New Grower with first grow, need some advice! - Micro Grows - International Cannagraphic Magazine Forums

tngreen · 10-26-2006, 06:31 AM

hello all! after months of reading, i finally got started about a week and a half ago. this first grow is just bagseed but should turn out to be pretty good (if they live). germed 5 seeds and all have sprouted. lighting right now is 84w CFLs and will up it to close to 200w for flowering. the cab i am using is 30.5"H x 27"W x 16"D so height is limited.

day 12 from seed

(close ups of the best plants are in my gallery)

they are in 16oz cups, in rockwool cubes on top of the little rockwool cubes being handwatered at the moment but want to do something different when i put them in bigger pots. i wanted to do something like SWC but wasnt sure what kind of tubs i could use that were as shallow as possible. Scrogging is a definate. the holes at the top right are temp until i mount my 92mm fan. as of now, they are only getting water and i can tell they need some nutes. money has been tight so im having to wait till friday to get them. so, how does it look? will take any advice i can get. thanks!

bongasaurus · 10-26-2006, 06:38 AM

lookin real good. your cab looks alot like mine space wise. you sure your going to want 5 flowering plants in there? make sure you switch the lighting early if ya do. i guess your planning on weeding out the males tho eh? what kind of temperature do you have in there at the moment? ive got 2 45w cfls going with a comp fan which keeps it about right. after i swictch on the other 2 though, the fan can barley handle them so i have to get another circulating and its still always a fight to keep the temps low

ill be watching. should be interesting to see such a tiny hydro setup. best of luck!

tngreen · 10-26-2006, 06:42 AM

thanks! whoops should have clarified, will only be keeping two plants. going to sex them and pick best two. temps are right about ambient at the moment (temp guage still on the list). since the cab gets opened daily, it keeps it pretty cool.

bongasaurus · 10-26-2006, 06:59 AM

yeah that makes sense.

do you know how many cfm your fan is? i too, usually open the door every day, in fact i like to leave it open a crack while the lights are on but still cant keep the temps down...

tngreen · 10-26-2006, 07:13 AM

36 or 38cfm i think, anyone know if that will be enough? also, i know i will need a scrubber, how small can i possibly make one?

Mr_Micro · 10-26-2006, 11:04 AM

Hey tngreen! Good to see you got your grow started!

The seedling phase of growing can be a bit nerve racking, but after that it's action action action! You'll be amazed how fast they change and grow

You asked for me to come in and give a little advice on your setup if I could, and I certainly don't mind helping a fellow grower out if I can!
All in all... your setup is coming together pretty well though I'd say!

The only things that could probably use a little work is your ventilation system and lighting system.
For the best growth I think the rule of thumb is to use 50 watts of HPS lighting per square foot or 100-150 watts of CFL lighting per square foot. When I calculated the square footage of your grow room (multiply the length by the width) it came out to 2.99 square feet, so your working with about 3 square foot of space. So with 200 watts of CFL lighting, that would mean you were working with about 66 watts per square foot.

Admitedly I myself am only running 50 watts of HPS lighting and 42 watts of CFL lighting in a 1.5 square foot space. Meaning that I'm about 8 watts of HPS or 16-24 watts of CFL lighting below what would give me the best results... but hey, the setup is still working great as far as I'm concerned! And I'm sure yours will too! I've seen quite a few people do a fine grow with somewhere around 200 watts of CFL in about 3 square feet space.

But if you can ever afford to chalk out the cash to buy a security light and remote ballast it (around $60), I really think a 150 watt HPS light would be absolutely perfect for your setup! Or if you have a bit of extra cash and don't feel comfortable remote ballasting a security light, a 100 watt Sunlight Supply brand HPS light with an integrated ballast and glass heat sheild would run you about $150. To supplement it a little bit you could just four 2ft fluorescent tubes running vertically along the walls as side lights. They do make pre-built 150 watt HPS units for growing, but most of them are pretty deep (9 inches or so) and would probably take up too much vertical space in your grow box.

But anyway... on to the matter of ventilation!

Theres a pretty simple rule to figure out how much ventilation you'll need to keep your temps well in check. You will need a constant airflow of 1 cfm per watt of HPS lighting, or 1/3rd cfm per watt of CFL lighting. Since you will be using 200 watts of CFL lighting, that means you'll need about 66 cfm of constant airflow to cool your room now, or 150 cfm of airflow if you ever decide to upgrade to a HPS light.

