test temperature. I have a good feeling about this. Altogether, including the indica chamber, there will only be 491w of light, including the little HPS, or 341w without it. Theoretically the dayton should be able to do this, even through a small carbon filter. I used this thing in the past, successfully, on a utility closet that had a greater cubic footage than this armoire, so that's what I'm basing it on.

Onward and upward...

 

[hush]

Well I've been testing the temp for about 24 hours now, and the space in the indica chamber maxed out at only 4 degrees over ambient. Seeing as how, when I'm gone during the day, the house gets up to 75 degrees at the warmest, this is acceptable. I still plan on replacing the fan, but it will work for now.

I even planted up 4 rooted clones last night and put them in the indica chamber. They spent the night in 76 degree temps, and they are happy. These 4 plants will eventually be mother plants, and will reside in their own DR60, but for now they are testing out this cabinet for me.

 

[ZZTops]

Glad your getting It Together...

Since your using T5's how are you going to place them in the cab, top, side or both...?

 

[hush]

I will be using these 1x54w strips mounted vertically in each corner:

So, 216w of side lighting. Overhead, being raised upward as the plant grows, will be a 150w HPS. That's the plan as of now, lol.

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

You could also fit three more lights, one up the middle of each wall, using the T5s without reflectors. Tubes don't get that hot. I once had a cab with vert shoplights on the walls. The plants kept trying to grow around the tubes and got lightly toasted only if they made contact.

How tall is the door of your cabinet? Could you mount a light there?

If you only grow one tall plant, consider placing it on a lazy susan for easy maintenance.

 

[hush]

Well keep in mind that T5s are still a bit warmer than T8 shop lights, but point taken.

You know, I thought about adding the extra strip lights on the walls, too, but then I just realized that I can stair step up to that if needed. This will actually give me a chance to gauge the plants' growth under lower wattage, and then if I'm not satisfied with yields I could always add more, and it would be no big deal, no construction necessary, that sort of thing.

As far as using reflectors, I have always found that the amount of light reaching the plants is always way better being bounced off of reflectors than it is being bounced off of walls. Even with mylar or reflectix or whatever. So I think by using reflectors I'll be better "shaping" the light footprint.

The lazy suzan sounds like a great idea actually. I just might do that for the sativa side. What I will be doing in this cabinet is DWC. The sativa chamber will have a single 5 gal bucket with an 8 inch bucket-lid pot up top. The indica chamber will have a Garden of Ease system that I will be converting to a standard DWC tub. It has 4 planter sites with a suspended CFL right down the middle of them.

 

[hush]

I just couldn't help myself... today I bought a hurricane glass tube from the craft store, since I happened to be passing by one on my lunch break. I went home and inserted it over the 125w CFL in the indica chamber, holding it there with my hand for a couple of minutes... and I gotta tell you guys:

I REALLY THINK THIS MIGHT WORK!!!

I understand that everyone says glass blocks lumens, which is true, and I'm already working with limited lumens in the first place... I understand that...

But when I held the glass tube in place, around the bulb, I instantly felt a rush of warm air flowing into the equipment chamber up above that I wasn't feeling before. Basically, by having the glass tube around the CFL, all the heat being produced is instantaneously being sucked up and away, never having time to heat the surrounding air, where the plants are. And, while I am not a plant, I couldn't notice any loss of light. I actually have a footcandle meter somewhere in my storage shed, so I am going to see if I can find it this weekend, and take some readings with and without the glass tube.

I think that the lumen loss resulting from the glass tube is negligible, and is nowhere near as impacting to the grow as the extra heat being thrown from the bulb without the glass tube.

More later...

 

[Mister_D]

I just couldn't help myself... today I bought a hurricane glass tube from the craft store, since I happened to be passing by one on my lunch break. I went home and inserted it over the 125w CFL in the indica chamber, holding it there with my hand for a couple of minutes... and I gotta tell you guys:

I REALLY THINK THIS MIGHT WORK!!!

I understand that everyone says glass blocks lumens, which is true, and I'm already working with limited lumens in the first place... I understand that...

