[Lazyman]

I always wanted a basement grow, with a simple and automated system that would always water itself, and involved as few moving parts as possible. I found a good candidate that was 24'X40' and decided to fill it.

I had a new fire door put on that's all weatherstripped and has a good deadbolt on it, only one door in and out. Here' s how it looked when I started:



I took a bare basement with concrete floors, added 3 X50A 240V circuits and 5X20A 120V circuits.


It already had water, but I upgraded some plumbing an d drains. I sealed all the cracks with sprayfoam and boarded up all the windows with white plywood panels.

After that we added Tekfoil insulation from Farmtek, it's whit e poly/bubble wrap/bubble wrap/mylar, and cuts with scissors, and goes up with staples. All joints are taped with foil tape, and only about 6 large pieces were used on the entire room. The ceiling was covered too. There is a small room off to the side for trimming, one for drying, and I made an airlock just inside the main door:



Oh and here is my ozonator cannon, CD800 on a 8" Duct fan with a speed control and a timer for the ozone genny. Keeps the airlock nice and odorfree.



Veg room:

A veg room that is 9X15 was walled off with Tekf oil and a layer of panda, and sealed up with tape and a tarp zipper. I put in 4 X 4' 8-bulb T-5 lights with an 8" Vortex for exhaust, and recently added one of the 12X39" Phresh filters with a 12" Vortex as a scubber. I'll probably pull the 8 and use it as an intake fan for the flower room.

In it I put about 50 rooted clones at a time, plus a handful of moms and clones.



Babies vegging in 2 gallon Smartpots of FFOF:





Moms in 4 gallon pots of FFOF:


A CAP AIR-4 keeps the temps and RH under control, and a pair of oscillating fans keep it well stirred up.

All plants in this grow are automatically watered with Tropf Blumat valves, which are gravity fed from 1 of 5 reservoirs in the flowering room. No pumps, no timers, each plant gets as much water as it requires, and you can adjust the overall moisture level in each pot. It's so good I'll probably never use anything else again. I can leave for days at a time and everything will be fine when I come back.

[Lazyman]

Flower room:

It's currently doing well as an air-cooled grow, but I'll add CO2 as soon as I pick a cooling system. Currently favoring a watercooled system with a big heat exchanger and a 2-3 hp chiller instead of a 4-5 ton split AC.

For water, I needed quite a bit and it needed to be clean. I plumbed in a Tallboy as a prefilter (on a timer so it runs 2 hrs a day) and plumbed that to a GE Merlin RO for 750GPD output. A meter shows the intake and output water PPM's, and the output line tees off to 5 reservoirs across the room.


The reservoirs are my pride and joy. Extra-sturdy stands were built to hold up 5 55 gallon reservoirs about 30 inches off the floor.


Each res has the following:

3/8" float valve (with shutoff valve on the feed line)
overflow fitting (3/4" barbed tray fitting with a screen to prevent clogs)
3/4" drain fitting to inline shutoff valve.
350W titanium reservoir heater
5 large airstones fed by a 110LPM air pump
Hanna pH/PPM/temp tri-meter
Wrapped in Tekfoil insulation




Here are some more pics of the flower room:


The lines from the bottom of the res run across the room as manifolds for the little Blumat drippers to plumb to, and the far end is plumbed to a shutoff valve and are all teed together after that. Five reservoirs, 1 for veg, 1 for each of 4 rows of lights. All the end lines run to a drain bucket, as does the line from all 5 overflow fittings and both dehueys:



For lighting, bare Ushio 1000W bulbs were wired to Quantum digital ballasts and strung from aircraft cables ran across the ceiling. All lights, lines, and plant yoyos connect to it:




So with 2 gallon Smartpots full of FFOF, I veg for 4 weeks, then move 50 plants into half the flower room. Repeat every 30 days and harvest 8 lights a month.




Lights are staggered so only 4 are on at any time, using two 240V CAP relays. 2 hours on for half the lights, 2 hours off. So far the plants love it and don't seem to notice at all. I use two fulltime scrubbers (all Phresh 12"X39" with Vortex 12" fans) and two more as powered exhausts with a passive intake.
I had all 4 hooked up as exhausts but two is plenty:

Before:


A dehuey in both veg and flower are doing well so far, the flower room is managed by a Sentinel CHHC-1 controller. I've got a gas line so I can add CO2 later too, just need cooling and a generator to light it all up.

Strains right now are Sour Grape, jackpot, and Purple Mr Nice. Oh and I have some Purple UrkleXGDP too. Trying to keep to 50 per batch and holding up well so far. Adding the remaining 8 lights next week so I can stagger 8/8 instead of 4/4.

So I'm at week 1 of flower and veg on my second batch, May1 I'm at full capacity and June 1 I harvest the first batch, whoo hoo!

Whatcha think gang? I named it the headbanger because I hit my damn head every 5 minutes in there. Grrrr.

Here's an update from 14 months in the future, now with amateurish video tour!

Ok, I got the videos re-shot, and are uploading to youtube as we speak. I'm a total newb at uploading and shooting vids, and had no idea that these vids would appear sideways, stupid phone doesn't mention that. Anyway, I'm not reshooting these anytime real soon (it always looks pretty much the same) so, I dunno, turn your laptop/phone/monitor sideways? LOL! Sorry gang! I will do better in the future. I hope these give you a good idea of the room at least.
Veg room and pre-veg room tours https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SqRe07BBwA[/URL]
Airlock tour (boring) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFECngP8Re0[/URL]
Flower row 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0RRxeYMqdI[/URL]
Flower row 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvbPEGjWDO8[/URL]
Flower row 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4YQzEaHO_8[/URL]
Flower row 4 (with room pan and shot of drying room) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rueVh9TBPNU[/URL]
How I run Blumats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AsCHtPmEBA[/URL]
Electrical System quick vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB7Ea5wppRA[/URL]

[Aeroguerilla]

lol headbanger... your funny man. thats a pro setup love all your automations. good luck hope you pull some nice weight off that... cant wait to see how the flip flop works for ya.

[Lazyman]

Hey thanks AG! Good to see you man, I know you flipped through the album but I figured I'd throw up a thread and explain things a bit.

[Greyskull]

dude.....
sorry im late for class

[mcattak]

Nice....

[inphu510n]

Dude what the f...




You have mental problems.

[Lazyman]

Whatcha mean mental problems???? HUH?? Wanna fight about it?

<sobs quietly in corner>

Go away! ARGGGGHHHH!!!!

Who stole my space coat? They stole my flags! My tongue is itchy.

[inphu510n]

Insanity.
What a grow op!
You call yourself Lazyman!? That was a ton of work.

Looking good. Some of the pictures (like the water setup) look almost identical to my setup. I don't have inline TDS testers, though! I'm jealous!

How are those huge air pumps treating you? Last time I tried one, I didn't like it because it pumped out hot air and heated the reservoir. Now I just use more of the smaller models, or in larger tanks a submersible pump modified into a powerhead. But I guess you don't have that issue, as you're needing a heater.

I like your treated rez stand. A lot of little details I like a lot, really. (Like the turn-buckles & cable, I've always dreamed of that exact setup.)

All that Reflectix must not have been cheap, though!

I'm thoroughly impressed.