McTokers' 3rd Grow ~ Hempy Buckets

[MerryPrankstr]

Subscribed, McToker and wife!

M.P.

[McToker]

Welcome MP.

The babies quite enjoyed their first dose of nutes. The BA's doubled the span of their leaves since yesterday. The WH's leaf tips no longer point toward the ground. They point straight out from the stem except for one that still has a very slight droop.

I should probably confess. Yesterday I had a brain fart and inadvertantly gave them a 1/2 dose instead of a 1/4 dose. I suppose all is well as the instructions on the nutes actually call for 1/2 dose for seedlings.

We ordered more toys yesterday. I love tax refund time. Even though the A/C unit has a digital thermostat, it only controls whether or not the compressor kicks in. So, the fan is always on. This was making it a tad bit chilly at night. The A/C instructions claim that if power is cut off, when the power resumes the unit will automatically return to the last settings. We experimented by puling the plug rather than just turning it off. Sure enough, when we plugged it back in, it went to it's previous settings. So, we ordered a plug-in thermostat to control the A/C unit. We also ordered a couple sets of the Yo-Yo style light hangers. And, of course, we ordered the power converter mentioned in previous posts.

[McToker]

Started adding Sweet to the nute mix today.

Current nutes:

CalMag = Full strength
Grow = Full early vegging dose
Sweet = Full vegging dose

[McToker]

Started adding Sweet to the nute mix today.

Current nutes:

CalMag = Full strength
Grow = Full early vegging dose
Sweet = Full vegging dose

Correction: Grow and Sweet are at full "seedling" dose.

[caregiver420]

I've been lurking for a bit now and decided to pipe up and congratulate you on a job so far very well done. I can't wait to see how it goes. :hippy:

[McToker]

Thanks and pull up a chair caregiver. We're a bit anxious too.

We did some rearranging in the "room" yesterday. It gives us much better access to everything.

Pic 1 = The new arrangement. The flowering tent is off to the left, just out of view. The portable A/C unit is behind and also out of view. The lights are usually much lower but happened to be raised for feeding time. The digital thermometer on the left is the room temp and humidity. The thermometer on the right is the canopy temp. In the flowering tent we just run one unit for humidity and canopy temp.

Pic 2 = The BA's.

Pic 3 = The WH's. The one on the far left is a bit deformed. We'll just let it go and see what happens.

Pic 4 = The AK.

[McToker]

Moved up to vegging doses on nutes and every other day on watering.

The deformed WH is looking worse, poor color and stringy growth. We were going to let it go but are leaning more toward just culling it out. The other two WH's are doing well.

[McToker]

The babies were very thirsty after their first time of waiting 2 days to be fed taking an entire gallon among them.

Got the light yo-yo's installed yesterday. Why did I wait so long to try these?:thumbsup:

Yesterday afternoon it finally got warm enough for the compressor on the A/C unit to fire up. No pun intended. It sure sucked the humidity out of the room in a hurry. It dropped from 60% to 27%. We broke down and turned on the humidifier and brought it back up to 40%.

[McToker]

The power converter arrived so I hooked it up and did some testing.

What won't work:

The portable A/C unit when the compressor kicks on.

The Lumatek digital ballast (250 watt).

What does work:

The Vortex 4 inch fan.

The flourescent lights.

Incandescant lights.

Room fans.

Humidifier.

:wtf::wtf::wtf:

I admit that I am somewhat below genius level when it comes to things electrical. But, here's what I think is going on. I'm sure some of the electricians on the forum will correct me if my thinking is in error.

The converter takes a 30 Amp (240 Volt ?) dryer outlet and converts it to two 20 Amp 115 volt outlets. Both the portable A/C unit and the Lumatek ballast need a 120 volt power source according to the specs on each device and the converter is only putting out 115 volts.

Fortunately for our grow, I have other power sources in the room. I plugged the A/C unit back into the outlet I had been using and then fired up the HPS light in the flowering tent, also plugged into an existing outlet. After the light came up to full power, I cranked the thermostat down on the A/C until the compressor kicked on. WooHoo!!! No problems at all. So, we'll just run the A/C and the HPS on the existing 120 volt outlets and run all the other stuff (humidifier, flouros, room fans, etc.) on the new 115 volt outlets.

It's not what we were hoping for but it will work.

[headshake]

you need to worry about the amps that those devices pull. current is what carries the power, so all the volts in the world won't help if the current isn't there. this is how tazer guns work, all voltage, minimum current. it's the current that will kill you. it only takes 0.1-0.2 amps to kill you. hence tazers advertising 100,000 volts.

that 240V (or 208) should be on a 20A circuit breaker. so if you split it you know have two circuits on the same 20A cb. hope that helps.

on another note, i got a couple of 1 gallon buckets to try my hand at hempys again.

hope all is well with you are yours!


-shake