What's new

Vertical Lighting and Recirculating DWC!

D

dubracer

Member
Its been 6 months since i have visited this webpage. Its good to be back. Got some more spare time now-a-days so I figured I would share my latest adventure with Recirculating DWC and my first try with vertical lighting. Strain is Grapefruit, she is a beauty and one I will be working with for awhile.

Since i started using this system over a year ago, I have moved from 18 plants to 12 plants down to 6 plants and kept the same size room or even larger. Yet, I have continued to yield the same and the bud is of an even higher quality. Vertical Lighting is the way!!! The vertical lighting gave me absolutely donkey ball buds from the very bottom of the plant, touching the floor, to the very top cola. The average bud size on each plant is about the size of my fist. I am NOT using CO2 this grow. I have found that while CO2 can really help pack on the weight and density, it really creates a lot of problems and since I am not trying to get a weight record here, I dont mind having my life easier. I still ran a sealed room (well i left the door open sometimes) and as you can see...there was no problem with lack of ventilation or fresh air.

Temperatures are between 70F and 78F in the daytime, controlled by an IGS220 controller and a 10k BTU A/C, and I drop it all the way down to 55F at night to help bring out the purple in the strain. I ran a total of 1 vertical 600 watt digital HPS, 1 vertical 750 watt digital HPS, 1 air-cooled 750 watt HPS over everything (kinda like an overall sun), and 4 T5HO bulbs. I decided to conduct an experiement between plants grown with just HPS and plants grown with HPS and with T5s overhead. While the T5s did not yield quite as much, the bud was even more full of THC and the buds themselves were gigantic. The top cola is thicker then my forearm. 3 oscillating fans and each vertical light has a squirrel cage cooling it from below.

Let me know if you have questions. Plants are about 4 days from being picked, on their 4th day of flushing. 8 weeks old. I am expecting over 3 lbs from the room.

Here are some pics from the beginning to the end.

















 
D

dubracer

Member













One of the obvious problems with vertical lighting is that it can be hard to maximize it. That is why I installed a single light above everything, which helped deliver light to the outside edge of the plant. The buds on the outside didnt put on nearly as much mass, but they still are dripping with THC.
 
B

Bigtimer7

Great Job man! looks wonderful..... I love the tree set-up! It looks good and is growing good. I cant wait to see what type of numbers your pulling on this bad boy! Keep up the good work and rep coming at you!!
 
D

dubracer

Member
I vegged for about 7 weeks. However, I vegged for 5 of those weeks with T5s, the last 2 weeks with a 750 digital and then once flowering started, the whole shabang. I think without the overhead 750 digital at the ceiling and the 4 T5 bulbs on the end of the room, the outside buds would have suffered far more. They arent big but nice.

I dont have a picture of the 750 at the moment, but its just a 6" glass vented good (large one) with an open end on one side and a 600cfm inline fan exhaust on the other. This is what helps keep my humidity down at night and the bulb cool. The 2 fans blowing air up at the vertical lights is really important in my opinion because it gets the air sitting on the floor up into the ceiling, and then the oscillating fans distribute.

I want to remind people that I dont use an intake. Sometimes I leave my door open, sometimes not. Since there is an exhaust fan on sometimes, I assume that air is being pulled from cracks or through the A/C.

PS. Forgot about the feeding. Ive experimented with a lot of different formulas, and honestly its all strain dependent. Some things work great with some strains, and the same recipe may be murder on another. Generally, the recirculating DWC provides a higher ppm limit for whatever reasons. This grow I kept things lower then I normally do. I dont use any measuring or stuff, its sort of by memory now, but when i hit flowering we were at about 1000ppm. This was pretty good. About a 1/1/1 ratio. I use G/M/B, Advanced 3 part. I add about 50 ppm a week. I never replace my water, I only add water and nutrients. The only time it gets changed is to flush. Tap water. Works beautifully. This grow we peaked at 1350-1400 and some of the plants did burn a little bit, some didnt, but it was sort of intentional in the hopes we could get it into hyperdrive one last time before dropping off. I supplement with Big Bud. I used SIGNIFICANTLY more nitrogen this grow and I was really happy with it. I continued to use Grow until the last 2 weeks and used a lot of Micro as well. The Big Bud took care of the PK. I will repeat this.
 
