Jonny's out with the old and in with the new - 2630w LED jungle

jonnynobody

Well-Known Member
I dumped all my HID lights. 2x1000's gone. 2x600's gone. Replaced the 2 1000's with 2x660w LED qb's. I plan to add 2 more 240w long skinny panels or 2 more 660's. Still mulling it over. I'll probably wind up with 2 660's. I really want to feel like I've done all that I can to max the room. 240w would be more sensible, but who the fuck cares about sensible? Life's short man. Let's go balls to the walls, right? :)

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I got to dump all the HVAC associated with my HID cooling which is fucking amazing. I now have 10-12" more headspace for the canopy also. The LED boards hug the ceiling so much tighter than the HID hoods. I repurposed a 500CFM vortex powerfan as an intake fan rather than having a passive intake. The exhaust is a 500CFM can fan max fan ran through a 6" ac infinity carbon filter. The ac infinity brand is effective, but very light on carbon. The higher quality (and more costly) brands are 5 times as heavy as the ac infinity filter, but the fucker works. I just doubt it'll last longer than 2 grow cycles before it's tapped out. We'll see eh?


My hope with the new LED lights and removal of the HID is that my 10,000 BTU portable AC will barely run if at all. I plan to route a 6" intake hose directly to the intake of the ac effectively creating a dual hose ac unit macgyver style. Just gonna use some gorilla tape to hold the 6" ducting perfectly in place over the intake of the ac unit. That way when the ac unit operates it won't have to overcome negative pressure to bring air into the intake. It'll be pumped in by the intake fan increasing the efficiency of the unit. The intake is fed from the unfinished laundry area of my basement. Nothing fancy. I've got a mesh grill on the intake so nothing can get sucked into my fan.

In between cycles I spruced up my little office area. Painted the floor with a nice thick heavy duty paint. Did the walls too. Heavy duty cleaning and scrubbing prior of course. Ceiling joists and everything. It was brutal. Turned out nice though. Got the table from a restaurant supply shop online for like $80. Very well worth it. Had the chair and rug on hand. Added an LED shop light to the ceiling you can't see in the photo. Home sweet home. Sometimes this little office is my only safe place to hide :)

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I just hacked the canopy down on a monster critical mass. 16-18 weeks she's vegged so far. The canopy will have to get hacked down 1-2 more times as the stragglers catch up in size. I've got 6 more plants in nurseries to add to the 12x16 room so she's gonna fill up fast when the whole gang is in there. Planning another 15 days of veg then she's start flowering. Rear left. She's getting 1.5 gallons am and pm. Monster fucking root system. In 4 days she'll be twice as thick allover again.

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Cooling the boards with this big shop fan that'll kick on during lights on. Got the 50 pt/day toshiba dehumidifier on standby. Towels, trash can, and work table with scissors, wax string, and hooks of all types.

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Entry door. That void on the ceiling right there is where I'd like to add 2 more 660's or 2 more 240's. We'll see. Leaning towards the 660's.

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I'm running jack's 321 without the epsom on veg. 4g jack's and 2.4g calcium nitrate PH adjusted to 5.8 diluted to 600-625 ppm or about 1.25 ec. Add epsom in flower for additional sulfates to grow fat stinky flowers.

AC and ducting with intake fan:
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New drainage system. It's a mighty pump attached to a heavy duty garden hose and routed to my basement drain. I drain the catch trays (water to waste hempy buckets) with a battery operated siphon pump. I use rechargeable batteries in the pump. Pricey fuckers but very convenient and bullet proof reliable. Dump the waste water in the big tub. Hit the on button on my keychain remote and down the drain it goes. No hauling buckets or any shit like that. Inside the flower room I have 5 gallon bucket dolly's to move the full buckets around as I siphon. 90% preparation. 10% perspiration. It's a way of life man :)

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It should be a good time man. I just treated with Forbid 4F today to address a spider mite issue. Summer brings them every dam time. No matter how much I try to prevent them from getting into the garden nothing works. Winter? Never a problem. Summer? Every dam time. All you can do is integrate a pest management program and run the play. Get 'er done man.

Stay tuned for more!
 
