[timmur]

I’m just finishing putting together my new setup and wanted to document the maiden voyage. I still have quite a bit to do to get the room ready and I have some upcoming travel so I won’t kick off the grow until late Feb. For now, I’ll document putting the room together and then log the grow.

The plan is to grow out from seed 9 feminized Malawi to find a keeper. I’ve spent about 2 years cruising the forums and reading cannabis cultivation books trying to come up with an ideal CEA (Controlled Environment Agriculture) room. What you see below is a culmination of this research. Thanks to dubi for putting up with my incessant stream of questions!

Equipment List

The Room
10’ x 9’ x 8 ½’ Eden Grow Room with Orca Grow Film throughout
Lighting
(16) Cycloptics Greenbeams – Phillips 4200k
(1) Far Red Flower-Initiator 20 Watt Grow Light
(2) A/B-C DEEP BLUE Booster 50 Watt LED Grow Light
(4) Mega-Ray 275 Watt Self-Ballasted Flood UVB Lamp
Hydroponics
Under Current E9XL with remote epicenter
EcoPlus Water Chiller - 1/2 HP
O2 Grow’s oxygenation system (electrolysis)
Supreme Clarifier UV Sterlizer - 40 watt
Environment / Process Monitoring
Mitsubishi 24,000 BTU Ductless Mini-Split Heat Pump
Active Air Commercial 100 Pint Dehumidifier
Minifogger Humidifier
Titan Controls CO2 Regulator
Hyper Fan Stealth 8 in 710 CFM
Phresh Filter 8 inch x 24 inch 750 CFM
AgrowTek GC-Pro Control System with Indoor Climate + CO2 and pH/EC/Temp/Dissolved O2 Kit
Nutes
Hydroponic Research’s Veg + Bloom RO/Soft version
Hydroponic Research's +Size
Cultured Solutions Roots

The room is a sealed design with primary lighting using Cycloptics Greenbeam CMH lights to deliver about 1,150 μmoles PPFD at about 20” from the fixtures. The walls and ceiling will be covered in Orca. I’m going veg and flower in this room. Secondary lighting includes a far red light to shorten the flower cycle, blue LEDs to keep internode spacing short when using far red and to induce stomatal opening at the beginning of the light cycle, and mercury vapor lamps to provide UVB for enhanced potency.

I plan on running much of the Ace catalog one variety at a time to select keepers. Besides Ace I plan on some selections from Cannabiogen as well as Mandala. With the exception of Bangi Haze and Nep Jam, I’ll focus on non-hybridized sativas and a few non-hybridized indicas. May run commercial cuts at some point further down the line.

First, a quick note regarding the UC. It’s going to run without the standard air pump and micro pore diffusers. Instead I’m using O2 Grow’s electrolysis device to generate oxygen. The Agrowtek has a dissolved O2 (DO) sensor that will control the O2 grow based on DO set point. O2 Grow claims that you can super saturate the UC system which enhances yields. We’ll see. In any case, I’ll be glad to get rid of the air pumps and diffusers. This should help keep pythium and root rot in general at bay. Also going to UV the RO water.

This should be a wild ride so here goes! First question. How long should I veg? Current Culture recommends 2 weeks, but I’m wondering if that is too long for these sativas especially considering the 8 foot ceilings.

Related to this I’m looking for opinions about growing techniques like main lining, Uncle Ben’s Topping Technique, or scrog, or? In such a tight space I’m thinking that scrog is a pain in the ass. The other two methods seem like they are probably easy after in the initial training/topping.

Here’s a cheesy floor plan and a pic of a mock-up of the room. The actual room is still being built, but mocking it up let me finish my planning. I'll post up more details as the room comes together. For now I'm open to all feedback.

[Homebrewer]

Those pods look like they're capable of growing some monsters.

In regards to shaping your plants, topping and bending and pinching always helps but since you're growing beans you're going to have some variation so just shoot for an even canopy with lots of 'tops'. Best of luck, this should be fun to watch.

[timmur]

Thanks Homebrewer! I'm leaning towards main lining as it gives such an even canopy. Normally main lining sets you back by a couple of weeks, but I've heard that in RDWC it barely slows them down.