But when I held the glass tube in place, around the bulb, I instantly felt a rush of warm air flowing into the equipment chamber up above that I wasn't feeling before. Basically, by having the glass tube around the CFL, all the heat being produced is instantaneously being sucked up and away, never having time to heat the surrounding air, where the plants are. And, while I am not a plant, I couldn't notice any loss of light. I actually have a footcandle meter somewhere in my storage shed, so I am going to see if I can find it this weekend, and take some readings with and without the glass tube.

I think that the lumen loss resulting from the glass tube is negligible, and is nowhere near as impacting to the grow as the extra heat being thrown from the bulb without the glass tube.

More later...

Enviroment first . Your thinking is absolutely correct here.

 

[hush]

Well, here is what I've done this evening:

 

[hush]

This is what the temp stabilized at after 24 hours with the doors closed and the light on:

So it looks like it's on!

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

see how you have the plants pots built into/under the base of the cabinet?
if you could do that with the fan as well then you could lower the light a fair bit
this would allow you to get the plants beside the light rather than below it much sooner
dead sexy setup, atho I wonder how much that plastic cooltube is costing you in light quality.

 

[ZZTops]

Looking Good Hush...

I do not think the tube will block much light...

I was thinking you ducted the tube ( like a open CoolTube ) but see you have a fan on the bottom. Is that what I see...?

Ducting it ( pull air, not push ) and making it adjust up and down would be another way to go...

Will be watching...

 

[hush]

Dave, the pots aren't beneath a shelf, like you said. This is a hydroponic system that has 4 net cups suspended from it's lid. The fan is resting right on top of the access hole. But it's cool I understand what you are suggesting. Thing is, eventually I will be starting with nicer, taller clones that will already be level with the top of the fan, so that won't be a problem. I just wanted to get this thing going, so I threw four newly rooted mother plants in there. The distance from the light in the beginning like this will probably help them to stretch a bit, giving me better cuttings, lol.

The tube is glass, not plastic. I don't know if that matters for light penetration, but I would be afraid that plastic would warp or melt. I would be willing to bet that the glass isn't blocking all that much light, to be honest. I've been raising corals under high output fluorescent light for decades, and many of those times the aquariums had glass tops. Let me tell you, I never noticed any problems with diminished light, and I always raised the difficult, high light requiring corals.

I'm still going to find my footcandle meter and measure the light as soon as I can.

ZZ, even though I positioned the fan there, there is totally negative pressure already there, sucking the heat out. I really don't need the fan. But in trying to even out the air flow from one square inch to the next, I ended up figuring out that putting the fan there, directly in the center, blowing straight up, causes the best dispersal of air flow, and it just happens to help the exhaust fan that's already pulling through the tube on its own.

But technically though, no it's not ducted to anything. I just have the tube perfectly wedged into a duct reducer, which is perfectly wedged into a 4 inch hole in the ceiling of this chamber. Up above there is a Dayton blower sucking air through this hole, and two other 4 inch holes with no ducting or glass tubes, and exhausting it straight out of the back of the cab.

Here's the trio of holes providing air to the exhaust chamber:

And then here's what it looks like up above:

You can see that I have a short piece of duct directed in the general direction of where the 3 holes are located, but that's the only duct.

This will change a bit when the sativa chamber opens up for business. That will mean probably closing up one of the 4 inch holes, and then opening the two holes that are currently closed off which lead into the sativa chamber from the exhaust chamber (not visible in the picture).

 

[ZZTops]

Very Nice and Clean...

 

[budelight]

What did you use to cut your holes?

 

[hush]

I used a 4 inch hole saw. It's the only way I can cut perfect circles, lol.

 

[budelight]

I used a 4 inch hole saw. It's the only way I can cut perfect circles, lol.

Great Stuff, im buying this set right now

NEW DRILL BIT SET - 16 piece HOLE SAW KIT - 3/4" to 5"
$12.96 + Free Shipping

 

[Jbonez]

Hush, for perspective... My 130w veg cab was designed and functions with a passive intake and exhaust, NO FANS...

I have enough room for the heat to rise and create a natural vaccum to pull air in at the right speed to keep temps and rh PERFECT..

Anything can be done with a little thinking!