Advice on my grow cabinet plans

Hi!
I'm new to this, but I've been reading up everything I could find. ANYWAY, I want to be able to maintain 6 plants for personal use,(2 fresh cuttings, 2 vegging, 2 flowering) in as little space and as covertly as possible, with a reasonable materials cost. I haven't purchased anything but the cabinet yet (a plastic garage storage cabinet made by KETER 25.8" wide, 17.7"deep and 59.8" high), so I have plenty of options! The fluorescent lights I'm planning on using in veg/cutting area are (4) 85w full spectrum 6500k bulbs from 85 Watt - Full Spectrum - High Definition - 6500 Kelvin - Spring Spiral Compact Fluorescent - 85W/SPRING/65K - $19.89 ea. Light Bulb
Planning on using a single 250w HPS for the flowering area, with a 50cfm bathroom exhaust fan paired to a homemade carbon scrubber. Painting the inside of the cabinet and everthing going in it w/ krylon fusion spray paint in satin white. I am going to caulk and weatherstrip the whole thing to make it air-tight/light-tight. The one thing I am concerned about is temperature control. The room this is going in stays a pretty consistant 50-60F. Was thinking I could run the fan only during the 12 hours the HPS will be on to keep my babies warm. I'm posting a somewhat crude drawing of whole thing to get an opinion/feedback/blessing from the OG's. I probably will put the intake on the same side as carbon scrubber to have the air flow right to left on the bottom, left to right on top, hoping to eliminate the need for additonal fans. Whaddaya think?

dude, that is one funny picture. did you actually use a ruler to draw the straight lines. lol!!!!!!!!!

I still find it faster to draw w/ a ruler on graph paper than use the computer... though I do enjoy photo editing... if you look close, it's actually pretty scale! Now then! any advice or comments on the plan, NOT the drawing?!?!

JD ...

The cabinet looks real good. One thing to change is the ducting exit for the carbon scrubber. You won't have much odor to worry about in the cutting/vegging area. The odor will come from the flowering plants. Your light hood should come with two intakes. One should be left open to draw the air from the inside of the flowering cabinet. The other should be hooked to to 4" dryer ducting and routed into a fan that pulls the stinky air through the hood, into the ducting, then through the carbon filter. If you do it this way, there will be no odor at all, providing your cabinet is sealed well. Also, you'll need a small fan in the cabinet to gently blow a slight breeze across the flowering plants. You'll need another one to do the same in the vegging chamber. Buy the smallest fan you can, kind of like those that clip onto the side of a desk. You don't need a storm, just a very gentle breeze. It strengthens the stems and encourages strong growth. Hope this helps you out.

A great fan to use to exaust air from the flowering cabinet into the carbon filter is the Hurricane Fan. You'll need the small one with the 4" flanges. You'll also need a carbon filter with 4" flanges. Here's a site for the fan: Hurricane Inline Fans

Vi

The 250w HPS I'm looking at isn't air-cooled... Looked at that hurricane fan... O.M.G! Looks like it could suck a golfball through a garden hose! In all seriousness, though. I was just trying to vent the whole cabinet as a means of temperature control. It's cool in the room it's going in, but the HPS in a plastic cabinet scares me alittle (don't wanna have a meltdown!)... I figured cool air in the bottom where the very hot HPS was, warm air up into the veg area, and out thru the scrubber in the top... Thanks for the info! This cabinet is going to be put together slowly as money and knowledge become availible. BTW... is a food dehydrator a good way to dry buds prior to curing?

