2714W 5 pound CFL MICRO GROW ikea box idea! comments please!

i vote for linear CFL's

inefectualize said:

i vote for linear CFL's

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Nice setup BTW.

In my small ikea cupboards I use linear/pl-l separated from the grow by a glass plate. It's enough to run perfect with zero ventilation. Perhaps you could do something like that if you want to go hi-watt and keep cool

Sir_Nugget said:

the days of rigging your own cabinet are gone my friend

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Says who...the influx of tent growers?

There are still plenty of people building cabs or buying pre-fab cabs,although now a days with the small dimensions I'd prefer to build a Cab rather then buy one.

A cab looks natural in a bedroom,garage...a tent does not!

Tents have the air-cooling and intake holes on the sides so you get to see all the duct work leading to/from the attic or window or wall out the side of the damn tents.A cab just looks waaay more natural,contains noises better,can be completely customized in any which way.

I'm not dissing the tents,they're cool,especially if you can keep it in a closet,but why not just use the closet to grow in rather then put a tent in and choke off the fresh air supply?!

To the OP...yeah you aren't going to get the results the Dr. got.As someone said previously,the Doc was growing his own strain using his own experiences and knowledge.What works for one won't necessarily work for others/all.

I am not downing you,or bashing you in any way shape or form.That's cool you want to do micro grow....just not my thing...was years and years and years ago but I saw the light (H.I.D.) and never looked back.This isn't to say I haven't ever seen a micro or cfl/fluoro grow that made me step back and say to my self "DAMN SON!" as I have seen a few here and there.

If you're set on using that cab this is what I would do:

Set it on one side so that the D x L x H would now be 22.875" deep x 90" long x 38.25" tall. (Are those the inner measurements or outer?If outer then remmber to subtract 1.5" from the length and 1.5" from the depth and also 1.5" from the height...if made from 0.75" thick material).

Sooo...let's say the cans inner measurements are....

21.375" x 88.5" x 36.75" = 69,519.515625 cubic inches
21.375" x 88.5" = 1891.6875 square inches

lets convert that to feet:
1.78125' x 7.375' x 3.0625' = 40.23120 cubic feet
1.78125' x 7.375' = 13.13671875 square feet

Lets round that off:
1.75' x 7.25'' x 3' = 38 cubic feet
1.75' x 7.25' = 12.6875 square feet


I'd go with 2x 36" 6 bulb T5 fixtures to hang and 2x 36" 6 bulb T5 fixtures to mount on the back wall....this would give you a total of 936w or 73w/sq.foot.Linear grow would be nice too though.

Although...for the price you would pay for the T5 lighting systems ($350 a pop so $1400) you could have but quite a few 400w or a few 600w or 1kw lights,exhuast fans and carbon filters,nutes,soil,seeds/clones etc.


Good luck and whatever you do keep us updated.

Lol, you might could dry 5 pounds in that cabinet. T5s would be nice, but they are rather expensive considering their effectiveness as flowering lights.

If it's going to be a couple months, you might look into getting an LED panel from LEDGirl-

https://icmag.com/ic/forumdisplay.php?f=65640

That is, assuming the tests prove her to be honest.

I'll throw in my .02 here since a lot of this has been going around in my head. I also am a fan of Dr. Buds methods, but I think beyond a mico cab it sounds like a lot of work. I finished flowering my first bag seed run only a week ago so I am green when it comes to growing but I will make these suggestions.

First off, the perpetual thing is the way to go for a smallish setup imho, but why weekly? What is so special about being strapped to a weekly harvest schedule? Once you get up and running you can supply perpetually on a monthly basis. Regardless of if you are a legal med patient or not you go to jail if you are busted with 80 plants! That's not fun I'm sure. Why not go perpetually with a simple scrog or LST scenario. If you use that 4 weeks to veg/train your clones, then flowering and harvesting every 4 you would most likely pull similar weight to a soda bottle sog with far less work. Late in flower a 1 litr mountain dew bottle needs watering every day and you will have 80 of them. Thats a couple hours and gallons of nuted water. How about 8 half gallon pot every month and pull 8 or 10 zips per month? In my setup I am running 1/2 gallon OJ jugs cut on their side because my veg/mother/clone cab is very narrow (about 7"), and I just need some dirt volume so I can leave my house for a day or two without loosing everything.

