Land of a thousand colas, part deux

[gmanwho]

i gotcha now! i have zero experience with mini-splits. i suffer from the "old dog new tricks syndrome"!

I love eBay’s new other option when searching for goods. And Setting up notifications for brand new scratch and dent mini splits. When the price was right I was all over them. Dents an scratches no problem, zooming in on the pictures when there was fin damage to the radiators. A deal or no deal?

Think I’ve gotten about 8 units over the years like this. some mine , and a few for the other 2 grow rooms I’ve helped people setup.

Biggest score was a buy now for 2 brand new 36kbtu Mitsubishi outdoor units, commercial pseries so they are good down to -10f, high efficiency 19-21 seer(efficency / seer rating depending on which inside head unit is used. the more radiator or surface area of the coiling coil, the higher the efficiency rating, within reason) , double fan units so they have a big coil to remove heat…$1000. An $250 shipped to the local fedex hub.

1250 for 2 units that are over $5k a piece. Nothing wrong other then a few small dents on the covers an a few radiator fins got pushed around.


I had dinner tonight with a hvac buddy of mine who used to work for trane servicing large commercial hvac systems. Picking his brain on the next setup I may build. Another 18 lighter but with no standard compressor style air conditioners. I only have another unused 60 amp sub panel to the barn. And maybe I can grab another 15-20 amp from the other feed, for fans an dehumidifier etc.



With night temperatures here 60f an below 9-10 months of the year. And Target temps of the room is 80-84f, that means I would have a 20-24f drop in water temperature Atleast. And larger drop during the winter. 3 runs a year an shutdown during the summer.


All hydronic cooling, a water & glycol system. indoor air handler removes the grow room heat.

The heated water is plumbed to 2 areas with air handlers that may require heat, a new veg room, and then the attached house.

When there is excess heat after those 2 air handlers, it will be routed to a series of large cast iron radiators outside , or a small cooling tower.

Everything configured to bring heat to veg or house or directly to outdoor radiators.

Something like this I could add about 40kbtu of heat when needed to veg and house. And save about 30-40% on this total room electricity. minus the water circulation pumps an air handler fans Electrical consumption

 

[gmanwho]

Many people can learn from Gman streams of consciousness

Just hoping to crowd source an share some ideas. That is till the trolls arrive.

@flower~power How those hazes doing? Those maha crosses seem nice!! Was it maha joy , I forget , it’s late for me, couldn’t sleep.

I did end up grabbing 3 packs of his trainwreck haze cross

 

[gmanwho]

Metallic Frankencense , said A5 x haze, 65-75day. Just dipped for ipm, topped a little, transplanted to 1-gal bag. Time to start feeding and get under some higher ppfd

 

[gmanwho]

Some good size turnips and golden chanterelle. Been a very wet summer up here. Turnips did well, garlic was ok, Potatoes are doing very well. Beans, rhubarb and horseradish doing well. Peppers squash basil all very very behind.

 

[gmanwho]

Moisture data from flower rm 2 with the cmh lighting. This is what i "think" i should be at during this stage of flower. at a 25% dryback before next watering

 

[Itsmychoice]

I like the way you think, i think every grower has wanted to heat their house in the winter with the lights that are on anyway. The trick will be building an efficient enough system in the right configuration and valving to get every room just right. It will be an awesome project. Find three more of those great deals on mini split condensers and just put one in the veg room, one under the house/attic and one outside and pump water through them and run the fans on timers

 

[gmanwho]

It often asked, if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, did it make a sound? or some wording to that effect.

So then.... if a tree falls in the woods and holds it self up, did it really happen??

Well it happened! What are the odds? I mean really, what are the f'ing odds? And then for a human to be around and find one?

They often fall an get caught on other trees. But for a branch of its own to fall then wedge against itself.

Walking to check out the waterfall area last fall i ran into this. And NO, i did not stage it!! As of a few months ago it was still standing.

 

[greyfader]

no way this coincidence happened! A large limb, maybe 10 ft long and about 4" in diameter at the base, fell off my neighbor's tree and stuck almost perfectly upright in the ground and stayed there for days until he took it to the curb.

 

[gmanwho]

in my second outdoor trial area i ended up loosing 2 outdoor plants due to high water levels.

one of my 2 outdoor spots i planted near a pond on purpose. about 5-6ft off the pond i took my post hole digger on the skid steer and dug down couple feet. then back filled with fresh amended soil an half coco. turned out in 2 of the 6 spots water table was to high.

next year im gonna build up a raised pot in the same spots. trying to come up with a happy spot to have the plant well above pond water table, but have the roots search low as they need water. in hopes to go the summer without having to water nothing but once or twice after the initial transplant.

also thought about running some rope down into ground and meet the water table, pop a hole and thread the rope through the bottom of the fabric pot. remove the rope braid and fan out the rope in the bottom of the pot. a passive wick

my first intention was to do swamp tubes here. but when i went to access the tubes i already had, the heavy paper was already kinda starting to fall apart.

