My Experiment

[Darkout]

I'm about to leave to fetch the lights. I should be able to build the grow box this evening, if I'm lucky enough to find enough cheap bulbs to start it. I'll wire them directly into the mains, which shouldn't be too difficult and sting them up around the seedlings. I'll add more as they grow, and as I get more money to spend on them.

DWR, I haven't grown before. This will be my first time. SOG just sounded like the most suitable way for me to start, hopefully resulting in enough plants that I can make a mistake or two and get away with it. Also it will be more compact, which is handy for when people I don't like come over and finally, I guess it's as good a place to start as any. Especially with the amount of light that I will have to start with. I'm curious to see how well compact fluorescents work for flowering.

 

[Darkout]

I went to Ikea yesterday. Even Ikea has shit bulbs. I was getting frustrated so I bought four 20w bulbs for more money than I wanted to spend on four 20w bulbs and spent the evening wiring them together like this:

Then I built a half of my growing chamber out of this:

and strung up the lot inside, like this:

Oh yeah, and Pris helped. Apparently:

So now I'm sorted for a little while. I have 80w right above my seedlings, which should keep me going for about the two weeks it takes for my new order of bulbs to arrive. I found a large quantity of 24w bulbs in the ed spectrum that I plan to string up on one circuit, along with the four 65w ones that should arrive at any moment, giving me a total of about 900w over the entire chamber. Another crappy thing about these bulbs is that it was impossible to tell what spectrum they are. I'm assuming that they're red, since that's all I can find in this country. I just hope my new bulbs arrive in time. I am about to go and grab some jiffy pots to plant my three new skunk seeds in and the timer is all set on 12/12. I'll build the second half of the chamber when I have enough light for it. I didn't see any point in wasting what I have on an empty half. I also need to install a fan or two.
I had the idea of weaving aluminium or copper wire around the bulbs, leading up and away from the box, as a sort of heat sink. Does anyone know if that would be useful or would I just be wasting my time?

 

[Lacy]

Looking forward to seeing this.

I'm about to leave to fetch the lights. I should be able to build the grow box this evening, if I'm lucky enough to find enough cheap bulbs to start it. I'll wire them directly into the mains, which shouldn't be too difficult and sting them up around the seedlings. I'll add more as they grow, and as I get more money to spend on them.

DWR, I haven't grown before. This will be my first time. SOG just sounded like the most suitable way for me to start, hopefully resulting in enough plants that I can make a mistake or two and get away with it. Also it will be more compact, which is handy for when people I don't like come over and finally, I guess it's as good a place to start as any. Especially with the amount of light that I will have to start with. I'm curious to see how well compact fluorescents work for flowering.

 

[jasonlocsouthkorea]

is that foil?
if it is take it off
its the worst reflection device possible
it refracts the lights in all different angles bro.
not trying to be mean
just trying to help you out bro!

 

[Darkout]

Thanks Lacy, cool (evil) eyes by the way.

Jason, thanks for the advice, I'm it's better than cardboard, so I'll keep it up for now but I'll have a look for some mylar or something in a few minutes when I go to the shop.

 

[jasonlocsouthkorea]

ya bro!
mylar is the way to go.
ur right its much better then cardboard lol
keep up the hard work man
cheers
-jason

 

[That70sGrow]

Thanks Lacy, cool (evil) eyes by the way.

Jason, thanks for the advice, I'm it's better than cardboard, so I'll keep it up for now but I'll have a look for some mylar or something in a few minutes when I go to the shop.

The problem with foil isn't just that it is a poor reflector. It can create 'hot spots' on your plants causing irreparable damage. Painting the cardboard flat white is a good, cheap alternative if you can't come up with mylar.

Just passing through at the moment ... It's the middle of the night here and I've been very busy lately. Need to get some sleep but I haven't forgotten about you. Make sure your ventilation is excellent before putting those plants in there. I'd hate to see you burn 'em up at this point - or any point for that matter.

Later ...

 

[jasonlocsouthkorea]

The problem with foil isn't just that it is a poor reflector. It can create 'hot spots' on your plants causing irreparable damage
Later ...

i dont think hell have heat hot spot problems using CFL'S
considering the fact that u can put cfl bulbs less then an inch away from you're plant to get better results.

