[GreenLights]

Hey everyone welcome to the party.

This is a step by step journal of how I built my first Vertical Grow, testing out theories and learning lessons.

The idea of this room is to test past designs and find out the best way to get the better yeilds with less building expense, smallest area, and less wattage. My goal is to surpass the yeild of th grower who last built this room. (2) 1,000w HPS = 6lbs

This is what my unfinished room looks like, We have had to build the room around a harvest so things are slow but you get the idea.



After months of reading up on Vertical grows I have pieced together plenty of useful information. The supposable record for vertical growing was from someone who got 12lbs from 2,000 watts doing a SOG method with 600 plants. This of course is very unpractical for any average grower. Besides the fact that cloning that many babies would take ages, the bacon cares not as to how small your girls are but to the count. You wont make it out anytime soon with 600 plants.

After much consideration and research the husband and I decided to go with the GB Vertical Room Design, named after Green Bastard of Cannabis Culture of whom the design was copied from. You can view his Original Thread and Design by looking for it in the grow rooms of Cannabis Culture.

the Basic idea was taken from the well known cylinder grow mechanisms such as the coliseum, the omega garden and the cage.



The Idea is that if you could put plants on all sides of the bulb you wouldn't loose the light that would normally escape in trying to bounce off a reflector. Growing Vertical also gives you the opportunity to take care of each of your plants better since you will have easier access to them at all times. Although it sounds hard to believe that this could make such a difference in weight it has been proven over and over as early as 2002 as this Cannabis Culture Article: The cannabis cage

The cage only takes up a five by five foot area, with less than seven feet of ceiling space. Yet in the right hands this device can grow 72 plants and pump out over five pounds per harvest.

Coming back to a present day experiment the Green Bastard has just past the year mark of growing Vertical and now runs 2 8x8 rooms which he boasts yields upwards of 6lbs each harvest. This being done without bloom boosters or Co2. I commend him on his construction skills, although I am doing this the ghetto way because I do not have access to the special construction equipment I believe that I will find the way to fine tune this Room Design to yield a considerable amount more than what he has accomplished. His goal is 8lbs per harvest after having added a 600watt light . I don't believe I will get to that much with just 2,000watts, but it Doesn't hurt to try.

Lets get started. First off I will go over what I have as of now:

Strains: Sour Diesel, AK-47, and White Rhino

Space:
I started with a room 10'x10' in which the Flowering room will be built to the size of 8'x8'. The Vegging room is a closet that is 4'x8' which a 4'x4' table is used for vegging.

Lighting:
Veg: 600watt Lumatek Digital ballast ~Hotilux Bulb ~Flat Air-cooled hood
Flower: 2000watts Coil ballasts ~Hortilux ~Cool Tube hung vertically

Cooling, Ventilation, Odor Control:
14,000BTU A/C Window Unit, 465 CFM Blower Attached to a 26 Inch Carbon Scrubber made following the DIY CarbonScrubber for Dummies (see my other posts) then exhausted outside.

Feeding and Additions:
General Hydroponics 3 Part series, B'Cuzz Boosters, and CalMag occasional additives: monster bloom, superthrive, and spray-n-grow
Co2 system will be set up later.

Let's Start Building

First we build the frames using standard 2x4s following the rule of a stud every 16". The Door leading to the outside had glass panes on it so I put up a dark drape and taped black plastic on the other side. For anyone who is more concerned about how this looks from the outside I would suggest lining the inside of the door with light rope and setting it on a timer before sealing it up with a wall so that it looks like someone is turning on and off the lights.

We used thin Drywall which I do not recommend as now we have light leaks that need to be fixed and a hole which is suspiciously shaped like a hand. Learn from our mistakes hehe.
I so need to trade my last dead weight co2 tank for a nice aluminum feather. Those things could take out a toe or two if you don't know how to roll them around right.

The doorway is very small but the only issue we have come across is not being able to fit the new carbon filter in the room. It was only a temporary thing so hopefully we wont run into anymore issues.

Drywall mud every crevice, don't leave any hole uncovered.