My best recomendation for this would be to hop over to www.newegg.com and find a 120mm PC fan that will push around 66 cfm and have a noise level below 30dBa. Noise levels around 20dBa will be almost silent, and 30 will be minimal. If you go above that though, your stealth factor goes out the window completely. Those 50dBa fans can be heard from many rooms away and will certainly raise the eyebrows of anyone who comes within 30 feet of your grow box.

Your intake should be roughly 2 to 3 times the size of your exhaust if your using a passive intake system (a 120mm fan is 4"x4" so you'd need around 8" x 8" or 12" x 12" of holes cut in or around the base of your box). Or if your using a second fan as an active intake system you should always make sure the intake fan is slightly lower in power compared to the exhaust fan. This way it will allow you to create a pressurized vaccume inside your grow box so that when you install a carbon filter all the air coming out of the box will be directed through the filter and no air will escape through the cracks.

And now for that carbon filter... there are quite a few ways to make a DIY carbon filter, but I think you'll find that Red Greenery's design will be by far the most effective you'll find. This is because with his system the air is allowed to slowly trickle through the carbon instead of being forced through it quickly by a fan. The slower the air is allowed to move through the layer of activated carbon and the larger the surface area of the activated carbon is, the better air filtration you'll have.

The second best DIY option that might be a bit more low profile would be to build a small chimney about 6" wide by 4" deep by 10" tall on the back of your box where the air is being exhausted from the fan. This way all the air being exhasted out of the grow box will be forced to travel upwards through this chimney and be exhausted out the top. After you've constructed the chimney you then duct tape in a peice of window screen material horizontally a few inches down inside the chimney. Cut a peice of quilt batting to fit the width and depth of your chimney snugly and place it ontop of the window screen inside the chimney. Then add about an inch thick layer of activated carbon ontop of the quilt batting and then place another piece of quilt batting (cut to fit snugly in the chimney once again) ontop of the carbon. So now inside your chimney you have a peice of window screen that supports a 1" thick layer of activated carbon sandwiched between two peices of quilt batting.
Your air will now be filtered through the layer of activated carbon on it's way out of the chimney! Incase your wondering what the quilt batting is for, it is to keep the extremely large ammount of carbon dust that comes off the activated carbon from falling down through the window screen and getting inside your grow box, and also from blowing out the top of the chimney as the air passes through it and creating a huge mess of black dust all over your grow box and everything around it.

While this second method isnt as effective as Red Greenery's due to the air being passed through the carbon at a higher speed and the smaller surface area of activated carbon, it will still work fairly well and should last a good month or so inbetween carbon changings. It might not kill 100% of the smell either, but it will certainly take care of 90 to 95% of it and the rest you can mask with air fresheners or incense.

There are a lot of people here who really like the Hamilton Beach True Air carbon filters and use them as exhaust fans, but I personally found them to be too expensive to maintain since the carbon pad needs to changed once a week or so in the height of flowering. And at $5 per carbon pad that gets expensive really fast!

Your other option might be to use a small pre-made carbon filter if you can afford it. Wormsway.com carries the Can Filter "705" which is rated for 39 cfm and will cost you about $40. However since PC fans don't put out near the backpressure of the inline or blower fans those Can Filters were originally designed for, you can easily use a PC fan as powerful as 70 to 75 cfm with them and still get complete odor elimination. Another option would be to use a Can 2600 Filter thats rated for 94 cfm and use a small 4" blower fan with it... but that gets noisey and expensive pretty fast.

But anyway, get creative! If you have some spare cash you can save yourself a bit of work by just buying a pre-made carbon filter, but if not there's a few different good ways to make your own!

Take care, stay safe, and best of luck on your new growing adventure! I'll be following it

tngreen · 10-26-2006, 08:40 PM

damn man thank you so much! the ventilation is what i was most worried about so i will return those 92mm fans and get some bigger ones. i actually get my supplies from a Worms Way store so i will def check those filters out when i go get my nutes tomorrow. originally i really wanted a HPS but funds just didnt allow it. eventually, a 150w will go in there. for flowering, i was thinking about using 4 42w and 2 25w CFLs so that would be just about right on, slightly over. this would also give me a mixed spectrum. will keep everyone updated! exciting stuff! im already in love with growing!

