New Cabinet Grow - 9'x4'x18" - Complete Build Journal - Lot's of Pics

[jsgamber]

So here's the latest. Needing a solution to the growing water temp issue I needed some inspiration. I ran across this post which I give credit https://www.rollitup.org/dwc-bubbleponics/313745-best-damn-reservoir-you-can.html

Also here's my quote on what I did:

Hey Boom,

Thought I'd post my Work In Progress. My water temps have been steady at 74-75 so I needed to get moving on a plan because the roots are starting to brown up. Here's the results.

I have exactly 18" of depth in my cabinet and my reservoir is 16". I went to Lowe's and purchased 1" rigid foam insulation. I cut the foam to fit around my reservoir and built a custom lid. What is nice about the lid is that it is now completely flat to let the net pots come closer to the edges spreading them out more. The reservoir on the bottom is what is inside the new cooler on the top so you get some perspective.

The night I built this got too late and I needed to get my ladies put to bed and get to sleep myself. Today, I plan on building another one, taping them both up with Aluminum tape and then spray paint the inside black.

The result? The first night in, I dropped in an 8 oz. frozen water bottle. Then next morning, temps were at 65.9 and the bottle was thawed. I pulled it out and haven't had to add another bottle in 4 days...temps are at 67.8. And that's with no tape yet and lots of leaks.

Structure is provided by toothpicks acting as dowels so the sides and bottom won't slip at the joints. I used skinny pieces for the underside of the lid to form a rim so the lid fits tightly. Again using toothpicks to hold it in place and the Aluminum tape keeping it together.

Comments welcome. I'll try and remember to post the finished deal.

peace

Here are the pics from my first stage. I needed to get something together so no time to tape or take pics. Also it was a "proof of concept".

So yesterday went to work on rez number 2. Here are more detailed pics of construction.

1" rigid foam insulation. This stuff is bug, mold and mildew resistant. It's easy to work with as well.


My drywall T-square comes in handy. Sides are 7" high.


All the pieces. Now for assembly.


The bottom is two pices "doweled" together with toothpicks. The tape will provide structure (like re-bar and concrete).


Bottom is together.


Now the sides


Sides together now the bottom.


All together. Now for tape.


The final product on the right. Notice the work light just in front? I put this inside the box with the light on, cord coming through the slot. Took the whole thing into the bathroom and turned the lights off. It stayed pitch black in the bathroom so no light leaks!!


The inside was spray painted black and the rez set in place. Notice I use that pesky 1/2" foam around the edge of the lid. This gives it that final light proofing!


Both coolers easily stay at 66* by throwing in a frozen water bottle every 2 or 3 days when it gets to about 69*.

It works perfect!!

peace

 

[EvlMunkee]

Hey js,
Nice lookin little res. I bet it could keep beer cold for days! A great idea for those with temp problems.

 

[jsgamber]

Hey js,
Nice lookin little res. I bet it could keep beer cold for days! A great idea for those with temp problems.

That's it dude! My new Earthquake Preparedness Plan. Keep beers in the rez for emergencies!!!

Actually speaking of emergencies, our refrigerator just went out. The Evaporative Cooling fan went out meaning it's not blowing cold air into the fridge. The replacement part won't be in until tomorrow so we've been living out of ice chests and I don't have any ice bottles to throw in. Thank goodness these are working out well!

peace

 

[jsgamber]

Ok time to seriously attack this humidity issue. I can't be sure what effect 38-44% RH has been doing to the plants but it can't be good. Now how to make it for cheap and still be effective.

It started with a post on another site using a pet water dispenser, sponges and a PC fan. The real issue is the possibility of mold/mildew with the sponges so I hoped to improve on it. So I need a wicking material that resists mold/mildew but has great capillary action. What fits the bill perfectly is 5/16 braided poly rope with nylon core. I cut a 12" piece and hung it up with about 1/2" of one end sitting in the water and within 3 minutes the rope was soaked the entire length. SWEET!

