6000w 14x18 sealed room with vertical bulbs

[castrau5]

Hello everyone here at icmag. I'm new here to ic but not new to growing. My first couple of grows i gave it the old college try with some fox farm dirt and fertilizers threw it in a room and had some good grows and some learning grows that way. Several years later i set up a bubble bucket and had some good crops that way but now i just set up a new room with my caregiver and we decided to grow in coco so i might need some insight on this grow. Here's a list of everything that went into this room plus some pics of whats done so far. Please let me know what you think about the setup so far.

20 Kalashnikova seeds
4 That 70's seeds
2 sweet tooth clones
6x1000w magnetic ballast
24,000btu wall mounted a/c
70 pint dehumidifier
20lb co2 tank
Titan co2 controller
House & Garden coco nutrients
Botanicare coco bricks
5 gallon smart pots
5 16" wall mounted fans plus 6 floor fans blowing up on each light
14x18 flower room
6x14 warm room where the ballast and back of a/c sit
no veg room but coming soon
before after

 

[shagdawg420]

imma pull up a chair

 

[Snow Crash]

To correctly light that 14x18 up you're going to need to double the number of lights in there.

The area is about 4.2m x 5.4m, or a little more than 22.5 square meters.
Plants need about 1,000 umol/sec per square meter.
You'd need about 22,500umol/sec to correctly light that room.
Each of those bulbs is pushing about 1850 umol/sec.
That's about 12 lights.

Going vertical is a great way to maximize the efficiency of the space. Depending on how you utilize the room, if you cut the flowering room dimensions/footpring down to about 10x12 then I think the plants will grow much better.

 

[castrau5]

Thanks snow crash for your insight. When i was setting up the room i was first going to do a 14x14 flower room but when i would set up the lights they seemed to be to close to each other to fit plants in between them. I would like to be able to drop the bulbs into the canopy and with the current spacing of the lights at 4.5 feet away from each other leaves me with about 3ft of grow space for 2 plants. If i made the room smaller would i raise the lights a little higher than the canopy so i can get the plants closer to the lights?

 

[stoned40yrs]

First time coco growers often make the mistake of using containers that are too big. Coco is not soil, bigger is not better in containers. Buy some 2 gal smarties if you want the right size for coco indoors. Even if you are growing indoor trees with a long veg time.

 

[castrau5]

stoned40yrs- I will be running a few plants in 2 and 3 gallon pots to compare how much i have to water them. I don't live with my garden so id like to water every other day not everyday.

 

[stoned40yrs]

stoned40yrs- I will be running a few plants in 2 and 3 gallon pots to compare how much i have to water them. I don't live with my garden so id like to water every other day not everyday.

Soil would be better for that then you could go 3 or more days between water. I hate handwatering also which is why I run a blumat system in coco where the plants get water when they want it. The true potential of coco is only realized with daily, even multiple daily watering. No biggie as you are just starting out in coco, 5 gal smartie will work for every other day. As you start dialing in your grow methods you'll find smaller pots and a drip system is where best and easy meet. goodluck!

 

[Snow Crash]

Thanks snow crash for your insight. When i was setting up the room i was first going to do a 14x14 flower room but when i would set up the lights they seemed to be to close to each other to fit plants in between them. I would like to be able to drop the bulbs into the canopy and with the current spacing of the lights at 4.5 feet away from each other leaves me with about 3ft of grow space for 2 plants. If i made the room smaller would i raise the lights a little higher than the canopy so i can get the plants closer to the lights?

Some strategically placed Gavita DE systems might be the answer to that problem. They are intended to be used horizontally, but from higher up, and designed to utilize the overlap and cross lighting that space is going for. You gotta do what you gotta do, and it sounds like you might need to pull the lamps up a little bit.

Doubling your lights would mean doubling the heat too. At 4,000 btu per 1000w light you're already maxed out. It might be an investment for another day, but a mini-split and another 6 set, probably another 50amp 240v and 30amp 240v run for the power needs... but add in some CO2 and that place would be kicking.

Consider the dehumidification as well. I find each liter of coco holds about 500ml to 600ml of water. More or less. If you are running 26 (?) 5 gallon containers then that's something like 245 Liters of water. If your grow space is enclosed, then that water has to go somewhere after it evaporates. This is going to tax the dehumidifier beyond it's capacity when the lights turn off and temperatures drop, spiking the RH in there. If you can't drop in another 100 pint dehuey then you're going to want to make sure you can exhaust the grow space to help the environment from getting out of control.

My plants in 3 gallon containers under a 1000w lamp would pull about 1 to 2 liters per day of solution (about as much as 1 gallon of coco can hold, which is why I use 1 gallon smart pots now). Controlling your container size, and your plant size, will have a beneficial effect on the environment control. And as we all know about indoor gardening, environment is King. Until the AC, the Dehuey, and the Lighting match the floor space and plant count you should probably be conservative with your container filling (use 3 of the 5 gallons and roll the sides down) and shorten the veg period this time.