As for cfl vs hps. If you have headroom and a way to exhaust heat, and are OK with the sound of larger fans it would only make sense to go hps, but if you don't you really need floros. For a small scale micro grow like what I have going (20"w x 14"d x 30"h), it would be impossible for me to run hps for improved lumens (70w hps sure, 150w nope) if I want to keep everything including ballast, fan, and scrubber in my box and maintain a stealth sound profile and 2' tall plants.

I'm just saying perpetual doesn't have to be weekly! I also agree with the posters who have said if you want to reproduce Dr. Buds results, do it just the same as him and try to dial it in. Either way, start simple and get going from there.

It really is a trick getting your first box up and running, and an even bigger trick to maintain a healthy plant from seed to pipe. My first one limped across the finish line and I am happy to get something to smoke out of the deal. I smacked that bitch around like a crack smokers baby-moma but she made it and I'm smoking my own.

I also agree with the proponents of cabinets for stealth reasons. A grow tent is not stealth unless it is in a closet or attic. A cab looks like an everyday thing. Though a 5lb cabinet is a little much for reality I would think. Start small, get through a few cycles, and then go rockstar if you think you want to, but I would agree that by the time you factor everything in, if you want to be pulling multiple pounds you should probably look at a room and some hps lighting.

Good luck to you!

Jed

the only way to pull very heavy is to grow more then a smart person would , which means very high numbers, if u read doc budz thread he talks about the potential of pulling over a pound easy with a 400watt hid light, so yes the 1.3 gpw 4 pound yeild of a 1000 is a real possibility but also a very dangerous one should one get caught with most laws-

Now or later?

Now or later?

One quick question Urban... ru trying to get 5 lbos over say a year? Or are you trying to pull it in one short bang? Think that's confusing folks here too. I am about as newbie as they come, but 5 over a period of time is doable even with LESS CFLs than you propose IMHO.

Hid's will get you more per bang maybe. Either way tho I think 5 over a year would be doable with either light option. I'd do a screen scrog on 3 layers with less plant #s if it were me. I DO hear you re: Dr Bud's numbers with that method... amazing. Still wake up thinking about it. I loved his "in the past" pictures with the warehouse of shelves each few feet equipped with a (I believe) 420w hps (mh?) too. Way too important of a thread not to read and ponder.

Rambling.. IMO 5 lbs is doable thoughout a course of a year in that box.
PEACE

5 pounds with a cabinet won't work unless your cabinet is 10'x10' with a few 1000 watt HIDs. I have 3 cabinets/dressers. 2 are stocked with CFLs and 1 is a 250 watt HPS. I have almost 1000 watts of power and I can pull 22 zips, THAT'S IT! MAXED OUT!!! Even though I just added the CFL dresser to my collection, the other 2 cabinets have been dialed in as close as possible. I've been running them for over a year. 3 pounds in one round with a cab full of CFLs is impossible, hell, 2 pounds is IMPOSSIBLE!!! LOL! Sorry to bust your bubble...
-
TB4U

doc buddz has warped some peoples minds into what clfs really produce, look at his follwers, look thundurkels grows which is really just doc budd singing in under a differant name or at his new locationthat he moved to out of the woods, dont get your 2gpw hopes up with cheap lights like this , have some common sense.

I see people throwing around 1000Watts and 1.3 grams per watt, but I gotta say that you won't get that yield with 1000W in this confined space. There needs to be a balance between wattage and grow area to really get good yields like that. This is why we aren't seeing all those people in the square foot challenge yielding anywhere near 1 gram per watt. IME you need to have between 60 and 90 watts per square foot, and more than two square feet of grow space before you can think in terms of grams per watt. More or less than that wouldn't be an efficient utilization of either the light or space. 1000W in this cab would be 166W per square foot. Total waste of power.

Now that I read closer...

Now that I read closer...

I see now you were shooting for 5# per "run" which I assume is one full flower cycle of all 4 shelves onto the final tall shelf. 80 per x 4 shelves x 7 gr ea bottle = 2240 gr = exactly 5#. Hmmm. Funny how dropping that to 5gr each brings it down to just over 3.5#... small changes reflect big results!

