New and Improved: Featuring Sour Northern Lights x Nevilles Haze

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Originally Posted by daihashi

So I moved the cabinet, plants and lights over to the new house. I had to pull apart the cabinet in order to transport it. Which means that the plants will not receive light during their normal 18 hours (well 14-15 hours. They were in their light period when I tore down the grow area.)

I finally got to bed around 4-5am, woke up at 7am to drag my ass to work. I'll put the cabinet together ass soon as I get home and try to put them back on their normal photoperiod. 1 day without light won't force them to sex, which is my primary concern since I'm trying to save a mother plant.

On the upside however I think I'll be able to start flowering very soon. I need to build out an area. I'm going to get a 600 watt hps on order as well as some panda film. I figured instead of building a cabinet I'll just build a frame and Panda it up!!!



I will probably need an additional fan as well as build a carbon/kitty litter scrubber for the room. My veg area will be in my closet with a panda film curtain to stop light from leaking through to the flower area. I will also install green lights so I can go into the grow area during it's lights off period.

I will post pictures of the room before and after I build it out. I'm hoping to spend NO MORE than $1k on equipment, I think I'l be able to come out under $600.

More updates to come, and the plants will restart their regular schedule tonight.

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GOD BLESS PANDA PLASTIC!:D:thumbsup:

well.. testing the temps in the new room/cabinet right now. Unfortunately the temps tend to rise after 4pm here. So I'll have to run my lights to turn off before then. 3pm would probably be the latest I'll want to run them. Right now I am going to leave the lights on and see around what time the cabinet will stabilize around 78 degrees. I will have my lights turn on at that point and run for 18 hours accordingly. Luckily in flower where keeping temps down is more important will be much easier. I could run the lights from midnight to noon and probably easily maintain 78 degrees.

We will see.

I will probably pick up some panda film tomorrow.

ugh.. having major cooling issues in this new space.

Things I need to do that I didn't have to do before.

1. Vent the cabinet either into the attic or out the window.
2. Probably cap off the other end of the cool tube to draw in cool air from the room itself.
3. Install a second inline fan to ventilate the room itself, exhaust it out the attic or out the window.
4. Look into tearing out my walls and installing some batting insulation (as close as I can get to r38 rating. Not sure what's available). And then line the studs with Radiant Barrier foil.
5. Install Radiant barrier into the attic.
6. Possibly install a portable A/C unit in the room.

Last night the best I could get the temps was 83.5 degrees. That was with the house sitting at 73 degrees.

I woke up this morning and the house was at 72 degrees and the room was at 90 degrees. What this means is that the house got very cool last night and didn't need to run at all while I was sleeping. Without fresh cold air coming into the room the temperatures just kept getting hotter and hotter (this is where venting might have helped keep it slightly cool but I question how much cooler.)

Further more I really don't want to keep my house at 72-73 degrees. I would prefer to keep the thermostat at 78-79 degrees.

If anyone has any ideas please let me know. So far I'm going to move forward with steps 1, 2 and 3. Then I'll move forward with steps 4 and 5. Radiant barrier is relatively cheap as is batting insulation.

A portable A/C unit will run me about $350-450 and I run the chance that it will be on ALL DAY LONG. These things pull on average about 880 watts - 1250 watts for a 10,000-12000 BTU model. I don't want to be pulling that kind of power 24 hours a day to try to get the cooling I am wanting. I would be fine if it ran for 30 minutes every hour. That would be 720 Kwh a month if it ran for 24 hours and 360 for 12 hour a day. I think I could tolerate 360 Kwh increase on my electric bill.

The room during the day with no lights on and the house at 78 will actually sit around 77-76 degrees while the A/c is on in the house and while it's off it might creep up to 78 degrees.

The light kills all cooling in the room.

Very frustrating.

If anyone else has any other ideas please toss them this way. I'm open to anything thoughts.

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Originally Posted by daihashi

ugh.. having major cooling issues in this new space.

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Also I decided I'm going to go ahead and buy a grow tent. My outside measured space is 32"x31" (WxL). I estimate the inside measured length to be 28.5" x 27.5".. So just a little over 2 ft. A bit small for a 400 watt light.

I am also going to use a squirell cage fan for the exhaust instead of wasting my other 6" inline fan that I have on hand.

Or since I don't intend on putting a carbon filter on this fan, maybe just a duct fan. This won't be the flower room and all I want to do is exhaust hot air from the room itself.

I will make my way into the attic today and see about cutting 2 holes to in the ceiling to exhaust all this crap.

Hopefully with the grow space, not using wood, and exhausting outside of the room that the cabinet sits in.. hopefully that will help me drop to a MAXIMUM temperature of 82 degrees and a generally sustained temp of 78 degrees.

