So much INFO...where do I even start!

As a brand new grower and someone ready to take this serious you will see alot from me!

I have no budget restrictions and i want an almost purely automated system!

For the last 3 weeks i have been reading, and reading, and reading. and im ready to join in with the community

Last years project was building a fractional reflux still that produced 190 proof alcohol on 1 run! using a stainless steel keg copper pipe 1500 watt and 3000watt hot water strip heaters on commercial dimmers all from sugar,water and yeast and nutrients!. That was fun, and alot of work! But my new hobbie for the summer will be in door growing.

I started off by reading some great threads on here and a walk through from start to finish off what to prepare for work for and achieve with what materials to get the end product. But when i started i figured i would be going hydroponic for faster shorter nutrient rich growth cycles, but it seems like alot of people fall back to soil?

Is soil the answer? My concerns are as space isnt a problem either I want a clone and mother room, a veg room, a flower room, drying room, and a trimming room. My first basic concerns is i dont think soil is right for me so setting up my system with different room for continuous yield all year long im guessing i need an ebb and flow system in both the veg and flower room. but how does one go about transferring the plants from room to room? seems like a basic concern, and what size pots should i be using for 4-5 foot plants? These answers as basic as they are will fire me off in the direction im looking for!

Thanks for your time in reading this, and it will be a pleasure getting to know all of you!

Noalias

If you want 4-5 foot plants you will need some side lighting. Or you will get alot of popcorn buds the bottom half of your plants. And for that size I would say ebb and flow buckets will be best for you. You can get away with it just in the flower room. Just clone and veg in rockwool on a flood table then move to the buckets to flower. Or you can use 2 and just swap the buckets baskets. And the reason alot of people go back to soil is they ether don't understand hydro and the work needed for it. Or it's to much work and they just want to water every few days. Then there are the few that get the wrong info from misinformed noobs on this site. Not everything can be fixed with cal-mag.
I do keep my mothers in soil just easyer for me to deal with. And my trimming room is my front room with the tv. After a few hours of trimming being in a room starts to get me clostraphobic

i wouldn't shy away from soil. it's actually less work for a new grower than hydro can be. soil can also be automated with just a nutrient reservoir, drip stakes, a pump, and a timer. hydro can be a lot more time consuming and very unforgiving on a new grower. any mistakes you make and your plants will suffer a lot more. plus you will constantly be fixing leaks and issues till you get the system dialed in.

if you wanna go hydro then ebb and flow buckets are a good idea but they do have some kinks you need to iron out first. also, mesh bottom pots with coco or hydroton on a flood table is very simple as well.

Im still just alittle confused on swapping the buckets from an ebb and flow from the veg to flower room. I want to take advantage of using different lighting so this is something that is a must in my system.

Am i using the same size buckets in the veg room then the flower room? what size of buckets am i suing? using large buckets in the veg room wont be an issue ?

I recamend this one. Can do 15 plants easy or 18 but you have to watch the water more in late flower.
http://www.sunlightsupply.com/p-13825-flo-n-gro-system.aspx
And the net pot inside the bucket just pulls out and you move it to your other room and system. But like any system there are a few things you will find that need tweaked. But not much.

And your going to need to deside on how big of rooms you want also lighting. How much and what types. Well atleast give a idea.

http://www.weedfarmer.com/cannabis/

start reading my friend, and then when you're done, keep on reading in this forum

there is no one source of perfect knowledge. you're going to find flaws everywhere you go, but that's the merit of this forum. we can work toward perfecting what we do know and share the new things we find.

^ so true. And you know basically what to do. So it is important to find out what not to do. That way you won't ask how to correct alot of things because you didn't do it in the first place. But mistakes will happen they always do.

wow, thanks alot! this system will work out perfectly for me! just unsnap the mesh bucket and move it over to the flower room!!! I remember hitting that site but not seeing this or maybe i did and i just hadnt researched fully at that point so i over looked what could be capable with the mesh inner bucket! so if i expand it to say 18 what kind of lighting would you suggest im thinking LED for the veg state to cut back on power consumption but want to bring out the big guns on the flowering state. Im stuck at 4 x 600 watt for the 18 plants thats 133 watts per plant, i hear the rule of thumb is 50 watts... but i dont want any corner plants being neglicted and there is nothing wrong with an abundant of light! or i go with two 1000w bulbs but i dont think i will be able to cover the area. i want good spacing for room to tie up my plants during the last 2 weeks of flowring.

How much space will i have well really i have a 4 thousand square foot basement completed un finished. i just built my house so the skies the limit im not gonna use the entire basement clearly.

I think ill draw up my floor room grow plan and post it maybe you guys can critic it from there.

i have read and i will continue to read!!! thanks for the link!


