Some Crawlspace Action

Hello :jointsmile: This is my first post and my first indoor grow.
Ive tried a few times to grow outdoors, but I really didnt know what I was doing so it always came out like crap, except one time, I got lucky.

This time Im planning everything out from the beginning. Ive read tons of your grow logs hoping to learn from your mistakes :smokin:

Im starting my veg chamber in a crawlspace attached to my apartment. Its 9x4x4 but I only plan to use 5x2 of that, in the tallest spot of course. The floor is made of unevenly spaced planks and any drippage through them may cause spots in my downstairs neighbors ceiling so I layed down a 6x4 piece of pond liner to stop that. I will be building 4 plywood vertical walls at 5 feet by 2 feet, and the liner will go 6" up the sides.
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Vaccuumed today and nailed some styrofoam insulation to the ceiling above the growing spot.

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Heres the other entrance to it, this is the one im going to use

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For lighting I plan to use T8's, 4 or 6 of them. I can get a bunch of 32 watt 4100 bulbs for free from work, Should I use them or look for something better?

Looks like a good place to grow man. I'd just get some 4' fluoros and put in there for veg.

Put up some walls in there. 3/8 plywwod painted flat white.

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and have 4 48" T8s

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Now im off to home depot to pick up some longer chains to adjust the light hight. Im gonna grab another 2 bulb fixture too, theres room so why not :thumbsup:

Do you guys think I should get a white floor? Im pretty sure I can get a white tarp for free.

Tonight I start monitoring the temp to determine how much ventilation I need.

That pond liner is only going to protect against small accidental spills. If you get a fairly large spill the water will run under your walls and down. I would suggest that you now get a primary containment tub of some kind and actually have your grow operation in that.

JMO

Good luck with whatever decide. Looks like you are doing real good work. :thumbsup:

PC :smokin:

Looks like you have things well on the way. The temps will be a bit lower with plants in the room in my limited experience. Good luck and happy growing! :jointsmile:

F4i, in the 'so that's what stinks in the attic' thread there should be a couple pics of my own crawlspace.
What I did in there was put down white panda film on the floor, then tack a couple strips of lath down to serve as runners. I keep my plnats in a cheap sterilite bin, one of the shallow kind, from walmart, and it slides easily on the runners so that instead of crawling into the crawl space to water, I can just slide the entire tub of plants out for watering, pruning, maintenance, cloning, etc.
Anyway nice log so far and great pics.
Good luck! :D
oh- you ride? I've got a ninja but a CBR600 f4i is my DREAM bike. mmm.... wiht the yellow and black paint job...

as far as the leaking, just go get yourself a waterbed liner. This will contain any leaking and allow for easy cleanup. It had cardboard sides and is wrapped in vinyl and will hold about 6" of water if spillage occurs.:thumbsup: And they are cheap and come in different sizes.:thumbsup::thumbsup:

heres a link to one i found
Safety Liners

or heres a cheaper one
Waterbed Liner, Standup waterbed mattress liners

I scored a white tarp today thats very thick and durable. My plan is to cut it to a size that will allow me to run it 6" up the wall on all 4 sides. So basically 1 foot longer and 1 foot wider than the box.

I monitored the temp today and the highest it got was 82 degrees. The outside temp was 80 degrees at that point, during the hottest part of the day. We're not going to be seeing too many more 80+ days this year, so Im not going to be installing any fancy air conditioning setup... yet. This crawlspace is attached to a room with a powerful exhaust fan (my smoking room) that vents directly out the roof, nowhere near my neighbors windows. My plan is to run a 5" box fan and dryer hose. I will suck the air out of the chamber and vent it directly into the path of the big roof fan. Also might put another 5" fan just sitting inside the box to circulate air.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stinkyattic

oh- you ride? I've got a ninja but a CBR600 f4i is my DREAM bike. mmm.... wiht the yellow and black paint job...

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I have 2 of them, both beat up stunt bikes :thumbsup:

Stunt bikes eh? So are you the one responsible for hammering on them? Very nice, high five.

That white plastic sheeting was exactly what you needed, now tack down slider rails and get a tray. :D

Nothing picture worthy today.

I got a bag of pro-mix bx, some perlite, and a ph test kit. My tap water is reading about 8.0 so I need to do something about that.

I started germinating some seeds yesterday too.

i have found that if you are strapped for cash or you dont want to spend the money on the commercial pH lower and raiser, you can use vinegar or baking soda depending on which you need to do, for your case you can lower it with the vinegar (white vinegar).

I bought some ph down for ponds, and got it down to the high 6's

My current ph tester is the kind where you take a 5ml water sample and put 5 drops of the stuff in. Im going to spring for a nice meter soon.

All 4 of my seeds germ'd today, so I planted them in plastic cups. So I guess this would officially be day 1. :thumbsup:

I have 2 of my 6 bulbs lit right now, when I start seeing leaves I'll power up the other 4.

Here are a couple pics

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Day 3

3 of the 4 in cups have poked their heads out. I also have another that i just stuck the seed in a jiffy pellet, withotu germinating it first. Its alive too :thumbsup: I have all 6 bulbs lit now, and tomorrow im going to get the plants within a couple inches of the lights

Looking good man. Whats the cubic footage of your space and what lighting are you using?

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Originally Posted by miley

Looking good man. Whats the cubic footage of your space and what lighting are you using?

