What is the single greatest...

What is the single greatest thing you did in your grow room?

Best idea?
Best set up?
Best rigameral?

Anything that made your life easier, or was just so ingenious that you though you deserved a medal, but your girl friend laughed at you when you told her.

I think the smartest thing i did was run a water line into the room to keep from hauling a garbage can full of water around.

probably putting the fan in the attic and the tape the exhaust hose to the vent in the roof... so bad ass. Can barely hear the fan and zero smell (only in flowering though). or putting down poly tarp to cover the wood floors of the closet.

Best idea I had was to get rid of it one toke at a time.

As tech'd out as mine is. The best thing I did was the externally cooled light. ie: getting temps under control.
Cooler temps=happy plants.

BigBudBalls said:

As tech'd out as mine is. The best thing I did was the externally cooled light. ie: getting temps under control.
Cooler temps=happy plants.

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Do you think it made a big difference getting the ballast out of the grow area ? I'm thinking about taking the ballast out of my fixture but didn't know if I wanted to do the extra work but you could probably talk me into to doing it by telling me it's the only way to go after you've done it.

best thing i did was seal off the closet door with sheetrock and installing a 20"x20" vent with lightproof filter in it is place.

now if no ones looking i just slip right in the vent and no ones the wiser


plus ya i put a water line in mine too also installed a flexible clear plastic tube for a drain for my res and ran it into the drain for my ar conditioning system

la9 said:

Do you think it made a big difference getting the ballast out of the grow area ? I'm thinking about taking the ballast out of my fixture but didn't know if I wanted to do the extra work but you could probably talk me into to doing it by telling me it's the only way to go after you've done it.

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No, because the ballast(s) was always in a different area. Went from a pair of 150W HPS 'room cooled' to a single 400W air cooled hood. The pair gave a bit more coverage, but at less light. I think I'm still ahead on light.

But I'm not sure if the ballasts make a huge diff in the room temp, since I never had them in there. But the bulbs sure do. I can keep my hand on the glass for the hood as long as I like. And the top of the hood is room temp.

Now, if you have the ballast integral with the hood on yours, maybe just sealing the hood and ducting it will help?

I feel using non grow room air into the light and exhausting out of the grow room is a HUGE key in keeping temps down. Then you only have radiated heat from the light. Can't escape that.

Best of luck with what ever you do.

best fing i did would prob have to be setting up a bar fridge connected to a fan to blow cool air through the middle of a 400watt hps lamp so i could get it a few inchs from the plants. or when i had my setup in the car with tinted windows so noone could see in a power supply coming from the floor and the air intake comming through the floor. i know thats more than one thing but had a party at mine noone new and cops came around and they didnt pick it and everyone that new were pretty impressed

smokeandfly said:

best fing i did would prob have to be setting up a bar fridge connected to a fan to blow cool air through the middle of a 400watt hps lamp so i could get it a few inchs from the plants. or when i had my setup in the car with tinted windows so noone could see in a power supply coming from the floor and the air intake comming through the floor. i know thats more than one thing but had a party at mine noone new and cops came around and they didnt pick it and everyone that new were pretty impressed

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I've posted this idea before, but her goes again. (though haven't tried it yet)

I pondered the same thing. But then tought of just using the fridge to chill a tank of water. Pump the water through a radiator (car heater core could work fine) And use a fan behind the radiator/core blowing cool air.
I think you would get better bang for the buck and better delta temp. Plus the 12 hours of lights off time will help recoup the water temp.

Add a tee in the system and another rad/core and you can cool the room and light separately.
Temp sensors and valves can adjust which needs to be on too.

Air to air is behind water to air. Kinda why cars aren't air cooled anymore. (that and EPA regs)

hmmm never thought of that i thought of using the engine a/c but would cost so much in petrol or to hard to just hook up to power, next time i need to do this i will try do it that way instead, dont need to do it atm since dont need stealth atm

smokeandfly said:

hmmm never thought of that i thought of using the engine a/c but would cost so much in petrol or to hard to just hook up to power, next time i need to do this i will try do it that way instead, dont need to do it atm since dont need stealth atm

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no no no LOL.

The car heater core is just the small radiator in the passenger compartment that uses the engine cooling fluid to heat the car. (but we want to use it to cool our rooms/lights)

The fridge is closed, and chills the water inside. Pump the water to the radiator. Fan blows across the radiator. Cool air out. If the pump is in the tank, its probably silent (stealth)

No cars, no petrol.

best thing i did was make the door into a bookshelf so its like a secret entrance. I cut 2 books in half so that i can hide the door knob

o i see wat ya mean now lol so u would need a pump aswell?

Shit,ive done a ton of good things,its hard to pick the best thing as all the upgrades ive done were huge improvements to my situation.

Installed dedicated power lines for lighting.

Removed all ballasts from room by making custom leads from the ballast to the light hoods.

Put all lights on light movers.

Installed AFCI breakers "not the same as GFCI" for real fire protection.

Installed water lines .

Installed Air conditioning.

Built a room for dumping untreated dirty air into so it can be treated with ozone before going out the carbon filters & exiting the building.