We will see. I didn't realize how well my last area cooled my grow cabinet. Oh well. At least I'm trying to fix it instead of dealing with it like a lot of people do.

welp.. I just bought a 4x4x7 Hydrohut (new version.. not the crappy outgassing version).

bought some flanges and a few other little things to get all the ducting to work. I also bought this stuff for windows. It's a clear tint type thing; what it does it filter out alot of radiant heat from windows. Supposedly raises the R rating by *UP TO* 90% (key word being up to, but even if it just raises it by 20-30% then I think it was worth the 5 bucks I paid for it.).

You apply it with a hair dryer of all things. I bought two kits and will be applying it to the windows today as well as running my ducting into the attic area.

I will duct the other end (intake side) of the cool tube just to the top of the hut so that way it draws in cool air from the room and not the hot air from the attic.

I couldn't get a duct fan so in the mean time I will use my other 6" inline fan to exhaust the room. This will also be exhausted into the attic.

I am hoping with all these changes that I can get the temps down to around 78 at night and at a maximum peak of around 82 degrees.

We will see. I'll post pics once I get everything setup.

got the hydro hut setup. Actual dimensions are 4' 5" x 4' 5" x 7'. This thing is very big.

I hooked up the lighting and cut a hole in the ceiling going into the attic. I setup the opposite end of the cool tube to pull in cool air from the outside. Temps were automatically 4-5 degrees cooler. Running between 79.7 degrees and 80.5 degrees at a time when the room is it's warmest (around 4-6pm).

I've added a second 6" inline fan to see if I can reduce the temps even further. If i can get it to stay at around 76 degrees then I think that this will be a winning solution. I will take pics of the entire thing when I have the entire setup dialed in.

I am very pleased with the quality of the hydrohut so far. Makes me wish I had bought one from the get go and I highly recommend one to anyone looking to build a decent grow area quickly and cheaply. It is only marginally more expensive than if you were to buy a cabinet or build one. I spent $149.99 locally for a 4.5'x4.5'x7' Tent. It came with a bunch of 6" vent flaps, a few 4" ones, a few holes for me to run cords through it as well as a bunch of intake ventilation flaps (long rectanges.)

I will probably but another one for my flower room.. or buy a smaller one (3x3 or 2.5x2.5 with a 250watt light inside) for my mother plants.

On the agenda tonight will be transplanting all my plants into 2 gallon or 3 gallon pots (I don't have enough 2 gallon pots to go around. I will probably put my mother in a 3 gallon pot).

Pics coming either later tonight or tomorrow.

:thumbsup:

Wow that sounds nice, I have one but yours sounds nicer. Mine is not even close to light tight. Didn't find out until after the fact, not very happy about me not checking before I used it for flowering! I am sure you will, but you should check, unless you aren't going to have any lights in the room outside of the tent. Mine is for veg only, in a different room. They are nice.

Update:

Transplanted 5 of the big plants into their final destination, 2 gallon pots. The 3 smaller ones I've left in their current pots until they get at least 6 inches taller.

With the house at 75 degrees, the hydrohut is running at 76.8 degrees. Not bad. I can deal with running between 76-81 degrees. I will time the lights to run mostly when the room being used is not in direct light.

I need to clean up the room but I will take pictures tomorrow of the entire setup. I need to buy more flexible ducting so I can push the hydrohut into a corner of the room so I can fit another one in there in the future.

I am very pleased to have solved this problem. Apparently my last apartment was so efficient at cooling I had never realized that the space I was using was actually too small for a 400 watt light.

I hope I'll be able to cool a 600 watt efficiently. I'll be ordering a 600 watt light and cool tube very soon so I can start flowering.

Before transplanting I fed the plants as follows:

12ml Canna Coco Nute A
12ml Canna Coco Nute B
6ml Calmag
PH'd water 5.8
10 oz of water each plant

so I checked the temps this morning.. about an hour ago actually. The A/C hasn't come on in some time now since the house is sitting at 73 degrees and the A/C is set to 75.

The temps inside the hydrohut as of 10am are 78.4 degrees. Typically if the A/C is coming on as it should then the temps are about 2 degrees above ambient. I will continue to monitor this temperature situation but I think the bigger grow area combined with installing a second inline fan and venting into the attic has helped greatly.

There was an accident it seems last night though. Apparently the flexible ducting fell at some point from the inline fan. I made the inside a bit tighter by folding ductape into the duct. It was a snug fit after that. In addition the hydro hut has these two bars at the ceiling for a charcoal filter I guess. I put those closer together in order to snuggly hug the duct so it can't fall again. I had to sweep up a crap load of coco and clean the plants as best as I could (I really need a dust buster.)

So far things are looking great in the new grow environment.

:thumbsup:

dealing with the heat situation was a big one with us as well. When I bought that 1kw light my hydro guy warned me about the heat but I blew it off......only to discover the hard way that you HAVE to deal with it one way or another. I remember at one point we had the central air running AND a window ac all going on at the same time just to keep the room at a decent temp. Going to a cool tube and white paint vs mylar solved the issue for us. :)

Love to see a photo of the setup when you can.