I dumped all my HID lights. 2x1000's gone. 2x600's gone. Replaced the 2 1000's with 2x660w LED qb's. I plan to add 2 more 240w long skinny panels or 2 more 660's. Still mulling it over. I'll probably wind up with 2 660's. I really want to feel like I've done all that I can to max the room. 240w would be more sensible, but who the fuck cares about sensible? Life's short man. Let's go balls to the walls, right? :)

View attachment 4923954View attachment 4923953

I got to dump all the HVAC associated with my HID cooling which is fucking amazing. I now have 10-12" more headspace for the canopy also. The LED boards hug the ceiling so much tighter than the HID hoods. I repurposed a 500CFM vortex powerfan as an intake fan rather than having a passive intake. The exhaust is a 500CFM can fan max fan ran through a 6" ac infinity carbon filter. The ac infinity brand is effective, but very light on carbon. The higher quality (and more costly) brands are 5 times as heavy as the ac infinity filter, but the fucker works. I just doubt it'll last longer than 2 grow cycles before it's tapped out. We'll see eh?


My hope with the new LED lights and removal of the HID is that my 10,000 BTU portable AC will barely run if at all. I plan to route a 6" intake hose directly to the intake of the ac effectively creating a dual hose ac unit macgyver style. Just gonna use some gorilla tape to hold the 6" ducting perfectly in place over the intake of the ac unit. That way when the ac unit operates it won't have to overcome negative pressure to bring air into the intake. It'll be pumped in by the intake fan increasing the efficiency of the unit. The intake is fed from the unfinished laundry area of my basement. Nothing fancy. I've got a mesh grill on the intake so nothing can get sucked into my fan.

In between cycles I spruced up my little office area. Painted the floor with a nice thick heavy duty paint. Did the walls too. Heavy duty cleaning and scrubbing prior of course. Ceiling joists and everything. It was brutal. Turned out nice though. Got the table from a restaurant supply shop online for like $80. Very well worth it. Had the chair and rug on hand. Added an LED shop light to the ceiling you can't see in the photo. Home sweet home. Sometimes this little office is my only safe place to hide :)

View attachment 4923945

I just hacked the canopy down on a monster critical mass. 16-18 weeks she's vegged so far. The canopy will have to get hacked down 1-2 more times as the stragglers catch up in size. I've got 6 more plants in nurseries to add to the 12x16 room so she's gonna fill up fast when the whole gang is in there. Planning another 15 days of veg then she's start flowering.

Cooling the boards with this big shop fan that'll kick on during lights on. Got the 50 pt/day toshiba dehumidifier on standby. Towels, trash can, and work table with scissors, wax string, and hooks of all types.

View attachment 4923946

Entry door. That void on the ceiling right there is where I'd like to add 2 more 660's or 2 more 240's. We'll see. Leaning towards the 660's.

View attachment 4923947

I'm running jack's 321 without the epsom on veg. 4g jack's and 2.4g calcium nitrate PH adjusted to 5.8 diluted to 600-625 ppm or about 1.25 ec. Add epsom in flower for additional sulfates to grow fat stinky flowers.

AC and ducting with intake fan:
View attachment 4923950
View attachment 4923952

New drainage system. It's a mighty pump attached to a heavy duty garden hose and routed to my basement drain. I drain the catch trays (water to waste hempy buckets) with a battery operated siphon pump. I use rechargeable batteries in the pump. Pricey fuckers but very convenient and bullet proof reliable. Dump the waste water in the big tub. Hit the on button on my keychain remote and down the drain it goes. No hauling buckets or any shit like that. Inside the flower room I have 5 gallon bucket dolly's to move the full buckets around as I siphon. 90% preparation. 10% perspiration. It's a way of life man :)

View attachment 4923949

It should be a good time man. I just treated with Forbid 4F today to address a spider mite issue. Summer brings them every dam time. No matter how much I try to prevent them from getting into the garden nothing works. Winter? Never a problem. Summer? Every dam time. All you can do is integrate a pest management program and run the play. Get 'er done man.

Stay tuned for more!
Great post man can't wait to follow along.
 
go balls deep and put some strip leds all over those walls. not just from the top.
Dam I never even thought about strips on the side. That's a great idea. My next alibaba order total is increasing by the day. My usual vendor actually sells those strip lights for a really fair price. They're not super high powered, but I think they'd work fantastic for side lighting to beef up the exterior of the canopy without frying anything. Do you think 240w panels would be too much for the walls?
 
