Trash's growroom construction

[cabletrash]

I hope someone can find this helpful. So lets get this started.
Parts List-
12/2 wire $30
2 20 amp breakers $8
2 Plastic receptacle boxes $6.
2 20 amp receptacles $6
2 Wall plates $2
2 Rubber grommets $2
1 Quart paint $10
1 Quart joint compound $3
Total $67

Tools-
Multimeter
Cordless drill
2 Inch holesaw
Tape measure
Keyhole saw
Utility knife
Pliers
Wire strippers
Screwdrivers
Tape
Flashlights
Putty knife
Paint roller
Paint brush

I cannot and will not accept any responsibility for any accidents or malfunctions that may occur because of this thread. If you find yourself unable to attempt a project like this I highly recommend you seek professional help. Please remember that anytime something like this is done it’s supposed to be inspected. You could always contact a local trade school and get them to do the work for FREE LABOR you have to pay for materials. They will repair cars, computers, a/c’s, heaters, ductwork, electrical wiring and just about anything else you can think of. Simply call or better yet go in and talk to the instructor, it’s a lot harder for someone to say no to your face. Have your story straight before going in. Tell them you are a gun or sport card collector and need to get power or a new vent for cooling so you can control the environment. Well enough about that lets get on with it.
SAFETY FIRST!!!!!! Look at your scope of work and what you are trying to accomplish. Make a decision on the path you are going to take. Take your measurements. Remember this basic rule “Measure twice and cut once”, it can save you a lot of errors. For my project I required 2, 60foot runs of wire. I was fortunate to have a closet 54”X40” next to and above the garage in the duplex. I will take half for this project and construct a 34”X19” with 6’heigth for flowering with a 19”X19” with 3’6” of height for vegging and 19”X19” with 2’6”heigth for clones or seedlings hopefully I will be able to squeeze a couple of mothers in the two smaller chambers also. This is what I was looking at first the closet full of junk.

Next the attic.

I laid out the 2 60’ lengths of wire while I was up there. Next it was time to go down and turn off the main breaker, so I could drill my hole in the wall of the closet and not have to worry about getting electrocuted.

Next picture is one of the holesaw I used.

After cutting the power off I cut a hole in the closet at 48” to the left of the right hand corner, because wall studs are generally 18” apart, and 76” high to keep the outlets out of the grow space. Due to a lack of foresight on my part I did not get a fishtape and found myself having to use a piece of cable TV wire to pull with.

I cut the fiberglass insulation with a utility knife and pushed it down the wall. I returned to the attic and used the holesaw to cut a whole 48” from the corner and about 18”high on the opposite side of the wall. UHOH I encountered my FIRST problem. No pulling cable! I ran up and down about 20 times refeeding the cable through the wall still no luck. It kept getting hung on something in the wall and even though I was pushing more than enough cable to reach the hole on the other side it must have been curling up. At this point my first really stupid thought was to drill lots more holes in the attic, not exactly the smartest thing to do. I still could not find the cable. Please learn from my mistake. All of a sudden I had a brainstorm. I attached a mini mag flashlight to a piece of heavy-duty string and fed it through the hole.

Success, it lit up nicely. It was there at the first hole I drilled. I guess the weight of the flashlight was enough not to get hung up. It was very easy to retrieve because of it being lighted. I ran back to the closet and tied the cable to the string. Then back to the attic to attach the 12/2 wire to the cable. Back to the closet and pull the wire to me. Here it is through the wall in the closet

 

[cabletrash]

At this point I felt safe enough to cut the power back on. Now the shot from the attic side notice the duct tape, they’re covering up the holes I drilled. It’s embarrassing, but I’m hoping someone can learn from my mistake so here it is.

As you can see I made a work platform out of 1/2” plywood. I didn’t want to have to repair a ceiling. OK let’s get back to the closet. I chose to use a receptacle box that doesn’t require mounting to a stud. This box has 2 plastic wings that flip up when you tighten up the mounting screws in the front of the box.

I trimmed the template and taped it to the wall and traced it with a marker.

I then checked for clearance to the right of the hole for my 2nd receptacle. Seeing that I had room I traced the template 1 and a 1/2” away from the first one.