10-26-2006, 06:31 AM	#1
tngreen Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 1,405	New Grower with first grow, need some advice! hello all! after months of reading, i finally got started about a week and a half ago. this first grow is just bagseed but should turn out to be pretty good (if they live). germed 5 seeds and all have sprouted. lighting right now is 84w CFLs and will up it to close to 200w for flowering. the cab i am using is 30.5"H x 27"W x 16"D so height is limited. day 12 from seed (close ups of the best plants are in my gallery) they are in 16oz cups, in rockwool cubes on top of the little rockwool cubes being handwatered at the moment but want to do something different when i put them in bigger pots. i wanted to do something like SWC but wasnt sure what kind of tubs i could use that were as shallow as possible. Scrogging is a definate. the holes at the top right are temp until i mount my 92mm fan. as of now, they are only getting water and i can tell they need some nutes. money has been tight so im having to wait till friday to get them. so, how does it look? will take any advice i can get. thanks! Last edited by tngreen; 10-26-2006 at 06:34 AM..
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10-26-2006, 06:38 AM	#2
bongasaurus king of the dinosaurs Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: canadia. land of the free Posts: 1,114	lookin real good. your cab looks alot like mine space wise. you sure your going to want 5 flowering plants in there? make sure you switch the lighting early if ya do. i guess your planning on weeding out the males tho eh? what kind of temperature do you have in there at the moment? ive got 2 45w cfls going with a comp fan which keeps it about right. after i swictch on the other 2 though, the fan can barley handle them so i have to get another circulating and its still always a fight to keep the temps low ill be watching. should be interesting to see such a tiny hydro setup. best of luck! __________________ word og another line in the field of time i got a window washers eye for an untuckable sky Let it grow, let it grow, Let it blossom, let it flow. In the sun and in the snow
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10-26-2006, 06:42 AM	#3
tngreen Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 1,405	thanks! whoops should have clarified, will only be keeping two plants. going to sex them and pick best two. temps are right about ambient at the moment (temp guage still on the list). since the cab gets opened daily, it keeps it pretty cool.
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10-26-2006, 06:59 AM	#4
bongasaurus king of the dinosaurs Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: canadia. land of the free Posts: 1,114	yeah that makes sense. do you know how many cfm your fan is? i too, usually open the door every day, in fact i like to leave it open a crack while the lights are on but still cant keep the temps down... __________________ word og another line in the field of time i got a window washers eye for an untuckable sky Let it grow, let it grow, Let it blossom, let it flow. In the sun and in the snow
	Quote

10-26-2006, 07:13 AM	#5
tngreen Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 1,405	36 or 38cfm i think, anyone know if that will be enough? also, i know i will need a scrubber, how small can i possibly make one?
	Quote