So the rest of the materials:

10" length of 4" PVC
2 pieces of white vent filter
braided poly rope
window screening
Aluminum tape
120mm fan

Using aluminum tape, mount the fan on the end of the 4" PVC so it blows into the PVC.

I cut 3 exhaust holes in the front. I also cut a notch in the bottom that fit's over the lip of the water dish.

Next I cut several lengths of poly rope so that they fit snugly together when laid side by side. I then sandwiched the rope between two sheets of vent filter, then sewed up the sides and across the top. Do not sew anywhere else across the rope or you will disrupt the capillary action by "pinching" it.

Next using Aluminum tape and the window screen, create a "pocket" inside the tube that will hold the rope assembly against the exhaust holes making sure all air passes through the wet rope. Not shown is how I sealed up the bottom of the tube letting only the ends of the rope come through the bottom and into the water. Note in the final picture that the tape isn't on the bottom yet. All the air was leaking out at first and bypassed the moisture.

Tube and wicking material


Fan


The inside "pocket" (this is an earlier pic). I've adjusted the screen even closer to the exhaust holes causing a tighter seal.


The result? Before 44% RH. After one hour 58% RH.


The downside. The cats needs a new water dish for vacations.

 

[newport78]

Truly, Truly, Beautifull. Now time to go read the grow journal XD

 

[jsgamber]

As you can see below, Larry OG is getting close to the top of the cabinet. This means I need to start thinking about clones and soon after flowering so it's time to get serious about finishing this cabinet up!

Remember from the first post that part of the deal was to also reorganize the garage and keep my wife happy. Well all of my experimenting has crap all over the place so the only way to clean up is to finish up.

The plan: clean out the chambers (they have been temporary storage and also my "electrical" cabinet), re-inventory my supplies, clean up my work space (so I can kick some ass), install the upper cabinet door frame, seal up the chambers (light and air), drill vent holes, hang Mylar, install doors, finalize interior electrical, finalize exterior ventilation.

Also I'm going to take some advice and relocate the mother/clone/veg chamber from the bottom to the top. Reason being is that heat rises and I'd rather deal with heat issues with the Mom's rather than the flowering chambers.

Here we are after clean up. If you notice, I have hanging storage shelves so the only way to get the full cabinet is to stand on the other side of the garage and take the picture up from the floor.


Here is my temporary electrical area. Yes it doesn't look very safe (and it isn't...I already tripped the GFCI once). Note the small plywood panel everything is sitting on. I'll be mounting all of this equipment on these plywood panels and hang them on the walls somewhere...not sure yet though.


Here's the current mom chamber to be moved to the top. Oh did I mention I still need to finish taping up my reservoirs. Also it's time to get a couple more made (adding to "to do" list)


The middle chamber.


The top chamber (standing on tippy toes).


Man I love this aluminum tape. So here's what I did to seal things up. I bought a roll of Duck Easy Liner I got from Lowes Duck Solid Easy Liner. It's 20" wide so I cut up 2" strips and taped them into the corners using the aluminum tape. Here's the top chamber.


Top two chambers done.


While I was doing all of this work, my ladies were sitting in the kitchen. It is sure nice being able to move these reservoirs around. Unfortunately I finally pooped out at 1:00am and couldn't get the body to move anymore. Fortunately, we just replace all of the incandescent floods in the kitchen with CFL floods so the ladies should survive the night with no issues.

After 5 hours of sleep I forced myself out of bed because I wanted my ladies back in the cabinet before I went to work. I was able to get the 7 holes drilled, the Mylar hung, rehung the cool tube/light and wired everything back up. Since I don't have doors hung yet and I was late to work, I figured running the cool tube open ended wouldn't hurt...and it didn't. I have to say looking up is pretty cool. I can't wait to see what 3 full chambers with 250/430/430 watts running is going to look like!!!


The wide angle view.


