Yet another PC case growbox thread

Well I'm stoked after just cropping 38g from a single plant grown in my case and now I'm ready to try it again, but this time I want to incorporate a few improvements to the case and try out a few new ideas.

Here's a pic of the lady I'm currently smoking




The case is a simple enough design, 100w HPS, 100mm bathroom extractor and an 80mm mains fan for intake. The intake is connected to the timer so it only kicks in when the lights come on and provides additional cooling along with some circulation.
There are some passive holes that I've covered with silver louvres as well.

Plants are 1 reveg and 1 seedplant, an Afghani #1 and a hermie seed from a NL#9.



The Afghani is due for retirement right around Christmas Eve, I have no info on how the NL plant will turn out but her mother was around 9 weeks in flower, so maybe another 7-8 weeks for her.
Both are in small containers with pure coco but I'm using it like a soil rather than hydro. I have a cutting from the seedplant on a windowsill that has just gone into a 1.4L hempy using perlite/hydroton below the hole and coco above it. I'm hoping that will work out well and be a basis for future plantings, so I'll introduce her in the next few days.

Sorry for the long winded intro, I'll try to be more concise in future. Any comments, suggestions, advice or constructive critique would be most welcome.

Way to go dude!

Love the thread title as well.

Stay Safe!

you call that long winded?
nice looking couch, good micro gro
"keep it up

Nice grow and yield for a pc setup!

100w hps in a PC, that's unheard of! Nice work!!

trem0lo said:

100w hps in a PC, that's unheard of! Nice work!!

Click to expand...

wow dude that is a very nice setup u have there. and 100 watts is a pc in unheard of for real. I was only able to fit a 50 watts in my old pc box.

happy smoking to u...

Thanks for looking in and leaving such nice comments everyone.

I didn't think 100w would be too much so long as the exhaust was up to the job, hence the bathroom extractor.
I am thinking of adding a small MH lamp in there to boost the lumens a bit and flatten out the spectrum. Please let me know if you think I might be asking for trouble with that.


Got no update pics from the grow today but yesterday was a rough day for me. I lost my best friend. This is her helping me to compost the trim from my recent harvest...





RIP Bun

So I put a cutting into a hempy last week to see how they work out. It has taken some time to look happy but it went into the cab under 12/12 2 days ago. Not sure how I managed to squeeze it in but I did.



The cutting is the most compact plant I have ever seen bar the mother plant I took it from. It has been putting out 5 sets of leaves per inch of height even though it has been kept 6 inches away from a 20w cfl to make it stretch!
I just hope it has a decent calyx to leaf ratio. I am certain that with all that foliage the plant is capturing every single photon of light which is hopefully a good thing.

Now the cutting has gone in the cab I kind of need the oldest lady to vacate asap.



So this is how the cab looks right now.




Last pic shows pretty much how the case is set up. I cut off the backplane of the psu and swapped the 12v fan for a mains unit. The power goes in as usual and routes to the small white distribution box on the back left wall.
The other end of the case has a bathroom fan with the facia removed to reduce length. The ballast for the light is out of shot tucked away in the space for the front 120mm fan.
Everything apart from the bathroom fan connects to the timer.

For nutes I'm running canna coco at half strength every watering with an additional drop of silicon once a week. Plants look good so I'm sticking with that for now.

I just fed the plants and spotted this on the Afghani reveg plant..



I thought it was a seed popping out at 1st but closer inspection shows it isn't.
I'm thinking it may be a male flower but I don't know for sure. Any experts out there that can tell me what it is?

thats male pollin fo sho. but eather way they both look really good.

hermaphrodite flower for sure.... but may not even self pollinate, often hermies are sterile, ime

Thanks for confirming that for me you guys.

I decided since there's only 1 male flower I should leave it alone but I checked it out with a scope and found that all the trichs on the bud are white with a good number of amber mixed in.
I thought afghani#1 needed 45 days from onset of flowering but it is obviously ready so perhaps Sensi Seedbank mean 45 days from switching to 12/12?
. It may also be possible that reveged plants flower a little earlier 2nd time around.
I will need to check on these things.
Anyhow, it has been 48 days since I switched and 34 since onset of flower and I've now harvested her.

The master plan has been gaining momentum and I'm now very happy that the case can produce good weed, so I'll take some pics in a day or 2 and post what I'm thinking about doing for the long term.

My belated update then. Here's the case after most of the hermie plant had been chopped..



This is the first of the new guard, just at the onset of flowering..



and here's the next 3 plants ready to go. If it is a nice strain then 1 of these will become a mother plant..



Those snaps were all taken about a week ago before I put a 2nd hempy in the cab. This is how it looks now..



So the plan is to add a new hempy every 2 weeks. I still don't know how long this strain takes to flower but I'm guessing around 50 days. The idea is a natural lollipop so that I can harvest a plant every 2 weeks.
I also do not know how much they will stretch, but it's looking as if there will be very little stretching and that may result in a lot of wasted space. I have therefore bought a single serious seeds chronic.
Chronic has a reputation for big single colas combined with a low odour so it should help fill in the gaps with more bud and also keep me under the radar.