Next step will be to install cool tubes on all lights but im dreading tearing the lights down so im in no rush.

panhead said:

Shit,ive done a ton of good things,its hard to pick the best thing as all the upgrades ive done were huge improvements to my situation.

Installed dedicated power lines for lighting.

Removed all ballasts from room by making custom leads from the ballast to the light hoods.

Put all lights on light movers.

Installed AFCI breakers "not the same as GFCI" for real fire protection.

Installed water lines .

Installed Air conditioning.

Built a room for dumping untreated dirty air into so it can be treated with ozone before going out the carbon filters & exiting the building.

Next step will be to install cool tubes on all lights but im dreading tearing the lights down so im in no rush.

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Wow thats a lot. I am moving my room. I just polyed and taped the whole thing. Its taken a while. I am just about to run my dedicated electrical lines. I think i too am going to run two lines, one for lights one for misc. I am trying to decide whether i should buy another cool tube or get a reflector that will hold both my hps and mh. I want to use both alternatly throught the grow. ALSO i am heating my canadian basement with the cool tubes. I am trying to decide where to vent the room. I don't want to go RIGHT outside the window, its too close to my neighbours. Think i will start a thread about duct length.

I'm alot like Panhead. I've done alot of upgrades and all the time I'm
thinking of how I can make something better than how it is now.

One thing I'm proud of is stumbling upon how I setup my ventilation
system and how it creates Co2.
Let me explain how my grow is setup.
Each part of my system is a different cabinet that I built.
My cabinets are entirely sealed as also the room that they sit in.
My flowering Cabinet is approx 5 foot wide, 3 foot deep, and 7 feet high.
My vegetation and cloning cabinet is approx. 4 feet wide, 2 feet deep,
and 6 foot high.
My Mother cabinet is approx. 3 foot wide, 2 feet deep, and 4 feet high.
My bud dryer cabinet is approx. 2 feet wide, 2 feet deep, and 3 foot high.
All of my cabinets sit in a 12 X 10 room that I built.

Outside of the flowering cabinet sits a air purifier with variable 300 CFM
fan that cleans the air with hepa and carbon filter before it enters the
cabinet.
My mother cabinet has a carbon filter connected to a 90 CFM filter that
is exhausted into the flowering cabinet.
Inside the flowering cabinet is a huge carbon filter that is connected to
a 265 cfm blower that acts both as an exhaust for the flowering cabinet
and at the same time it acts as an intake for my vegetation cabinet.

What I stumbled upon was that fact that all the clean carbonized air
that's inside my flowering cabinet and also being exhausted into my
vegetation cabinet creates Co2 inside my vegetation cabinet. I don't know why, I think
it has something to do with all the activated carbon. The PPm's hover around 1500-1900.
My vegetation cabinet has a 265 CFM blower that ventilates to the outside.
My bud dryer is lined with cedar and stays all the time. It has a 60 CFM
intake and a 90 CFM exhaust that circulates the air inside the entire
room and also it gives off a sweet cedar smell inside my the room.

Like I said before there are a ton of things I'm coming up with for my grow room.
But the one greatest thing I can say is my ventilation system.

Right after i got my 1000 watt hps temps were near 90 degrees with the lights on. Since I wired my own ballast i made the cord long enough to be able to put the ballast in a different room. This dropped the temp in my 6 x 10 room by 3 degrees. Then I was lucky enough to find out the bottom clean out to my fireplace is actually in the closet of the grow room. Now I'm pulling enough cold air in through the chimney that the temps around 75-81 degrees F. Other than saving a few hundred on my light setup by not buying a kit, thats about it so far.

titanium3g said:

Right after i got my 1000 watt hps temps were near 90 degrees with the lights on. Since I wired my own ballast i made the cord long enough to be able to put the ballast in a different room. This dropped the temp in my 6 x 10 room by 3 degrees. Then I was lucky enough to find out the bottom clean out to my fireplace is actually in the closet of the grow room. Now I'm pulling enough cold air in through the chimney that the temps around 75-81 degrees F. Other than saving a few hundred on my light setup by not buying a kit, thats about it so far.

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Yeah well done on the fire place clean out. In my old room that was what i was venting out of. Plastic on the fireplace up stairs and all summer vented out. Worked great for keep unwanted odors way above ground level.

...and now for something completely different;

My room is very small, very very short. I was getting a sore back bending over the plants to train, trim, etc. I found an old, padded chair, took the legs off ans squeezed it into my grow closet. My back thanks it every time I sit down.

Small change, but I enjoy going in there so much more now.

Spicolli said:

...and now for something completely different;

My room is very small, very very short. I was getting a sore back bending over the plants to train, trim, etc. I found an old, padded chair, took the legs off ans squeezed it into my grow closet. My back thanks it every time I sit down.

Small change, but I enjoy going in there so much more now.

Click to expand...

Yeah i am just moving out of a room where i had to stoop over. I had a foot stool in there that i would sit on. It was very cozy under the stairs. I am not sure how i will make the new room have the same feel. Maybe i will hang up some pictures. Hey theres an idea. Someone should make pot posters on white reflective poly so your room can be stylish and functional. Maybe i'll do that and then post it in this thread later.