My pimped out, fully automated 4,800K watt set-up

ok so I jsut went and finally cleaned the basement up and refinishing my rooms so I thought what the hell, I'll post up some pics. Also, there was another guy looking for advice on a "real" grow room set up. So here is what around $7,000 in grow gear and ALOT of time and effort look like. Like a fuck load of effort.

OK folks.. here is the no frills DIY veg tent. Pretty basic, I have two 600 watt batt wings or whatever the hell the super expensive non AC cooled reflectors are. They DO throw alllot of light in a VERY wide pattern though. The heat is a real bitch though. I have a single 6" fan pulling heat off the bulbs. The buckets you see are 18 4 gallon DWC buckets. and my mini veg post clone veg DWC tub.





pretty basic stuff. I start with around 26 plants in the tote, then take the best 18, then cull down to 12 after about 3 weeks.

Now here is where all the effort goes in.. the flower power room.

The central rez is on the ground outside the room (tote on floor) the tote on top is a auto top off system controlled by a float valve. When I fill both up I can pretty much leave it the fuck alone for about 10 days.

The cooler and frankenstein looking thing are my water DIt dehu chiller. I can express how fucking awesome this thing works. yeah, you buy your $400 eco-piece of shit. This thing cost me $110. The water in the cooler is continuously being pumped through a stainless steel coil in the rez. Twice a night the dehu turns on for 30 minutes. It chills the water in the cooler to around 55. The rez gets down to around 65 in about an hour.



Total of 5 ballasts on 220 circuit powering 6 AC hood. In order to save about $60 in timers (and sync them all, and use a shit load of outlets--the timer only has one outlet). I wired a 220 plug and ran that wire to my outlets where the ballasts plug in. All the ballasts use standard plugs so I made sure to write 220 all over them to avoid frying something...or more to the point..my wife frying something.



Now into the room... YES, it is cramped. But this thing isn't about comfort its about growing weed, and allot of it (allot at least for a guy with a full time job and two kids). We have two rows of 3 super sun II hoods over the top of two rows of SCROG screen. Each screen is 3.3' x 10'. I have two 6" Tjurlund inline fans with direct routing to the outside.



Each screen rests above a total of 6 plants in 4 gallon DWC. The water in each bucket is maintained by a an ebb/flow bucket. it automaticcaly tops off all the buckets when the get low. in addition, and this is probably the coolest thing,three times a day it empties all the buckets into the rez (timed to happen after the chiller has run its course) and all the "old" nutes are mixed with the "fresh" nutes in the rez and then 15 min later they all get filled again. PRICELESS.

Its a DIY bucket from...ummm, those guys that sell them.. Aquahub! It, like all my buckets, are wrapped in panda film.



Here is a picture of one fully trimmed up and getting ready for the flip in about a week. These are vegged for around 4 weeks I think. maybe 5?



And on the business of keeping everything running correctly...and auto-fucking matically.. we have a CAP XGC-1 controlller that I basically have running the inline fans, a back up emergency cooling fan (outside air), and my co2 generator. Keeping things at a nice 83 degrees during veg and early flower to 75 in later flower is my 18,000 btu mini spit. (thing is such the bomb!). Two circulating fans (one fixed up high) and one oscillating on the plants keep shit moving on that end, I have another oscillator on the other end of the room.



(the emergency temp controller is just a 6" inline fan connected to the outside. In case for some reason the AC breaks down or something gets completely fucking sideways, the CAP will turn the fan on at 87 and stop co2 production until temps get down to 84.

green fan in top right..

And lastly..we have the co2 burner. Which is little more than a tankless water heater off of e-bay. Cost me $160. When Co2 is low, the CAP unit turns on a pump sitting in a 50 gallon barrel full of water outside. The water flows, the burner turns on expelling 99.6% co2, and the heat of the burner (about 70% anyways) is carried by the water out of the room and into another 50 gallon barrel ( they are connected).


Oh yeah, probably the best personal grow room purchase ever.. a $20 stool on rollers from harbor freight. Just low enough that I can sit and scoot around and trim and tend to the plants.



So that is what $7,000 of grow shit looks like. I pull around 5-6lbs out of that room per 8 weeks depending on veg times and preventing and calamity from striking like mold or spider mites.

Nice setup man .. I wish i had the room to do something like that.