A thought I was having. My first though for the cabinet exhaust was to make a long run across the garage to the external vent on the opposite wall. However, the wall behind the cabinet leads to the empty space underneath the inside staircase to the second floor. I think if I just drill a 4" hole in the wall and terminate all the ducting to it I should be able to safely dump that air in there and let the house heating/cooling system deal with it. The other thought is to pull the air in from under the stair case and go ahead and dump the exhaust into the garage. Any opinions?

More to come!!

peace

 

[Danielsgb]

Good to see you got the moms up high. Mum should be able to look down on her daughters. On that exhaust I'd go for dumping it under the staircase. But I'd look for it's effect on your heating/cooling as you mention. Would it help with more hot air in the winter or take more cooling in the summer? If you wanted to get even fancier you have the ducting to both directions to change by summer/winter. I'm in MT so we have HUGE extremes both ways. Sorry if that's no help, but the cabinet is coming along nicely.
Daniels

 

[Mr.Natural]

A thought I was having. My first though for the cabinet exhaust was to make a long run across the garage to the external vent on the opposite wall. However, the wall behind the cabinet leads to the empty space underneath the inside staircase to the second floor. I think if I just drill a 4" hole in the wall and terminate all the ducting to it I should be able to safely dump that air in there and let the house heating/cooling system deal with it. The other thought is to pull the air in from under the stair case and go ahead and dump the exhaust into the garage. Any opinions?

All right JS, looking good dude . Love that humidifier !! You seem full of ideas !! way to go..

Just a thought have you considered odor yet ? don't know if thats a factor but...might think about it while routing that exhaust...

Lots of luck on your cabinet and grows.

 

[EvlMunkee]

Hey js!
Great lookin cab there dude! You're gonna have a fantastic setup when you're finished.
I agree with Mr. Natural on the ventilation. It would be a great place to dump it but....will you have to scrub it first? I wonder if an Ozone generator would work in a place like that? Just thinkin out loud.
Everything looks great though js. Keep it up Bud!

 

[jsgamber]

Good to see you got the moms up high. Mum should be able to look down on her daughters. On that exhaust I'd go for dumping it under the staircase. But I'd look for it's effect on your heating/cooling as you mention. Would it help with more hot air in the winter or take more cooling in the summer? If you wanted to get even fancier you have the ducting to both directions to change by summer/winter. I'm in MT so we have HUGE extremes both ways. Sorry if that's no help, but the cabinet is coming along nicely.
Daniels

You made my wife giggle because we have two daughters.

All right JS, looking good dude . Love that humidifier !! You seem full of ideas !! way to go..

Just a thought have you considered odor yet ? don't know if thats a factor but...might think about it while routing that exhaust...

Lots of luck on your cabinet and grows.

Thanks Nat and glad to have you aboard. I have to give lots of credit to the people on this site. Almost everything is inspired one way or another by the people here and then I just put my little spin on it. The whole point of this is therapy and letting my creativity run wild. I'm glad you're enjoying this thread. Make sure you check out Dan and Munk's grow too. Dan took my cool tube and made it look even better! And Munk's cabinet is the sickest thing going on this site...I think he must be OCD because he is soooo neat! But it's paying off for him with some nice buds!

Pay it forward man and improve on what I do.

Hey js!
Great lookin cab there dude! You're gonna have a fantastic setup when you're finished.
I agree with Mr. Natural on the ventilation. It would be a great place to dump it but....will you have to scrub it first? I wonder if an Ozone generator would work in a place like that? Just thinkin out loud.
Everything looks great though js. Keep it up Bud!

We all must think alike. Since I don't have the doors on the Mum (I like that word) chamber yet I pulled out a comfy chair, turned all the lights in the garage off and stared up at all of the light blazing out of that reflecting space and relishing the work. Then I looked over at my shop vac and remembered I switch the hose from input to output all the time. We go from the 50's in Winter to 90's in the Summer so not near as extreme. But even so, heating the house in winter and then letting the house help out with HVAC in the Summer.