Hate to be the one to rain on your parade, but there is no way in hell you're going to push air through a carbon scrubber with a 50 CFM bathroom fan. Im currently working on a stealth fridge for growing and i was considering something similar (70 CFM fan) before i discussed with a friend of mine. We went over the whole thing and came to the conclusion, instead of using a squirrel cage exhaust blower (which is actually what we should be using for this. They're rated from 150CFM and up and usually go for no less than 150$), two 250 CFM inline fans (one blowing into the filter and one drawing from it) might do the trick. So ya, just thought id letcha know, sorry, but ur better off just buying a good fan instead of buying a crappy one, finding out youve wasted 30 or whatever dollars on it, and then having to buy a good one. Hope it helps and best of luck with your closet.
Happy growin', Sarge

K. Bathroom exhaust fan = bad!

Ok guys, after a nice bowl and a good nights sleep, I have another idea. I wanna know if it would be that bad to just skip the whole carbon scrubber and vent directly outdoors? I don't live in the city. My house sits 60 yds back off the road, and the point the vent would exit the house is at least 100 yds from either one of my neighbors, and of course I would have the day cycle run with the fan at night as not for meter-readers and other visitors to detect the smell. I guess what I'm asking is would 2 flowering plants smell bad enough to get me detected by my neighbors or local authorities?
Pardon my ignorance, but in my 30 years I've never been in contact with anything other than the finished product! The whole reason I've decided to grow is:
1. Getting to old to travel to the "bad side" of town to get my stuff.
2. Tired of varying quality and availibilty.
Thanks for all your suggestions so far! I can't imagine how hard this would be without all your help!

Another thing you really neeed to consider is space. When your plants start flowering, are you going to have enough room for them to double in height?

How close to the house do the meter readers, mailman, UPS and FedX people come? If you don't have odor control, and you are venting to the outdoors, they WILL smell it during the flowering and drying cycles. Prior to buying a good carbon filter, I was using a Uvonaire 3000 Ion generator, which is no slouch in odor control. I came home one day in the fifth week of flowering and I could smell my plants out it the drive way.
Do you have another place in the house, like a spare bedroom, where you can grow without using the plastic cabinet?

Food dehydrators CAN be used for drying the buds. BUT ... if you want real quality, you will want to dry them slowly the conventional way.

Vi

i think its great, if u think you can do it then go ahead and do it!

ViRedd said:

How close to the house do the meter readers, mailman, UPS and FedX people come? If you don't have odor control, and you are venting to the outdoors, they WILL smell it during the flowering and drying cycles. Prior to buying a good carbon filter, I was using a Uvonaire 3000 Ion generator, which is no slouch in odor control. I came home one day in the fifth week of flowering and I could smell my plants out it the drive way.
Do you have another place in the house, like a spare bedroom, where you can grow without using the plastic cabinet?

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Actually, the place where the cabinet is going is a storage closet 4' x 25'! The only reason I want to use a cabinet is to help control the temperature, as the closet stays about 55-65 degrees pretty consistantly. (from you wonderful forum folks I know my plants need to be at about 80f during the day and no less than 65f at night) Like I said though before, I would be venting actively only at night, when I don't have visitors (run my day cycle 8pm to 8am and put the exhaust on that timer) What would my odor control options be if I didn't use the cabinet? (I don't wanna stink up my whole basement or whole house! I have people who come over, with whom it would be better that they not know about my secret gardening interest!) If I had a nice, warm spare room upstairs, a lock would go on the door, and I wouldn't have so many questions! Thanks for all the help so far!

tenn1234 said:

Another thing you really neeed to consider is space. When your plants start flowering, are you going to have enough room for them to double in height?

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Since I was using compact fluorescents, I figured I would grow to 12" and flower, since I heard from others here that trying to get any bigger with CFL's is pointless. I think I may get a larger cabinet though. a 7' cabinet would allow a 18" plant and about 36" to 40" for flowering. I've got an anal retentive hatred of wasted space! Thanks for your help!

A larger cabinet is a good way to go.

The plants will at least double in height during the flowering cycle.

Don't worry about "wasted space," just grow more plants. *lol*

If you truely want stealth, get the carbon filter, a vented light hoods and a hurricane fan.

Vi

I use a colman TD storage floor model painted white with 400w hps with a vent low by the plants and a fan blowing at the plants and a EX fan at top of box and I put on the outside of fan ex hole some dryer sheets to cover up the smell there's 6 plants in there growing just fine.