Nice good luck on that and hpe you post up some results

Im not seeing 7k in equipment but nice set-up...Also if ur in colorado ur waaaaaaaaaaaaay over ur plants numbers...lol 3 plant limit what a joke...

three per person. Wow, that a bummer. But no, I'm not over my limit. I actually have a spread sheet with all the costs, it is a gnats ass under 7k and I didn't factor in many of the miscelaneous expenses, or bulbs. You wouldn't think it would add up that quickly but it does. hell that CAP controller and split AC was $1,800 alone. A quick list:

7 dimmable lumatek digital ballasts, 6 AC hoods, 6 digilus HPS bulbs, 6- gro lux MH bulbs, 2 adjust a wings, light rail, 4 6" line fans, 8" booster fan, 10" booster fan, two 1110l/h air pumps, CAP XGC-1 controller, 50 pint dehumidifier, tankless hot water heater, high pressure-low volume water pump, 3 oscilating fans, 4-40 gallon totes, two ebb/flow controllers, two 55 gallon buckets, 30 4 gallon buckets, 4 different small water pumps, stainless steel wort chiller, 50 feet of airhose, 40 feet of 1/2" and 3/4" water line, chloramine water fiilter, 1800 BTU split AC, shit load of net pots, 100 liters of hydroton, extension cords, 60 amps 220 fuses, 10 gauge romex wire, 220 timers, bunch of 110 timers.. shit man I should update my spread sheet. I forgot a bunch of stuff. LOL

^^^^ hahaha... I know your pain... I for sure see over 7000$ in equipment not to mention time and food to do the work! I had the same setup but now that winter is here in Colorado I went vert the ac kicks on more but the production is up alot already more chunk down low... Love my tankless heater thanks for that thread months back saved me money when I went from bottled
Oh and to the poster referring to Colorado if you are a caregiver coop ing with others you can grow as many as you have patients for so I heve 15 peep so I can do 45 in veg and 45 in flower... So ya know if you get a lawyer the sky is the limit here too....

you bet. Its getting cold here at night as well, I think that I may adjust the temp settings on my outside air fans so that when it gets to the upper limit of where the aircon is at it doses the room with cold outside air. Of course it will exhaust all the co2 and the burner will kick on again but I think in the end it will save me a little AC expense. Its a 13 seer unit so its pretty damn efficient but at times it hard to sleep at night knowing that I'm running a big AC in the middle of winter

^^^ yup I may try running a 8 inch exust fan then split it to 2 6" and run 20 feet of it out and back thru the cold and see if it makes a difference . I think I saw a thread about this a year back ...I can run it back in thru the old holes for the light a/c.. Hope it works may save on all expences

Hmmm, not a bad idea. Actually a pretty fucking good one. You won't have any problems with condensation either as it would be condensing on the outside of the pipe.

I wonder if you could run the air through some sort of radiator of sorts? very interesting. Going to think on that one.

I was just wondering if I build a hard plastic grid to pump air thru or bury and pump air thru boost it on the way out and still save money on power... I hope I can build one that is efficient enough to be worth the time .

I was thinking that you would want something made of metal that both ends of the duct connected to. If the metal object was bigger than the ducting then the cold air would help displace the heat. Just a big heat sink of sorts. However, I don't know how you would connect the ducts to it without losing a bunch of airflow.

Its probably not worth the effort really. I'm not sure how much heat you will lose with just ducting but you will loose some. The biggest thing I did to reduce heat loading is to duct my dehumidifier exhaust out of the room. I just made a big cone of sorts and taped it to the dehu exhaust and the other end to a duct leaving the room. I didn't think it would matter that much but JESUS, it was heating the whole basement!!

Tried to send you a PM but your inbox is full. Just wanted to apologize to you for coming off like an asshole in my thread. It is really not my style to get into with people. Nice setup and best of luck on your grow bro

no problem. perhaps you ran out of meds?

legallyflying said:

no problem. perhaps you ran out of meds?

Click to expand...

Rough week, all is well now

woohoo... im subbed up for this one.... been awhile.... lets get an update,, damn... porn,PORN!!!!!

Dam! I wish they had basements in Cali.... That shit would bee full..... 7k can be hit pretty quick and not look like much...... I know.. I went way over that.. Good Job!

hey legally I don't know if your subbed here but does your air still get dehumidified as well after the mod? I am thinking of doing the same

Lol. No it actually doesn't. About two days after doing that mod and taking pictures I was laying in bed and it dawned on me... You stupid fuckhead, how are you drying the room if your exhausting all of the drier air out of it? Total and complete brain fart on that one.

So now I'm just using the split AC and since it is too cold for bugs outside I have a blower set to blow outside air into the room for 5 minutes once every 40 min or so. Just reduces the load of my AC unit a bit.

Coming up on harvest in a about two weeks. At this point I'm a little disappointed on size. Went for a super long veg thinking monster colas but that doesn't really seem to be the case. We will see what the next couple weeks hold as it is the bulk up time

Hey joe, did you ever set up your "Air chiller" ducting thingie? I talked to some of the engineers at work and they said that having a spiral or something instead of straight runs would college air inside the duct better due to more turbulent air movement. They also said that you would want to make sure to bend a dip in the end before it comes back into the room and put a few slits in the duct so it could drip-spit out the condensation that would form inside the pipe

Yeah I did one run with it. Seems to have helped but mice want to nest anywhere the tube spirals outside . I am working on fitting all of my ducting in a boxed areA except the in an out. Then blow cold air over it may defeate the pourpose ... I just expanded and am working out the kinks... Being all vert in a huge room is pretty cool I am up to 7000 w mixed in a 10-18 room .. The colas close to the lights are huge...