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Need Help building a room

Hello folks. Been growing forever, been a long time since I was indoor. I have a 5x9 area that I want to grow some personal head smoke in. What do I need to build a good grow room? I have 2 110v circuits and a 220v, all dedicated to the grow.


What lights are best?
Do I need AC and heat?
CO2?
Dehumidifier?
controller?
size exhaust fans?


I worked construction for a good part of my life, and I know how to wire and build anything that a grow room would require. Looking for something that I can produce excellent quality herb for breeding purposes. My outdoor garden is the work horse.

Thanks in advance for any help. It's needed!:tiphat:
 

Lester Beans

Frequent Flyer
Veteran
Welcome to the site!

The main thing to get right indoors is environment. For your flower room you want temps around 72-78 during the day and 65 at night, with RH at 45% then 15-20% for the last few weeks of flower. So you will need an AC unit or outside air to cool the room. I recommend ac so you can dial the room in properly. A dehumidifier is a must.

For veg room you can run higher temps and Rh.

As for lighting in the flower room I recommend HPS. There are all sorts of new led, CMH, flouro, etc. I've tried them and they just do not compete with the HPS as far as quality and quantity. Your 5x9 area is perfect for 2 1000 watt HPS. Rule of thumb, 75 watts/sq ft. Any ballast will do. The digital ballast have a dimmer which can come in handy, but not necessary. Galaxy ballast are nice. Hortilux Eye blubs are nice.

A co2 tank, hose, regulator, and controller is a nice addition, but you need to run a sealed room for it to be efficient. You don't want to be exhausting your co2.

You sound like you can build the room so focus on making that room a perfect environment. Once you have it light proofed, temps stable, enough light, the plants will grow themselves. The reason most weed sucks is bad environment and drying issues.

Best advice is over engineer your cooling and extraction. More is better.

Best of luck and let us know how it's going. If you start a grow diary's we can help you along the way and help is a few key strokes away.

Cheers!
 

MJPassion

Observer
ICMag Donor
Veteran
I would build an insulated room within a room set up.

What is the room height?
If tall enough, you could use Double Ended HPS ballast & bulbs for max light use efficiency.
Can Fans are excellent for exhaust. Size is dependent on room volume. You need to move twice the volume of your room every minute.

CO2... ONLY if building a sealed room.
I am my controller so I've nothing for ya there. hehe
I'm in a super dry environment so I'm no help with the dehuey issue either.
 
Thanks you guys! Great advice so far.

So my room is only 8' tall. I already have a DE 1000 watt dimable ballast and bulb. I think I will buy another to fill the room. The room is insulated with r-13 and is inside a garage which also acts as insulation from the harsh environment outdoors.

I will be vegging in the same room as I flower, for now.



So I have some questions....... In the past I would just vent and try to keep temps in an ok range. Some parts of the year this worked out great, others not so much. I want to dial in the enviroment this grow, and I think the best way to do so is in a closed system. Questions are:

How big of an ac unit would I need for a 5x9 grow area?

Without venting, I would need co2 right? How big of tanks, how much do they cost, how many will I need?

Without venting, I still need to scrub the air inside the tent, right? So a scrubbing inline fan that intakes and exhausts in the room?

Do I need a exhaust fan at all in this situation?

How big of a Dehui?

Thanks again everybody, this is a huge help.
 

Gone Camping

Well-known member
Following.. as luck would have it i'v added a 4'x9' addition to my garage.

My space will hold two tents for the moment till I figure just what your asking here.
 

Lost in a SOG

GrassSnakeGenetics
Thanks you guys! Great advice so far.

So my room is only 8' tall. I already have a DE 1000 watt dimable ballast and bulb. I think I will buy another to fill the room. The room is insulated with r-13 and is inside a garage which also acts as insulation from the harsh environment outdoors.

I will be vegging in the same room as I flower, for now.



So I have some questions....... In the past I would just vent and try to keep temps in an ok range. Some parts of the year this worked out great, others not so much. I want to dial in the enviroment this grow, and I think the best way to do so is in a closed system. Questions are:

How big of an ac unit would I need for a 5x9 grow area?

Without venting, I would need co2 right? How big of tanks, how much do they cost, how many will I need?

Without venting, I still need to scrub the air inside the tent, right? So a scrubbing inline fan that intakes and exhausts in the room?

Do I need a exhaust fan at all in this situation?

How big of a Dehui?

Thanks again everybody, this is a huge help.

You want to be running the plants in an ideal environment really,, check out a VPD chart. outside of this ideal transpiration zone and certain deficiencies will probably crop up.

