Short on Bedroom Space? Want to Grow 60 Plants?

Short on space? Want to grow over 60 plants in your bedroom without any closet space or suspicious grow tents? I have the plan for you!

Essentially I ran out of space and needed to expand, and whats the biggest thing taking up space in my room? The bed! So we built a raised bed box! So simple, yet it took me years to put it into effect. Using materials easily attained at a larger hardware store we built one box that is in use and the other box will be in use this weekend. There are a variety of advantages of this setup, including a nice warm bed in the winter (we do reverse cycle, day at night).

Bed #1 is a 4'x6'x4' area with a twin mattress. Bed #2 is a 5'x7'x5' area with a queen sized futon mattress. Even at 5' feet tall, I can sit up fully under the ceiling without smacking my head. The air at the top of room is warmer as well.

For Bed #1, we vent down through the floor and into a basement via an 8" 700cfm fan. The intake is drawn from the opposite end of the basement via a 6" 500cfm fan. The box is sealed, is covered in mylar, and powered with 2 1000watt HPS lamps that are both aircooled. The exhaust is drawn through the open ended hoods. With a planter box setup, there is room for 70 plants but we run 60 because there is a 16"x8" hole in the corner for the ducting. The fans are hung. The room is sealed with neoprene, expanding foam, and duct tape.

Bed #2 is running 2 600 watt digital HPS lights (which putout almost the same lumens as a standard 1000 watt), both 8" aircooled hoods with 6" adaptors. Both these hoods are exhausted with a single 6" 500cfm inline fan and the air inside the room gets exhausted through these hoods as well. Intake is a 4" inline fan around 300cfm. We draw air from the bottom of a window that the grow box butts up against. We exhaust through the ceiling through a heating duct converted into an exhaust. This involved no cutting the floor, something your landlord will enjoy. This is also a frame, then covered in plywood to seal and strengthen.

Building Materials (specific measurements will be up to what size mattress and how much space you want):

- 21' of 4"x4" post (use pressure treated if you dont mind arsenic in your room)
- 4 4'x8' sheets of 3/8" plywood (thicker plywood will seal out more noise but make the entire bed around 400 pounds and a lot more expensive)
- some scrap 7 foot lengths of plywood to take up the extra foot 4' doesnt cover
- 1 4'x8' sheet of 5/8 plywood for the door (needs to be stiffer)
- 24' of 2"x6" plank
- approx 6' of 1"x4" plank for bed slats (more comfortable)
- approx 24' feet of 2"x4"
- Lots of 2"+ screws
- 16 bolts and cylinder nuts (cylinder with a hole through the width)
- 2 5" long bolts with wing nuts to secure door shut
- Type of door insulation

Essentially, there is probably a simpler way to do this that is still strong and maybe even lighter, but I like how solid this setup is and I can dismantle it in about 30 minutes and put it back together. You will need a Skilsaw, power drill, and chiesel/hammer minimum.

Take the 4x4 posts, and cut them into equal 5'3" lengths. Then comes the hard part (already? I know!). I use a Skilsaw to cut a 1.5"x6" rectangle hole into the post that is about 1.25" deep. This will be where the 2"x6" sits inside the 4x4. You will need to do this twice to each post to form corners. The top of my cut is 3" from the top of the post. Then drill 2 holes through each hole, these are where the bolts will slide through. Drill the ends of the 2x6 plank to match. Then drill your perpindicular holes (perpindicular to the length of the first hole you drilled). You want to drill into the other hole, large enough to fit the cylinder nuts. Do this to each end of 2x6. This makes it extremely solid and strong and allows everything to be tightened down but also easily dismantled. Now the plywood will just reinforce.

Take the 2x4 and cut it to fit inside the rectangle made by 2x6. Position it where you want the bottom of your bed to be (about 2-2.5" from the top of the 2x6 works fine). This will hold up the slats that hold up the plywood that holds up your mattress. Cut the 1x4 planks to fit between the 7 foot lengths of 2x6. I use about 10 of them. Then cut your piece of plywood to fit between the 4x4 posts (just some 90 degree corner cuts). Since 4x8 sheets of plywood are not big enough to fit the 5x7, you can take up the rest of the space however you want. To have the least amount of cuts, I have a 1'x7' piece of plywood to supplement the 4'x7' piece. My futon mattress is soft enough that it doesn't mind the couple inches that the 4x4 posts take up inside the rectangle. There is barely any border around the mattress which is what I like, just enough to keep it from moving as the mattrress is 4" thick. The end is against the wall so I dont need a head board. A simple ladder made from dowel and 2 pieces of 2"x4" gets me on top. Then cut and attach plywood around the outside of the bed, seal it up well. I then line the inside with plastic and mylar. The door I make with 4 heavy duty hinges and line the contact points with weather stripping. Its heavy enough that just the weight seals it pretty good, but 2 carrier bolts through the bottom of 2 legs with some wing nuts on the end let you really get it sealed. No light leak, no air leak, hardly any noise.

Finally, I just hang some curtains and tapestries around 2 sides to hide the plywood and it just looks like storage. Its fairly hard to hear the fans too. I will post more pictures as I take them.

The pics are of bed #1, which was built a little differently and more elegantly with a normal mattress in mind.

Oooh baby you're gonna get some nuggets out of that! I like the soil bed SOG you got going! I'm considering it myself after reading an article about Soma's soil beds (they have ventilation for the roots with PVC pipes leading from a layer of hydrocoals to fresh air in the corners)

Wow, dammit thats a good grow area. I really wish I had one like that lol. I'd be growing LR all day :D.

That's just...brilliant! Show us some pics later on, around harvest time, if you can get a good picture of the growing area under the bed with a bunch of buds in the pic. I'm very impressed, and now I'm eyeing my bed. Lol! ;)

loll thats fukn awsome
oh how the mind boggles!