[farmerlion]

Timmur, Just a couple of thoughts for you to consider. Your lights don't shorten a flower cycle or make your pot more potent. That is a sales pitch not a biological fact. Your set up is very nice. Your genetics will determine stretch, growth rate, structure. Your environment will determine the amount of phenotype expression. You can lessen the amount of stretch somewhat with light intensity. Your lights will influence weight gain during flowering. The plants won't mature faster during flowering, genetics control plant cycle maturity. I'm working with light cycle times to manipulate plant height. I have a 9' ceiling height to work with. Using 100% sativa and sativa dominant strains I have much work yet to draw any conclusions. I wish you well on your grow. Peace

[timmur]

Originally Posted by farmerlion

Timmur, Just a couple of thoughts for you to consider. Your lights don't shorten a flower cycle or make your pot more potent. That is a sales pitch not a biological fact. Your set up is very nice. Your genetics will determine stretch, growth rate, structure. Your environment will determine the amount of phenotype expression. You can lessen the amount of stretch somewhat with light intensity. Your lights will influence weight gain during flowering. The plants won't mature faster during flowering, genetics control plant cycle maturity. I'm working with light cycle times to manipulate plant height. I have a 9' ceiling height to work with. Using 100% sativa and sativa dominant strains I have much work yet to draw any conclusions. I wish you well on your grow. Peace

Hey farmerloin, thanks for stopping by! I appreciate your comments, but I think you might need to dig a little deeper regarding the use of far red to shorten flower cycles or increase yield (depending on how it's employed). I'll point you to a few resources that influenced me. It may be a sales pitch, but I think there's good evidence for it so I'm going to give it a try!

First something from Ed Rosenthal:

Flowering In Less Darkness

In Experiments at the Cutting Edge, Part I, I discussed critical dark periods that induce flowering. When the plant repeatedly receives an uninterrupted dark period of that length, flowering is induced. The plant measures darkness as the absence of red light. To stop a plant from flowering, interrupt the dark period with red light such as the light from an incandescent bulb half way the dark period and the plant will continue to grow vegetatively.

When the red light ends it takes the inactive form (which doesn’t promote flowering) about two hours to change over to the active form. This can be speeded up considerably by far red light. You cannot see far red light but you can feel it as heat. Incandescent bulbs emit about 10% of their energy as visible light. The other 90% is emitted as far red light. When the light hits a solid object, the energy is converted to heat.

You can make your own far red energy lamp by covering an incandescent bulb with opaque black paper. The visible light is blocked but the far red rays go through the filter. Far red bulbs are available at pet shops where they are sold as black heat lamps.

When far red light comes in contact with the inactive form of the flowering hormone, the hormone is immediately converted to the active form. The far red light doesn’t have to remain in contact with the plants long—just a few moments will do.

Photoperiodism is a localized effect. If you had a plant with two branches and one of the branches was given a flowering light regime while the other was given continuous light, the first branch would flower but the second would continue to grow vegetatively. Because the effect is localized, all parts of the plant must be reached with the far red light. Think of applying far red light as you would think of spraying water on the plant. The entire plant and all its vegetation must be dripping with water when you are done. It is in this manner that you have to spray the plant with invisible light. The spraying should take place each evening after dusk or after the lights have been turned off.

The Effects of Far red Light on Outdoor Gardens

(WARNING: THESE METHODS ARE BEING TESTED NOW. THE RESULTS WILL BE AVAILABLE LATER THIS YEAR.)

In an earlier article “Project Haiku,” I described how to force plants to flower early by covering them each day using an opaque curtain. They were harvested eight weeks after forcing began.

Far red light can substitute for the curtain tossing. In Northern California, where Project Haiku took place, June 22 is the longest day and shortest night of the year; the garden received 14¾ hours of light and 9¼ of darkness. The short dark period prevents flowering. Chemically, the inactive flowering hormone is taking its time, 2 hours worth, to convert to the active form. The plants are under the influence of the flowering hormone for only 7¼ hours, so the plant remains growing vegetatively.

