1000 watt "square kiddie pool" PPK, Tangerine Dream + Chernobly

What's up ICMag people! I can't believe I'm finally starting my own grow thread! I've been trolling here for a couple of years - reading and learning and making plans - and was blessed to finally have some space/resources to start a grow a few months ago.

So welcome to my 1000 watt "square kiddie pool" PPK thread!!

First up, the disclaimer: I'm a medical patient, growing for myself and other medical patients, in a medical state, and am complying with state and local laws. So glad I live in NorCal now! Can't imagine going back on zoloft, viibryd, clonazepam, lorazepam, propranolol or any of the others after discovering the sweet mood balancing effects of a good kush, or the motivating properties of a funky diesel.

But Albert, what the heck is a 'square kiddie pool' PPK?

That takes some explaining. My last home wasn't fit for growing (tiny apartment), so I spent a lot of time reading, planning, and coming up with some crazy ideas. Delta9nsx's original "passive plant killer" thread was and continues to be an inspiration to me, and I have unashamedly stolen more than one amazing idea from that thread. I've also been partly inspired by the early kiddie pool threads of DamnUglyDogE and Alien_Dawg, and those crazy contests. I found inspiration in the idea of using wide, flat containers to maximize the available space for root growth. And how do you cover 100% of a 4x4 tent with growable media?

Easy! You plant in a "square" 4x4 "kiddie pool", a 100 gal reservoir:


In that pic, you're seeing a 100 gal res that's perched 8.5 inches above a 2nd 100 gal res, on a support structure of PVC I made to hold it all up (sorry, no pic of PVC). In the top res, I drilled 20 holes, and inserted 20 standard sink tailpieces, sealed at the bottom with fiberglass screen and pipe tape. I tried zip ties (not nearly strong enough), metal clamps (really didn't want to deal with rust), and the double sided plastic clamps, but this stuff is the best: http://www.faucetdepot.com/faucetdepot/ProductDetail.asp?Product=18826

Everything is in a SunHut 4x4 XL tent, making the actual tent dimensions much closer to 5x5x7 (which is good, I need the extra space).

In the bottom res I also have a submersible 900 GPH pump, which floods the top res through a single outlet smack dab in the middle. Here's what it looks like running:


And now with 40+ gallons of turface in there:


Pic with the light hung. I tend to go "overboard" when I do stuff, so I just bought a Gavita Pro 1000DE to start:

Oops! I just realized I misspelled Chernobyl in the title of this thread. Haha! I guess I need to proofread better

More pics:

More pics:

Alright, to continue the log:

Turface was initially prepared using screen stretched over a wooden frame, but that lasted all of a weekend before I realized that I would be forever sifting turface if I didn't figure out a better way.

Enter advice from Delta9nsx again... I remembered him saying one time that he had bought a cement mixer? Maybe it was someone else. Either way, I bought one, and it was a fantastic investment:


Harbor Freight for $250, so it's a bit loud and not all that well made, but who cares! It does an awesome job. Aluminum window screen is stretched across the top and held in place with pipe clamps, allowing me to load about 1/2 bag of turface in the drum, turn it on, and then tilt it over at a 45 degree angle. An hour later and all the "smalls" are out of the bag, and the turface tests to about 38% porosity using the solo-cup/tooth-pick test. I'm now washing the turface in the cement mixer too, passing water over it in batches until it runs pretty clean (this takes longer than I'd like).

Ventilation for the room is handled by a combination of things. I have a small window air conditioner to keep temps from running away, but primary temperature control is handled through the house. I turned the closet into a lung room, but only for exhaust. Punched a 8" hole in the ceiling of the closet, and hung an 8" fan and Phresh filter:


And a pic of the closet:

On the left, you can see the exhaust coming from the tent, a 700CFM fan. This way if I add fan to my clone tent, I can have it exhaust into the closet as well, and the 8" and filter will scrape that heat and pull it into the attic (assuming I maintain negative pressure in the closet.

Here's the other side of the closet, with a little shelf I just set up for nutes:


Nutrients:

For nutrients, I'm feeding Jacks and Jacks CalInt, with added silica for strength and light tolerance. I think I have a bit of a deficiency still, so I'm going to feed them a bit of CalMag next time I top off the res. Water is supplied by a 3/8" line run through the attic, from a RO filter co-located with my laundry area in the garage. Right now, I'm still hand-mixing (drill + bulb auger FTW) nutes, and am transferring them into the big tent by bucket as needed. I need to automate this, but am planning changes to the style of grow, and think this is sufficient for this run.

