600W DWC Closet Grow

[cheesin']

Hey all.

In about 4 days I'll be growing some quality bag seed in a 2'x5' closet. I have a 600W HPS air cooled light that I'll be running on top of a 12 site DWC homemade unit. I've grown hydro only one time before and had great plants going until a vacation I took killed them. I plan on having probably 7-9 of the sites filled. I'll be using rockwool cubes in hydroton for a medium. Also, I have the Fox Farm line for nutrients, but they have been opened and are almost a year old. Do they expire? Are these bad to use probably? I was thinking about switching up my nute line anyway.

Just wondering what you guys think on this: would it be alright for me to put soil plants in there also? The DWC unit is just a 30 gallon rubbermaid tub and it will only take up about a 1/3 of the room I have to work with. I know there is a risk for bugs and such with the two in their together, but I really want to use all the space I have to work with.

I have about 40 seeds germinating right now. I'll be picking out the best sprouters over the next few days and vegging them under 5 CFLs for the first week or so of their lives before they go under the 600. I'll get pics of my setup up here as soon as I get the Panda Film to cover the front of my closet. Cheers!

 

[cheesin']

Alright so I took some pictures of the space and some of the equipment I'll be using. I'm going to the grow store tomorrow to pick up some Panda Film so I can make this light tight.

 

[TheJackyl]

nice i will be watching this, pulling up a chair now

 

[oOBe RyeOo]

I'm sub'd for this one

 

[cheesin']

Welcome to my grow journal! First time I've done a full-out journal, so I'm pretty excited to have followers already! I'll be updating on the regular (every couple days probably) and adding pictures probably once a week or whenever needed to keep you guys informed of what's going on with the grow.

 

[oOBe RyeOo]

Good, us stoners love pictures!

 

[Corbat420]

Good, us stoners love pictures!

dam rights we do!

this grow looks like its guna be great, deff subbing for later

 

[cheesin']

Alright. Went to the hydro store today and dropped about a hundo on various things I need for this upcoming grow. Best part of today was putting that last staple into the wall in order to finish the "closet tent." I think it came out quite well. I figure I can have the DWC unit on one side and still have room for about 6 potted plants on the other.

One of my concerns I have is ventilation. I'm going to have an oscillating fan in there at all times moving around the air, but I'm still a little skeptical as to how I'm going to vent my exhaust. I was thinking I could take a 6" duct flange that I have from an old tent and put it at the top left of the tent. I could either then: 1. Hook up ducting to a carbon filter inside my tent and have my inline fan pull the air thru my light and filter and then stop flush with the tent where the flange is. This would mean venting directly into my bedroom. Would it still reek of weed? I know it'd be hot as hell for starters...OR 2. Have ducting coming out of the closet and feed it into an air vent that is in the middle of my ceiling. I don't have people in my room very often at all, but in the case that people do come in, I think I could put a tapestry on my ceiling and hide the ducting from view. I know this is a lot, I'm kind've just typing what's on my mind so I don't forget it.

Check out the new pix. I got my Rockwool cubes soaking in 5.5 water right now. Putting the germinated seeds in them tomorrow. I have 15 total soaking right now, because I figure I'll have to yank quite a few males from this mix. These will be put under CFLs for the first week or so until they get fully rooted and can be put in the hydro unit. I'll throw about 8 of them in soil tomorrow though and get them going into their medium. I'll update as soon as I see some foliage from these seeds!

How my closet looks from the outside.

How it looks when hte doors are open. The Panda Film will block out any light coming in or out.


The tent with the 600 in it. Still gotta hook it up to the ballast, but that can wait a week or so for now.

Some seeds that popped today. Gonna plant them in Rockwool tomorrow.

 

[cheesin']

i forgot to mention that the seeds i am germinating are from my last grow. I had a plant go hermie on my and I decided to grow it out anyway. Does anyone think this is a problem? I read so many mixed results from people saying they'll turn hermie, or male, or all of them will be female. I don't know what to believe anymore. Does anyone have first hand experience growing seeds that were produced from a hermie plant?

 

[cheesin']

So last night I was thinking long and hard (I was up til 5:30am on RIU) and I realized I don't wanna fuck around growing seeds that could hermie on me in the last stages of my grow. Instead, I went out and got 7 clones for myself! I got:

2 Hawaiian
1 White Rhino x Grapefruit
2 Black Domina
1 Shiva Skunk
1 Purple Dojo

I only put 1 Hawaiian, 1 Black Domina, and the Shiva Skunk and Purple Dojo in the DWC unit though. I don't want to overcrowd it, and I think 4 will be plenty in there. I am going to by a bag of Ocean Forest tomorrow afternoon and plant the other three clones in dirt. The roots on these clones are just hardly starting to show thru the rockwool. I don't have enough water in the tank to reach all the way up the them, but I have individual hoses running to each net pot pumping water onto them. Is this bad for the plants? or will the roots just grow and eventually hang thru the pots?

