Rotating plant around verticle cooltubes..

I was thinking up some crazy ideas, and I wanna put the idea out here to see if the Genius marijuana farmers could come up with a way of how it could be done.

I'd like to place two hid bulbs in vertically aligned cooltubes, and rotate my plants around the lights in the middle. One bulb down low and another higher up to allow for 4-5ft plants plants of solid bud from the very bottom of the plants to the tops all the way around...

Only problem is, and a big one at that.. I can't seem to come up with a easy way to spin my plants.. I've thought of pottery wheels, and the toys look to small/cheap, and the good ones are to much $$. I've thought of record players, but finding 6-8 of those in working condition is getting harder by the day LOL.. I'm out simple ideas, and think I may need to delve into homemade rotating mechanisms and more technical shit to go about it, and I'm just not good with that kinda stuff.... If you have any simple solutions, or believe you have the skill to develop something that could do this, I'd love to hear some ideas??

I kicked this idea out on another forum a couple years ago, and got a couple responses with the opinion that it wouldn't work, or some how spinning the plants would stress/screw with em... But hell I'm willing to try it anyway.. I'm not talking mach1 spin, but a slow steady spin..

I saw a little dealy on Ask This Old House where they were scoping a spinner for hanging baskets that ran on photovoltaics.

Hmm I thought today of possibly useing a fan motor.. I could remove the fan blades, and make a flat platform for the plant containers to sit on.. I could probably plug the fan into an inline dimmer switch to control the rotation speed...

Gonna check out what I can find tomorrow at the store. I'm thinking if I can make this work I could probably drop my plant numbers by half, and yield similarly or maybe more. I know right now with a traditional set up I'm loosing a lot of yield do to the thick canopy.

Sounds good PM how about some cordless drill's you can find them cheap at pawn shops
Just wire them up to adapters to use 110 power and some have high,low gears and sense their variable speed zip ties set around the trigger to adjust speed.
Hope his helps


I N hail

A few places sell those round dolly's like they use for trash cans. Not sure of the price but they don't seem too hard for a DIY. Should work as long as you don't mind manually rotating them. Automating that is way over my head, haha.

I grow as you described, and I never turn my plants.
I lst the plant and pull it to one side of the pot while in veg, and leave it for the first week of flower. Then I remove the ties and let it grow. All of the bud sites will be facing, and seeing, the light. The part of the plant I had tied down is always placed furthest from the light. This creates a sort of single plant stadium situation, and turning the plant now is counterproductive.

Here is a shot of a BG that I had in veg for about 60 days before flower. This shot is on day 7 of flower and the ties removed. The left side of the plant is the main stem that was tied down. The plant is now in flower for about 18 days and all the budsites have situated themselves for optimum light collection.
Try to imagine how a scrog would be, with all the undergrowth being sparse. Theis turns out similar only it is the back of the plant that is sparse, and all the buds are out front and healthy.

Thanks for the idea/tips/pic hoosier. I love the verticle set-ups, and vert scrogs, which is why I'm heading in that direction, and looking for ways to maximize within my parameters. Do you have a pic of the whole set-up in flower?

I'm trying to head in a slightly different dicection... I'm needing to keep my plant numbers low, and I'm working with a bit larger grow area where I could grow larger 4-5ft tall plants, and dance them around the light unempeeded. I'm hoping that the slow spin and light from all directions would keep the buds more upright without the shoots/buds leaning-facing the light in the middle as they do now with a stationary verticle setup. More natural verticle growth without the shaded spots that would be created with a full canopy facing in towards the light.

This is possible but not cost effective. if cash is not a concern. There are a few ways to do this. 1 a circular conveyor belt. 2. individual spinners you will need motors for those. Weight is an issue. The motors need to be High torque.

a slow spin around a vertical light will not effect growth patterns. I really don't think it would do anything at all. plants grow towards the light if the light is bare and hung vertically all angles will receive the same light in the same manner. this method will not work as you planned. use chicken fencing to surround the bulb. the plants can then be weaved in the fencing to expose more bud sites to the light like basically a vertical scrog. turning plants in a vertical setup (to the side not receiving light) will result in airy buds.