Here's my little table of clones:

These are in a true 4x4 tent (cheap on amazon) that sit in a corner of this 10x10 room I'm working in. Most of these are left over from a failed attempt to get my TurboKloner up and working , and frankly I lost track of which plant they are. the smaller ones in the front I kept much better track of, and am excited to get those in for round 2 in a few weeks.

And now, here's how the plants are doing:

Early:


last week:


Everything had come from seed, and the Tangerine Dream had almost a 3.5 week headstart on the Chernobyl, so I feel pretty good about the way that they're all catching up to each other now.

Here they are last night, day 28 of flower:


I've got a SCROG screen in (1.25" extruded polypropylene heavy duty mesh deer net), and am training aggressively to try to keep things at a level height.

Tangerine Dream:


And Chernobyl:

What have I learned so far?

What have I learned so far?

So, I'm about 12 weeks total into this, and I want to start recording some of my observations about what to do and not to do for next time.

Lessons learned:
- Doing this in a big, square, heavy, immovable, hard to access 4x4 res was dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. It's been a fun experiment, but I don't think that I'll do it again. Next time? Buckets. Maybe buckets on small furniture dollies, so I can move them around easily.
- Perpetual is the way to go: I want to make the move to perpetual. Easier to iterate changes in plants, consistency in a schedule, and greater chances to maximize resource uptake, etc. Will work on that in the months to come
- Underfeed, don't overfeed: Yeah, I read this a lot and still had to make that mistake for myself.
- Temperature is important when cloning/propagating/germinating, and heat kills: Yeah, had to learn that the hard way too, lost all 5 of a kush I had planted after I baked. Heat mat temperature sensors/controls pay for themselves!
- Vent your hot air someplace else, like the attic: At first, I was essentially running a super leaky closed-room system, and it was baking my house and causing my AC units to both run more than I'd like (window unit almost continuously). Since moving the vent to the attic, my house is cooler and the AC runs less. Need to spend the time to ventilate WELL in advance of adding any heat sources.

I'm sure I'm missing things. Ha! So much to learn! I love being able to do this, it's so much fun! I feel truly blessed guys. Tell me if you think I'm doing something wrong; I'm humble and just want to get better!

Good stuff man. You're really doing an amazing job for your first go. Much respect to ya.

Elements001 said:

Good stuff man. You're really doing an amazing job for your first go. Much respect to ya.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

Looks good man. Watch ventilating to the attic as it can cause mold and mildew.

Keeping things mobile is definitely a plus. Awesome to see your open to learning, and learning. fromyour personal experiences.

great job...U should consider entering the Newbie contest...

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=287801

More pics of the setup

More pics of the setup

Some more pics to show the setup.

I managed to catch the pump running and snapped some pictures. Since it only runs 40 seconds every 60 minutes, I kept forgetting to take one.


And here's what the outlet looks like shortly after the pulse has finished. Takes between 2-3 minutes for the top res to empty back into the lower one.


Here's a shot between the reservoirs, note the "Christy's Pipe Tape" holding on the screen around the tailpiece. It's great stuff; sticks to itself, waterproof, and seems to be holding the screens REALLY well. Found it after I had some plastic clamps fail, and have not been disappointed.

You can also see some of the PVC support structure I built to hold up the second res... and also... lots and lots of sediment. Yep, the bottom of that should be black, not tan. From what I can tell, I should have washed my turface better, which is confounding, as I washed that turface for HOURS before it went in Oh well, live and learn, right? That's one of many reasons why I will not reuse this exact system again... there's no way for me to get in there to clear the sediment until EVERYTHING comes out.

The submersible pump is in there too, and just fits between the 2 reservoirs:


How does everyone mix their nutes? I found this thing. It's a $15 bulb auger from Lowes, and if you work your drill in small, counter-clockwise circles while running it counter-clockwise, you can get some SERIOUS cavitation in a small container (40 Gal Brute trashcan, also pictured):


:-D

yortbogey said:

great job...U should consider entering the Newbie contest...

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=287801

Click to expand...

Nice! Somehow I missed that thread. Thanks for the heads up, I'm headed over there to enter now

AlbertMarkovski said:

So, I'm about 12 weeks total into this, and I want to start recording some of my observations about what to do and not to do for next time.

