Get a Harvest Every 2 Weeks
- Thread starter Al B. Fuct
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Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
folks, I'm gonna be tied up for a day or so. Just up to my ears in it, no biggie. Back soon.
Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
stang, I do want to compliment you for your extraordinary effort in looking over this thread and comprehending it throughly- more than a bit difficult when the information comes at you a bit higgledy-piggledy as it does in a discussion forum. Not like there's a Table of Contents for all this.
OK, let's cover your queries.
The plants in trays 3 & 4 are all usually close to the same height, so the disparity isn't great there, but as you correctly point out, plants in tray #1 are 'vertically challenged' compared to those in tray 2, certainly come the day when tray 2 is in week 4- they are growing as much as 25mm/day up til the end of wk 4. You're right in noting that the cooltube can't come down to 300mm over the tray 1 plants while maintaining sufficient clearance over the tray 2 plants.
I don't mind the disparity in height for the tray1 (newly introduced to 2 wks) plants. These plants have just come out of the clonebox where they have been under fluoros for the last 12-14 days. They don't develop much new leaf foliage in the clonebox, but what is grown in that time will be acclimated to fluoro light. A bit of extra spacing over the tray 1 plants for the first 7-10 days, when they begin to catch up with the height of the tray 2 plants, is just fine. This 'sun hardens' the new growth and prevents any 'sunburn' of the tips of the youngest plants
I grew up with feet & inches but have not had to use the old imperial figures much for the last dozen years or so. I have a very special hatred for fractional inches, as do many folks who grew up in the early days of pocket calculators. You'll note that I use metric figs as much as possible these days. Converting every figure I use when writing a post is a bit onerous, but when someone has asked me something quantified in imperial units, I try to respond in those units as well. I am not so good at doing the conversions on the fly, but I do my best.
The pots are not cylinders, rather slightly conical. The pots are labelled "175mm" (about 6.9"). Turns out this measurement is the OD of the top of the pots, inclusive of a rim lip. The bottoms of the pots are about 130mm dia. I cited the pot size as 8" in the lead post in this thread because the top dia to my eye looked like about 8" but in fact is about 1.1" smaller than that. You can fit as many as 24 of these pots into the 820mm^2 trays but they can't sit with all their bases flat on the trays unless there's only 22 or 23. With 24, they're a bit wedged in.
A durable floor surface is very convenient- the only thing better is a durable floor with a floor drain.
From your dwgs (great stuff, thanks), all looks in order.
OK, let's cover your queries.
Looks great!
ooh, clever.
A 1000 in a cooltube can be as close as 300-350mm from the plant tops, perhaps even closer- that's a conservative estimate.
The plants in trays 3 & 4 are all usually close to the same height, so the disparity isn't great there, but as you correctly point out, plants in tray #1 are 'vertically challenged' compared to those in tray 2, certainly come the day when tray 2 is in week 4- they are growing as much as 25mm/day up til the end of wk 4. You're right in noting that the cooltube can't come down to 300mm over the tray 1 plants while maintaining sufficient clearance over the tray 2 plants.
I don't mind the disparity in height for the tray1 (newly introduced to 2 wks) plants. These plants have just come out of the clonebox where they have been under fluoros for the last 12-14 days. They don't develop much new leaf foliage in the clonebox, but what is grown in that time will be acclimated to fluoro light. A bit of extra spacing over the tray 1 plants for the first 7-10 days, when they begin to catch up with the height of the tray 2 plants, is just fine. This 'sun hardens' the new growth and prevents any 'sunburn' of the tips of the youngest plants
Yep.
Will work like a champ, does for me.
I don't think I'd opt for the T5s. Clones just don't need to be pounded with light. All they need is to be convinced it is daylight for 18+H/day. Go for some less expensive, regular 24" tube fluoros or CFLs. Replacement ordinary tubes/CFLs will be more readily available, probably even at your local grocery. Your clones will thank you for the heat mat by rapidly setting root.
nothing wrong so far!
