400W Medicine Cupboard

[Blimey]

How many / what strains are you going to be running in the new setup? You run 8 at a time iirc?

Reckon it will yield substantially more than before? Quite a few extra watts you're running now, but not so much red.....

No LEDs in the new cab?

Fascinating stuff, man....

 

[indifferent]

Currently in there are two Durban Poisons, two West Africans, two SSH f2, three G13Haze x SSSDH, two Mexican, two Appalachia, two Ethiopian Highland, one The White x Jack's Cleaner 2 and one Deep Chunk. I'm running a high density perpetual SOG.

There is plenty of red from the 3400k tubes, I'm adding some 2700k tubes shortly for more red. I just added four 9w Sylvania red coated CFLs running on Tridonic-Atco 2x18 PL-C ballasts, I have ordered eight UVA PL-C 9W lamps that will replace these red ones, the only reason I have these red ones in there at the moment is they are the only lamps I have that fit these sockets.

Yup, there will be some LEDs in there too. I'm refitting the 25W light in a corner where the ventilation ducting is and also adding some red 48cm LED strips as sold dirt cheap on ebay for car styling, pc case pimpin etc. The red from these LEDs should give a nice yield boost.

16 x 14W 3400k tubes
8 x 15W UVA tanning tubes
8 x 9W UVA nail curing tubes
2 x 24W 10000k Actinic tubes
8 x 9W 2700k tubes
1 x 400W Metal Halide
100W red LEDs

That is a lot of lighting for a small space. Not running it all 12/12, would use too much leccy. I'm using three timeswitches to turn the red, blue and UV colours on/off independently so I can simulate damn/dusk and the high UV of noon.

It's long been my goal to replicate the light intensity of the equator indoors as I like to grow equatorial and tropical sativas. If this setup I'm also finished building doesn't manage to do it, then I'm not sure what else I can do!

 

[indifferent]

First pic shows my nice big Appalachia cutting, I've placed it in the corner so it has four 14w tubes very close to it, this should boost the yield somewhat.

Other pics show the setup after adding the 9W red tubes, with all the ballasts and wiring and tubes virtually all the sides of the interior of the box is covered with technology now, there is definitely an element of mad science in this rig!

All the mains 240v wiring is keep safely waterproof as I'm using ip55 waterproof junction boxes, you can see one in the last pic of my previous post. The ballasts aren't waterproof though so I've placed them high up at the top, away from any water spills.

The ambient temperature in the box has gone up from 24C to 28C, which is perfectly acceptable imho and I can live with a 4C temp rise considering I've lined the insides with electronic ballasts and fluorescent tubes!

 

[*mistress*]

keep the hitech fun going!
there are others out there... in he lahB...

enjoy your garden!

 

[indifferent]

Thanks mistress, this lighting stuff becomes an obsession after a while, there are so many different types of lamp available these days and it opens up all kinds of new possibilities for advancements in growing over the traditional HPS or Halide only method.

Later this year I'm gonna run 8 nice big Highland Oaxacan Gold cuttings in this box and use a high UV regime:

3400k and 2700k tubes on 12/12
400w Metal Halide on 8/16
UV tubes on 4/20

The tubes will run for the full 12 hours but the halide only for the middle eight, this should hopefully simulate dawn/dusk pretty well with warmer, dimmer lighting for the first two and last two hours of the 12 hour lights on period. The UV tubes will be on for the middle four hours to simulate the high UV of midday.

I figure this is as close to the natural lighting of the central valley of Oaxaca as I can get in a small cupboard, the goal being to grow the Oaxacan cutting to the same level of potency and quality as it would in it's native environment which happens to be one of the 'sweet spots' for ganja growing on the planet. I'll be very pleased indeed if I can get anywhere close to replicating my own little piece of 'sweet spot' in my mad science contraption I call a medicine cupboard! lol

 

[VerdantGreen]

yes im watching with great interest! - i plant to address this UVB thing later this year. im thinking just one or two t5 tubes for a couple hours each day. you say that phillips do them? or are the reptiglow the best ones? it would be nice to get just UVB tubes rather than just 10% or whatever...

