The Lurker Finally Shares...

[SirStynkalot]

Hi guys! I've been lurking here for EVER, long before I made this profile to comment on like a single post that really bothered me. I love the resource, but in the past when I wanted to share results and shoot breeze I posted under the same name on Growkind.

Anyways, I've used you guys for ever. I figure it's time I put something back, especially given recent circumstances. I had to stop growing about 20 months ago for a lot of reasons, but I had my medical card for several years and was pretty consistently growing the best stuff available in my college town. I know because I played weekly poker with all of the town's importers.

Anyways, I quit but I really missed it. Growkind's nice for sharing, but they don't just have the wealth of information ICmag does. I was still passionately addicted to GROWING, but I had nothing to share so I researched on here and tried to satisfy myself growing culinary herbs. Rosemary's nice, but it isn't a piece of living artwork the way a well grown cannabis plant is. Huge sparkling trichs, diverse and powerful aromas and flavors, vivid colors across a huge spectrum... aaah. I'm getting distracted. Anyway.

Now I'm back. My old "friends" that robbed me are long gone. No one in my new city knows anything, and my girlfriend finally gave the go ahead so long as I kept it smaller and secret (I used to run a 2 room grow in a 2 bedroom apartment).

Hope you guys enjoy. Thanks for keeping my growing cravings in check when I wasn't able to grow myself.

 

[SirStynkalot]

TLDR? TOUGH!

TLDR? TOUGH!

First, when considering any project, you must figure out what YOUR limiting variable is. Do you want high weights? Is it personal or commercial? Do you have only a small or oddly shaped space to work with? Would you have to compromise security in any way to be able to meet your needs and desires at this current limitations?

Take it from experience. Security comes first. At this point in my life I have no desire or need to grow commercially. I don't want anyone but my live-in girlfriend to know that I have a medical card and a small legal operation. That means I'm limited to a closet or a cabinet. Add to that the additional space constraints of my apartment and I'm stuck with the freestanding cabinet option only. And since I don't want to drop a bunch of time and money into this more than once, I'm going to try and build it out nicely, put it on wheels, and invest more into the project than many might be comfortable with. If you see some corners you don't mind cutting, go ahead. I'm doing a lot of the cosmetic stuff to fit my needs only.

Because I'm limited by available space, I have to make the most efficient use of the available space possible. That means vert lighting. Really though, anyone who's building a new cabinet in this day and age needs to be building for vert lighting. This has been a major design flaw in many of the standard stealth cab models – the growers are limited by available floorspace so they try to minimize the height and increase the width and length of the flower chambers as much as possible. Going vert allows for a bit more design freedom than was possible before as well as much more direct light.

Finally, I'm a busy, busy man. I work full time and am studying for the LSATs. If all goes to plan I'm going to be even more busy in the years to come, and much, much more in need of a few bowls. This means I need to design for an absolute minimum standard of maintenance and for a perpetual harvest of rotating strains.

Now we get to the meat of the design. When designing any grow or really evaluating any grow, what you need to look for are the godly and all important 6 factors. These are the things plants need – and they can only do as well as the worst factor permits.

The 6 factors:

Light:
For my personal use I estimate the most I'll ever need is 2 grams per day. That means that, if possible, I should design a flower cab that can yield that at a .5 gpw ratio for a full crop rotation (70 days). This would be the basic minimum efficiency standard for growing pot – I was consistent at .75 gpw growing with horizontal lighting on a bigger scale, so I'm pretty sure I can hit .5 even in a new and unfamiliar setup.

This equation means I need to design a cabinet with roughly 300 watts of flowering light.

Veg cabinets can be much smaller than flower cabs – the rule of thumb I heard is 25% of the space and light (or for vert growers 70% of the full net covered). The current plan is to install two 6500K 200w replacement CFL bulbs in vertically, for a total lighting of about 90 watts. Since I'm basically going to be flowering clones a week after they grow roots I'll probably not need much in the way of intense light. I just need them rooted and around 6-10 inches tall (strain stretch dependent).