I run small semi sealed room 3 x 3 under a CMH/LEDs that vents if/when needed but is otherwise sealed off.. Vegging plants dont need extra CO2 but do need to be around normal CO2 levels (400ppm).. For mature plants it's all on a scale, If you have a light giving 1000+umol that is in ideal VPD then CO2 becomes the major limiting factor (assuming Nutrients are all available) so should be kept at 800-1000 ppm (as high as 1400ppm in the healthiest environments).

CO2 makes plants stretch more in early flower and can have other negative effects if your grow isn't really dialed in.

You could also build a small lung room to exhaust into and climate control before putting it back in from there, that might be really useful for you.

In a closed system like this you want to be watching all your variables.. Also remember that cannabis transpires much more for the first half of flower than the second.

Saying how much CO2 you will use is pretty difficult but like I said you don't need to go crazy with it in Veg because CO2 isn't a limiting factor at that point. I personally only really significantly raise CO2 from week 3-6 around the end of stretch to the end of flower mass growth.

I think you only need to scrub the air if you are worried about smell, it might help clean it a bit I guess. Using the DE I'd probably be using a humidifier more than a dehumidifier but I have both hooked up holding the RH where I want it. I run the fans and heater on a temperature controller as well. Id probably also advise getting a cheap PAR meter like the hydropharm one so you can see quite how much CO2 you might need to be dosing.. :2cents:

You can successfully grow ganja so many ways..
 
How is the build coming along?

I have about 20 seeds started, but don't have any idea how I will be doing the AC or the CO2 yet.

Let me ask some questions again.....

So I have some questions....... In the past I would just vent and try to keep temps in an ok range. Some parts of the year this worked out great, others not so much. I want to dial in the enviroment this grow, and I think the best way to do so is in a closed system. Questions are:

How big of an ac unit would I need for a 5x9 grow area?

Without venting, I would need co2 right? How big of tanks, how much do they cost, how many will I need?

Without venting, I still need to scrub the air inside the tent, right? So a scrubbing inline fan that intakes and exhausts in the room?

Do I need a exhaust fan at all in this situation?

How big of a Dehui?

Thanks again everybody, this is a huge help.
 

Hookah79

Active member
You size up your ac unit according to your btu.So you have to add up your light fixture,co2 burner,and dehumidifier btu’s.
 

Hookah79

Active member
6000 btu per fixture
2500-3000 btu for 70 pint dehey
LP burner 2000-9000 btu

Always go higher than what you need just in case.
 

Itsmychoice

Well-known member
ICMag Donor
Get 2 air cooled de hoods and take the glass out of them in the winter. Phillips bulbs. Keep the plant tops 30” away. Get the smallest co2 burner they have. A 12k btu mini split would be perfect. Don’t let anyone scare you on the install, they are easy enough and the info is easy to find. I wouldn’t dim the de bulbs, it cuts their lifespan down. I would get one 315 cmh or a couple of quantum board LEDs to hang up for veg. Set up some tables that drain easy.
 
6000 btu per fixture
2500-3000 btu for 70 pint dehey
LP burner 2000-9000 btu

Always go higher than what you need just in case.

So I need an AC unit that is larger than 10,500 - 18,000?

Is an LP burner better than co2 tanks? Seems like a fair amount of BTU to deal with?

Thanks for the help! :tiphat:
 
Get 2 air cooled de hoods and take the glass out of them in the winter. Phillips bulbs. Keep the plant tops 30” away. Get the smallest co2 burner they have. A 12k btu mini split would be perfect. Don’t let anyone scare you on the install, they are easy enough and the info is easy to find. I wouldn’t dim the de bulbs, it cuts their lifespan down. I would get one 315 cmh or a couple of quantum board LEDs to hang up for veg. Set up some tables that drain easy.

So you run the two hoods in a closed system? Meaning the hood has ducting from outside, through the hood, strait to vent? While the room is closed and has CO2?

a 12k btu mini split sounds expensive...... right?

I was worried about veg. I have many t-5 fixtures that I am using for veg at the moment. However when the ladies get a little bigger, I was thinking a nice veg bulb would be needed. However the time between veg from t-5's and moving to the HPS is only a matter of a week or 3. I will consider picking up another fixture for this reason. Thanks. :tiphat:
 

Itsmychoice

Well-known member
ICMag Donor
An off brand mini split like pioneer will cost $6-700 and will pull 5 amps. The one you have will work fine it will just cost more to run. A propane tank will last a month or more for a co2 burner and they don’t stay on long so it’s not as much a heat influence as listed. A co2 bottle would be better if you have a convenient place to swap bottles and you can get it to last a month. The hoods are vented from outside and to the outside. You could put the dehuey in the garage and just exchange dry air from the garage when lights are out. As long as you aren’t running beds the lights and ac will keep it dry enough during “daytime”. A clone tent would save you some time in getting each run reset. Like you said you could probably just veg for 3 weeks in the room after you got them out of the cloner.
 
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