PC Grow Box, CFL, SCROG method in JAPAN

Hey all, I've just hollowed out an old desktop that I'm not using anymore. Going to attempt to use it as a grow box. I've read other people's posts on doing this and it looks like fun. I'm aware that it won't yield much, but hopefully this SCROG thing helps out a bit. Couple of obstacles I have to overcome are getting good lights in Japan, the highest CFLs I've found at the stores are 21W. I'm probably going to order from 1000bulbs.com; 2 105 watt CFLs. One for vegging and one for flowering. Trying to keep it low budget so I won't be ordering and shipping over any nutrients. There's some stuff that people use here on their gardens that might be similar, more research will be done on that. Also gotta try and figure out how to mount the lights and fan in the computer box without taking up too much space. I need a bit of help choosing which strain to buy. Any advice on that, or anything else about this grow would be greatly appreciated. This is only my second grow, first one a balcony lowryder grow. That didn't go so well, but learned a lot. I'll post as many pics as I can as I go along. Thanks again for any advice ya'll have.

Hey man. I am right now in the prosess of building a stealth speaker-grow. I have done a speaker grow once before aswell... I´ll have somewhat more space than you to play with, but i have learned alot about growing in very small spaces .

Firstly, how big is the cabinet? Is it one of those big ones, or a normal one?
Is this a stealth grow? And if it is, how will you deal with the smell?
I guess fan noise is not a problem, seing as this is a PC.

100+ watts in that small a space will produce quite alot of heat. I had a 60w cfl in my speaker and and heat really was a big problem. So big infact, that I could not get the temps under 35 Celsius, even with fans. And this severely hindered the growth and lowered the quality of the buds.The main problem for this was the carbon scrubber. But your space is even smaller and with almost twice the wattage. On top of this the bulb will get very hot. I burned the entire top half of my plant because the bulb fell down on in. It will fuck up all plant material in the near vicinity. I learned this the hard way. Think of how sad this situation was for me. Just a couple of weeks to harvest, and all my buds go up in smoke, without me being present... Horrible lesson.
The "safety-distance" the plants have to keep away from the bulb, is pretty space consuming. In order to deal with the heat once and for all, I would deffinatly get a cooltube. I just built my own last week for about 50 bucks using a vase. Attach a fan inline to this cooltube, and the heat problem should be solved. I cant guarantee that the plant can rest against the cooltube, but it should be close. That would depend on the fan and thickness of glass perhaps. The cooltube will free up alot of space inside the PC, allowing for a bigger plant taking advantage of getting closer to the light. You know, the inverse-square law and all.

Then you need to get some ventilation going. Here you could consider a carbon scrubber, if smell is an issiu.

Ive seen some posts around the web where dudes with sick training skills can tame a plant like a bonzai, making it look like a work of art. Some almost seem to have nothing but buds growing from the pot. I have no experience in doing any training, and not much either in strains. My best guess would be an autoflower of some sort. If these are small-strain autoflower, maby you could even have two of them. But again, i dont know much about strains and such, so I dare not say more.

Thanks for the reply lavamuffin. I won't be growing in a cabinet, just a PC box. It will be kind of a stealth grow, I'd like to keep it as stealth as possible. My wife isn't very keen on me using a closet (even though we just bought a house and we've got a ton of closets to use). She will know about the PC grow, but I'd like to keep it low profile for when guests come. Thanks for the advice about the lights, you probably just saved me $60 on bulbs and $40 on shipping. I will definitely rethink the lighting situation. I will research that "cooltube" idea, but if i can't make one, what would you recommend for lighting in such a small space? Sorry to hear about your misfortune with the plants burning up, that must have sucked. smell could be in issue, I've done a little research on building a carbon scrubber. First I have to finish putting together the PC box. I gutted the whole thing, so now I have to put the fan back in. After that I'll see how I can build a carbon scrubber around it. I'll post some pictures of my empty PC box. Thanks again for the reply. Have you got a grow going on now?

I´m building my speaker grow-box as we speak, and expect to start growing in a weeks time or so. I finished a grow in the same speaker a month ago, and in the process I learned alot. You can follow the build here; https://www.rollitup.org/grow-room-design-setup/460153-stealth-speaker-grow-setup.html

I found that the secret of a good microgrow-box is lightning and cooling. The cooltube deals with both of those issues.

If I were to use a cabinet such as yours, this is how I would build it:


I imagine the fan could be a 80 - 100mm in diameter, and i would wire the fan in such a way that it turns on and off when the light does.
The box should have some additional ventilation that runs all the time.

Now remember, that all the air going through the cooltube is never in contact with the pungeant air inside the box, therefore this rather large airflow does not need to be scrubbed, which really was a revelation when building my box. It makes air-scrubbing and ventilation so much easier, and independent of the cooling.

Now the type of light to use... When i built my speaker grow, I first tried to build a ventilated hood/reflector for the bulb, so that all the air being sucked out would pass the bulb and cool it down. It didnt take me long to notice that the 60w cfl bulb got alot dimmer when cooled. i then managed to get a hold of a lux-meter, and my suspicions were confirmed. When cooled, the cfl lost about a third of its light-output. Apparently they like being hot, but the plants dont. This probably has something to do with the properties of the gas inside the bulb.
This is why I deffinatly would use a hps - probably a 150w for a box your size.
Hps bulbs are alot better than cfl´s in every aspect. They do not appear to get dimmer when cooled. They are more effective, and thus produce less heat. And the penetration is vastly better.

If you then use some advanced training techniques, the yield could be pretty decent. I´m afraid that I am not the right person to advise you in this subject.

to deal with the smell - get yourself some activated charcoal - small pieces you can order it - put it inside a neoprene bag with small holes in it - you can do this yourself - if you lack the neoprene info: how about a cheap neoprene glove filled with the tiny activated charcoal with holes in it - then hang it behind your exhaust fan.....just an idea -

widow

I just moved back to the U.S from Japan earlier this year, hated not having bud o.0 Good luck with your grow, PC grows ftw.

thanks all for your replies. I'm going to take my time to build this thing and build it right. I fucked up my first grow (lowryders) because I was too excited and germinated a bunch without fully studying and preparing how I'm going to grow them. About the "cooltube", a lot of people say to use this Pyrex tube that has to be ordered on ebay. Are you aware of another material that this could be made out of? BudeeB, where in Japan were you? Yeah Japan sucks for trying to get weed, that's why I'm trying to do it on my own. Thanks again all for the replies and advice. I'll post pics of what I am able to accomplish as I go along.

To all the guys above. Hi, I was searching this kind of active thread for a while, so I decided to make an account here.
I want to grow to, probably in a metal cabinet since its more spacey. The problem is I don`t have any seeds/cuttings. Could some one help me out?

Heatsinkt - check out The attitude - http://www.cannabis-seeds-bank.co.uk/ - been going through these guys for a couple years now. never had any problems and the prices are reasonable. since you dont need many seeds check out the pick n mix section. you can by individuals. hope that helps!