I looked over a lot of options for lighting and the only reason I'm choosing vertical bare cfls for the lighting is because I already bought the bulbs. Pretty well any CFL configuration that doesn't spike heat would work. If I did it again I'd probably go for the long skinny CFLs along the ceiling to get them to stretch more faster.

CO2

I won't be injecting CO2 – instead I'm shooting for a decent air exchange rate. I'm using an Elicent 4" inline fan rated at 152 cfm, which is supposedly the quietest inline 4" fan available. I'm still working out how I'm going to manage an intake without stinking the room out - give me some time on that one and suggestions are appreciated.

Heat

The plan is to run 2 150w lights vertically in a 6” cooltube down the center of the flowering room to control heat from the bulbs. It'll be sucking air out of that room, which should hopefully make the ambient temps in the room only 5-6 degrees higher than the ambient temps outside the cabinet. Without factoring in drag from the intakes I should be turning over about 30 cfm (filter and 1 90 degree turn), so I actually have to have a significant amount of passive intake drag (the recommended turnover is once every 5 minutes - significantly higher rates increase water loss and add stress).

Water

For water I'll be using Tropf Blumats. It's a bit expensive to set up (after shipping my 14 blumats and the installation kit cost around $103) but the long term simplicity should make up for it a hundredfold.

The res will be located above the veg room and will feed into a main water line in both the veg and flower rooms. Individual feeder lines will be run from the main line to the drip nozzles. Just a clean, basic drip system setup with low constant pressure, same as you can find on any other of a million DIY threads.

Nutrients

This is requiring something new from me. Perpetual harvests usually go hand in hand with high maintenance especially in the feeding schedule arena. My solution is to go 100% organic – make a soil base that'll last for years, won't require compost teas, and can be used in small batches. Goin for I believe LC's mix #2 and bone/blood/kelp with some added Azomite. I was debating getting Glacial Rock Dust too but I would kinda like to see how the Azomite does by itself first.

I'll also be recycling. I don't have an easy disposal method. Probably going to be switching up amendments when i reamend just to experiment. We'll see.

As an aside - this is all new for me. I learned how to grow in homemade DWC buckets. I'm a hydro king indoors and have done tons of landscaping, but I rarely mixed my dirt with my pot.

Space (headspace and growing media)

Finally the hard part for a micro cab – how do I maximize my flowering room and still provide adequate root space for heavy budding?

My answer was simple. 1 gallon grow bags are roughly 5.5”x5.5”x8”. If I do an 18" by 18", I'll barely have the floorspace for all of the plants and the 6 inch cool tube and filter in the middle. However, because I can build the cab chest high, the plan is to make the flower chamber run the length and just put the carbon filter inside it at the bottom, which leaves 30 inches of headroom at a minimum. It may require some minimal training to make sure the plants don't grow too close to the bulbs, but that is easily managed with a few screens along the walls and some pipe cleaners (Marlo's method).

When it's all said and done, I should have 5-6 square feet of growing area – all of it directly lit with the canopy evenly 4-5 inches from one of the bulbs. That's a HELL of an improvement over most of the other multi room stealth cab designs I've seen. Maintenance should also be minimal - only 1-2 tasks in each room every few days, with the ability to leave it on autopilot for a week if necessary.

Finally, I'll be drying plants in the res room. The res will be sealed and the room will have airflow so there shouldn't be any humidity issues.

-------------------------------------------------------

I have several rough sketches made, but I think the final build will vary a bit from those. I'm still working out the passive intake system and circulation patterns. I'll be taking pictures while I build it out this week though, so look forward to next weekend's update! It should have all of the construction pictures.

And if anyone's wondering about my genetics, I've worked out room in my veg chamber for 4 bonsai moms. I got 10 seeds to test in my first 2 harvests. The different veg growth rates and flowering times should also help me start setting up my staggered harvest system without destroying productivity. I'll have a log of each plant so I can keep track of vigor and maturity.