Yep, do your testing, but I think you'll find that a powered intake, even with (a) modest axial blower(s) will bring the thruflow closer to the actual CFM rating of the exhaust blower, which is rated with its air intake at atmospheric pressure. When the exhaust blower has both to fight to push its air column out the back side as well as work against a restriction in the intake, the actual CFM rate will fall off quickly, even with a centrif blower in the main exhaust position. Powered intake also makes it a lot easier to light-trap the intake as the duct size will be much smaller. Passive intake annuli have to be about 2x the area of your exhaust duct.
OK, now you've forced me to whip out my tape measure.
I grew up with feet & inches but have not had to use the old imperial figures much for the last dozen years or so. I have a very special hatred for fractional inches, as do many folks who grew up in the early days of pocket calculators. You'll note that I use metric figs as much as possible these days. Converting every figure I use when writing a post is a bit onerous, but when someone has asked me something quantified in imperial units, I try to respond in those units as well. I am not so good at doing the conversions on the fly, but I do my best. The pots are not cylinders, rather slightly conical. The pots are labelled "175mm" (about 6.9"). Turns out this measurement is the OD of the top of the pots, inclusive of a rim lip. The bottoms of the pots are about 130mm dia. I cited the pot size as 8" in the lead post in this thread because the top dia to my eye looked like about 8" but in fact is about 1.1" smaller than that. You can fit as many as 24 of these pots into the 820mm^2 trays but they can't sit with all their bases flat on the trays unless there's only 22 or 23. With 24, they're a bit wedged in.
Sounds like a great space for a grow op.
A durable floor surface is very convenient- the only thing better is a durable floor with a floor drain. From your dwgs (great stuff, thanks
), all looks in order.
Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
Someone mentioned that I use the HPS for the stem thickness- while partly true, I'd get thick stems from MH, too. I keep using the HPS because it also produces elongated plants compared to MH. This works out to my advantage as I cut very tall clones. I started out using the 400HPS because it was surplus at the time, formerly used for flowering in an early incarnation of the op.
Vegging with HPS worked great (for my application) so I never bothered with MH until sometime last year, when I picked up a "400" (actually 360W) MH conversion lamp (on special, yay!) and ran it over the mums for a month or so. The result was that the mums only recovered about 2/3 the height and veg mass in the scant 14 days they have to regrow after a pass of cuttings, compared to the ordinary (non-blue enhanced) 400HPS. I went back to the HPS over the mums and the MH conversion lamp sits on the shelf.
Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
Plants usually require about 6-8 weeks under veg cycle light from seed before they will begin to show preflowers at the nodes. 32 days is only a bit over 4 weeks.Originally Posted by cmak40
whats the deal on telling sex in veg tho al, i have 13 plants on 24hr lite from seed and from las nite when i talked to you to today one has sacs all over it. they are 32 days old from germ and this is the only one showing any signs of sex??[/i]
That's a hypothesis that probably should be tested before placing a lot of faith in it. While I agree that stressing a plant is never good, I'm not so sure 24/0 light is particularly stressful nor that stress can induce a seedling to come up male. On average, you'll get 50% males from seed. You might think that males are a bad thing and also that stress is a bad thing- but they are not necessarily related. The cannabis plant probably doesn't think making male plants is so bad, that's just part of its job of reproduction.
When it comes down to testing hypotheses like this, the motivation to do so can be fairly limited by the actual utility of what you're trying to prove. In my case, I have enough on my plate just running the op productively- I don't really have time to do comprehensive investigations of phenomenae that in the end won't increase the output of my op.
Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
Good stuff.
Divide the room air volume by 3, i.e. a 500 cu ft room will need 166CFM thruflow. That's your bare minimum volumetric capacity for the combination of the exhaust and intake and really only a useful figure when using cooltubes.