Do you know of any automated ph balancing and nutrition adding systems to atatch to my 55 gallon drums. i plan on putting a float in the drum so when the water levels drop my plumbing from house ( which will be from an RO system) will auto fill my drum never needing to top up what my plants drink! but once its topped up my ph and nutrition will be diluted! i was thinking something along the lines of you know how you can buy pressure washers that add soap while you spray your car? why cant i add something that will add liquid nutes while my 55 gallon tank is being filled? i can pretty much fabricate anything if its possible. is there anything on the market that does this already?

i think the best way to do this is by putting a flow meter/counter before my water enters the 55 gallon drum. If its digitized it can be read by a controller. the controller set up on relays can be attached to a selenoide ball valve which then woudl release the nuts into the 55g drum at a specific amount that we can calculate. This way there is never a drop i nutes. Its always consistent and you never use more then you should.


Say my drum is filled at 50 gallons we set the float that it will call for water once it has reached 40 gallons. we then calculate how much nutes is needed for the entire 50 gallons divide it by 5 giving us the ammount of nutes that are needed when water is called for top up. This can be achieved by the selnoid opening for a predetermined time that we can time and measure how much is being released by gravity.

Maybe this needs to go into the advanced forum...

Call me crazy but i built an auto bottling filler for my still that ran on a track. once the flow reach a certain point that filled a 750 mill bottle, it sent a relay to a track i made out of with a 1/3 horse motor and rotated the bottles. thus never having to switch the bottle while my still was running ( these run for 14 hours at a time, with all my temperature probes i was able to monitor the still while watching tv) trust me. nothing more boring then watching drip drip drip for 14 hours!!! and theres nothing worse then coming back to a bottle thats being over filled with 190proof highly flammable ethyl alcohol. safety first!

I use that system. But only run 15 and have 2600w. And T5 in veg. But just to throw this out. If you can afford LEDs to cover your veg area of 18+ plants why would you worry about power bill? That's why I use T5.
There are a few auto systems out there. Just don't know where to find them. And cost isn't worth it for 55 gallons. And I have 2 floats in my res. 1 up top do I can top off on my own. But when I gotta leave I can't use that. It will over flow in 1 day. Filling everytime the system floods. So how I fixed that was flooding the system found my min water level of the res. Added a float there that I turn on when I leave. And I found it only takes 10 min a day to do the ph and nute checks. So if I can't spend that time I'm not spending enough time in the room. Plants need looked after daily anyways. And most of the time lights need moved every other day.

i Think i will try soil my first couple of harvests just to get an idea of growing the plant. what too look for and learn from what i didnt know going into it.. it will be easy to make the switch to ebb and flow... or should i start right from the ebb and flow? again i have never grown anything indoors this is all new to me. But im a super fast learner and really handy my room will look commercial when its done

your right its not just about taking the time of 10 minutes to check the nutes levels, i just like to automate everything.

I'm gonna sk some more questions on about how you rigged up the float, because your right. when the res empties and the system floods, it will call for water.... im not sure how you have that set up.... im guessing im gonna have to check the water levels manually when the its all in the res? I dont understand completely how you did it with floats

if i have the cahs flow for leds why worry about the bill... well in the end the leds will pay them self off with the savings in my hydro bills. not only that i dont want any un needed attention to my hydro usage.... and to think they dont snoop around building my house over the winter i used a 100,000 btu ELECTRIC FURNACE that ran non stop all day to keep heat in my huose over the winter, my hydro bills for 2700, 3200, 3600, 2600 from December to march last year. I got a phone call with a concerned hydro1 employee on the other end. Dont say they dont report suspicious hydro usage in the neighborhood when my neighbors bills are no more then 400 bucks.... Also, i dont mind the upfront costs of the system its the monthly usage fees that will affect me

Yes start cheep. Go with soil. Just to learn the plants. Hydro will be different as in nutes but the plant is the same. You might even find out that growing isn't for you. It's alot more work then your veggie garden. It's not plant, water, cut, and done. That's a mistake alot of noobs make. And the automation this is a good idea but without knowing everything it will be a pain setting up. And not all plants react the same. And I'm always adjusting my nutes to what I see the plants need. So to me just adding or subtracting a few nutes each week is easyer then pulling out the laptop and changing the meters peramiters. And if I do it and make a mistake I know right away. And can fix it how ever is needed even if it's dumping the res and starting over.
Ok let me try and clear the float thing up. I like to do it by hand so I have a float up top drilled into the res. Reason for the float is my RO system takes 30 min to top off 10 gallons and I forget to turn it off sometimes and that saves my from a flood. And as for the one that will top it off when I'm gone. Is drilled at the lowest point of water when the whole system is flooded. So if my water is low it will turn the RO system only during the flood time. And when the system drains back filling the res. the float turns off the RO. The real draw back to that is I don't know how much water is added. So harder to adjust the nutes. But keeps the plants with water and won't burn out my pumps.

Automation is a good thing. But I save that for my lights, AC, dehumidifier, pumps, and fans. But when it comes to my plants and water it's hands on. Even trim lbs by hand. Doing that I know it's right and if something went wrong it was me and I don't need to search for the problem. And power outages don't affect me.