Heck I'm going with the Zen DIY Walmart Carbon filter. I have all the parts. Moms don't smell at all so I have another month to worry about that. But it better be sooner.

peace

 

[EvlMunkee]

"Make sure you check out Dan and Munk's grow too"

Hey js,
Thanks for the plug!
Nice little humidifier you got there. How long does it last between fill ups?
Cab's looking awesome dude!

 

[Danielsgb]

"Make sure you check out Dan and Munk's grow too"

Hey js,
Thanks for the plug!
Nice little humidifier you got there. How long does it last between fill ups?
Cab's looking awesome dude!

Thanks Js for the plug too! I guess great minds think alike Throw in a mind and we can pull off most anything.
Daniels

 

[Malenki]

What did you do for the passive intake? Are those dark room vents?

 

[jsgamber]

What did you do for the passive intake? Are those dark room vents?

Don't you love it when you have a straight man! Hi Malenki and welcome. Right now I'm in the throws of solving my ventilation/humidity issues once and for all!

To answer your question, the passive intake is just 3 holes in the back of the cab covered by a standard grill from Lowes. But that's gonna change!!

Okay all you thermodynamic guru's, what do you do when you have high temps and low humidity and you want low temps and high(er) humidity? You build a swamp cooler aka evaporitive cooler.

Here's my thinking, I've been trying to add humidity to a space that keeps having it's air "refreshed" 2 times per minute. It's not going to happen. So why not just make the air coming into the cabinet cooler and more humid? Duh!

Here's what I'm looking to build:


This guy actually built this to be portable and cool what ever room he was in and was able to drop room temps by 5*. Assuming a standard room of 10x12x8 is 960cf and my cab is 2x4x9 or 72cf, this should be overkill.

Since it's possible I'll be using up to 5 gal of water per day for evaporation, I'll be adding a water suppy with a float valve to keep water to the pump. On the exhaust side I'll be hooking up 4" pvc which will run to the passive intakes of all 3 chambers. I am planning on using a 100cfm fan to put some positive pressure to the passive intakes so that the chambers don't draw "dry" air from any of the leaks in my cabinet. I'm gonna go out and get parts today so hopefully I'll have something to show over the next few days.

Between life and trying how to keep clones alive, I haven't been posting much. I keep getting sidetracked into looking at everyone else's grows! As a quick update, I've relocated the doors up to the top. The hinges weren't on right and the 1/4" plywood is a bit too flimsy to make a really good door with no air/light leaks. I'll be using 1/2" plywood to build the doors for the two flowering chambers.

That's it on the cabinet. Time to go update my grow thread and show you guys how bad I am at cloning!

peace

 

[chainseeker]

Hey Js hows it going now? Just read the entire build and I have to hand it to ya job well done. I have something u might try it worked wonders on my cab I would love to see if it works on another cab. Here's how it went with mine. I was having bad temp prob's. Well just about everyone had a solution, which I love the input but unfortunately none seemed to work. So at the time I had 1-65 cfm fan with a diy filter I had 2- cpu fans for circulation and 1- 8 inch fan also for circulation. Sometimes I'd point the fans on the lights or just try different things. You obv know how it goes. Well I went back and reread all the advise I had received. The thing that kept getting me was that everyone mentioned the fact that heat rises. I kinda got sick of hearing that actually because thats why the exhaust is on top and intakes on bottom so obv I knew that. Well I started thinking and smoking LOL and thats when it hit me, it came to me in ? form. I had to ask myself - How do you expect the heat to rise and get sucked out the exhaust while all those dam fans are mixing up all the air in the cab. So I shut off all fans except the exhaust at that time temps were 93. I left for 30 min and came back to find the temps at 82 already. Another 30 min's 79. Now she goes from 83 right before the A/C kicks on to 77 after it's been on a while. I even asked some of the best growers i could find on this site and they all said that the air moving from the intake to the exhaust would be sufficient air flow so no prob's with circulation. Also IDK if you got an answer to whether or not you should have the exhaust fans on 24 hrs. I say yes this way no smell gets out plus your plants still get plenty of fresh air while lights are out. Now I wish I could run a smoke test and see what happens to the air as it runs through the cab and then put the fans back in and see what happens. Nice and smooth without em and total chaos with em. Well I've taken enough of your time sorry about the long post I could've gave you the short version but I just felt like rambling and couldn't stop. So I'll go check out your grow now. Peace!
Chain