I then cut a hole in the center of the second template, with the holesaw, and moved one of the wires into it.
I used a keyhole saw to cut the sides out.

I trimmed the top out with a utility knife.

I repeated the same on the other side. Then I placed the wire into the box. These boxes work by placing the wire under a tab that lets you push it in but you can’t pull it out because it digs in without tearing the jacket.

Picture of wire pushed in from the outside.

Now from the inside.

Work the box into place. Leave about 2”or 3” of wire out from the wall and cut the wire. This should leave you just enough to work with. Tighten the mounting screws.

Remove the outer jacket. I used a utility knife and sliced the jacket on top of the bare copper ground wire. I was very careful to stay on top of the copper wire as not to take any chances of cutting into the hot wire, which is black jacketed, and the neutral wire, which is white jacketed. Using wire strippers remove 3/8”of jacket from the hot and neutral wires. Remove the paper jacket from the ground wire. Now with the ground prong facing up place the receptacle to the ground wire and make a hook shape in the ground wire and tighten it down. You need to make sure that the hook shape in the wire goes in the same direction that you tighten the screw. This stops the wire from coming out of place as it is tightened.

 

[cabletrash]

Now you take your neutral wire, white, and tighten it under the lug plate on the top right. Remember the ground prong is facing upwards. You don’t want any excess unjacketed wire hanging out of the lug.

Now place the hot wire, black, under the lug plate on the top left and tighten it down.

Place the receptacle into place and tighten it up.

Notice how there is very little jacketed wire is in the box. Put the faceplate in place and tighten it down.

I repeated the same steps for the other side.

 

[HOT CARGO]

nice job cabletrash

peace

 

[cabletrash]

Now its time to attack the circuit breakers. I encountered another problem here. There was no way to get the new wires into the breaker box easily. I knew this was coming when I was scoping out the job earlier. Looks like I’m going to have to perform major surgery. Lets start by turning off the main breaker again.

Now it’s safe to remove the front panel. Remove the screws from the face of the panel. There were six total on this one. Two each on the top, middle, and bottom.

Now is a good time to make damn sure its dead. Take your voltmeter and set it to a high enough voltage to get an accurate reading, should it be hot. I had mine on 600 volts A/C because there is 240 coming in. Take a reading from the hot side to the neutral side.

Good deal we’re safe. Well not really see these two lines here the only way to make them dead is to have your power cut off at the street by the power company. You could make a shield out of cardboard and carefully tape it over if you would feel safer. Very soon we will have bare copper wire out and if you make contact its 120 volts, on each one, with no circuit protection and could result in shock or death. In any case use extreme caution around these two right here

Now that the panel was off I noticed there was no room were all the other wires were coming in. I pulled the ground wires, bare copper ones, out and located two unused punch out holes in the top of the box. I carefully used a screwdriver to knock them out.

It’s time to open up the wall. I marked the wall 2” down from the ceiling and 12” X 16”. I was hoping to catch the 2”X4” at the ceiling to make the restoration easier on myself because I’m not to experienced with dry wall repair. I used the utility knife to try and keep the piece I was cutting out intact as much as possible. There is also a possibility of cutting wires, two of which are still hot, in half if I tried to use a saw. I made the cut directly over the top of the circuit breaker box because I knew I would not run into any wall studs. I had barely enough room to get the two pieces of new mire through the existing hole but I had prepared myself to use a chisel if necessary. I cut 2 lengths of cable 8’ long and ran them through the wall and into the attic you can see one of them in place in the picture

I had barely caught the bottom of the 2”X4”, at the ceiling, if I had to do it again I would have made my top cut 1&1/2” down from the ceiling. Anyways it was time to go to the attic and tie the wires together so I could pull them down. I used a splice like this so it would be strong enough and not get hung up as I tried to pull it back through.

 

[cabletrash]

I then taped this up and made it very streamline. I then cleaned up all evidence of work and vacuumed up the sawdust, used a dustbuster, from the holes I had drilled earlier. Went back to the circuit box and pulled the wires through. Here they are.

Next I had to pull my wires into the breaker box. I did this by removing my splice, taped up the ends of the 8’wires and pushed them through the holes I had punched out earlier. Just one per hole.