I already had the seeds germinated and the rockwool sitting in 5.5 pHed water so I went ahead and planted 7 or 8 of them. If I see any signs of hermies or males they are gettin' yanked immediately. I'm going all sensi this round. Sick of seeds.

Here's some pictures. Not great quality. I should have taken some pix of the clones before I put them in the pots...



Edit: I meant to add that I will be covering those open holes tomorrow with Panda Film, and also that I'm just waiting a week or so for the clones to get accustomed to their new environment before I throw the 600HPS on them.

 

[Corbat420]

Awsome, i will love to see this grow on clones > seeds, this setup looks perfect for doing 4-8 plants every 2-3 months.

just make sure your not drowning the roots on the clones, fresh roots on those babies are really delicate.... other than that it looks like everythin is going great

 

[cheesin']

Just wanted to give anyone following a little update. Yesterday I put the 600 in the room. I couldn't wait any longer. I got my inline fan exhausting out the bottle of the tent though which is a problem. I'm going to buy some more 6" ducting today and fix it up right. Man, $$$$. This grow's starting to hurt my wallet a bit. Every one of the net pots in the DWC unit now has roots coming through the bottom headed toward the water. So I guess I'm not drowning them (which I was nervous about). I'll update with pictures once there is something worthy of posting. Peace!

 

[cheesin']

I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out how to vent my tent. Do you guys have any suggestions? Should I just knock a hole in the wall above the closet opening and vent thru there? Cover the hole with a vent grate or something? I'm doing this tomorrow at some point and I don't wanna fuck it up.

 

[oOBe RyeOo]

Just cut two holes one for exhaust and one for your air intake. Have the intake blow air down out the opening of the duct pipe. The exhaust pipe could have a carbon filter attached to a fan that exhausts the air.

 

[Corbat420]

Just cut two holes one for exhaust and one for your air intake. Have the intake blow air down out the opening of the duct pipe. The exhaust pipe could have a carbon filter attached to a fan that exhausts the air.

i totaly agree, with something like your tent that would be a great set-up, bring the cold air directly into the bottom to help push hot air up and out. the fresh air on the bottom will also help your roots.

 

[cheesin']

So last night my Comcast (internet and tv) stopped working. So I call up Comcast and they send a technician out. He goes outside and tells me there was so much interference and noise on my cable line that it blew the connection. So he changes all the wiring on the outside of the house and says there was some things in the line that may have been causing the interference. Anyway, he plugs his little noise meter back into my cable line and it still has a ton of interference running through it. So at this point I'm freaking out because my grow room is literally a foot thru the wall from where he is standing and checking the cable connection. He starts talking about relacing wires and shit through the walls and says he needs to go to his truck. Right when he goes outside I run into the grow room and just yank the main plug that shuts everything down. Long story kinda short, he tests the line again and low and behold, no interference. He fixes my breaker box and says it must've been the outside wires that were crappily installed and leaves.

I went online and found out that older digital ballasts (like mine) will release a ton of interference that will fuck up cable lines and anything else that uses RF waves and cause this to happen. Has this ever happened to anyone else? Should I just get a magnetic ballast ASAP? I have my original 5 CFLs hanging over the plants again but that is clearly not enough. I'm still so freaked out about blowing the Comcast breaker that there's no way I'm hooking my digital back up again until I find a cheap magnetic. Any input is very much appreciated. Thanks guys, I'll keep you updated.

 

[cheesin']

Just cut two holes one for exhaust and one for your air intake. Have the intake blow air down out the opening of the duct pipe. The exhaust pipe could have a carbon filter attached to a fan that exhausts the air.




View attachment 1191646

Thanks for the input. Really appreciate the drawing, too. I'm just wondering, for the "out" in the top right corner of the drawing, are you saying to have ducting going through that and coming outside the tent? Would you put the fan on the inside or outside of the tent?

 

[oOBe RyeOo]

carbon filter > hole> fan

fan is outside of grow area. make sure you have some kind of intake on that tent.

I would definitely run some ducting through that hole. You need to have the exhaust dump out somewhere other than where you are getting your fresh air.

 

[cheesin']

I see what you're saying. I'm gonna have to do it a little differently, but you definitely gave me a really good idea about how to go about doing this once I get the light figured out tomorrow. Thanks for the help man. I just took a look at your upcoming grow by the way, you got a really clean setup going. Can't wait to see some green up in that thing!

 

[TaoWolf]

I'll be following your grow. I just started a 2'x4'x7'/DWC/600w myself but only have one plant started and one germinating (about a week apart from each other) in 5 gallon buckets. I exhaust into the bedroom outside the closet and my temps max at 85f but usually run at 80f under the light, so I'm sure you can get the exhaust/heat issues worked out.