When the plants are “sprayed” with far red light, the hormones convert over to the active form. If this is done daily at dusk, it gives the plants another two hours under the influence of the active hormone each day. This is a long enough period for them to be induced to grow buds and start flowering. So if a garden was forced in May it will ripen in July. A June forced garden, such as PH, is harvested in August

The main problem with using far red light is that it sometimes induces stem stretching. There is a solution: spray the plants with blue light. Blue light has been used for decades in a few commercial nurseries to keep plants compact and prevent stretching. Plant photoperiodism is not affected by the blue spectrum. After the plants are sprayed with far red light, a spray of blue light keeps the stems short and stocky.

Far red Light Indoors Gardens

(WARNING: FINAL RESULTS FROM THESE EXPERIMENTS HAVE NOT YET BEEN REPORTED)

The typical indoor flowering room spends 12 hours a day, half its time, in darkness. The positive side of this is that the dark period forces the plants to flower. The negative side is that while the plants are in darkness they don’t photosynthesize.

A few growers have figured out their plants’ critical flowering time and increased the lit period by up to an hour and a half. Instead of spending 50% of their time in darkness, they spend only 44%. More importantly they luxuriate under the lights for another 6% of the time. That’s an increase of more than 12% of the lighted period. A corresponding increase in yield should follow.

Using an far red light spray followed by the blue light cuts down the need for as long a dark period as plants are normally given. Imagine if you could reduce the dark period by 2 hours, more than 16% of the lighted period.

If both techniques were used the lighted period would total up to 15½ hours, three and a half more hours each day for creating sugars and energy for growth. The final result: Bigger buds, and more of them.

Here's another bit more info about the use of far red to reduce flowering time. I should point out that the "reduction" is relative to an indoor garden that lacks the appropriate far red spectrum that is normally found outdoors from the sun.

From Faster flowering with Far-Red light treatments

I have consistently decreased flowering time by 10-14 days across many different strains. In doing so, I achieve a faster time to market while still achieving better than average yields,” Commercial Grower and Washington state licensee. As this grower has learned, shortening the time to market can be as important, and just as impactful, than the question of yield. He does this by changing the light spectrum in his Heliospectra LX60s during different growth cycles. Growers can modify the light spectrum using our built-in control software and scheduling program.

We walk a fine line in revealing the grow light recipe designed by one of our customers. In the spirit of an open discussion, with the intent to “raise all ships,” we feel it is important to share this grower’s discovery. Without giving away too much, this grower runs a modified 12/12 light cycle during flower. Towards the end of the 12hr light cycle, the Blue, White, and Red colors turn off, leaving the Far-Red light at full power to finish the cycle. This light recipe, results in a decreased flowering time, and steady yield output.

As one of the best LED grow light providers, Heliospectra knows that yield and productivity are foremost concerns for growers. For this WA cultivator, increasing crop throughput, while achieving better than average yields, has a consistent positive impact to their bottom line.

What would faster crop production mean for your bottom line?

Phytochrome manipulation for growing cannabis?

Far Red Light, the Emerson Effect, and Phytochrome

I don't really have the time or motivation to post up the relevant research on UVB and it's alleged effects on potency (as well as other beneficial effects). I'm going to find out for myself! I will leave you with this though since it was easy to find.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.ph...4&postcount=11

There several ways to limit stretching beyond light intensity see here for a rather exhaustive list. Reducing Stretch in Indoor Hydroponic Crops. Certainly genetics determine the potential for yield, potency, flowering length, etc..., but the environment plays a huge part.

[pulverizer]

Timmur your setup is killer and so well thought-out! Good luck to you sir!

[timmur]

Thanks Pulverizer! I have agonized over it for so long that I thought my wife was going to divorce me! With that said, it is kinda fun to sweat the details and synthesize various technologies to achieve synergy (I hope!).

[timmur]

Can I leave the carbon filter and fan sitting a shown in the pic or does it need to be hung? I have four wall fans for general air circulation and the cooling is handled by the mini-split, so the fan and filter are there just to recirculate and remove odor.

[Bobbo4200]

Looks good guy, I'm tagged on this one!

[Mikell]

Less noise transfer from a can/fan hung from bungee or rubber tie downs.

How's the muffler/fan combo working? Noticeably quieter?