New Grow in a Box!

Peace to all. I wish the Dead would tour again-anyway I am transplanted to the great North West and I am looking to see if the following will be the best set up? This is also my first indoor crop.
Grow Box 4x4x6-Air Cooled 430 with a SonAgro bulb,lined with mylar. 4" fresh air at the bottom of box(intake) and exhaust out the top. I am thinking of using just a 4" duct fan for the light and a circular house fan for inside the box.

Will I need more suction to bring in fresh air? Do I need a 4" duct fan on the fresh air intake and for the light? Is the heigth of box enough? Comments/tips for heat,humidity and growing in the Northwest is greatly appreciated? I can change things on the box also as I am handy. :thumbsup:

The dimensions sound fine. I'm a new grower, and I initially bought a 4" inline fan, but found out that for my grow box it was just overkill, and is too noisy. So I'll just be using it for odor control now and then. For air intake/output with a growbox, all you really need are some computer-type fans. Try to find some with cords or power adapter, bghydro sells some. What I did was got four cat litter box air freshener things at Target, which have small computer fans in them. I removed the computer fans and attached them to PVC piping, two for the outlet and two for the intake. The fans are quite weak, so it would be a good idea to get the type that bghydro has, although these are bigger so it will be more of a challenge to attach them in a manner that allows for the light to be blocked.

for a 430hps your probably need a good amount more than a 4inch exhaust. hps puts out alot of heat. in my 2'x2'x3' box with 150hps i have a 180cfm exhaust and 4inch inline fan for intake. now that might be a little overkill but my temps are always the same inside the box as in the house because the air doesn't have time to heat up. pc fans work for small boxes with cfls or maybe a 70hps but you will need alot more than a pc fan for a 430hps

i second what justaseed just said. I just put a 4inch exhaust fan in my closet (rvk fan- closet about 130cm-60cm-210cm). It does make a bit of difference but not much, i still cant close doors fully even with the fan running. Well not if i want my 400 watt light about 8 inches from my tips. temps with door closed gets over 30c which is bad. looks like i must buy another fan too.

i like the 4inch fans for intake and even circulation but i always use a more powerful fan for exhaust.

id love another one but im too poor to buy anything and they aint cheap.
unless anyone knows of somewhere where u can get good fans cheap??!!

i got a 180cfm kitchen exhaust fan from home depot for about $50 and mounted it on the back of the box. you can get 70cfm ones for like $12 there too! if you just mount them on the back or top of the box and connect some 4inch tubiing to the exhaust so it loops around a couple times you get a lightproof exhaust fan without much trouble at all

Thanks justaseed I can use that out of the box info. I have read many grow books but it is always cut and dry and kinda expensive. My buddy waws telling me maybe about cutting down the size of the box to a 3x3x6 due to light? What do you think? What do you think about the number of plabnts to run? Thanks to all I will try to get some pics and keep the journey going.:dance:

that sounds ok. word on the street is that 400 watt lights cover 3x3 max -if u want goodness. U really dont need it to be 6 foot tall either dude. If ur plants get too tall the lower branches wont get enough light and u will get crap buds down below. in a 6 foot box u could get plants 5 foot tall, when 3 is more than enough. I may be wrong but i doubt u would get any more yeild from a 5 foot plant indoors than a 3. If u boxed off 18 inches or so at top you could have a chamber for cuttings/seedlings as well. just some thoughts dude.....

Cool information I may be going for the overkill. I want it to be successful. I will keep it low. You wouldn't happen to know if there are any advantages to putting your seeds in like a 3 gallon container and growing to harvest do you?

ummmmm as far as my limited knowledge goes..... i have a mate who went to horticultural college and she says it is better to start with small pots but the reason she gave me didnt make much sense (to me). she said something about if the roots have too much space to grow into they get confused....!!!??? i think she is confused (hippychick, lol).
i wouldnt put my seeds straight into a 3 galloner for a couple of reasons: first when plants are young you have to be careful about how much water and how often. 2: its so much easier to manipulate little pots than great big uns but i guess this only matters if u ever have to move ur plants!
transplanting isnt hard though dude (not when the plant is small anyway).
check out the FAQ's and other threads for more info and maybe if ur lucky someone with more experience than me will tell ya the best ways of doing things and why also!
hope it all works out dude!

I don't think a 430 watt light is enough for that much space, personally. That's 16 square feet (assuming the 6' dimension is height). That light would cover a 3x3 area, but even then, the periphery would not get much light in comparison to the center. Light drops off proportionally to the square of distance, so double the distance, one FOURTH the light. Triple the distance, one ninth the light, etc. A 1k light would be ideal for a 4x4 area. What you could do, though, is section off your box for now and create two 2x4 areas, and use that light in one of those areas, and add a second light later to the other area. Or sell that 430 later and buy a 1k light, although I would personally just add a second 430, so that you have some equipment redundancy, and you're not totally screwed if one light fails.

For my (flower) box, I went a little overkill and got a 6" 440 CFM fan, which I have speed controlled down to where the noise level is tolerable. And this fan is up top, at the exhaust area. For the air input, I just left it passive, using two 8"x8" Doran darkroom filters. A 4" inline centrifugal fan would be enough though, even for your box (which is twice the volume of mine), but again, I'd use it for an exhaust fan and use passive intakes. I don't really see much reason to have active intakes - just complicates things, more stuff to fail, unnecessary expense, more lightproofing hassle.

It's better to graduate your pot size as the plants grow, which requires transplantation. I understand laziness though. What I do to maximize laziness is start with styrofoam 16 oz. cups (which are easy to razorblade down the side to extract the soil mass), then transplant to 1/2 gallon square containers, then one final transplant to 4 gallon square containers. So that keeps me to just one transplant that's in any way a hassle, and even so, it's not a major hassle. Ideally, it'd probably be better to have one extra round of transplantation in there between the 1/2 gallon and 4 gallon containers, but again, I'm lazy. ;)