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Stealth Insulated Attic Build

Bender

Member
Hey guys - We're still in the process of finishing our first grow room and I wanted to share the progress.

As it sits right now the room is mostly stealth and we're still far from done. We have our first run of bagseed clones flowering right now under 1200 watts of odd MH ballasts and old bulbs we scavenged over the past few months. The construction process has been a huge financial strain so we're piecing it together as we go along at this point. I will admit that I grossly underestimated how much it has cost to construct a purpose-built stealth grow room in an attic that can cope with the hostile climate. The room is heavily insulated and carefully vapor-sealed. We know exactly where the air comes in and goes out. We put up sheetrock walls and painted them with some expensive flat white primer that I can't remember the name of.

I will not be posting pictures of the entrance to the room to protect our security. I will say that we access the room from a hidden door in a walk-in closet. No ladders!!

I took pictures of the process previous to these, but they're a little too revealing.

Flower room mid construction
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Looking in from the entrance. Divider is framed in the middle.
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How the room looked yesterday
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Ripped some magnets out of hard drives to secure the door (need to replace the broken one)
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Looking at the entrance of the room (this is the veg side)
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Veg/Flower divider. There will be a door here soon.
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Flower room in its current condition
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High-tech soil temp probe
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Bender's Organic Tea Buckets bubbling away
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In my opinion, this is the only acceptable fan controller on the market. The 8" Can Fan HO runs like a dream on this thing. We had the cheap router speed controller on it and it buzzed like hell. Money very well spent here folks.
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http://www.variac.com/

There's an 8" HO Can Fan just behind the filter. The air ducts are heavily insulated and the fan assembly is dampened. We built a giant muffler with tons of insulation and it works great. Only thing you can hear at the exhaust port is a very faint 'whooshing' sound from the air, but you have to stick your head inside the duct to hear it!! I should also mention that the exhaust port exits the bottom of the big silver muffler to the room below. No pictures of that!
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This looks like a mess but it is the start of something great I think. My partner is the brains behind the wiring and for what he had to work with I think he did great. The two 400MH ballasts on top are recovered hanging shop lights that we turned into remote ballasts. There is another 400MH ballast on the bottom shelf that was sourced by a friend. I believe its an xtrasun or something like that. None of it will matter after this grow though because we'll hopefully be upgrading ballasts, bulbs, and hoods. Expect to see 2400 watts of CMH in the future.
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That should do it for now. I know I left a lot out, so if you have any questions or see any glaring flaws please let me know!
 
G

Guest

Rawr. Sexy and inspirational; be proud and carry that weight you love.

That looks like a high-quality setup with a lot of planning. I am sure it will bring you great rewards. I could easily stick another pun here, but I will spare you.

I'm subscribing so I can see your babies get fat; If you don't thread it here, stick a link?

Very sexy.
~A
 
G

Guest

PS- Are those beams of structural value or are you renting? If not, my newb ass would cut em out between your lights. Not if it's going to drop your floor out though!

Rock on,
A
 

Bender

Member
AesNewGrower,
Thank you for the kind words. It has been an enormous amount of work, months of researching/planning, and thousands of dollars invested. I can't wait to finish the room.

As for removing the webbing from the structure.... not gonna happen :) The 400's actually fit quite nice in there as the footprint available in each 'bay' is roughly 2'x3'.
 

Bender

Member


beautiful setup good sir! :yes: hope to see some updates!

Thank you Pontiac!! I have to say that my partner and I both feel very honored to be included in the DIY thread. I've had that page bookmarked on my computer for months and I've used it extensively for research and inspiration. Being part of that list easily validates our efforts and we haven't even smoked our own yet!

I will keep updating this thread as we progress. Good things are in store!
 
You know those beams could actually help you out. I would try and secure some wire or rope across the beams. It will help when your plants get to big they cant support themselves.

Something to think about. Peace.
 

Graffiti

Member
Hell yeah, that looks like fresh setup. When I started looking at this thread seeing the unfinished attic i was thinking "how the hell is he gonna do this?" now I see that it works out damn near perfect. Like a ninja in the shadows, Mad respekt. By the time you get some genetics you'll have it down. Peace and good luck!
 