Dam I never even thought about strips on the side. That's a great idea. My next alibaba order total is increasing by the day. My usual vendor actually sells those strip lights for a really fair price. They're not super high powered, but I think they'd work fantastic for side lighting to beef up the exterior of the canopy without frying anything. Do you think 240w panels would be too much for the walls?
I've tried this before using a 375W fixture Bridgelux strips on its side. To light 3 moms I was flowering to really get in the canopy. So 750w on top and 375 on one side. And I would rotate the plants around each day.

I found that it really didn't add much for yield or quality. I thought every bud on the plants was gonna be nice and chonky. But they were meh.

I think the same could have been done for a lot less watts. Like maybe 80W of side lighting would be decent per 4ft section.
 
Dam I never even thought about strips on the side. That's a great idea. My next alibaba order total is increasing by the day. My usual vendor actually sells those strip lights for a really fair price. They're not super high powered, but I think they'd work fantastic for side lighting to beef up the exterior of the canopy without frying anything. Do you think 240w panels would be too much for the walls?
honestly, just a guess on my part but i'd go with low powered strips vs panels for side lighting. you could probably get by with just 2 strips the whole way around it. maybe 18" up from the top of your pots and then another maybe 12 to 18" above the bottomone.
 
Not a whole lot to report today. I've noticed something cool since getting my new 3500k qb's. The plants under them are more vibrant than the mixed 3000k/5000k boards. I'll never order anything but 3500k moving forward. It's just a beautiful spectrum the plants seem to love. A lot!
 
So my new RO membranes arrived today. Installed them both and shot out 35ppm. What the fuck, right? Well I have a 200gpd model and ordered 150gpd filters. Idiot. Then I went to order the 200gpd filters and found out I was still ordering wrong. The 200gpd model uses 2 membranes on the water saver model I own. Those membranes are each 100gpd. 2 comprises a 200gpd capable unit. For fuck's sake man. This is why it's important to get ahead of the game on things like this. A stock of fresh filters should always be kept on hand. Otherwise you end up like me ordering the wrong shit, returning that, ordering more filters, waiting for shipping again, and repeating the whole dam installation process again. Good times eh? I always say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Something tells me I need to take a little of my own medicine.

Now the saving grace here is the 100gpd filters are about $20 cheaper. That's solid. Now something weird happened when I reinstalled my original dow 100gpd membranes. The fucking thing is spitting out 0ppm water now. What the fuck again, right? I'm still going to keep the proper 100gpd membranes coming from ebay to keep on hand. As soon as it starts spitting out more than 0ppm again I will swap the membranes. I truly can not understand why removal of the membrane and reinstalling would cause a difference in output tds. Why argue with a good situation though? Just strange man. I think I'm going to order a stock of DI resin to keep on hand too. In bulk it's super cheap. Buying just a small amount they rape ya pretty good on price.
 
What carbon filters do you like more than ac infinity? I'm looking to upgrade
Traditionally the phat or phresh filters have been pretty incredible. I don't think I ever had to replace either one of them. Used each for 5+ years. Super effing heavy man. They stuff a lot of carbon in those puppies. If I didn't have reinforced tent frames (secret jardin) back then the dam filter would have bowed the bars easy. I opted for the ac infinity filter this time because this was an unplanned purchase and I didn't want to shell out the cash for a quality phat or phresh filter. Next time I will though. I hate equipment that requires frequent replacement, but sometimes the cheaper price is the deal maker depending on whether the purchase was planned or not. Make sure you match your CFM ratings to the filter. Phat and phresh I believe have several different iterations of the 6" filter. You must match the filter to your inline fan's CFM rating or the filter will not work.
 
Today is plot planning day for the next veg cycle. I'm running 6 gorilla glue #4's, 3 big buddha cheese, 2 blue dream, and 1 jager. I let go of gg#4 a couple years back and I've regretted it ever since. I haven't been too impressed with critical mass and maui is getting a little stale. I've ran it for nearly 2 years now. It's time for some fresh genetics.