 

[castrau5]

So i decided to take everyone's advice and make my flower room smaller. Ill be walling off the back of the room and turn that extra 4x14 into my veg room. The new flower room will be 14x14 but only 10x14 will be used as grow space. Ill put a picture down below each Honeywell fan represents where a 1000w light will be. keep in mind i only placed 4 out of 6 lights in the picture.

For all the bottled co2 users out there how often should i expect to fill my 20lb tank while running 1500ppm? I know there's many factors to consider just curious on a ball park idea.


Kalashnikovas

 

[stoned40yrs]

My plants in 3 gallon containers under a 1000w lamp would pull about 1 to 2 liters per day of solution (about as much as 1 gallon of coco can hold, which is why I use 1 gallon smart pots now). Controlling your container size, and your plant size, will have a beneficial effect on the environment control. And as we all know about indoor gardening, environment is King. Until the AC, the Dehuey, and the Lighting match the floor space and plant count you should probably be conservative with your container filling (use 3 of the 5 gallons and roll the sides down) and shorten the veg period this time.

I never thought about container size to limit rh. I'm in 2 gal smarties now, do you think I could use 1 gal size even though my plants in bloom are between 4' and 6' tall? I have no interest in limiting plant size with my low plant count of 6 in veg and 6 in bloom to stay compliant.

 

[RedBeardy5]

You can grow trees in 1 gal smarties but good luck from keeping them from falling over without any support. A 4-6 ft tree in the end of flower is going to be pretty top heavy. I would personally use 2 or 3 gal

 

[stoned40yrs]

You can grow trees in 1 gal smarties but good luck from keeping them from falling over without any support. A 4-6 ft tree in the end of flower is going to be pretty top heavy. I would personally use 2 or 3 gal

Mine won't fall over, no problem there. I live in the earthquake state- Alaska Each plant is wrapped in trellis and secured to the walls. The walls will need to collapse to bring down the plants. The 1000w hangs vert in the middle of them

 

[Ichabod Crane]

I run 5 gallon smart pots and have to water daily or they die. These are 12-16 oz plants.

That was a good idea to roll down the sides till the plant needs more room. If you don't have a auto water system this may help till you find out how much your plants drink between you available watering times.

 

[Sleeper7784]

Oh shit! I'm tagged to this one! Good luck homie! Show the crew how you do it!

 

[castrau5]

The Kalashnikova seeds are about 1 week old now and they look like there showing a cal/mag def. I use RO water with ppm of 20 and i have only been adding slight amounts of House & Gardens A&B. Never used coco or RO water so this is kinda new to me i always just went out and bought Ice Mountain water in the past to grow with. I'll be feeding later today and my plan is to bring the ppm's up to around 80-120 with cal/mag then ad very slight amount of coco A&B. What do you you guys think? good idea?

 

[Snow Crash]

I never thought about container size to limit rh. I'm in 2 gal smarties now, do you think I could use 1 gal size even though my plants in bloom are between 4' and 6' tall? I have no interest in limiting plant size with my low plant count of 6 in veg and 6 in bloom to stay compliant.

I would say no, not if you want to keep the same plant size. Cutting to 1 gallon containers would probably cut your plant size by maybe 25%. And if you cannot fill that space back in with more plants I don't really see a benefit on your side of things.

You can grow trees in 1 gal smarties but good luck from keeping them from falling over without any support. A 4-6 ft tree in the end of flower is going to be pretty top heavy. I would personally use 2 or 3 gal

The best kind of problem!

 

[RedBeardy5]

The Kalashnikova seeds are about 1 week old now and they look like there showing a cal/mag def. I use RO water with ppm of 20 and i have only been adding slight amounts of House & Gardens A&B. Never used coco or RO water so this is kinda new to me i always just went out and bought Ice Mountain water in the past to grow with. I'll be feeding later today and my plan is to bring the ppm's up to around 80-120 with cal/mag then ad very slight amount of coco A&B. What do you you guys think? good idea?
[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=55418&pictureid=1297116&thumb=1]View Image[/url] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=55418&pictureid=1297117&thumb=1]View Image[/url]

I don't see any problems, I run house and garden and I screwed myself by using cal/mag supplement. This is the first time not using it and had no problems. Just make sure not to under feed them. House and garden already is cal/mag rich. Otherwise your babies look good.

 

[Rollout]

It's not possible to have deficiencies at such a young age. Those plants didn't even use the stored up nutrients in the cotyledon yet.

 

[castrau5]

Update: over the weekend we built the veg room which brings our flowering room down to 14x14 and 14x4 for veg. At the moment we have 4 plants that are from 19-21in tall and are about ready to be put into flowering but I'm concerned with them. 1 of the 4 looks good and it seems to be the only sativa in the batch but the other 3 look droopy and down all the time. The leaves don't feel correct to me they feel to thin. Here's some pics and if you look at the back right one you can see how lazy it looks.

 

[castrau5]