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Bender

Member
Hell yeah, that looks like fresh setup. When I started this thread seeing the unfinished attic i was thinking "how the hell is he gonna do this?" now I see that it works out damn near perfect. Like a ninja in the shadows, Mad respekt. By the time you get some genetics you'll have it down. Peace and good luck!

Thank you for the kind words. It took a lot of deliberation between my partner and I to determine if the space would be usable or not for our purposes. Looks like its going to turn out alright :)

As far as genetics goes..... there's a little veg box in the house with our first batch of 'real' seedlings:
Serious Seeds AK-47 x 11
Rez Double Strawberry Diesel x 10
CH9 Jack x 4
Barney's Blue Cheese x 2

I'll start another thread for those in the future.
 

catman

half cat half man half baked
Veteran
You guys have really done a nice number on the whole room. Good job and keep up the good work. Thanks for sharing!
 

Graffiti

Member
STRAWBERRY DIESEL!
:woohoo:<-----diesel fan
sounds like you got some damn good strains, I don't know a lot but I know enough to be jealous lol. If anything is worth doing, it's worth doing right.
 

BeeBee

Member
Hi,
I think your design is clean, well-thought out.
In my opinion, considering that you have relatively little height, and that you are using 400 watt lights, you will do just as well with smaller containers--1 gallon is large enough. Using containers no larger than necessary saves a lot of work, particularly in tight quarters, up stairs.
 

Uncle Remus

Member
Yes height could become a problem with some real stretchers...If you've never grown it, Rez's DSD is great smoke...My keeper smells just like fresh strawberries

 

Kerosene

New member
My account just activated and I couldn't wait to throw in my 2 cents on the project. I'll introduce myself as Bender's partner in this project.

We used Zinsser B-I-N primer. At some point we plan on using the webbing to mount large screens. I think it should be mentioned that the room was designed to be broken down and stripped in a matter of minutes. Other than the chains and hooks in the ceiling, the whole system can be broken down and thrown into a vehicle in very little time. A lot of our discussion has been privacy/security and so it played a heavy role in the construction. Also why we used the Variac Controller for the CanFan (it's completely silent save the moving air.

I'm super stoked at everybody's response and I really look forward to sharing pictures when we've got the room more complete.
 

Bender

Member
Hi,
I think your design is clean, well-thought out.
In my opinion, considering that you have relatively little height, and that you are using 400 watt lights, you will do just as well with smaller containers--1 gallon is large enough. Using containers no larger than necessary saves a lot of work, particularly in tight quarters, up stairs.

We picked the two gallon containers because they would be one set of pots that we could use for multiple growing techniques. I agree that using the smaller pots would save some soil mixing up front and limit the height. However, the larger containers give us more time in between waterings and we plan on doing some heavy scrog work underneath CMH in the future to take full advantage of our limited height. Floor to bottom of hoods is about 44" in the current configuration if I remember correctly (can't measure right now).
 

Bender

Member
Yes height could become a problem with some real stretchers...If you've never grown it, Rez's DSD is great smoke...My keeper smells just like fresh strawberries


Haven't grown it yet but I've read enough to know you speak the truth. We are very excited for each of the strains we have selected, especially this one!
 

Uncle Remus

Member
If I may thro a suggestion you'z guys

When looking at pic 7 (flower room) what if you put walls on those rafters (?) dividing that area into 3 smaller grow areas each with its own light...Little walls would also help reflecting some light back into the sides of your plants...Then I wouold move the lights a bit over to the left (when viewing the pic), giving you some more headroom for raising your lights...Shouldn't encroach too much on the traffic side of the room either

Very nice stealthy setup...I would assume this is in the attic (duh) and that the exhaust goes thru the roof? IMO fan/air noise is going to be inaudible from ground level unless you have a jet fighter engine going up there, so I wouldn't be too afraid to crank the fan up if necessary...Or is intake noise a problem as well (Exhaust goes into the room below huh? What about exhausting into the closet where the entrance is? And use the old exhaust as your intake...Closed closet door is gonna hide any whooshing coming out of duct...Or is the entrance hidden from other house occupants as well?)

A little tweaking and dialing in and that's gonna rock :headbange

EDIT: How are you set for power/distribution? If your gonna run 2400w HID thats gonna pull a lot of amps/power...Make sure you guys put some detail into that area as well...Hate to see you guys lose all that hard work and $$$ to a fire...Keep it safe boys
 
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