Lessons learned:
- Doing this in a big, square, heavy, immovable, hard to access 4x4 res was dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. It's been a fun experiment, but I don't think that I'll do it again. Next time? Buckets. Maybe buckets on small furniture dollies, so I can move them around easily.
- Perpetual is the way to go: I want to make the move to perpetual. Easier to iterate changes in plants, consistency in a schedule, and greater chances to maximize resource uptake, etc. Will work on that in the months to come
- Underfeed, don't overfeed: Yeah, I read this a lot and still had to make that mistake for myself.
- Temperature is important when cloning/propagating/germinating, and heat kills: Yeah, had to learn that the hard way too, lost all 5 of a kush I had planted after I baked. Heat mat temperature sensors/controls pay for themselves!
- Vent your hot air someplace else, like the attic: At first, I was essentially running a super leaky closed-room system, and it was baking my house and causing my AC units to both run more than I'd like (window unit almost continuously). Since moving the vent to the attic, my house is cooler and the AC runs less. Need to spend the time to ventilate WELL in advance of adding any heat sources.

I'm sure I'm missing things. Ha! So much to learn! I love being able to do this, it's so much fun! I feel truly blessed guys. Tell me if you think I'm doing something wrong; I'm humble and just want to get better!

Click to expand...

You don't learn how to do it the right way until you learn how to do it the wrong way! I learned so much from my first hydro run, too... Great pointers here

Liking your system mate, I have never tried flood and drain yet. Good luck with your grow.

Day 34 pics

Day 34 pics

Pics from last night, day 34 of flower.

I realize now that I've been over feeding. Kind of a lot. An embarrassing amount. For some reason, I got it in my head that the instructions on the back of the Jack's tubs was good; it's a 1/.66 ratio, and the plants seemed to really like it. But earlier this week I started to see some tip curl, and then some burning starting to develop, so I flushed with RO and have gotten down to a much more sensible level. This took a few flushes over the course of this week, as this system is a pain-in-the-rear to clean out. Another compelling reason to do this in a traditional PPK bucket based system next time.

So... what I'm seeing in these flowers is way too much leaf, not enough bud, right? Especially at 34 days? And this is most likely because I've been over-feeding them N? That's my best guess right now. Any PPKer's around to chime in? I think it may be time to read that thread for the 4th time. Ha! ;-)

On with the pics!

The tent BEFORE I trimmed fan leaves out last night: (wow, I never expected them to get this big!)


Tangerine Dream: (look at all the vegetative growth)


Chernobyl:


Here's the tent after I spent about 90 minutes trimming fan leaves. I had purposely waited, letting the plants grow and grow, as this is my first experience with them from seeds. I wanted to see how much pork they'd pack on, and boy is it a lot! The Tangerine Dream seems really fat around the middle, so many side branches that would have produced bud had I not trimmed them off (no larf, right?) Can't wait to do this in a proper sized room and grow little trees.


Anyone have comments or suggestions? I took about 30% of the fan leaves out last night, I was going to wait a couple of days and take another 30%, based on plant and light penetration. Is that enough or should I be more aggressive? Any advice on feeding, besides "stop overfeeding"? The TD is a 10 week strain, so I still have 35 days (flush the last 2 weeks? I know D9 was never into flushes, but he also didn't overfeed his plants).

Here's my little cloning table.


Everything is in Turface now.


Bigger ones were topped for the first time last night:


The big one has a PPK style tailpiece into the bucket, and seems to be pretty healthy. This was an experiment more than anything else, but I'll grow it to a mom for cloning (probably). Need to paint the bucket tonight, don't want algae. The foil one is cause it was in a clear plastic tub (and the turface was going a bit green. oops).

Looking really good man. God note keeping, and all around great grow. Hard to believe its your first go, doing a fantastic job man!

Elements001 said:

Looking really good man. God note keeping, and all around great grow. Hard to believe its your first go, doing a fantastic job man!

Click to expand...

Thanks! This is the most fun I've had with a hobby in a long time. I can't believe I'm going to get to smoke the results!

Pics from today:
Chernobyl:


Tangerine Dream:


I can't believe how much they change in just 24 hours. Seems like they handled the pruning just fine, and I swear it feels like there was an inch of growth on some of them. Group pic:



I'm still seeing some burning. That's what this is, right? Too much N?

That looks like wind burn from a fan...is that from right near the fan.
Burning begins at the tip, an progresses.

Btw. looking real nice in there.

Beautiful plants pal! Seem's like allot of work the flood and drain, something i look forward to investing some time into in the near future. I grew the tangerine dream not too long ago, very poor strain lacked allot of everything to be honest, hopefully you scored decent beans!
Kudos.

Looking really good Albert! I would back off the N if not cut it out all together at this point.

Great job and good luck!