10-26-2006, 11:04 AM	#6
Mr_Micro Orbital Jellyfish for the Flying Saucer Men Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 353	Hey tngreen! Good to see you got your grow started! The seedling phase of growing can be a bit nerve racking, but after that it's action action action! You'll be amazed how fast they change and grow You asked for me to come in and give a little advice on your setup if I could, and I certainly don't mind helping a fellow grower out if I can! All in all... your setup is coming together pretty well though I'd say! The only things that could probably use a little work is your ventilation system and lighting system. For the best growth I think the rule of thumb is to use 50 watts of HPS lighting per square foot or 100-150 watts of CFL lighting per square foot. When I calculated the square footage of your grow room (multiply the length by the width) it came out to 2.99 square feet, so your working with about 3 square foot of space. So with 200 watts of CFL lighting, that would mean you were working with about 66 watts per square foot. Admitedly I myself am only running 50 watts of HPS lighting and 42 watts of CFL lighting in a 1.5 square foot space. Meaning that I'm about 8 watts of HPS or 16-24 watts of CFL lighting below what would give me the best results... but hey, the setup is still working great as far as I'm concerned! And I'm sure yours will too! I've seen quite a few people do a fine grow with somewhere around 200 watts of CFL in about 3 square feet space. But if you can ever afford to chalk out the cash to buy a security light and remote ballast it (around $60), I really think a 150 watt HPS light would be absolutely perfect for your setup! Or if you have a bit of extra cash and don't feel comfortable remote ballasting a security light, a 100 watt Sunlight Supply brand HPS light with an integrated ballast and glass heat sheild would run you about $150. To supplement it a little bit you could just four 2ft fluorescent tubes running vertically along the walls as side lights. They do make pre-built 150 watt HPS units for growing, but most of them are pretty deep (9 inches or so) and would probably take up too much vertical space in your grow box. But anyway... on to the matter of ventilation! Theres a pretty simple rule to figure out how much ventilation you'll need to keep your temps well in check. You will need a constant airflow of 1 cfm per watt of HPS lighting, or 1/3rd cfm per watt of CFL lighting. Since you will be using 200 watts of CFL lighting, that means you'll need about 66 cfm of constant airflow to cool your room now, or 150 cfm of airflow if you ever decide to upgrade to a HPS light. My best recomendation for this would be to hop over to www.newegg.com and find a 120mm PC fan that will push around 66 cfm and have a noise level below 30dBa. Noise levels around 20dBa will be almost silent, and 30 will be minimal. If you go above that though, your stealth factor goes out the window completely. Those 50dBa fans can be heard from many rooms away and will certainly raise the eyebrows of anyone who comes within 30 feet of your grow box. Your intake should be roughly 2 to 3 times the size of your exhaust if your using a passive intake system (a 120mm fan is 4"x4" so you'd need around 8" x 8" or 12" x 12" of holes cut in or around the base of your box). Or if your using a second fan as an active intake system you should always make sure the intake fan is slightly lower in power compared to the exhaust fan. This way it will allow you to create a pressurized vaccume inside your grow box so that when you install a carbon filter all the air coming out of the box will be directed through the filter and no air will escape through the cracks. And now for that carbon filter... there are quite a few ways to make a DIY carbon filter, but I think you'll find that Red Greenery's design will be by far the most effective you'll find. This is because with his system the air is allowed to slowly trickle through the carbon instead of being forced through it quickly by a fan. The slower the air is allowed to move through the layer of activated carbon and the larger the surface area of the activated carbon is, the better air filtration you'll have. The second best DIY option that might be a bit more low profile would be to build a small chimney about 6" wide by 4" deep by 10" tall on the back of your box where the air is being exhausted from the fan. This way all the air being exhasted out of the grow box will be forced to travel upwards through this chimney and be exhausted out the top. After you've constructed the chimney you then duct tape in a peice of window screen material horizontally a few inches down inside the chimney. Cut a peice of quilt batting to fit the width and depth of your chimney snugly and place it ontop of the window screen inside the chimney. Then add about an inch thick layer of activated carbon ontop of the quilt batting and then place another piece of quilt batting (cut to fit snugly in the chimney once again) ontop of the carbon. So now inside your chimney you have a peice of window screen that supports a 1" thick layer of activated carbon sandwiched between two peices of quilt batting. Your air will now be filtered through the layer of activated carbon on it's way out of the chimney! Incase your wondering what the quilt batting is for, it is to keep the extremely large ammount of carbon dust that comes off the activated carbon from falling down through the window screen and getting inside your grow box, and also from blowing out the top of the chimney as the air passes through it and creating a huge mess of black dust all over your grow box and everything around it. While this second method isnt as effective as Red Greenery's due to the air being passed through the carbon at a higher speed and the smaller surface area of activated carbon, it will still work fairly well and should last a good month or so inbetween carbon changings. It might not kill 100% of the smell either, but it will certainly take care of 90 to 95% of it and the rest you can mask with air fresheners or incense. There are a lot of people here who really like the Hamilton Beach True Air carbon filters and use them as exhaust fans, but I personally found them to be too expensive to maintain since the carbon pad needs to changed once a week or so in the height of flowering. And at $5 per carbon pad that gets expensive really fast! Your other option might be to use a small pre-made carbon filter if you can afford it. Wormsway.com carries the Can Filter "705" which is rated for 39 cfm and will cost you about $40. However since PC fans don't put out near the backpressure of the inline or blower fans those Can Filters were originally designed for, you can easily use a PC fan as powerful as 70 to 75 cfm with them and still get complete odor elimination. Another option would be to use a Can 2600 Filter thats rated for 94 cfm and use a small 4" blower fan with it... but that gets noisey and expensive pretty fast. But anyway, get creative! If you have some spare cash you can save yourself a bit of work by just buying a pre-made carbon filter, but if not there's a few different good ways to make your own! Take care, stay safe, and best of luck on your new growing adventure! I'll be following it __________________ PC Case Growers Club The Nanomachine Mr. Micro's Dual PC Case Hydro HPS/CFL 3 Strain Grow
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10-26-2006, 08:40 PM	#7
tngreen Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 1,405	damn man thank you so much! the ventilation is what i was most worried about so i will return those 92mm fans and get some bigger ones. i actually get my supplies from a Worms Way store so i will def check those filters out when i go get my nutes tomorrow. originally i really wanted a HPS but funds just didnt allow it. eventually, a 150w will go in there. for flowering, i was thinking about using 4 42w and 2 25w CFLs so that would be just about right on, slightly over. this would also give me a mixed spectrum. will keep everyone updated! exciting stuff! im already in love with growing!
	Quote