 

[Darkout]

Right, quick update. While out buying mylar (it's not mylar, it's wrapping paper but I did some research and I'm pretty sure it's more than adequate) I also picked up some hardboard and a 12v computer fan. I have a twin hard drive fan already, and I'm about to get out of bed so that I can build a real box with fans and everything. At the moment the fans will be hooked to two 9v batteries. A very easy sum will tell you that's six more volts that it should be but I have used fans like this for growing shrooms so I know it's ok. Eventually I'll wire them both in parallel onto a phone charger or some other 12v thing but batteries are ok for now. I think it will be enough for my pitiful 80w of bulbs but I have about THIRTY on their way, of which I can fit at least twenty in the box and by that point I think I'll need a little more than a couple of 12v fans for intake and exhaust. That's ok though, I can get more.

However here's an update of the embarrassing mistakes made recently.

Embarrassing mistake no. 1

I scoured the internet for the cheapest bulbs available and found a good deal (even after VAT and customs) on a bulk buy of 24w bulbs from America. After paying for them I realised I'm going to need a voltage converter for a European plug socket. And that I can't wire them onto the same cable as the other bulbs I have/that are on their way because they will be made for 220v. Bollocks.

Embarrassing mistake no 2

I woke up this morning, expecting to see the light shining through the corners of my grow box. No light. I thought that I had grasped the complex workings of the digital timer I bought the other day when I finally set it to run on a 12 hour cycle and since I fell asleep last night before it was programmed to come on, I just assumed it was ok. I had set it for 12 hours of light from 12am to 12pm so that any daytime maintenance would come during a period of darkness. Or so I thought.
I remember setting the off time to 12.03 because I couldn't be bothered to cycle through 57 more numbers to get back to zero and at 12 pm today the light came on. Three minutes later the light went off. They were both set to PM. My poor, abused little seedlings have now had more than 24 hours of darkness after a 12 hour cycle that lasted about two days (of manual switching). They're going to grow ears.

Anyway, after that short but significant string of failures I'm determined to be more focussed today and bring the whole thing together. Expect an exhausted, sweaty update in about seventy hours.

P.S. I'm glad to wake up this morning with That70sGrow watching over me. It wasn't at all creepy.

 

[Darkout]

Old Box:

New Box:

Much better. It needs to get its insides 'reflectivated' and it could do with some supports. It took me a shamefully long time to build and the screws I had were too long so I came up with the idea of hacksawing them off. Turns out they're made of some Steel-adamantium-diamond-titanium composite, impervious to the tools of mortals so I ignored most of them and gave some cute little feet to the ones on the bottom out of wood I stole from the wall of the shed.

edit: Oh yeah, and it needs some doors.

 

[Darkout]

The box is done. The seedlings are in it. It's plugged into the timer. The three newest seedlings are breaking the surface and they're on a platform, up close to the lights.

I'm writing on here now because of an idea I had.

It occurred to me that an incandescent light bulb can handle anything up until the resistance in its filament is exceeded. A bulb made for 110v would blow if plugged into 230v because the resistance would be too low. But how does this apply to CFL's? I would imagine the wiring in the ballast would blow first, but if not, couldn't you get up to quadruple the energy from twice the voltage? Until I hear from someone qualified this seems a little too dangerous to throw into my growbox, but here's another suggestion i came up with to get around the fact I will have a bunch of useless bulbs heading my way by now.
Assume I have two 20w bulbs designed for 110v. According to a friend of mine,

One 110V made for 20W has the resistance of
R = 110 / 20

So I figured that a certain amount of bulbs in a series circuit could provide enough resistance to bring the current down to a usable level. According to electricity man:

Resistance on one bulb is V/W = 110 / 20 = 5.5 Ohm.
Resistance of two bulbs in series is 2 * 5.5 = 11 Ohm.