Last edited:
ogenko

ogenko

Member
no res change

no res change

dubracer said:
I never replace my water, I only add water and nutrients. The only time it gets changed is to flush. Tap water. Works beautifully.
Click to expand...

i've seen that from a few of the big pullers around here
that's efficiency!
can't wait to watch this unfold
best of luck to ya :)
 
D

dubracer

Member
i believe initial guesses of overall yield were...a bit...conservative. I just finished cutting everything down and I would like to change my expectations to about 4 pounds of beautiful dense large bud herb. The average bud size ended up around the size of a soda can, and I know from experience this will yield a very very minimum of 7 grams each. At over 100 of these buds counted, not including the huge center buds and the smaller buds, 4 pounds should be conservative.

This was the final straw I needed to be convinced of vertical lighting. what a success. At nearly 2 pounds per light, i am exceptionally satisfied by the outcome. Trichromes are bursting, abundant, and the colors I want and the buds are some of the densest I have ever had. Without the reflector, the HPS bulbs do not burn the buds since the light is not concentrated by aluminum reflectors. The buds were 8" away and not burning.

A huge success. Not one single instance of any pests, any mildew or mold, or any type of problem (except one plant falling over and ending early). By far my most problem free grow. While i have been incredibly satisfied by previous grows over the last 2 years, none have matched this. This was also the best ratio of cost to yield. Because HPS was only used for part of the time, and T5 fluros would used for a majority of the time, it makes it even better.

I attribute a huge amount of this success to this forum, and obviously I never would have found the recirculating DWC were it not for Blaze.

PS. Very conservatively, I know there will be a bare minimum of 1800 grams of prime perfect bud, not including all the tiny buds and shake for hash. Since I did not use the HPS for the entire grow, I did the math for the amount of time each light was going. The average amount of wattage of lights was 1600 watts. That would be 1.125 grams per watt, which has been my goal. Even if we had all the lights i had for the last couple weeks going the entire time, it would still be .85 grams per watt, and that was not the case by any means.
 
Last edited:
ogenko

ogenko

Member
good job dubracer
hats off and in the air
beetin about the bush with the yeild their though
hmmm did you make the gram/watt gang or not???
 
D

dubracer

Member
it may be presumptuous to guess the weight now, but I have been doing this long enough to be pretty accurate in my guesses. And in fact on the last few grows Ive been grossly conservative on my guesses and ended up with about 40% more then I guessed. Last larger DWC grow I guessed 3 pounds but we ended up with over 4. I have never made a guess and then yielded less then when I expected; always more. This time I wanted 3 but would have been happy with 2, however I am sure it will be over 4. My numbers are based on the fact that even if the plant looses 95% of all its moisture, i will still make my 4 pound mark. On average, they lose about 85%. Wish i could have got a picture of the whole entire room but its hard.

I will give the room a nice cleaning and then in 1.5 weeks I will be starting again. I think that for this next grow in this room I will be trying a different strain, however I have Grapefruit mothers that will be used for my garage, which will be 2 normal horizontal air cooled 750s. While I will continue to vertical in this room, in the garage I am going to air cool with horizontal normal lights since I would like to do a SCROG with about 16 5 gallon buckets. I feel the space that I have in the garage (a room I built about 9x9x9) is not large enough for vertical lighting and I would like to retry the densely packed DWCs but with a different strain and lessons learned from previous attempts.

PS. And yes, I did make the 1 gram/watt which is what I have been shooting for in the last year. By far the cheapest grow as far as electricity is involved for how much I yielded. By far. I love T5s!!!!!
 
Last edited:
M

Military

Member
very nice man, Im loving it :p I cant wait till i get a chance to get my grow area setup completely. Only working with PC grow and CAB grow atm :p But still fun as hell.