I have a 500cu ft flowering area and have a 600CFM exhaust blower and a couple of axial intake fans helping make things more efficient. Even that wind-tunnelish volumetric capacity was not enough to contain the room airmass temps to my desired range (24-26C) all year round with 2kW of HPS light. The 1000s were not in cooltubes at the time I selected the exhaust blower. If I were planning it over again with cooltubes from the get-go, I would have selected a 200mm centrif (220L/sec, 466 CFM) for the main exhaust blower. The cooltubes are highly effective at keeping lamp heat from warming the room's airmass and I could do with a lot less exhaust fan power.
Of course, I use a 400 over 10 plants in a roughly 300 x 700mm tray, but they are being fairly well pounded with light. I THINK I could get by with a 250 but have not tried it to know what the character of the growth would be. The safe bet is to use a 400.
A secure distributor? It's grow media, not gold bars!
A mix of perlite and rockwool sounds like it would overcome the very high water holding capacity of RW floc. The way to be sure is to check how much water weight is lost in a 24 hour period. I like to see about half of the water weight lost before watering again. If you use pots of only RW floc, yes, flood 1x/day at lights-on for just long enough to flood the trays to about 50mm deep.
insanestang4life
Well-Known Member
Thanks again AL B you are the man. Didnt mean for you to have to go and whip out the tape measure but I appreciate it.... I couldnt figure how it was possible to fit those 8" pots in there but now I got it all figured out. Thanks again
southfloridasean
Well-Known Member
Yo Al you need yo write a BOOK. Info galore. I dont see this thread disappearing anytime soon. 
cmak40
Well-Known Member
on the air circ note. i have a 440cfm inline that i was gonna use in this order for exhaustGood stuff.
Divide the room air volume by 3, i.e. a 500 cu ft room will need 166CFM thruflow. That's your bare minimum volumetric capacity for the combination of the exhaust and intake and really only a useful figure when using cooltubes.
I have a 500cu ft flowering area and have a 600CFM exhaust blower and a couple of axial intake fans helping make things more efficient. Even that wind-tunnelish volumetric capacity was not enough to contain the room airmass temps to my desired range (24-26C) all year round with 2kW of HPS light. The 1000s were not in cooltubes at the time I selected the exhaust blower. If I were planning it over again with cooltubes from the get-go, I would have selected a 200mm centrif (220L/sec, 466 CFM) for the main exhaust blower. The cooltubes are highly effective at keeping lamp heat from warming the room's airmass and I could do with a lot less exhaust fan power.
Of course, I use a 400 over 10 plants in a roughly 300 x 700mm tray, but they are being fairly well pounded with light. I THINK I could get by with a 250 but have not tried it to know what the character of the growth would be. The safe bet is to use a 400.
A secure distributor? It's grow media, not gold bars!
A mix of perlite and rockwool sounds like it would overcome the very high water holding capacity of RW floc. The way to be sure is to check how much water weight is lost in a 24 hour period. I like to see about half of the water weight lost before watering again. If you use pots of only RW floc, yes, flood 1x/day at lights-on for just long enough to flood the trays to about 50mm deep.
410cfm Carbon filter-->cooltubed 600-->cooltubed 1000-->cooltubed 400-->440cfm fan-->exhaust, now that ive read what u have here should i throw in a 190 cfm fan for intake to help the load(was gonna be passive but i can get the fan cheap)
also would a 400 hps cover 14-16 moms well and good?
Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
Axials are not very good at pushing air into a high static pressure caused by obstructions, like a filter. Air pressure just leaks backward between the axial fan's blades when the limit is reached. The blades 'stall' like an airplane wing and don't move much air. Thus the CFM ratings of an axial pushing into a carbon filter simply are not reliable. You might be getting 10-20% of the rated flow. If there's a carbon filter in the duct, you'll want to get a centrif blower.
Intake fans on the other hand, when paired with a centrif exhaust blower, are just plain loafing. They can be dirt-common hardware store 'duct fan' axials, 150mm is common. The intake capacity rating should be about 80-90% of the exhaust blower rating to keep the room at negative pressure. This way, any small gaps or air leaks become air inlets. If the room were at positive pressure, they would be exhausts, allowing air out of the room without going through the carbon filter. If the room is at slightly negative pressure, all air leaving the grow will go through your carbon filter. For low cost, use a pair of smaller, cheap axials whose added CFM ratings are about 80-90% the CFM of the exhaust blower.