Wattage of something with 11 Ohm when plugged into 230 V is
V / R = 230 / 11 ~= 21 W

So, it would be possible to succeed in my awesome idea of using series circuits to make use of the useless bulbs. However, they're only 24w each, which would mean that I'd be reducing them to about 10-15w each, making them really inefficient and therefore not as awesome as I had previously thought. I think I might try to sell them. That is, if nobody can tell me if I can safely put more voltage through them without blowing them up. I guess I could try it with one and leave it on and away from anything that might burn. And try it with another in a series circuit with something that has less resistance. Like a fan. So the wattage would be higher but not too much higher. Anyone know enough about this to fill me in?

 

[Darkout]

Alright, time for some news.

I got some new bulbs today, and I have just now set three seeds from the skunk mix to germinate.
I've wired up the new bulbs (four 65w CFL's) onto the same circuit as the current bulbs to form a lamp with a combined wattage of 340. Unfortunately, the four bulbs are in the blue spectrum, but that doesn't matter too much because I also bought on 125w bulb and I'm about to buy a bunch of 24w mini spiral bulbs that I can totally fill the top of my box with. The lights have only been on for an hour but already I have noticed the huge difference in the amount of heat coming from them. I decided to wire up my two fans to a phone charger until I can find a higher voltage adapter I'm willing to sacrifice. Here's what it looks like now:

Not much else to report, other than that I damaged a seedling while removing the old lamp to build the new one. It's pretty fucked I think but it seems to be still alive and healthy from the bend up. It it currently being supported by a stick of Rizla filters. How apt.

Here's what the others look like. They're all doing pretty well, especially the one in the first picture.

I guess I'm going to have to start asking for help with nutrients soon. When should the first batch get theirs? One other thing, I'm going to be at a festival for about four days next week and up until now my plants have needed watering about once every two days. With this added heat they're bound to need it more. I was thinking initially of putting all the pots into a tray of water so that they could soak up water as needed. Would this work? Would they get screwed up in four days if they had too much water? My other idea would be to water them thoroughly just as I'm leaving and place them at the other end of the grow box, away from the lights. They'd lose some light but that's definitely preferable to losing them altogether. Any ideas? I also considered rigging an elaborate slow-release drip system so that they'd never totally dry out. This is not very likely to happen due to chronic laziness and fear of failure.

 

[Darkout]

I just checked the plants again and though still doing well, the big one has some yellowing on the tip of one leaf and the two initial leaves have wilted slightly. Is this normal?

I think it's time to start the nutrients. I'll flush the older plants with clean water tomorrow (I read it's recommended to do so every few weeks) and I will buy some fertilizer. But should I be giving nutes designed for veg. growth or flowering? The plants are under flowering conditions but also need to grow a bit. Can anyone suggest what I should use?

 

[Darkout]

Anyone going to help me out here?

 

[Darkout]

Alright, I guess I was being lazy with asking about the nutrients. A fair amount of research has led me to realise that I need to get hold of some bone meal. I saw some earlier today, but I had assumed that it would be a source of N, not P. The best ratio I could find was 10-10-17, which I ended up buying just in case. Tomorrow I'll get some bone meal and tonight I'll add a small amount of the fertilizer I bought this evening. I figure that by adding bone meal to the fertilized soil I can increase the N to P ratio quite effectively. I still have to research how much to add, but I get the impression you can't easily go wrong with bone meal so it should be ok. I'll be careful anyway.

I still need to hear some ideas about what to do while I'm away. The best I've done so far is put all the plants in larger pots, hoping that the additional soil will hold water for longer. I think there's a chance that will work.

 

[Darkout]

I don't know if anyone's even reading this any more, but here's what I plan to do.

I found this recipe:
4 parts coffee grounds
1 part bone meal
1 part wood ashes

For a 2-4-2 organic fertilizer so I'm going to make that. I'll throw in some egg shells to counter the potential effect of the coffee grounds and possibly some dog hair (if I research some more and decide it's a good idea)for gradually decreasing nitrogen to form a slow release soil mix for my next seedlings. I will then use the above recipe, practically unaltered to fertilize from about the third week, in increasing concentrations. I'm still looking into faster release phosphorus.

If anyone's still reading this, let me know if it's even worth me updating. I get the feeling I'm talking to myself here. I want to know if I should take this elsewhere.

More pictures to come next week, after the festival. I'm leaving tomorrow, so any last minute suggestions about how to keep my plantlets alive would be very appreciated.