Lord knows how it will turn out but I'll keep posting progress and we'll see what happens.
Merry Christmas everybody.

Just thinking out loud..

The hempy's are 1.4L and are filled with washed perlite up to the hole. They take 200ml of feed or water before it begins to overflow.
I thought I would be able to get more water in than that.

My 1st plant was in 1.8L coco and used to take up 500ml per feed every 2nd day. I was hoping the hempy would allow me to get similar levels of food to the roots but it is not happening.

To remedy this issue I will be looking to keep the bottom rez free from any medium.
Plan now is to split the 1.4L container into 2 parts, with the bottom part left empty for the water and the plant hanging about 0.5 inches above the overflow. Hopefully this will allow 600ml of water while the roots will dangle in 0.5 inches of free air before they hit the rez.
The pots will be based around sub irrigation planters but I intend to feed through the medium instead of piping it direct to the rez

My aim is to increase the rootspace to at least the 500ml I was getting from the coco.
I'll hold back 1 of these compact cuttings so I get a direct comparison to what I'm currently doing.

good lookin couchgrass, im still watching
good luck w ur experiments

Thanks Avinash, I really appreciate the support.


I guess like everyone I've been a bit hit and miss with feeding over the last week but the plants look ok. I'm going to reduce the feed strength down to 2+2ml of a+b per litre as I can see some signs of burning on a few leaf edges.

I was worried that the compact nature of this strain was going to really restrict the amount of bud I could get out of each cutting, but the biggest plant is now looking quite respectable.
That means I can return to the ice cream tubs and straight coco as a backup plan if things go belly up with the hempy tests...



The main plant was grown on a little to give some cuttings up before she went into flower and has taken a while to come on, but now she looks like a good producer. There are 7 distinct colas all about 3 or 4 inches long and she is still putting on weight, so the single cola experiments should do well.
Things will get a little dull when she comes out as she is starting to fill the case up nicely, but there will be another hempy going in within the week so the lull should be short lived.

I'm struggling to find a way to split my container into 2 sections right now so I'll stick with the current style of hempy for the next plant.

Happy New Year to everyone.

nice yield and looks real tasty stuff.. grats

Thanks for looking and for leaving such positive feedback Gremista.


I have been busy the last few days reading lots of diaries again, looking for some ideas on a way to adapt these 1.4L containers so they can hold the maximum amount of water.

With no medium in the pot it will hold 450ml of water but adding perlite reduces this capacity to 200ml. I must also assume that this means there is only 200ml worth of space for the roots to grow into when I use perlite, and that when they do reach the rez, that space will reduce in size as they expand into it.
That also means I will need to water very often, especially at the end of the flower cycle when the roots are at their biggest.

So today I made a breakthrough.
I have bought some sphagnum moss from the garden centre and allowed it to dry completely before filling the pot up with it.
Now when I add water I can still get the full 450ml into it before any begins to spill out the hole. I have no idea how this is possible but I ran the test about 8 times and got the same result every time.
This means I can have more than twice the rootspace when compared to the current perlite system.

A second benefit was also noted.
When I pour away all the water I only collect about 350ml. This means that the moss medium is holding on to 100ml of water which will continue to feed the plants even after there seems to be no water left when I tip the pot over.
I think that will allow me to run the pots dry now and again without any negative effects on the roots or the plant.

I will therefore make up my next container with sphagnum moss up to the hole and coco above that.



Just to explain why I am sticking with a coco upper layer:
Hempy buckets are notorious for giving plants a bad start until they hit the rez, at which point they explode.
My thinking is that there are no such problems associated with a coco grow, so in using it at the top to start the plants I should have maximum growth at all stages.

I'll be transplanting my next clone into one today so we shall see how it works out.
Fingers crossed for a good outcome.

Good luck with the moss experiment. I like the idea of coco up top since it's known for having a lot of air space -- keep those top roots aerated and let the tap roots drink and much as they like, sounds like a great plan.

Thanks for the support Quinoa. Glad it isn't just me that thinks it might work out ok.


Looks like I'm running out of gallery space so I better only post 1 this time.
This is the case today..



Left is the seedplant and mother, the other side now has 3 buckets with 2 weeks between each of them.
The 3rd bucket has just gone in so Mom is on 2 weeks notice or my new plan is straight up the Swanee, but she looks like 2 weeks will be enough.

The main thing I'm getting from the hempy's is where's the stretch? There's only about an inch difference in height between all of them but there is 4 weeks between them all!
So this is why I chose a pic with the mother plant in it.
There's a few really fat buds on her and she is only at day 44 since first sign of flower, so I'm still hopeful that the buckets will explode. It's hard for me to believe they are the same plant right now.

I'm tempted to fire up the chronic seed and see what difference that makes.

The plants are not sick by the way. I played around with settings on my camera to try and tone down the orange glow.