 

[jsgamber]

Hey Js hows it going now? Just read the entire build and I have to hand it to ya job well done. I have something u might try it worked wonders on my cab I would love to see if it works on another cab. Here's how it went with mine. I was having bad temp prob's. Well just about everyone had a solution, which I love the input but unfortunately none seemed to work. So at the time I had 1-65 cfm fan with a diy filter I had 2- cpu fans for circulation and 1- 8 inch fan also for circulation. Sometimes I'd point the fans on the lights or just try different things. You obv know how it goes. Well I went back and reread all the advise I had received. The thing that kept getting me was that everyone mentioned the fact that heat rises. I kinda got sick of hearing that actually because thats why the exhaust is on top and intakes on bottom so obv I knew that. Well I started thinking and smoking LOL and thats when it hit me, it came to me in ? form. I had to ask myself - How do you expect the heat to rise and get sucked out the exhaust while all those dam fans are mixing up all the air in the cab. So I shut off all fans except the exhaust at that time temps were 93. I left for 30 min and came back to find the temps at 82 already. Another 30 min's 79. Now she goes from 83 right before the A/C kicks on to 77 after it's been on a while. I even asked some of the best growers i could find on this site and they all said that the air moving from the intake to the exhaust would be sufficient air flow so no prob's with circulation. Also IDK if you got an answer to whether or not you should have the exhaust fans on 24 hrs. I say yes this way no smell gets out plus your plants still get plenty of fresh air while lights are out. Now I wish I could run a smoke test and see what happens to the air as it runs through the cab and then put the fans back in and see what happens. Nice and smooth without em and total chaos with em. Well I've taken enough of your time sorry about the long post I could've gave you the short version but I just felt like rambling and couldn't stop. So I'll go check out your grow now. Peace!
Chain

Great minds man! I noticed the same thing too and so I also stopped using internal fans...for now. One of the issues I think happens is my passive intakes are not finalized so they just pull air in from any old direction. Stay tuned to my next posts and hopefully I'll be able to show you something bitchin!! By the way stay tuned means NOW!

 

[jsgamber]

My Plants need your help tonight. They have been out of their home for 2 nights. They need a water change and have to go back into there home. Please read how you can help!!

Just so you know, I have been working my ass off this whole weekend on my cabinet. I've rebuilt my cool tubes, I've designed my passive intake registers and finalized the ventillation design. I have all the parts, I've cut all the holes and fitted everything. I just need to put it all together.

It's gonna be an all nighter. I've got the radio blasting, the pipe filled and ready to go. I'm starting out with the before pics of the cab. I'll set the timer for 45 minutes and if someone checks in to this post and asks to see progress, I'll snap some shots and put them up, no annotations or anything. Just quick and dirty. There will be major transformations through the night so help keep me going!! If nobody asks for pics, I reset the timer and then I keep going and will post results at the end.

Here is what the cab looks like now:






Here's a taste of my creations over the weekend. I'll go back later and give the build details but I know you all like to read the last page frst anyways.

New Passive register


Cool tube redisign (top old, bottom new)


Cool tube re-installed

 

[jsgamber]

See how unhappy they are?

 

[pwizzle]

Actually they don't look too bad man!
They seem to be holding their vigor so I see them bouncing back fairly easy
What all are you trying to accomplish tonight?
Happy Memorial Day RIU! and all the fellow vets out there.
Oh, and that cabinet is lookin good, nice job on building it.

 

[chainseeker]

45 min your late!