Was thinking of picking up some used culvert pipe for next year instead.

or building some tubes out of chicken wire then lining the insides with landscape fabric.


few pics of the happier outdoor area.

100 gal pots on plastic pallets incase i need to move them. Amended soil with perlite an rice hull
2 plants per pot
4 pots of santa cruz blue dream.
2 pots of deadpanheads Orginal peach hashplant.
1 pot of FAM95
1 pot of chacos sour valley

Had a really wet summer. I kept putting off planting them, i think they had about 15-20 days in the pot before i saw some starting to flower. no where near enough time. but there going pretty decent now.

moon out nearing sunset , closest to the bottom to the left an right are the original peach hashplant. First ones that started to flowering

in this photo the bottom 4 pots are the blue dream

Chacos sour valley or fam 95, tough for me to tell from this point. one of the later ones to start flowering

i believe this is fam95, tough to tell from the picture. Everything has a label on them, little later to flowering.

Still debating if i should put up the hoop house around them. if my helper is back, i will do it. While i am legal here, i would like to get the hoop house up so they cant see plant counts. and technically its supposed to be "under lock an key".

the local county sheriff usually start flying around in a helicopter late September, early october. They do look for plant numbers, but also a big part is looking for poachers before the hunting season starts.

Last year a guy 2 miles up the road got pinched for having to many plants. think it was like $100 fine for plants he had over the limit. my current limit is 18. so im good outdoor. but i would like to add another 8 to next year too. I figure the hoop house would obscure actual pots


I do have a 20amp 120v feed about 60 ft from here. i figure i could get some fans going in there an maybe even a dehumidifier. I could even run a few leds early season to keep them from flowering if needed.

I havent dug deep into the wiring from the irrigation system yet, it is possible i can dedicate the second neutral line as another 120v feed. providing 220v to the system, then use a step down transformer to jump back to 120v at the hoop house. a step down transformer can then provide a "legal neutral". Or something to this effect, i still need to do a little research and see how things are setup.

this way i could get a total of 40 amps here. without doing much work.

Shhhhh.... the foreman is having a look around, Quick ........look busy!!

 

[greyfader]

three summers ago i was working for the cbd operation in Nashville. I was the director of controlled environment agriculture for the company and focused on flower production but we also had 1600 acres of outdoor planted for bulk extraction. different sites spread out over several counties.

we had a manager for that too and they were having quite a bit of trouble getting the transplanted greenhouse seedlings to root in the clay soil. they lost a lot of them so i proposed an experiment.

we took a tractor with an auger and drilled holes 10" in diameter and 3 ft deep and backfilled to within about 6 inches of the surface with red scoria. no liner or anything else. we then took the seedlings and transplanted them in 6 inches of potting soil and put a timed drip line on each one fed from an elevated tank.

they got huge fast. and ended up as 8-10 ft plants compared to about 5 ft for the ones put straight into the soil.

we only did 6 of them as an experiment but it showed that the technique worked.

 

[gmanwho]

Been a busy last few weeks/ month. Successes an failures with some winds of a remanent hurricane ripped thru. it could've been worse. i got an interesting video to show how resilient the outdoor was in the 50-60mph winds.

start off with the 92 og room. massive yields, nice quality. chem an onion finish. I didn't clean up lowers like i wanted to, but those will go to the extraction place.

i should have added a 3rd layer of trellis, vegged abit less, and or account for lighting schedule and or redlight influence (if such a thing and to what extent).

also messed up during the flower transition and into day 25/30, not enough daily feed, not enough run off, and a few excessive dry downs. some unknowns im sure and im sure some cat/ion imbalance ive yet to understand fully.

but im learning the room and also experimenting with the lighting.
the 92 og is definitely an amazing plant. Her resilience, quality, and yield makes me believe she will be an amazing plant for production. (im eager to crunch the numbers, but not ready yet)

i cant wait to see what these 92og bx3 that chaco made will bring to the table. there are 12 males and 4 females, i just up potted the males and gonna flower them out in a 2x2 and see what they show. My intention is worth another post on these.....

few earlier pics, then a low food finish

about day 25 is where i had a little trouble. Into the stretch they really started transpiring heavily. I didnt increase my feeds enough to match theiWasn't passing enough nutrient feed through. sent in run off for testing.

run off was like 4000+PPm. As seen here caused mag an K issues. maybe some other unknowns. Runn off had supper high levels of S Na and Chlorine.

flushed a bunch of nutrient through over the weeks and got back on the pedal rather quickly but i know lost some early bulking.

about day 50/55 can see the K and Mg Deficiency still present. I shoulve had a 3rd layer of trellis. Shit straight up went from 4ft off floor to about 7ft. then day 45/50 top layers fell over and was back down to 5.5-6ft

then the intended wind down of food and extensive drybacks from like day 62-75
pics just after 24-30 hrs of darkness and the chop

Happy i was able to turn things around. Really need some good harvests to line up for me!!