Keep it up man hope you stick around

SMOKE ON
 
S

SoEx

Member
Very cool, I am liking these vertical lighting threads, didn't know things worked so well when they were mounted vertically.

Keep up the good work :)
 
D

dubracer

Member
Thanks for the kind words everyone. I have always heard about vertical lighting but this was my first try at it. Needless to say I will continue, however its a little less efficient in the summer months. Luckily it stays pretty cold where I am for a few more months.

mysticls said:
beautiful setup

you don't hear much about 750w lights what do you think of them?
Click to expand...

Ive had them for over a year now and they have been great. They produce more lumens then a conventional 1000 watt light so its pretty intense. They dont need to be close to the canopy to produce huge fat buds and in fact with a hood, you cant get closer then 15" from the canopy. With the bulb just hanging vertically, the plants can get pretty close since the light isnt concentrated by a reflector. I got them right when the 1000 watt digital lights came out so I got a smashing deal from a friend for a bunch of them. The only drawback is that there are relatively little bulb choice. I heard there were a couple more now, but I just use the sylvania's and replace them as often as I can.

Unless it is a great deal I would stick to the 600 digitals. They produce still a ton of lumens, they have a huge range of bulb choices, and they produce significantly less heat as well. Although the 750s are still cooler then a 1000 watt conventional.

PS. I figured I might let people know how this room is run. Since all the lights are 240volt and this bedroom is not near any 240v lines with the proper breaker, I had to bring power to the room. The simplest method I have found is to use the dryer plug. My CAP MLC-8 box takes a single 240v line and turns it into 8 slant eyed 240v lines, controlled by 2 times (4 lights on 1, 4 lights on the other timer). This allows me to supply electricity to 2 rooms and they can be on different schedules. I run an 8 gauge grounded wire through my ceiling to the room in question, its only about 35 feet long so there isnt really any loss of power, especially with 8 gauge.

Its always difficult to figure out, especially with old shitty houses, how to run everything correctly and safely. I really want to reiterate that big grow rooms can really be dangerous if you dont know what you are doing. I spend a lot of time mapping out each of my breakers, inspecting wire to make sure its 12 gauge in the walls and up to code, and I install a GFCI outlet at the closest point to the breaker box. That means that if anything ever happens, the GFCI will pop before the breaker does. Even easier. I upgrade from 15 amp to 20 amp (if its all up to code) breakers for 120. For the 240, its good to have a 50 amp but with the digital lights they barely use 30 amps for all 8 lights.

Spend the time to map out your breakers, inspect everything, and figure out a way to distribute the load of your grow room throughout your house. This will help guarantee you are not popping breakers are nearing the limit of your lines. This is one great reason why growing in the garage can be so easy.
 
Last edited:
scegy

scegy

Active member
dubar: maaan you have a beautiful garden, i've tried vertical in dwc this time too and it beats the horizontal growing in every sense! awsome buds, i wish i'll have a bigger room some day to be able to do that....or maybe the LEDs will get cheaper and better first...anyway, a splendid job!
 
D

dubracer

Member
Usually when I want to let my room rest between grows, I convert it into a drying room. Humidity at 35%, fans run 24/7, temps between 60-75 degrees, and always in the dark. With this method, I can dry everything quickly but without affecting the quality. Plus, at this time of year the humidity is very high and its cold outside so it can take weeks for bud to dry on its own.

Yield of 4 pounds looks to be accurate. Haven't weighed it all but still got about 40% left to weigh and were already almost at the 3 pound mark (trimmed and good to go).

There is a huge difference in quality and taste between the early picked bud and the stuff that went all the way. Our one plant that fell over early is dried, cured, and good to go and Ive been toking it for a week or so. It is not bad, but it was cut down with 1300ppm of nutrients and about 3 weeks early. The finished product that went a full 8 weeks has the true Grapefruit taste and is quite devastating. THC production is incredible, however now that Ive looked over all the bud with a microscope, I am not finding as many cloudy and amber as I like but so it goes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Latest posts

Top