New Cab and Lighting Question...Redtails, DutchPimp, Bones and others chime in please

Hey folks,

For Christmas, I received a new cabinet. Its a utility cabinet that fits in the garage without standing out. It 72" high, 48" wide, and 22" deep and all white inside and out.

Today I bought some additional CFLs and a fixture to put in it along with some T8's with fixtures. The idea is to mount the T8's vertically on each side with the CFL's mounting on a hanging platform from up above.

The T8's are Phillips high color rendering, 48 inches long, 32 watts, 6500K bulbs X 4

The CFL's are 100 watt, 26 actual, 1600 lumens each, 6500K X 16

I'm hoping this will provide a lighting system that supports vegetation form the sides and underneath as well as above without the higher heat temps from an HPS system. Bear in mind I will not be growing more than four to six floor plants at a time. I'm still going to mod it to use an high (100 0r higher) CFM inline fan and a passive outlet and thinking about lining the inside with mylar just because...

Thoughts, Input, Guidance? I'm very excited about the new cab and assembling it all tomorrow!!! A Pothead with a new toy!!! WoooHooo!!!

sounds good...:thumbsup:...all you need now, is some kind of cool air intake at the bottom and hot exhaust hole at the top. Must have a fresh air flow.

Check the temps, before starting the plants.

Good Luck...:jointsmile:

Hey Dutch,

Yeah I'm using a 150 CFM inline fan at the bottom and a passive oulet at the top through a series of bends to control light leak. I'm going to caulk the inside of the entire cabinet so that there isn't any odor or light leak, and decided to use flat white paint instead of mylar on the inside.

Tomorrow is build day, and hope to have it all finished and tested for light leaks, temps, and so forth before I put some freshly sprouted ladies in it tomorrow night....

How are you doing? Having good holidays over there? Wish you the best and will post when finished building!!!!

Happy Christmas and Merry New Year!!!

I would put the fan at the top; exhausting, pulling cool air from the bottom intake...:jointsmile:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dutch Pimp

I would put the fan at the top; exhausting, pulling cool air from the bottom intake...:jointsmile:

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I can see that making sense, I thought a fan pushing would be more efficient and effective. I'll try that.

Hope all is well in your neck of the green forest..... Merry New Year!

Sounds like a hell of a lot of CFL's, I wanna see PICS!

ditto... i think that you are gonna have some kinda major heat problems man..
cfls put off more heat/watt than HID systems.. you may have to put a fan off the 'light board' blowing across the CFL's to keep heat from building there... they are gonna be close to the tops.. i assume.. and that means the heat is gonna be closer than if you had a 250w HPS. and the HPS would have way better light penetration.. but it you are set on the CFL's just vent the board somehow and you should be fine in my opinion..
-J

Sounds good to me. You have any sort of circulation fan going in there? Like to blow on the plants, thickens the stems and keeps canopy temps down too.

That's a crapload of cfl's I must admit, you could even set up two levels and do a perpetual grow/SOG setup. Bottom level(24-36") has the mother plants and rooting clones under the t8's & maybe a couple cfl's & the top (24-36") has the flowering clones under the cfl's. Reason I say that is because while the cabinet is 6' tall, it's less than 2' deep so it'll get so thick in there & block the bottom from getting light if the plants get too tall.

I second DP's idea for the fan on the exhaust idea also because of smell. If you use it as an intake, then anywhere the cab's not airtight it will leak the odor out (positive pressure). When you hook it up to ducting as an exhaust it allows you to route it somewhere else so it's not stinking up the whole room...then if there's any leaks they are sucking air in and not letting smell out (negative pressure).

What a great x-mas present you got! I feel like it's my present by proxy, can't wait to see it set up!

Thanks for all the input... I'm putting all together at the moment, and ventilation is definitely going to be an issue, the last thing I need to be doing is making brownies in my cab.

I'm thinking about you suggestions and I'm going to try to incorporate all of them:

1)I'm gonna cut 4" hole at the top, use a 4" 90 degree bend into a 1' section that goes into a 180 degree bend and add a homemade carbon filter, filtering the exhaust and stopping light leak. I'm going to put the same thing at the bottom without the carbon filter for intake, creating a negative pressure effect. This is going in my garage so I'm not worried so much about neighbors....

2) try different mock setups for the lights including Red's idea for seperating this into two different chambers.

3) I'm caulking the seams of this cab to eliminate any possible light/air leaks.

4) I'm going to put an oscillating fan inside to help with heat and move the plants around a little to strengthen the stems as suggested. If I can, I'm going to put a smaller one to cool the "light board".

Let me get back to the garage and finish putting this together:)

the putting together is always the best part man.. have fun..
:thumbsup:
-J

Sounds sweet dude.

I used something like 12+ CFLs in a much smaller cab than yours and I was able to keep the temps at a solid 72.0f. As long as you have a good fan pulling that hot air out you will be fine. Looking forward to seeing pics.