 

[Chunkypigs]

wish you were around the corner. my 92 jar is light and I miss it in the morning...

 

[gmanwho]

wish you were around the corner. my 92 jar is light and I miss it in the morning...

wouldnt it be great to teleport

 

[Chunkypigs]

wouldnt it be great to teleport

yes that would be great but I'll settle for paypal and USPS until the TEK improves if you catch my drift Bro...

 

[gmanwho]

yes that would be great but I'll settle for paypal and USPS until the TEK improves if you catch my drift Bro...

ahh. TBH, i wouldn't want to disappoint.

what i can offer.... i know im not ready yet. My tek is still off.

Going to a organic grower i feel i left alot off the table. I did not reach that terpene bar. if i could reach that bar in soiless / hydro / synthetic is another topic. which i am eagerly after.

with that said i have started incorporating tea brewers into the systems. Biofilters. Keeping the sediments out of the drip lines is another process all together. But its in motion....

 

[Chunkypigs]

ahh. TBH, i wouldn't want to disappoint.

what i can offer.... i know im not ready yet. My tek is still off.

Going to a organic grower i feel i left alot off the table. I did not reach that terpene bar. if i could reach that bar in soiless / hydro / synthetic is another topic. which i am eagerly after.

with that said i have started incorporating tea brewers into the systems. Biofilters. Keeping the sediments out of the drip lines is another process all together. But its in motion....

I have yet to see anybody making true quality in organic soil indoors, I tried it for years with all the woo but I smoke way better quality OG grown in promix with PBP indo or even rockwool flowers.

I would try Slownickles micronized powders in the drip, best plants I've ever seen were running his powders, chelates, and also his salt tek.

that 92 will perform tho once you get her dialed, nothing finer in my lungs...

 

[gmanwho]

I have yet to see anybody making true quality in organic soil indoors, I tried it for years with all the woo but I smoke way better quality OG grown in promix with PBP indo or even rockwool flowers.

I would try Slownickles micronized powders in the drip, best plants I've ever seen were running his powders, chelates, and also his salt tek.

that 92 will perform tho once you get her dialed, nothing finer in my lungs..

ive done alot of research on calcium products and mobility and or lack of. I use a bunch of calcium products already. while i slightly understand, i see the difference. And what i found is all of slows products are relabeled and already availble in the agricultural field already. But he has brought the science aspect into the canna light.

My other true belief is microbes an enzymes can get you into the top percent of what the environment, nutrition, and genetics are capable of.

 

[gmanwho]

Now getting everyone to play along is the other hurdle of understanding

 

[Chunkypigs]

Now getting everyone to play along is the other hurdle of understanding

I think there are many ways to grow fire, us stoners will probably never agree and for certain there is no one recipe that will work the same in every situation and place on every variety.

I think most folks treat grow styles like a cult or religion and follow certain preachers or gurus.

us Americans treat it like consumers of the ultimate Brand and fall for the wackiest hype too.

I believed it was the microbes for a while, took the DR. Elaine class, bought the microscope made the compost, joined a private no till indoor soil group, and my weed was good, but when I finally got the proper tests, the ones worked out in Slow's old thread, I found that the secret to better flavor and quality came from 4 things I never added before...

Zinc Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Manganese Sulfate and Triple Super Phosphate in the proper quantities.
once I got my levels up in my outdoor of those minerals, and Sulfur, and the rest balanced it made a difference in stank and flavor like I never thought I'd get. proper Calcium really helps with the plant heath outside and mold resistance but you need lots of it every season here, at least at my place, I had 7" of rain one week this season and 2-3 inches most every week until now.

here on the east coast where we get so much rain it takes way more minerals than I would have expected each season but I get quality that you can't see in a picture. when I visit other gardens with the same clones you can really tell. many folks outdoors in the east don't ever fertilize enough to get their weed loud like indoor, i can't get every strain that loud but some the early ones are getting there.

it's so inexpensive and all you need to add is rain but pumping those liquid feeds makes it even better if it's dry enough to do that for you.

lemme know you want to try a soil test and I'll hook you up with a rec for it. tasting is believing.

seeing 4 acres of Slow's Tek in greenhouse action this season was something else...

seed starts planted in hoops last week of July, picture on Sept 15th

 

[Itsmychoice]

Thats what i am talking about. Late starts are the way in the east, its just less time for trouble to develop. Thanks for sharing.