The seeds I'm starting with are:
2x Dutch Passion Brainstorm
2x Dutch Passion Euforia
2x Dutch Passion Jorge's Diamonds #1
1x World of Seeds Landraces Wild Thailand
1x Greenhouse Seeds Great White Shark
1x Delicious Seeds Cotton Candy (freebie)
1x Delicious Seeds Blue Northern Lights (freebie)

I'll be running the ones I think I'll least want to keep first.

Current costs:
Seeds - ~$120
14x Blumats (Amazon.com) - $103
Elicent Inline Fan 4" (Amazon.com) - $160 (quietest inline fan on the market AFAIK)
2x 150w HPS, 4" Carbon Filter, and 6" cool tube from HTGsupply.com - $310

 

[SirStynkalot]

Pics from cab construction are uploaded to this album.

Total cab construction costs were roughly... $900 before dirt and seeds. I ended up going a bit over budget but the results are pretty noticable at the moment. I kicked the fans on for a sound test and it's inaudible right outside the door to that room. Hopefully it'll be airtight enough to not stink either.

The seeds came in the mail and the 150w bulbs are coming tomorrow (forgot them across the state) so I'm just waiting on my card now before I can plant em.

 

[SirStynkalot]

Yep. Just under $1150 including 40 gallons of fully amended soil and all the seeds to get this thing fully operational. Only need 115 grams to break even at the rate I'm currently paying. If I don't hit that in my first cycle I may as well just quit growing...

 

[frankenstein2]

Your gonna like that GWS. Really good strain, at least the pheno I got.

 

[SirStynkalot]

Good. I need to find at least one or two keepers. I'm on a mom hunt for a friend's commercial operation and I wanna try and find him some varieties that are less common in his area but will work in his double stacked 6 donuts. I seem to recall White Widow was especially branchy and seem to have heard GWS had similar branching/stretching characteristics. Don't know how well it'll work in MY tiny space, but that's just fine at the moment.

 

[SirStynkalot]

Just went to turn and rewater my cooking soil mix and it had a mycelial mat crusting the top in places. Rather exciting. The smell is quite different from what I'm used to as a hydro grower. Feels like I'm back in my parents' vegetable patches. In case anyone is wondering, I added a myco/beni bacteria package to the soil.

I should have my card and the first 5 seeds in the ground by this time next week. I'm considering not popping the thai strain after all - with the last minute design changes I just don't think the current flower cab is big enough for the thai. I'm going to have to just veg them as small as possible while I wait for the soil to cook - I hear the trick is to give it a full month before using it. We'll see.

I'll be popping the JD #1, the Euforia, and the GWS first. I have a friend that needs some good moms in a hurry. I may not even be flowering these plants out since I hear they're good stable lines, in which case I'd probably be reimbursed and would reorder them plus a few extra for the trouble. I'm hoping that pans out since I'm really looking forward to testing some new super CBD strains and can't afford the seeds.

 

[SirStynkalot]

Turned the mix again yesterday and it was still OBVIOUSLY cooking. Stuck my hand in the middle of it to test and it seemed to be about 10 degrees warmer than the outside of its container.

Just goes to show, this mix needs to cook a long time. I know some people who swear up one side and down the other that it's good to go in a week but I can't imagine subjecting a baby rootzone to this temperature elevation. That may just be my hydro senses tingling and I'm sure soil is more forgiving and blah blah blah but it just does not seem like optimal conditions to me.

 

[Green81]

Your right, the heat from the soil will cook the roots, it needs more time bro.

G81

 

[SirStynkalot]

Well, unfortunately I have to delay this project indefinitely. Something came up and I'm going to be moving across the state. No point starting a run and having to move mid flower.

I'd be really bummed out about it if I wasn't moving over for an amazing job opportunity.

 

[Born Loser]

Good decision and best of luck brother.