DWC Cooler SCROG - 2 x (C99 x AK47) clones - 250W HPS @ 42 DAYS Veg (pics lay within)

Very nice FG!

I definitely feel there are a couple of cabinet tweaks I could make to improve the venting (i.e. up through the cabinet roof rather than out via the utility space) but this will require me to do some carpentry after this grow is complete.
Right now I am dying to throw a 400W HPS into the cabinet but have not had any experience with 400w to know how much hotter it might be than my current grow with the 250W HPS.

Flo Grow - did you notice much of a temperature increase in your cab (all other things being equal) when you upgraded to the 400w?
How about noticing much difference in the density of your buds from the 400w grow?

I'm lucky to have my cabinet running lower than 80F/27C with it being summer in Australia at present.
The past week my cab has been running at 71-90F/22-32C due to some fairly cool summer weather right now thank goodness.

Thanks for stopping by bro!

Flo Grow said:

My prob as an indoor newb years ago, was to buy a cool tube since they were new and all the rave.
Only to find out later that the curvature of the lens and therefore the lights reflection, decreases the lumens that your plant(s) receives.

Click to expand...

Hmm definitely food for thought FG!
You've made me rethink my cooltube arrangement now.

I think that after this grow finishes I will rework the cabinet to try a grow without the cooltube to get some comparative results.
That will mean removing the ducting from the current cooltube setup and just venting the flower room out of the roof (instead of via the Utility room from the cooltube ducting).

Stopping to think about it, that makes much more sense as it will mean that there are:
(1) more lumens are on the plant without the cooltube tempered glass in the way
(2) no bends reducing the extraction fan's efficiency. I currently have two 90-degree bends in the ducting leading from the cooltube out of the flower room which can be replaced more efficiently by the fan blowing directly out of the roof don't you think?


I reckon I might try the 400W HPS ballast/lamp for a day or two and see what happens.

You hit it perfectly !

With #2 being very key !!
That's why I did mine that way too.
My rigid ducting, semi-rigid actually, helps with even less resistance instead of the classic flexible ducting that most ppl use.

Classic flexible ducting that we see in 95%+ of indoor gardens.
The LEAST effective in resistance also, even if it is straight with no bends !!
View attachment 1931109


Semi-rigid and what I currently use.
Thicker walls also and moves air much better that the above flexible ducting.
Wrap these bad boys with insulated pipe wrap (Lowes/Home depot) and lock in that heat from the hot air and watch temps drop more.
View attachment 1931111


Rigid ducting provides the most effective extraction.
Very little to no ridges that will impact air flow.
View attachment 1931112


Now add to the fact that ppl bend and twist their duct work, let alone the shear overall length, and a grower will forever struggle with their environment.

Most ppl don't know that the air vents in a home can only have so many bends, BY LAW, because of the inadequate venting they cause.

So I researched and learned.
Now I have NO bends and only 3 feet of STRAIGHT ducting.
Ya'll hear me out there !?!? lol


....

Nice tips there Flo! Much appreciated sir!

I am planning to rework my cabinet after this harvest and I'll definitely work in some semi-rigid/rigid ducting after reading your post. Sounds like just what i'm after!
I may not even need any ducting at all if I vent straight out of the roof/back of the cabinet.

Thanks for taking the time to post that info FG!
Any more juicy tips you want to give me you just go right ahead

Grow on bro!

P.S. More pics tonight

Comparison: Day 1 and11 of 12/12:

Sorry, couldn't help myself posting a little side-by-side comparison since 12/12 started 11 days ago:

Day 1:Day 11:

Thank-you kindly FG!

Take care bro.

DAY 12 of 12/12: Upgrade the HPS from 250w to 400w!

Oh yeah! The 400W Digital Ballast & bulbs that I ordered have arrived and that means one thing and one thing only - CABINET UPGRADE TIME!!
Yep you heard me right! Time to put the 250W HPS out to pasture for the meantime and bring out the mighty 400Watter!
Being a Digital ballast (as opposed to the common magnetic ballast) not only does she give me better lumens, better efficiency, longer lasting bulbs, blah blah blah but now I can take photos of the grow without any annoying HPS light flickering.
That and it can take both HPS & MH bulbs and adjust its current accordingly!