This would have been a good time to put in the rubber grommet by slipping it over the end of the wire and up into the punch out. I didn’t and found myself having to split the grommet and putting it in the punchout. That was a headache because I had everything put back together. Remove 6’ of outer jacket; start from one inch out of the punchout hole. I had to use the utility knife again and worked over the top of the bare copper wire.

Cut the wire to size. I followed the path of the existing wires. The hot and neutral wires went to the left and the grounds went to the right.

Remember this picture from earlier?

This is when the danger of shock comes into play. Please be careful. OK now that I’ve said that and we have our wires cut to size lets strip 3/8” of jacket from the hot and neutral wires. Now loosen one of the screws on the grounding block and place the bare copper wire under the screw and tighten it down tightly.

It’s ok if you have two in one location if you have to I did. Now lets do the same for the neutral wire, the white one, and use the neutral block. Make sure only the stripped part of the wire is in there and it’s very tight. Once again it’s ok if two share the same screw.

 

[cabletrash]

Now its time to take care of the hot wire, the black one. Loosen this screw on the side of the breaker.

Put the stripped part of the wire under the screw and tighten it down tight. Now take your breaker and snap it into place. The wire should be on the outside and make sure the contact clip on the bottom straddles the half moon sticking out in the center of the box.

Remove one of the break aways from the front panel with a pair of pliers.

Tuck your wires away and put the cover back on.

Here are the two new breakers.

Flip the main breaker on and the new ones. Test with voltmeter. Select a high enough voltage, on my meter it’s 200volts A/C. Insert one of the test probes into the hot side and one in the neutral. I didn’t get a picture at the time so this one is just for demonstration trust me the new ones work just fine.

 

[cabletrash]

Now lets fix that hole. I took a 1/8” thick by 2”X14” piece of hardboard, this is like pegboard without holes. I glued this to the back of the inside of the dry wall. I held this in place with these clamps until dry.

The purpose of doing this is that it gave me two solid surfaces to glue the piece I cut out to. I used a 2”X4”X8’ to hold it in place till it dried.

I used joint compound to fill in the cracks.

I sanded it down and painted it.

No trace I cut a hole in the wall. I had picked up some paint samples and cut them into pieces and taped them to the wall. I used the sample that was ever so slightly darker. I trimmed the ceiling in with a brush and then rolled over the top of the cut out section with a 3” foam roller. I didn’t put anymore paint on the wall and just kept feathering it out till the paint blended in. It worked out perfectly for me.

Well this concludes the first section of TRASHES grow room set up. I’ll get the construction part up soon. If I can help anyone let me know I’ll do my best to help.

 

[cabletrash]

Thankyou Hot Cargo. Glad you stopped by.

 

[I.M. Boggled]

Nice Job...

Nice Job...

Those pictures are worth a thousand words. Great demonstration.

 

[cabletrash]

Thanks I.M. Boggled I thought it would be a good idea to be thorough if I was going to post something about electricity. I've seen the thread about the grower charged with murder due to a fire in his grow opp. and hope this can help others to see what is involved in running a new breaker. Trash

 

[Satans pal]

I wish every description was this detailed. Great going CableTrash and thanks. SP

 

[Guest]

Excellent post.

I could have used this thread when I ran my first electric. Safety is obviously your first concern.

If we could just drill this information into the heads of extension cord / duct tape newbies there just might be less fires and casualties in our little game.

Thanks for your contribution, Ill be watching this thread for sure!

 

[cabletrash]

More kind words thankyou Satans Pal and Phototropic.
Trash.

 

[AManAndHisPlant]

Tagged for future use!

Thanks for the info

 

[flipmastermike]

CableTrash, That was great.That is exactly what I need to do very soon.My best friend was an electrician in the navy but that was a few years ago and I myself do not have much experience with wiring homes.My friend does have experience but this demonstration will help both of us.

thanks alot for the demonstration and perfect timing too! ,Mike

 

[Guest]

Here is a pic of my timer board. I didn't use any hardcore timers, but this will easily power up 10Kw.

 

[00420]

nice info

nice info

great step by step...

im about done with my wiring and permit time
in california it's only 8 bux per 110 outlet...............(16buxfor220)
i had a friend with a contracter lic' come sign it off.
but could eazyly been done be for the grow