Citizen Bubba's law abiding grow box

I have a tube like that and while they are good for cooling they are terrible for light footprint. I modified mine to take out the internal reflector and attached a batwing wich helps but you would be better off with a regular air-cooled rectangle hood. That 4" fan will cool a 400W. That's about 57 watts per sq ft. I wouldn't go much higher but it will work. If you get a dimmable ballast then you can turn it up and down as needed (ebay is the best source for this ~ $150.)

Never mind, I found one, except its out of stock..... Doog, do you think the used equipment store would have something like this?

ViaVolt™ 36" Super Yield Dual Socket Cylinder Reflector, 6" Air-Cooled

View attachment 2528828
NOTE: This item is out of stock until further notice. In the interim, please refer to item #VACC19, a comparable product. Please call us at 1-888-305-4450 should you have any questions regarding your order.


This ViaVolt™ Air Cooled Grow Light Reflector measures 36" long x 6" wide and offers efficient cooling with double the light for double the yield. The Air cylinder design provides fast cooling and comes with an internal highly reflective pebbled insert for intense reflectivity and an even reflective light dispersion. The Air Cooled Dual Cylinder comes pre-wired with two 5KV sockets and two pre-wired 15’ reflector cords and will accommodate most HID bulb types (both HPS and MH).


• 36” long with a 30" x 6” air cooled tempered glass cylinder
• Tempered glass for durability
• 5KV sockets and cords included
• Comes with mounting hardware
• Highly reflective Internal and external reflector
• Comes well packaged to assure a safe arrival
• Light weight and easy to move at only 14 lb

doogleef said:

I have a tube like that and while they are good for cooling they are terrible for light footprint. I modified mine to take out the internal reflector and attached a batwing wich helps but you would be better off with a regular air-cooled rectangle hood. That 4" fan will cool a 400W. That's about 57 watts per sq ft. I wouldn't go much higher but it will work. If you get a dimmable ballast then you can turn it up and down as needed (ebay is the best source for this ~ $150.)

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Ok, thanks for advice. I have to keep the profile as low as possible on the hood(s) due to running out of headroom. The cabinet was designed to grow with 2 or 3 of those 240w LEDs so I'm not sure if one light, albeit a 400w, will cover a footprint of 2x4. Will it? and spread enough for 3 plants in a row? Think I would be better off with 2 small hoods? Maybe 2 dimmable 250s? Would be about the same cost as buying 2 more LEDs. Thanks for the guidance.

Most hoods are about the same height so don;t let that be a determining factor for you. They vary on width.

A single 400w would cover that area with no problem.

Thanks again. And thanks for keeping me real lol. I have a tendency to over think the design to achieve a perceived efficiency improvement - I.e. thinking i needed 2 smaller hoods @ twice the price..... I think I'll swing by the place you posted the link of and see what they have that will fit the cab.

So, do you think the 4" 170cfm fan has enough juice to pull through a CAN 9000 C filter, then push through the 400W Hood and still maintain good negative pressure? Box is pretty tight... currently the fan will suck the door shut from a couple inches out. I bought a variable speed controller, but wish I hadn't wasted the money (may need in future project though...) as you can barely make out any sound outside the box even when the fan is running wide open. I read in reaserch that you should look to change out the full volume of air once every 5 minutes, so I had originally thought to only run it at 50%. I looked up the back pressure info on the 9000 and figured it would bring cfm down by half. Volume of box is roughly 44cf, so I thought I would need to bring system cfm down by 1/2 or so.

Bubba - I have found the exact same thing being in CO. I won't germ without a heat mat now as I've found it makes it so much easier. I will for sure keep an eye out. I really want to see your Snow Goddess take off. Hopefully you will grab one of those purple phenos with the high CBD.

Thanks for the kind words Kramer. I checked out the used store Doog left a link to. I think I'm going to stick with the LEDs through flowering though. If I'm disappointed, I'll figure out how to squeeze a HPS in the cab safely for the next run..

I think the blumats ran today sometime. I noticed the surface of the soil in the pot seemed disturbed - looked like a runoff area from the drip tube. If they did operate, it's pretty cool because I don't think it used much water as the drip pans were bone dry. But something is going right in that box cause the plants are takin off. They are now at 17 days from dropping the seeds in for a soak the Dank5 is gettin a fat ass and the SN1 is lookin pretty sexy.And here's a pic of my newest Snow Goddess arrival, isn't she cute

Off to a good start. Love that your runnin some 303! U won't be disappointed.

420circuit said:

Mylar emergency blankets make a nice final wall coating, perhaps over a couple coats of white anti-mildew on the bare interior wood first. I am finding that the plants grow faster and wilder than expected. Box looks nice, bet you get the bug and decide to outgrow it in a few months.

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Man, that is just prophetic of you and you are correct. I gotta have more space for mothers and stuff... and the Mickey Mouse seed starting / clone box that I made is just lame. So, I'm going to add another cabinet. This one will be 2x3x6 -the upper 2/3 of the box for mothers and the lower 1/3 for starting seeds/clones. I plan to have separate, light sealed chambers with separate doors (common ventilation via light trap passive intakes between chambers) I thought about tying it in to the first cabinet for ventilation, but decided I will go with a standalone box.