Digital ballasts push out a constant current instead of pulsing the lights on/off the way that magnetic ballasts do.
So if you have ever wondered why your mobile phone camera photos of your lights-on time are always flickering, it is because your HPS ballast is not digital.
I have managed to save myself a lot of photo taking time as now EVERY photo has a decent exposure instead of every 4th flickered-photo as used to be the case

Here she is - the Lumatek 400W Digital E-Ballast:
EDIT: the model below is a 240v model for Australia only. The US model will have a different model number to the photo below (on the off-chance you were losing sleep over it...).


However, replacing the 250W HPS with a 400W has lead to roughly a 20% increase in cabinet temperature.
Prior to putting in the 400W HPS the cabinet was running between 68-81F/20-30C. This has now increased to 75-93F/24-34C (but I know this can be improved with suggestions given by others on the forums).

So tomorrow I plan to replace the existing venting system from the flower room which should hopefully drop temps.
I'll remove the existing cooltube and flexible ducting setup and instead use a new non-cooltube reflector shade and move the extraction fan to vent out the back wall of the flower room instead of venting via the utility room as is currently happening.

So tomorrow my current setup (below) should be replaced by something new & improved:


Currently:
- res temps @ 66F/19C.
- ppms @ 1110(0.5)/1550(0.7)
- pH @ 5.9

Some pics from today:
I never get sick of those nasty-bitch-looking, jagged sativa leaves!



It's a jungle in there!
Are those Oompah-Loompah sillhouettes I can make out in the undergrowth? Shhhhh! I can hear them singing...

I reckon tomorrow my cabinet will experienece a similar sensation to being circumsized (not that I know what that feels like to date).

Goodbye to that elephant-trunk, wrinkly-foreskin, flexible ducting and hello to a streamlined/German-engineered/Kraftwerk-inspired new venting system (thanks for the suggestion to move to semi-rigid/rigid ducting Flo Grow!).

Assuming I can make it happen, I will post photos of the refurbishments tomorrow.

Congrats Globule !! View attachment 1935459


Now you're rockin the same shit as me.
Hope ya don't mind the pics.

This is my 3ft of extraction ducting wrapped in insulated pipe wrap
View attachment 1935461
n
My 6 inch Can Fan sits outside on top of my tent
In the red circle is the mouth of the fan with a blue filter screen on it.
The suction keeps the filter in place and I rinse it every 2 weeks.
The black material above the screen is the tent opening folded so the mouth of the fan actually pokes thru and into the tent perfectly.
View attachment 1935462


As you can see, I am not venting my hood and I only have a clip on fan blowing over the canopy top.
On the floor to the right, and straight ahead, I have my large vent flaps open.
They're something like 2ft by 6 inches each.
The fan is pulling more than enough air for negative pressure and my lights on temps stay 80F - 82F.

Reinventing the Venting:

Hey Flo bro! I really appreciate the post mate!

So very timely, as today I was fretting over how to best modify my venting?
I didn't manage to get anything done on the cabinet today as planned, but I think just as well, as I need to thoughtfully stroke my chin, ponder the issue... AND ASK SOMEONE ELSE!!

Temps in the cabinet went up to around 85-90F/30-32C after installing the 400W HPS yesterday
I expected an increase in temps as I know I need to rework the venting for my space (similar to your setup Flo).

PROBLEM! I don't know how I am going to keep the flower chamber light-proof with my original venting plan of moving my main fan to vent out the back of the cabinet and add a 90-degree rigid elbow onto the back wall behind the fan to direct extracted air upwards?

Currently:
the cooltube/flower room is vented by a Spectrum Airjet 6"/150mm axial fan sucking air out of the mother room and pushing it into the utility space.
It is then vented out the back of the utility space by a 12cm PC fan.

I'm thinking this setup is a bottleneck of airflow out of the cabinet via the utility space, causing higher temps than necessary (as the Axial fan would also be required to essentially vent the utility room as well by pushing the air out, no?)
- PURPLE below highlights 12cm PC Fan/150mm Axial fan.
- YELLOW shows where I am thinking of cutting a hole into the back wall of the cabinet and moving the Axial fan to vent out through it.
- Passive air intakes (3 x 1" PVC pipe) out of sight underneath moms and feeding into grow room via 2" PVC pipe.