Yes, but I have my suspicions that's close to the upper limit. You must be planning to take a LOT of cuttings.
Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
heh, thanks.Yo Al you need yo write a BOOK. Info galore. I dont see this thread disappearing anytime soon.
If this thread doesn't die, no one would buy the book.
PlasmaRadio
Well-Known Member
I got the title:
"Grow Up Fuct: The Al B. Fuct Way"
Trademarked, double stamped.
"Grow Up Fuct: The Al B. Fuct Way"
Trademarked, double stamped.
We TaRdED
Well-Known Member
lol, it has a nice ring to it
i like it 
hey al! waz up bro?
im not sure if this was asked and answered yet, but have you thought about using perlite for a E&F medium? (im sure youve thought about it)
also, if you did, aprox how often do you think you would run your ebb cycles?
so just the pros and cons if you will....
your great al
thanks and
Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
I'm waiting for the TV show featuring a bumbling secret marijuana growing agent-
'Get Fuct!'
You can rest well and truly assured that if I ever published a book- I'd pick a new nom de plume.
I didn't try perlite early on because the stuff is not terribly absorbent, escapes pot drain holes, makes a heck of a mess if spilled and tends to float. The only reason Fytocell (which also floats, makes a heck of a mess when spilled and falls out of drain holes) is any better is because it is by comparison much more absorbent than perlite.lol, it has a nice ring to it
hey al! waz up bro?
im not sure if this was asked and answered yet, but have you thought about using perlite for a E&F medium? (im sure youve thought about it)
also, if you did, aprox how often do you think you would run your ebb cycles?
so just the pros and cons if you will....
your great al
thanks and
Hard to say how often I'd flood perlite. I'd weigh a dry pot of perlite, wet it, let it drain, then put it in the op and see how long it takes to lose half its water weight. There's the watering interval for young plants, where more water is lost from the pot due to evaporation than consumption by the plant. By abt wk 3-4 of flowering, more frequent flooding will probably be needed.
Enigma
Well-Known Member
I've got the air exchange for the room. I'm wondering about the fans for the cool tubes. Something to cool a 400w and a 1000w in that configuration.
I figured that might be the best bet.. but the 600w looks great.. and if the cool tubes are everything they are cracked up to be they could go well in such a small space.. then again the 400w sounds more practical for the space.
Thanks as always!
Enigma
Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
Oh, OK!
Most any 150mm axial will do. I use an Allvent A60 to run 2x 1000HPS in the flowering area's cooltubes, which as you know are fitted in series. The A60 is rated 192CFM. The straighter the duct and the more airflow, the better the cooltubes will work, but it's all good with 192CFM for 2kW.
It occurs to me that you may not be able to run your veg & flower cooltubes in series. Light would conduct down the cooltube from the 400 and into the flowering area during lights off. You may have to use a wye and push air through the two tubes in parallel, or use 2 separate 150mm blowers and make the systems totally independent to assure light isolation from the flowering plants during their nighttime.
Yeah, I don't think you'll really need a 600 for that job. Nice light and all but really a bit of overkill for this particular application.
We TaRdED
Well-Known Member
yup, you definitely don't want stray light into your flowering room..
if need be, you can think about using BLACK stove pipe at a 90 degree bend.
this might attenuate it enough.
or you could use two 90's to eliminate it completely- no doubt!!!! in like an S shape.
if you know what i mean.... this will attenuate your cfm's a little though. umm not to offend anyone but to try and further my point on the "S" shape, it might be better to think of it as half of the nazi symbol.
(maybe there are better analogies but thats the first thing that came to my head)peace
Enigma
Well-Known Member
There are about 6 bends from the 400w to the 1000w. Some are 90 degrees or more acute.
I think that would be enough...
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