Go ahead and laugh.....

I spent the day installing a new 8" fan to replace my 4" fan. The jury is still out as to how effective it will be for cooling, but I can assure you of one thing, this fucking fan can and will suck a up one of your plants. CYA Goodbye, nice to know you sucka. Check it out....


So I am up in the attic and I am installing this 8" fan. It's a beast to say the least and with all the other work I have been doing to my ducting, ac and what not to perfect my grow room, I have been pretty tired a lot. So as I am installing this fan my normal "lights on" triggers as normal and right on que the fan I was installing came to life. It was a bit more then I had expected but I decided it the best thing to do was to continue to finish the job and get out of the attic once and for all. It was easily 130 up there today. A few minutes later my wife comes home and offers to help. I say to her, perfect timing, grap this 6" flexable duct as I push it through the ceiling. This fan was so powerfull mind you, that any time it came into contact with a solid surface, it would suction itself right to it, just like a vacume only with a 6" line! Ya, sure np she says. I shove the duct through the space in the ceiling and she grabs it, pulls it down towards the floor.

With in seconds she screams out, "Oh shit, shit, shit, shit."
What I say?
It's stuck to the box, she says.
Ya, it will try and do that, I say. It's a pretty powerfull fan I tell her.
No, you dont understand, it's stuck to the box.
Huh?
It's sucking up your plant's.
Huh?
I climb down the ladder and take a look. Where's my plant I say?
The hose took it she says.
The hose took it? The hose took it! What do you mean the hose took it? WTF?????

She managed to lose control of the ducting and some how some way, the damn thing managed to flop right the fuck down on top my littlest plant. It literally sucked the thing right the hell out of the pot and up into the attic. OH MY GOD! Have you ever in your life heard of such a thing? I have lost so many sprouts this cycle from stupid shit like this that is happening over and over and over again.

So what do you think? It's pretty much all done at this point. This is my flower room and is near 100% totally dialed in.

How often would you water a 4" bed of hydroton?

very nice setup very professional looking. oh ya Thanks for the laugh i really needed that.

Very nice. I love attention to detail. Awesome. Perhaps it is not in it's permanent home but you want to move that thermometer out of direct light. Otherwise you are getting an incorrect reading as the direct light heats the panel and plastics in a way that does not reflect true temps.

tell me more Bigsby. In fact I have been leaving the thermometer in that spot and I have been fighting with temps for the last few days nearly none stop. What rules should I follow? I assume root zone water temps are what I need to be measuring here and not the actual water in the res. Thus the remote probe is simply buried at the bottom of the hydroton. Other then water temp I need to get canopy temps so how best to place that thermometer?

For the thermometer...waist high, in the shade from your table. (or attached to the side of your table, out of the direct light)

They do make aquarium chillers. The 1/10hp (many different brands and prices) or even the IceProbe chiller probe would help if water temp is a problem.

actually as it turns out, flood tables seem to like higher temps anyway. My plants are proof. They have never looked greener or grown so quickly once I got everything dialed in. As I was waiting for a bigger fan my temps routinely ranged in the mid 80's in the canopy and 78 to 80 for res temps. The plants seem to like hotter climates and ebb and flow require evaporation to work properly, so I'd say they were made for each other. I only have to worry about temps for another couple weeks anyway. Pretty soon, high noon will have passed and we can get back to normal growing weather.

What Rusty said, as far as the thermometer goes.

I'm a dirt farmer myself so I can't help you with the res temp issues. My only question would be, doesn't stuff grow in that solution at those temps? My comment would be, results are results. You learn a bit with each grow.

Well set up man. Just shows me I have a lot more work to do haha. Keep up the good work.

That's why I posted the pics. I just wanted everyone to see how I was coming along and give others ideas to work with. What you see took me a year to do. I probably have at least 40 hours, perhaps more in total construction time, but it comes in stages. I ended up having to redo much of the work several times over. It's very important to accurately measure things like cfm needs, duct requirements and so forth. It seems to me that most people don't think about these things until they realize that all the work you just did wasn't enough to do the job correctly. That's certainly what happened to me

I made a small revision last night to the room that was just the thing I needed apparently. I redid the a/c line from a 4" to a 6" and also installed an 6" inline fan to draw in more a/c. I'm sure it will be murder on the electric bill, but hopefully I will only have to do this for a few more weeks and then the temps will ease a bit outside. All in all I am very pleased with the results. If I could somehow manage to actually fill the table with clones, then I would really be in business then.

gave me a good laugh lol :)

I've been planning and working on my new basement build for 3 months. I have a lot going on in my life and can only dedicate a few hours per week. I had hoped to be finished by now - framing, ducting, wiring, sheetrocking, and then room setup. I'm only completing the framing... much slower than I thought but at least I'm pretty confident of the plan...

The new 6" a/c is working so well I discovered my root zone to be 67 degrees. It's currently 94 outside. Ya for me!

Great story man, thank you for the permission to laugh before you told it, it made it all that much more fun to read. I could just picture it as it happened, and a wife with the doe in headlights look. Priceless man! :abduct: