wtfn's 4000w legal medical soil food web organic grow show

[whythefnot]

The blower fan for my a/c's condenser (the one that has been squealing) bit it yesterday about noon. I thought for sure that the air conditioner fell over, or that somebody had rammed their car into my upstairs. The squirrel cage inside literally broke in half. So I got a 8x8x8 wye, with an 8->6 and 6->5 reducer and taped it to the back of my max-fan, and ran 5" duct to my a/c exhaust, where I installed my recently-purchased 240cfm duct booster and wired it to where the old blower was wired. If that's confusing, you'll see it all in the pics.

I figured it was better this way -- no more wear and tear on the a/c trying to push/pull through 10+ feet of duct, plus now I have only 1 place where air is being exhausted, giving me a perfect place to put an inline carbon filter. The only drawback is that now I have to run my main vent fan 24/7. Not the end of the world.

 

[choptops]

Chops, I think that Lemon OG is the real deal.


Sweet deal if they smell like straight pine sol then you know your dealing with some true. Hope it turns out that way cause it's easy to get rid of i'll tell you that.

 

[whythefnot]

yea and with the fabric pots they run small soo like the 3gal only fits like 2.5 and the 5gal only fits 4ish so you are def gonna need the 5

Hmm, these seem to be about 3.5. Maybe this IS the 5gal then? The box says _2_ gal.


Edit:
Wait, I forgot I measured them and the dimensions matched what their web site has for 3gal.

 

[whythefnot]

This a/c unit is driving me crazy -- compressor will run for about 10 minutes then switch off... this is a new symptom, since disassembling and modifying various things...

Now it's not even building up any condensation. Any ideas? I think it's time to round up a different unit.

 

[whythefnot]

Those pots are def. 5 gal. My bad.

 

[whythefnot]

I figured out my a/c problem. When I broke the condenser blower I instead hooked it up to a wye on my 675cfm max fan. Apparently even without cooling the lights that didn't pull enough air through the condenser to keep it satisfied. I rush ordered a replacement blower cage for the unit, and tomorrow I'll install it but leave it hooked up to the max fan blowing out. I think I like that set up the best, and it should keep that condenser blower running smooth for a very long time.
I took some photos -- gonna eat dinner and smoke, then I'll see if I have time to upload them...

 

[mastacheeser]

Can't wait to see some hoes up in there

 

[whythefnot]

I've been very busy!

Here's the soil, mixed up, quick-baked and ready to go!

Here are the fabric pots. They are the "Yield Pot" brand from buyfabricpots.com. I think I paid $120 after shipping for the box of 50. I put a 1/2" layer of perlite at the bottom to help with aeration. I'm not sure how much it will help, but I had the perlite. I sort of wanted it for the top layer but I may mulch instead, going with the whole food web theme.

Here they are all filled up. I still need 2 more bags of fox farm (maybe I'll go with roots for those) to fill the top layer. They each have about 3gal 'super soil' at the bottom, then a layer of regular potting dirt at the top.

Here's what went into the super soil:

It's roughly 8 bags of FFOF, 1 large bail of coco, about 1.5 bags worm castings, roughly 9 cu ft OMRI cert. compost from a local quarry products yard, 3cu ft organic compost from lowes, 2 cu ft perlite, 2lbs organic blood meal, 2lbs insect frass, 3lbs alfalfa meal, 10lbs or so crushed oyster shell, ~6lbs peruvian seabird guano, ~1/4 bottle kelp extract, 4lbs organic bone meal, 4lbs happy frog bulb food, a cup of azomite, a cup of lime, a few tbsp nature's nog, a few tbsp mycorrhizae. Everything is OMRI certified.

I hit it with compost tea 3 times and let it sit out in the yard to cook together. I added some stuff last minute, so it still has a little cooking left to do, but I'm sure my plants are fine to get transplanted.


By the end of the year I'm hoping to be as self-sufficient as I can reasonably hope with an indoor grow. I just need to get some worm bins.

We've been here less than a month and look at the compost pile already -- this is just kitchen scraps and some leaves that were in the yard.

I decided that I'm going to insulate the room with fiberglass. I have access to the attic on both sides. It's cheap & will limit air transfer, and probably keep the floor from lifting up when I shut the door. I'll keep posting...

 

[whythefnot]

This is why I've been so slim on the plant pics:

My entire room is in disarray fighting this a/c unit. I'll have it licked within a day or two.


Here you can see the two runts in the front. Confession time: I lost quite a few clones to the flood and mostly to heat. I had 4 separate occasions where the temps climbed to 91-92, killing off all the weakest clones. I have 47 plants now. I'm glad I don't have more, because I don't have soil for them. An 8x8 area can only hold 7x7 fabric pots anyway, so even if I had 50 I'd have a straggler.

I'm thinking 2 - 3oz/plant is a reasonable target. I'll be happy with 1oz/plant on the first run.

I insulated the two attic walls of the room. It really helped with pressure coming through the floor, but it definitely didn't fix it. When I was in the attic I realized why. The entire sub floor is that old diagonal stuff they used to use, with 3/8 or 1/2 inch gaps in between every board. This means that it would nearly impossible to totally seal the room without taking up the floor. I'm not totally opposed to the idea, consider how much of that stuff I've laid in the last few years, but it will have to wait until next run if I'm going to do it at all.

Also, whatthe215 -- somewhat on your advice, rather than installing a fan on my whirlybird (which would only vent the small space directly above the room) I opened up both of my attic accesses a few inches to let the swamp cooler push cool house air into the attic areas on either side of the grow room rather than to the outside through windows and doors. That does a really clean job of cooling the attic off. I've brought the ambient temps down in the room by 6 degrees between that and the insulation.

The plants are taking to their environment nicely -- they're really greening up, and starting to get some nice big leaves. This is where things start to pick up pace...

 

[whythefnot]

More a/c modifications today. Maybe I should have gone with a window unit? I've just had really bad experiences with them in the past -- nightmare smells coming out the back from the condensation drainage. Check out my aero octagon grow for more details on that.

Anyway, I'm adding a second intake. The one I have right now is a 5" (intake that the unit provided) with about 3.5ft of ducting going to the window, and a 120cfm booster right at the unit. I'm adding to this a 6" intake right next to the compressor, since I'm pretty sure that's the only cause of the a/c not cooling as well as it should that I have left to deal with.


I'm going to take a whack at fully sealing this room. Next thing to try: [I could have sworn I typed this last night...] I'm going to peel back all the pond liner and caulk the hell out of the base trim. Laminate flooring, to the best of my recollection, is pretty airtight, so if I can seal it to the wall I should be golden. I had assumed that there was no underlayment, but this is all new flooring, and I've never laid this stuff without at least SOME type of cheap underlayment, so I'll assume that the installers did it that way. It's really a shame that I didn't know I was going for a sealed room right off the bat, that way I wouldn't have to take down the pond liner. Oh, well, it's just tacked up every few feet with some button caps into sheetrock. It won't be very hard to take it down or put it back up.

 

[whythefnot]

I hit my refrigerant line while drilling in the a/c. I think I'm just gonna go pick up a window unit and just be sure to mod the hell out of it before I install it.

I found an 18,000 btu unit on craigslist for $125. I'll go with that, if the guy will ever call me back. I feel like I just wasted this entire last week, not to mention over two hundred bucks.

 

[whythefnot]

I ended up going with a 16,800 btu/hr window unit that I got for a hundred bucks. So far it's working really great. I took the extra precaution to empty an entire can of expanding foam inside it to truly seal the outside out and the inside in. I'm going to drill a hole in the pan right in the front of the unit to drain my stinky condensation out to a hose buried under my garden. Figure I'd kill two birds.

 

[hereigrow]

Whelp, I flooded my room filling my second res today. I had at least 4 inches across the whole thing. Pond liner held

The only reason I realized is because I heard the TV click off, meaning a breaker blew. Apparently my cordless drill charger was taking a bath.

I REALLY need to get a float valve.

I know a guy that got busted like that be careful. in his case the flood got his phone and it started dialing 911111111111111111111111111111111111111111 so the sheriif came and kicked the door down thinking someone was in trouble in the house.....bad news bears

 

[whythefnot]

Wow. Just wow. That's such an incredibly unlikely coincidence.

Anyway, I got a float valve later that day and installed it. No problems since.

 

[whythefnot]

I've done a whole lot of work in here since I last posted a photo, even if you can't really tell, and I just got it all cleaned up, so I took some photos and made a panorama.

I rode to get another 4 bags of soil today, the guy didn't have the co2 controller I was hoping to buy, and another guy just sold his that I was hoping to get for $120 so now it's gonna be a mad scramble to round up a co2 controller for under $150.

After that, all I need now is another oscillating fan or two, a carbon scrubber combo, and a big old jug of molasses and I'm in business.


Tonight I'm going to FIM the majority of the plants -- I did the biggest few yesterday and the day before, but most of the crop is at the right size now. I'm planning to transplant within a week and then top them and flip the lights in just under 2 weeks.

There are still a few stragglers, that's sort of a wildcard. I may have to let them go a couple days longer. I'm already way behind schedule, but trying not to let it get to me.


I started my first large batch of compost tea tonight -- 30 gal. I'll use it to hit my fabric pots one more time in preparation of a transplant. Then I'll use the excess on my soon-to-be veggie garden.

 

[whythefnot]

I went to Lowes and got some tubing, PVC pipe and fittings and made myself a high output rig to connect my air pump to the 30 gal tea brewer. It really spreads out the bubbles.

In the morning, when the brew is done, looks like it's transplant time. Many of the bigger ladies are starting to get rootbound. Unfortunately I'll have to run more lights but it will only be for another week and a half at most until I flip the lights.

I think one of my ballasts is dead too. I'll have to try again tomorrow but it made a loud buzz sound when I plugged it in and the light never turned on, only flickered. I'm sure it's one of those replaceable parts in the ballast. I don't know my way around one (yet) although I've built the kits before. But I'm sure it's well within my abilities to learn.

 

[whythefnot]

Checked the ballasts -- it still wouldn't come on. I tried the hood connected to another ballast and it worked so I know it's not the bulb. So I tried a different hood plugged into the ballast in question -- it worked fine. I guess that means I should just keep going. I'll be expecting a ballast to need some work soon.

 

[klint]

Gonna be massive jungle in future ill take a seat for this one good luck Bro!

 

[Yakov]

Subb'ed, looks like a great set up.

 

[whythefnot]

Thanks! It was getting a little lonely in here.

And my girlfriend, the only other person who's seen the room, goes in there and says, "It looks like a grow room." All she can think about when she sees the room is how it's not a bedroom anymore haha. She smokes, and she likes to smoke, but she doesn't give two shits about growing.