So, there you go lol.

Or you could just go with some tents and hide them in the new room that you will need for what this leads to. Told my family I was building a 'prepper' storage room. Hope we don't ever have a reason to tap into my prepper supplies or they will be in for quite a surprise.

Ha, you must have ESP. That is pretty much exactly my plan for later. I plan to add a basement 1.5 bath/ laundry room. I did the floor layout so that there will be a hidden room at the end of the bathroom framing. It will be hard to tell its even there unless you measured. Was thinking of serious cloak and dagger and getting me one of those bookshelves that is actually a door lol. The grow room is a little small the way I have it currently, may have to shorten up the bathroom area.

Bubbagineer said:

Ha, you must have ESP. That is pretty much exactly my plan for later. I plan to add a basement 1.5 bath/ laundry room. I did the floor layout so that there will be a hidden room at the end of the bathroom framing. It will be hard to tell its even there unless you measured. Was thinking of serious cloak and dagger and getting me one of those bookshelves that is actually a door lol. The grow room is a little small the way I have it currently, may have to shorten up the bathroom area.

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In retrospect I wish that I had made the room just a few inches wider and included a sink, but what I have is working well enough, a hose from the laundry room for cold water and another hose that drops into the washing machine drain to pump old nutes out. The drain guy had to come out a few months back, about a yearly ritual in the area, which made me wonder if the nutes were helping tree roots to fill the drain line. So now when I dump nutes I add some crystal root killer to the drain at the end to give the trees something to chew on. Every couple months I pour root treatment down the drain to hopefully avoid another plumber visit, but the whole area suffers from the problem so it may be unrelated to the nutes. The law says we need to have the grow locked so another thing to consider in your design. Venting was my big struggle and I wound up installing ducting, the sheet metal stuff, to the garage with the outlet enclosed in a heater style vent. Since there is a big carbon filter on the inlet there is no smell, just a slight rise in humidity. The garage doors opening a few times a day keeps the RH level good and the variable speed fan looks normal where is is mounted near the furnace equipment. There is a slight sound from the fan that I attempted to mask with some adhesive roofing peel and stick tar/foil stuff with limited success. I may replace that fan with something quieter if my OCD kicks in. The folks suggesting plants over a pound each with DWC have me looking into that instead of upgrading my hydro/aero equipment, so I may be doing some tinkering again. I got no advice except to have fun. Looks like you will be developing a well engineering machine for growing, be great to see how it produces.

Yes, I definitely plan to do an industrial sink. I'm plumbing in the bathroom myself, so it will be easy to run the water and drain lines over to the room. I know what you mean about those darn trees. I have mature trees, which is nice, but is hell on the sprinkler lines (roots pinch the water lines shut, then over time fatigue in the PVC pipe causes a split. I fix 2 or 3 of those a year lol.... got a special sprinkler system repair toolbox, how's that for OCD . My neighbor had to pay to have the street dug up to repair the sewer due to tree roots. Most people don't know it, but you're responsible for the sewer line to the T off the main, which in my case is under the middle of a town street - cost them like 6K.

Also, thanks for tip on venting to the garage, the far wall of the room is the common wall with the garage, will work perfect.

These will be 3 weeks old from germination tomorrow. They seem to be growing well but aren't stretching much. Do you guys think this is a problem?

It could be a sign of either one of two things or a combination of both. You're keeping you light close enough to the plant to prevent unneeded stretch, or it's just in the genetics.

It's funny but I get less stretch running cfls than most people get with hids and I attribute that to being able to keep the lights so low.

Either way, nothing to worry about. Your plants look healthy.

*also, their growth will really pick up as the next set of leaves gets larger.

Thanks for the advice, its much appreciated.

It could also b from temp stress... to much heat (even from cfl ((which I also run in veg and LOVE)) or t5) equals more transporation rather than growth. With bigger plants the lowers are still able to "sweat" and the tops push forward, but with babies like this there may not be enough surface area to handle the complex duality of both processies. Make sence kinda? Maybe give em some space, they'll catch up- I have ran into this myself. Or what he said /\/\

chef c said:

It could also b from temp stress... to much heat... Maybe give em some space, they'll catch up- I have ran into this myself. Or what he said /\/\

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Thanks Chef. I don't think it's heat stress, the box is staying at 75deg F and I actually have a seedling mat under the 1 gallon pots and roots are staying around 65 a 70 deg F. I think I'll raise the lights up to 24" and see what happens.

OT Alert. (Over-Thinking) Perhaps a little over-analysis of these sprouts, maybe hold off until they actually grow into plants before putting them under the microscope. My OCD requires that I toss my 2 cents in, I'd unplug the heater mat unless is gets cold during lights out, if it does get cold you could leave the light on 24/7 to keep it around 70F. Looks great so far.

I think they'll appreciate that. It'll give them something to grow towards.