Whole room is primed with Kilz and then painted with 2 coats of Flat white paint. Anywhere you can't paint(floor,ceiling), cover it with Panda Poly/Film (Black/White Poly)

Coming Next: Shelving

[GreenLights]

Originally in the GB setup he put in 2 levels of shelving, with 32 plants total to achieve the standard 6lbs.
The more and more reading I do suggest that achieving higher yields would involve more plants. But as I looked at other similar grows with a LOT more plants they got the same yeilds as GB, I am trying not to over do it but changing it up So I added a 3rd shelf after installing them the first time, that means some of the pictures are a bit confusing.

Primed and Painted the wood panels for shelving.

Put up brackets for shelves with shims to angle them slightly for the drainage system. Changed the system later to not tilt so much, when I was feeding the water would rush down to one corner and not saturate the pot evenly.

Bolted tight to the studs on the wall.

All the shelves are up the first time but will be taken down and moved around to make room for one more shelf.

Caulked the shelves so that the water will run down into the drainage points. There are drains in 2 corners opposite of each other.

Super cheap looking I know, but what works... works!


Up next: Adding in the Cooltube

[GreenLights]

This is how I set up my cool tube originally, the plans are changing. Since I am adding in another shelf with more plants I have decided to purchase a Can66 Carbon Scrubber for added security.

My original set up featured a hand made Carbon scrubber using the DIY Carbon scrubber for Dummies design.

Back to cool tube action!
Since my room is a perfect 10'x10' square I have 2 feet on each side of the smaller room to put equipment and build shelves for the ballasts and the exhaust system.
So far I do not have the ballast shelf built but this is where I keep them for now.


Here is the lovely cool tube. For my next room I do not think that I will be purchasing another 5ft tall cool tube. It is important to be able to control the direction in which your bulbs are going and using the long cool tube doesn't let you do this. For my next grow I will purchase (2) smaller cool tubes and connect them together, both pointing down.
Its ok for now because the room is so reflective that I doubt I could loose very much light in any direction. My room is also covered in poly from head to toe and this makes all the difference in the world.

The tube is hung with the bottom open and an exhausts tube leading out connected to a 465CFM blower attached to a home made carbon scrubber vented to an outside porch.
Here are more pictures so you get a better idea of how its set up for now.

In that last picture my idea is to remove the top shelf and place the new can66 in front of the A/C and vent out through the hole that is tapped on top of the A/C.

great start green lights I to have done the same idea .. vertical with a huge ass cooltube for 2 1k lights , with 4 shelves per side ! .. works great .. just dialing in the setup!! .. need lots of air movement!!

[GreenLights]

Awesome ghost. Do you think the 4th shelf in necesary for a larger yeild, If so i am not finishing construction until this batch is done. Or is there another reason for you doing it?

Also did you buy the big 5ft tube or 2 smaller ones... I kind of wish I would have bought 2 smaller ones so I can control where my lights hit.

I will be following this. I already have a room but am interested in the vertical setup. I am considering taking down a e&F table and putting up a vertical system. And going SOG style wouldnt be an issue as I already am doing that

Tagging and watching for updates. Good luck greenlight

[mysticls]

Lets see more of this

[GreenLights]

Thanks for the support, glad to bring my grow to ICMAG finally. Took a while to get activated so I was very excited to post.

So here are some bud shots from a few days ago. They are much fatter now.

I like the way the girls are adapting to the vertical grow... leaves point down and back sides are exposed... when I do this during veg will be SO easy to foliar feed, just turn them around. I know its hard to see but the growth is very even from top to bottom. There are 2 stakes in the form of a cross proping whatever branches would have grown behind forward. These were moved in here already budding from a horizontal garden so I wil not be able to see how they will really fill out the room until next grow.

Working on clones now

More bud shots from a few days ago.




What a perfect bud shot








Polinated White Rhino :(

[GreenLights]

This waiting for 50 posts to read your messages is pretty sucky... I have to see that blinking 2 messages everytime I sign on.

Why can't it be that you can see them but not respond like on those cheap adult personals sites.

*stares at blinking notice*

[HATCH]

I think you are doing a stand-up job. I have a friend that has a room with shelves in it like yours. He is going to try a 4x4 post in center of the room, sqaure with corners not sqaure with walls, and use 6' chain light tracks on all four corners of post. With 600w.HPS and MH. with out hoods. He has a aircooled cylinder like yours and has abunch of places that doesn't get good and even light. So thats why next time he is going to install the 4x4 and four lights instead of two. Do you have this problem?