Yeah I thought that to for a couple years... Just recently though while looking through a maximum yield catalog I saw a unit that did just as I was intending to try a a couple years ago. I couldn't believe what i was seeing, but it was an advertisement for www.spinnerhydro.com which is a small unit that uses the concept of spinning plants around a verticle light.. I figured I'd ask others what they felt of the possibilities on here before going and kicking myself in the ass a couple times for putting the iidea out there before cashing my paycheck for it first LOL:smile:

The web site isn't exactly up yet.. Just the typical high times mag style advertising with a couple hot chicks standing around a unit that does pretty much what I had wanted to try developing although my idea was on a larger scale. Same concept though of spinning the plants around the verticle light.

it is possible that I am wrong but sounds like a gimmick to me. the light never hits the plant at different angles.

Utilizing nearly 100% of the direct light output is so seductively efficient.

I don't ge the 'spinning' part, however.

I N Hail said:

Sounds good PM how about some cordless drill's you can find them cheap at pawn shops
Just wire them up to adapters to use 110 power and some have high,low gears and sense their variable speed zip ties set around the trigger to adjust speed.
Hope his helps


I N hail

Click to expand...

Just done a little test with a 14.4volt cordless and it lifted 40lb. off the ground ( it was in low gear ) wired to a 14volt /110 adapter.
This should be enough to spin a plant or two.

machine-less/cheap/easily doable options:

plywood (w/ corners sawed/sanded off), screwed to cheap plant trolleys. plants on top of plywood, cut to spec

simple plant trolleys linked together in circle (or desired hex/octogonal config), w. old, thick extension cord pieces, or similar thick wire/cord

kiddie pool spun around. place on foam so as not to rupture bottom if on rough plywood, etc.

hope this helps!

I would build something like this


You would need to build one rotating disc for each plant, as this is the only way that the plant will receive light from every direction. Having the plants spin around the light on a single large disc will have the same effect as if they were stationary, as the same part of the plant will always be facing the light.

Then you would arrange the plants in a circle around the light.

I'm not sure if you would need 2 cool tubes as you can raise and lower just the one but if you wanted to, all you would have to do is line them up after each other and attach them together with two pieces of metal or plastic. You might have to drill some extra holes in them but that's done in a few minutes. Since they will be hanging from the roof they will align properly. Then attach the ducting to the topmost cool tube and patch up any leaks.

The only extra wiring you would have to do is hooking up the motor to the speed dial, which should be fairly easy as I did that with my duct fan without problems. Without it the discs would spin out of control. You would need to fix the motor to a board or something that will provide enough support. I think that the motor would still have to be quite robust as the pots and everything will weigh quite a bit but I'm sure that it would not be hard to find suitable parts for the build. I would try electronics shops or just order the parts online. I'm no electronics expert so I'm just guessing here but it can be done.

The less the disc weighs the better. Maybe hard plastic would work well.

You can either have the chicken wire cage hanging from the roof or standing on the floor, whichever proves more practical.

I would line the grow room with mylar or even better clear white surfaces. The duct fan would be sucking air through the cool tube, which should provide the plants with enough airflow but if you have space for a fan, it probably wont hurt.

I'm not sure how the plants would respond to the angle of light but it seems to work for hoosierdaddy. Nice setup by the way

You will need a motor that has been reduced by a big ratio. A "gear motor".
Trying to run an AC motor as slow as that need to go will burn it up.
You would need a dc motor and variable speed controller to run that slow without mechanical reduction. But realistically, it needs a reducer.

Circling all of the plants around the light at once doesn't make sense to me. You would have to spin each plant 360* individually. Giving them a 1/4 turn everyday seems like a simple solution but idk your situation. Put them on swivel wheels if weights the issue. GL

Ya know, I was kinda thinking the same thing.

I wonder if just rotating the plants manually every day would accomplish the same thing. I dunno.

I will keep thinking about it Mr.Postman

Yeah I agree. Spinning the plants on one large disc would have the same effect as if they were stationary so I wen't back and edited my post and updated the picture.

Errr.... Spin them by hand. Unless you have 200 or more plants ( i doubt it ). Then spin them by hand once every three days or so.
I am a big fan fan of keep it simple. The more stuff you have in a room... the more crap you gotta deal with when it comes time to vacate... and sometimes in a hurry.
The less moving parts the better, and nothing electric... no light movers and such. The more time you spend in the room with the plants the better off they are and the more you learn about them.