V.

 

[indifferent]

The one you need is the 2ft Philips TL/12, it's 100% UVB, no UVA. For UVA you can just use a blacklight tube.

 

[cannaboy]

Your setup is tip top mate... I bet your sativas are lovely you got it going on mate...

I wanna try some of your stuff dude as your pushing the boundarys a step further,,

Led alone is not up to much yet neiter is plasma affordable and I just buzz on this kinda thing.

Keep it up Indifferent,,

 

[indifferent]

Cheers mate. I messed around a lo with LEDs on their own and they aren't great yet, bu may work good mixed with fluoros etc, not sure.

The 'time machine' as some friends call it, is sat at home unused currently as I've moved to a new country and bigger things. I'm about to start building a bigger version of the 'time machine' with more lighting and more space, so it just means the experiments will be carried out a bit into the future from now.

Be delighted to have you try some of my stuff sometime mate, I'm just settling into a new house after a few weeks of moving turmoil, but in the near future will have lots of new grow-related stuff going on and will see what I can do about getting samples of my work to you for evaluation, be great to gain some feedback on some of my experimental work from others!

 

[cannaboy]

I hope you settle in well Indifferent i know what it is like to relocate..

Cool offer.. when your settled let us know.. I got some thing for you too....

That timemachine.. Its So good.

 

[indifferent]

I've relocated a few times in my life, but this is first time in another country. I'm already settling in, Dutch life seems to suit me.

I'm going to be starting lots of seeds over the coming months so will make sure to find a spot to try some new things.

I'm hoping this new larger version of the Time Machine has enough power to split the space-time continuum wide open and allow me to properly experience the tastes and highs of the 60-70s. I'll start a thread soon when it's up and running.

 

[*mistress*]

 

[theweedman.fr]

Loving the lighting experimentation;

Question: have you moved house purely for the legality of growing mj ? lol. I have considered this.

 

[indifferent]

It's just as illegal here, just the penalties are far less severe, also, the market is far larger and the overall situation far more conducive to growing for profit without life spoiling levels of paranoia.

I am pretty sad I had to leave the Time Machine MkI behind, it won't fit down the spiral stairs from the room it is in so I couldn't give it to a friend to use, I would have been delighted to donate it to someone with the passion to grow but not the resources.

I will start a thread for the Time Machine mkII shortly, the basic outline is a 1m square space 2m tall, it will have 10 x 35W t5 tubes on each side wall, for a total of 1.4kw of fluoro lighting. In the top will be a 600w lamp, probably a metal halide. The 35W tubes are 1.5m long so all but the bottom 50cm of the pace will be intensely illuminated with a total of 2kw of light in the visible spectrum.

On top of this will be a load of UV lighting, I am not 100% sure what tubes and how many I will use just yet, but I like the look of the 70w 1.5m phillips CEO tanning tubes for UVA and a little UVB, for UVB I am hoping to use Philips UVB medical tubes, but if I can't find these i will probably use Osram Vitalux 300W Mercury Vapour UVB reptile lights, four of them mounted in the roof. Near-UV/deep blue will come from actinic type tubes, probably 3 or 4 on each side.

The goal would be to grow 9 or 16 sativas in this space, I have a number of sativa cuttings I think would be suitable such as Angola x Banghi, Lesotho x Uzbeki, Highland Oaxacan Gold, Haze x Nepalese, Goldfinger, Old Time Moonshine and a few others. I will plant them in a modular coco bed consisting of 30cm diameter woven coco fibre pots placed tightly together in a 1m square tray with 10cm of COGR coco particles mixed with diahydro/diatomite in the bottom.

I would be aiming for tall plants approximately 1.2-1.3m tall, this is to take advantage of the side lighting, the aim being to illuminate all of the plant from top to bottom, and I am going to pick cuts that like to grow as one huge long cola such as the Oaxacan and Angola x Banghi, maybe I can get a huge 1.2m long cola?