I'll clip clones tomorrow and fire up the clone tote. Light speed ahead. I'm observing something interesting with the plants under the new 3500k qb. They seem to be looking better than the plants under the 3000k/5000k mixed chip qb's. Moving forward I'll be ordering all my qb's in 3500k. I'm fairly impressed by the difference.

Nothing too major to photograph today. Just some seedlings joining the vegging plants. I use to germinate in paper towels between plates, but I have had no problem planting seeds directly in the soil. It's all about preparation. I use happy frog and water all of the cups before I add the seeds. I let it drain off. Dump the soil back out on a tray because it gets compacted after watering for the first time. I add it back which leaves a fluffy consistency rather than packed. I use a little micro screwdriver to make about an 1/8" hole in the soil. Place the seed in there tip pointed down. Cover up with a very lightAttach files amount of soil. Toss it in the humidity dome and typically 9 out of 10 break through the dirt. I feel that handling the seeds once germinated is poor practice, but to each their own. I did it for years, but no longer feel it's the best method for me. I'll be applying once last dose of forbid 4F tonight as it's been 4 days since the last application. Tomorrow and then every 3-4 days for 2 weeks I'll be applying venerate CG and grandevo CG in rotation. These are all organic products that work very well as additions to your IPM regimen.

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Apparently I got mites from a clone I accepted from another grower. I'll never do it again and I would recommend you do the same. Let them keep their bug problems in their garden and out of yours. In any event the problem is being handled with some nasty heavy duty pesticides. The plants are in veg and will be for another 7-10 days. Once I enter flower I'll begin rotations of a safe organic pesticide every 3-4 days based on leaf inspections through to harvest. It's really all you can do. Run your IPM routinely and get through it. Sanitize the room afterwards. No pest strips will kill everything nearby with a fumigation. They must be used properly and safely and no plants or people should be present. 4 day fumigation and nothing in that room will be alive. Ventilation for 2-3 days with heavy duty inline fans. Wash the walls and floors with 10% bleach. Asta la vista cocksucking mites.

The flower room is shaping up nicely. I'm a bit behind schedule but getting things on track quickly. I've got godfather OG, maui waui, jager, god bud, blue dream, and critical mass running this cycle. The godfather might not make the cut though. She's the one quarantined with mites presently. If she isn't 100% mite egg free by the 12/12 flip she's getting tossed in the trash. It's a shame too because she's a stinker.


Here's a pic through the observation window of the godfather OG on the left after I massacred it with a leaf strip today. It's a real 50/50 whether she's gonna make it into the flower room right now. Time will tell soon enough. That's a bruce banger on the right. Not a chance she's going in the flower room. Too small. I'll let her veg another cycle. Sorry about the poor quality. These shots are through the green observation window. Didn't feel like popping the locks off.
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I've got 7 gg#4 fem seeds going, 2 big buddha cheese, 3 blue dream, and a variety of cuttings. Godfather OG, maui, jager, blue dream, critical mass, and god bud.
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And the flower room getting ready to rock:

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That monster up there is critical mass. I've gotta defoliate her tomorrow and strip the shit below the canopy. Also a little topping to even the canopy out again.
 

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Looking great.
I'm sooo jealous of the room.
Tents serve their purpose, but that kinda space would be so much better. I'm guessing you're happy with the Ali boards?
 
Looking great.
I'm sooo jealous of the room.
Tents serve their purpose, but that kinda space would be so much better. I'm guessing you're happy with the Ali boards?
Thanks man. The space is kind of a blessing and a curse at the same. I've gotta spend several hours in there nearly every day to keep things on track. Endless branch training and tying off as things grow. Defoliation that seems to never end. Cleaning is an endless merry go round. As flower really gets underway it seems like I'm endlessly making, depleting, and cleaning reservoirs only to repeat the process over and over again. I'll be in there for 3-4 hours tomorrow just working that monster critical mass. I'm absolutely not looking forward to that shit. She's huge. I miss my tent days. Life was easier :)

I really love my 'baba lights. The 3500k spectrum seems to perk the plants up noticeably more than the 3000k/5000k chip arrangement on my other boards. I've gotta do some more observation to confirm but I'm very happy I went with the 3500k chips so far and plan to order 2 more 660w boards to max out the room. 3500k is supposed to be better for flower but also capable of growing from veg to bloom so I'm looking forward to seeing how they perform when the 12/12 hits.
 
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