Can anyone suggest an elegant solution for light proofing this?

I considered adding enough ducting turns outside of the cabinet to light proof it but this just doesn't make sense as adding more turns will just negate the point of changing my venting in the first place.
Unfortunately the fan vent out the back will definitely need light proofing as there is light coming into the garage continuously throughout the day.

If anyone can help I'd be truly grateful!
Cheers.

Thanks for your kind words and sage wisdom as always bro!
The cabinet isn't pushing out the pounds by any means but she serves me well

My axial fan is rated at just over 250cfm.

Today I went to Bunnings (Australian equivalent of Home Depot I guess) and got a length of semi-rigid ducting that can extend up to 3 meters. It looks like nice stuff to work with actually. It has given me confidence in pulling off a decent cabinet temp now with what I have.

So I think I will have to run the new venting back down behind the cabinet and exhaust near the floor, but not sure whether I should vent out the roof or back wall corner.
I am leaning towards the back wall corner.

What do you think? Would it help to add a short bend to the axial fan on the inside of the cabinet to give better light-proofing?
Or still keep venting into the utilty space as well so that some air is drawn out the back is it is at present?

Oh and this might be obvious to most people, but if I attach a 2nd 12cm PC fan to the front/back of the existing one in the utility space does that double the amount of air being sucked out?

Will be trying to make the mods tonight once I have put my daughter to bed.
Cheers and thanks again for the help!

Quick Update:

Tonight has been more prep and planning for re-working the venting tomorrow.

I did manage to modify how the air-pumps for the res are hanging behind the cabinet as I noticed some buzzing from them both.
Hanging them further away from the outside rear wall has reduced the vibrations from them substantially. They are just hanging quietly from plastic zip-ties (can't do without them!) attached to the 90-degree brackets that I screwed to the back edge of the cabinet roof this evening.

I also removed all the flexible ducting from the cabinet for tonight, which removes about 180-degrees of bends which were previously there venting into the utility space.
This alone has reduced cabinet temps by about 4-degrees already

Hopefully the work I do tomorrow should improve temps even further I hope...

Will upload new photos tomorrow once I've finished the re-venting.

Cheers!

DAY 15 OF 12/12

IMPROVED VENTING:
Since adding the 400w HPS 3 days ago, temps in my cabinet have risen to unhealthy levels.
Yesterday my max cabinet temp reached 104F/40C! For how long I'm not sure as I run my lights overnight.
I finally finshed redoing my ventilation today and cabinet temps have dropped as a result thank goodness!

So far tonight since lights on, cabinet temps have not risen above 86F/30C
Ambient temps are around 77F/25C and the vent exhaust air is 98F/37C at that time.
This is good news as it means the hot air from my cab is being extracted reasonably ok (compared to yesterday at least, when my cabinet temps and exhaust air were almost the same 104F/40C).

Hopefully the cool 62F/17C res temps meant the plants weren't too badly stressed but they seem much perkier with the new venting arrangements.

The changes I made to improve venting were:
- Replaced the exhaust flexi-ducting with some semi-rigid ducting.
- Changed direction of cooltube to be diagonal.-
- Removed the long and curvy length of flexi-ducting in the flower room and replaced it with a shorter piece.

BEFORE: AFTER:

If cabinet temps get worse then I will resort to my original plan and vent out of the cabinet roof instead and ditch the Cooltube.
Right Flo Grow?


TRIMMING UNDERGROWTH:
Yesterday I trimmed some of the leaves/stems under the screen. I should have really started this a bit earlier but better late than never.
I let them rest today and will do a bit more trimming tomorrow.

BEFORE : AFTER :


SCREEN STRETCH:
The plants are stretching much less this grow compared to my previous grow. Not sure if it is because this time around I am growing from clones instead of seeds?
Last grow I reckon they would have at least tripled in length/height which was unexpected and highly inconvenient!

My cabinet was severely overgrown last time and as a result yields weren't very good.

This grow they are much more orderly and the canopy is looking reasonably ok so far.
I can see a few gaps at the front of the screen, so I might try vegging maybe another 5-days next time or add a 3rd plant.

Still, it's better to have a screen with a few gaps than an overgrown one!




BONUS BUDSHOTS:


Good growing to you and thanks for stopping by