I think it's do-able in my utterly (nearly inexperienced) opinion. The heat would be the issue along with humidity. The Dr's watering method would be cumbersome to say the least, but there are ways around that.... drainable waste trays underneath each batch w/ a hose to draw off the runoff. If you had to go away leaving the overflow in would give extra days freedom (swa the Dr. do that on a several day excursion).

I see you haven't responded in awhile. I am curious to see your results... hope yo show back up and keep us up to date... sensing a return after results can be reported. Sry for the ramble.. I am new but curious.
PEACE

BIGGEST PROBLEM: Will definitely be controlling the heat. This proposed setup has 64 42watt CFLs and 1 26watt (is 1 26w bulb good enough for 80 clones and 3-4 moms?) thats a total of 2714W! That's an insane amount of heat to deal with, and I dont even know if it's possible.

That is a lot of heat to control (read ventilation 101).
CFM = 3.16 * Watts Dissipated / delta T in *F
room temp = 72 F, exiting temp = 78 F, Cabinet running at 6 F above room temp.
CFM =3.16*2714 watts/ (78-72)=6 F
CFM=8576/6 F
CFM =11426 cfm
CFL's run cooler so let remove 1/3 of the CFM 11426*.66 =7453 CFM
Now lets go into duct design @ 7450 CFM with no scrubber with a friction loss of .02 you would need a duct size of 42" in Diameter or on opening of 1385 square inches for your exhaust and your intake should be 1 1/2 times your exhaust so that would be 2078 square inches.
So let see, if you leave the back off the cabinet and place the furnace fan from your house on top the cabinet you should be fine.

CaliRaised said:

5lbs in a cabinet... Lol. It could never happen even with a lifetime of experiene. I am assuming the most yield from a cabinet of this size could yield would be maybe 1lb with a 600watt hps, and that is without the mothers, maybe the clones would fit on top but even they need 12" of space. My advise is to try out some tomatoes before you kill 100's of clones or seeds.

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you people are crazy

it is most certainly possible!

It sounds to me like he is going to be harvesting 80 plants every 2 weeks.

@ 7 grams per plant thats 540 grams every 2 week on a 9 week strain harvesting ever 2 weeks thats 2240 grams in just 8 weeks

which is 70 ounces which is 4.375 pounds with only 8 weeks

It comical how ppl dont understand what perpetuial means LOL


the real problem here is having 400 plants in your house at any givin time

noone4u said:

you people are crazy

it is most certainly possible!

It sounds to me like he is going to be harvesting 80 plants every 2 weeks.

@ 7 grams per plant thats 540 grams every 2 week on a 9 week strain harvesting ever 2 weeks thats 2240 grams in just 8 weeks

which is 70 ounces which is 4.375 pounds with only 8 weeks

It comical how ppl dont understand what perpetuial means LOL


the real problem here is having 400 plants in your house at any givin time

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I don't think you know what you're talking about. Growing dope isn't just a math equation. There are real world factors that need to be taken into account that all of the math scholars in this thread are conveniently ignoring. Namely: Space & Heat

you are going to run into a huge heat problem, that many cfls in that small area you are going to need the same inline fans somebody growing in a room with 3000 watts of hid uses. look into led if you want to grow in a small space, you can suplement led with cfls for a good grow and less heat to worry about.

...and boom goes the dynamite...

Gosh!

lol how's the cab doing

It could be done, Im not sure about getting 5lbs in 9 weeks but that cab could have 3 flowering cambers but would need a seperate cab for mothers. And that brings up antoher good question how would you produce 50 or more clones every 2 weeks? That would take atleast 5 med/big mother plants. I didnt read through all the specs and everything but, theoretically with two of these cabs you could produce alot of bud. But two big factors, way to big or a risk if you got caught you might aswell kill yourself and it would cost mulitple thousands of dollars to do and a hps grow could produce the same with alot less risk and cost. Anything over around 600w is pointless to use cfls.

Wow also i just looked at the measurements of the cab and theres no way its 90" tall thats 7.5ft.