Pics of my 4x4 tent with adjustable shelves and thin LED panels

Hi Everyone,

First post here, but thanks for all the insight you've given while I've lurked around for a while.

I wanted to get a bit more functionality out of my 4x4 tent so I bought a 5 shelf metal unit that lets you adjust the height of each shelf individually. I'm still trying different small, inexpensive LEDs and don't have a clear winner yet, but I have 3 different styles of leds of increasing power as you go up the tray and I think this is going to work out great with a little fine tuning.

My idea was to be able to start seedlings and clones with a low power light just above them and then move the plants up the shelves as they need more room and light. I've always loved fanless technologies and the power output and coverage depth seemed like a perfect use of current low power fanless LED panels. The plants can literally grow right up to touch them without being light or heat burned which lets you fully make use of the vertical space on each shelf.

My 4x4 tent was only used as a vegetative area before and felt a bit limiting, but now I have room to hang my small 400w HPS sideways up front (not pictured) as well. On a 20/4 schedule this will let me veg a bunch of small stuff on the shelves in the back while playing around with a couple taller autoflowers or larger mothers in the front of the tent.



--The bottom 2 shelves use two ultra thin fanless panels from ebay that run about 20 true watts (38W advertized)
--The third shelf uses two fanless 45 true watt panels (120W advertized)
--The top shelf uses a 160 true watt panel with slightly more powerful 1W LEDs than the panels below it.
It still even leaves me a little storage room above the top shelf too

I used wire ties to attach the LEDs to the ceiling of each shelf and they are pretty easy to slide side-to-side to adjust coverage. The total LED power is only a meager 330W, but that should be more than plenty for the smaller girls I plan to grow on the shelves..

Suggestions and comments are welcome and I hope you guys enjoyed my first post here.

First off are you vegging or are you flowering in this set up

It's primarily a veg tent with clones and teens on the trays and it will have mothers or (occasionally) autoflowers the the space in front of the shelf. I'll add a 400w HPS hanging in the front half of the tent when I have autos or mothers in there. The teens in the bottom were just there to see how much light was getting to the floor area from all the shelves.

I made this post because I j wanted to throw out one idea for an easy, low cost vertical setup inside a 4x4. You could easily fit 2 of these shelving units if you wanted with a small "isle" in the middle for access.

You guys like? Any thoughts or suggestions?

Looks Great stephend9! I have been planning to build a similar setup! Thank you for sharing this. I can tell the LED fixtures are really getting the job done! I have yet to own an LED fixture (I'm more of a T5 fan) but this setup has me looking at them again.

Neet set up.
Does.Any of.your lamps have a name brand or some thing ?
And are you going to set up a flower tent for finishing and please please I'm sure curious about your yield .....
Just freeking neat

woah!
we are needing this setups after the comet strike!!

I had the same idea. I had no room for the larger tent tho. looks great. should work well for you. peace

Great idea man. Looks great!

Thanks for sharing gives an idea of a possible grow

I thought I'd post a quick follow up. This idea has been working out extremely well for my veg room and I'd really recommend it.

I will eventually get around to flowering in this tent and I'll try to do a writeup on the experience and the yields then, but I've got too much going in my other grow rooms and outdoors right now to mess with that.

Some of the LEDs wattages were heavily exaggerated, so I hesitate to throw out any brands or recommendations, but the star piece of equipment was definitely the shelf that came from Wal-Mart. They make it in smaller/shorter sizes, so there may be different versions that would work well for smaller tents. Here's the link to the shelf:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Work-Choice-5-Tier-Commercial-Wire-Shelving-Rack-Zinc/44425506

Here's a little feedback on the various lights:
--The top shelf light by Lvjing on amazon was way under wattage and had too narrow a light focus to work well in this setup. It blasted lots of light, but didn't have a wide enough spread to make a shelf usage setup worthwhile.
--The next shelf down had Lvjing 120w panels that only ended up putting out 45w, but they work just fine for this application. I did have trouble attaching them and also thought they weren't really worth the money overall. I used lots of gorilla tape, since there were no easy to use fasteners on top of the light, but the warmth of the LED unstuck the tape and it crushed a few plants, so I used tons of gorilla tape and it's working okay now, but I'm not to sold on them.
--The lower two shelves seem like great low power cloning or young plant LEDs. I bought them in a 4 pack on ebay. Here's a link to the ones I bought if anyone's interested in trying something similar. They were very easy to mount and they only use 20w. They aren't super bright, but I'll eventually flower a couple plants under them just for fun and report back.