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2'x4' and I can hang the lights anywhere from 8" to about 2 feet high. I have 3 shop lights, each with a pair of 4 foot T8's at 32 watts each. 192 watts total.

And my last seedling just poked through, within the last hour.

Cool man. What are you gonna do once the plants get above 2 feet? Oh and on the growing space it is 2'x4'x ?. Cant figure out the cubic feet without the 3rd measurement. Let me know.

Peace

Quote:

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Originally Posted by miley

Cool man. What are you gonna do once the plants get above 2 feet? Oh and on the growing space it is 2'x4'x ?. Cant figure out the cubic feet without the 3rd measurement. Let me know.

Peace

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its about 2 feet high with the lights all the way up. when they get that high, im gonna flower them. Im currently building my flowering cabinet, its about 4 feet high.

So 2'x4'x2'? You may want to start flowering them at 1 1/2 feet because they will at least double in size(sometimes triple) by the time they are ready for harvest. Just a thought. I was gonna veg my plants for 6 weeks but i stopped after 5 because they were already half as tall as my total height from light to floor. Dont forget to figure a tall pot into that equation. 1 foot pot + 3 foot plant = 4 feet.

have U thought about trying to scrog them. theres 1 in my sig.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by miley

So 2'x4'x2'? You may want to start flowering them at 1 1/2 feet because they will at least double in size(sometimes triple) by the time they are ready for harvest. Just a thought. I was gonna veg my plants for 6 weeks but i stopped after 5 because they were already half as tall as my total height from light to floor. Dont forget to figure a tall pot into that equation. 1 foot pot + 3 foot plant = 4 feet.

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Theyre going into 6" pots when they outgrow the cups, so that would put them at 1-1/2 max anyway.
My flowering cabinet is hps, so I'll need some clearance from the light. You're right Miley, I need to make a taller cabinet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hydrocannabis

have U thought about trying to scrog them. theres 1 in my sig.

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my flowering cabinet isnt wide enough. it can only handle 2 adult plants currently

Day 6

One looks like it needs some water, the rest look great.

Unfortunately, this grow looks like its coming to an end.

I came home at lunch today and my landlord/uncle's truck was in the driveway. When I walked in the house, the first thing he says to me is "The plants have to go"
I didnt lock my apartment door when I went to work today, so I screwed myself. He says as long as theyre gone in 1 week, he'll keep his mouth shut, so I guess it could be worse. He also says he'll be back to check once a month or so. Man I need to come up with a new plan.

Lesson learned: SECURITY FIRST

that sucks.... gonna be hard to grow now...

Bummer dude. Were they out in plain view or did he snoop around for them?

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Originally Posted by miley

Bummer dude. Were they out in plain view or did he snoop around for them?

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I didnt do a good enough job concealing the light

What the hell was he doing in your house anyway. Even though he's the land lord isnt that still like trespassing?

depending on where he lives, each state has their own laws, however, if it is written in the lease that the landlord can enter the premise without prior notice then theres nothing he can do. Most complex's will have it in the lease that they will notify 24 hours in advance, but thats more of a common curt thing than anything else. The landlords to have the excuse of "it was an emergency due to XYZ was broken and/or needed to be changed" so kinda screwed, but thats part of renting as opposed to buying your own house.

damn thatd a kcik in the nuts.
thats why you have a growing partner. so he can take care of them for a bit if shit goes down.

Hi!! Im back, with a good story.

3 months ago I was forced to give up my plants. I had one friend who had the means to set up a growing space, but he was being a sissy about it.he had 2 plants he was growing on his windowsill already. They were getting about 2-3 hours of sunlight so he supplemented that with a few hours under a 12 watt fluorescent. You can guess how that was going. Anyway, I couldnt stand to throw my plants away, so I brought them to his house where they suffered from the poor lighting. For some reason he wouldnt let me bring my lights over for a month, then he finally gave in.

So we finally grew them under 6 48" cool white tubes for 2 months at 18/6. They took almost a month to recover from their poor living condions, then in thelast month and a half theyve been growing somewhat healthy.

They now live in a crawlspace thats pretty similar to the one they originally lived in, 4x2x3.5 We just took them out into the kitchen for yearbook pics.
There are 5 healthy plants and 2 that are a waste. The 5 good ones are taking up about half of the available grow space right now so we've decided to switch the lighting to 12/12, along with that switch, a slight change in the lighting configuration. I now have 4 48" 2700k fluoros centered overhead and 2 48" cool white fluoros on each side of them. I hear that the cool white end of the spectrum promotes bushyness, so I put those bulbs where they'd get to the lower branches, and the warmer bulbs on the top.

i veg with 4000k cool whites now and iv never had plants as bush as i do these days.


:smokin:

I see you are using the good old Home Depot t-12 shop lights, Can't go wrong with the price $16.00 each including bulbs. I use them for my cloans and nursery.

Yeh I would say they are ready to flower good luck and keep posting

Glad to see this thread is back up and running. Great job on those plants dude. Keep up the good work.

7 days into flowering

One of the unhealthy plants really came back to life after the lighting switch, so the number went back up to 6
We confirmed 2 of them to be males and cut them, one of the healthiest ones too, of course. Down to 4
Also confirmed 2 are females, and the other 2 im not sure yet. I'll have a chance to check again in a couple days.