$7000 Budget - 3000 Watt Basement CGE Setup

I am about to start a grow in my basement. This will be a legal Marijuana grow as I am an authorized medical patient. Hope to start construction in the next week or so. I can legally grow 60 plants since there are 4 authorized medical patients involved in this grow.

The size of the area I will be working with will be a 8' x 11' flower room and a 5' x 6' veg room. These rooms will be connected so it will make it easier to share co2 and filtration.

My plan is to use 3 x 1000 watt HPS w/ a Magnum XXXL 8" AC reflector for my flower room. I am upgrading the bulbs to the Hortilux brand for both HPS and MH. For cooling I'm just gonna pull fresh air from outside, through my lights, and exhaust it outside through my basement dryer vent.

Light Setup:

http://www.gchydro.com/Magnum+XXXL+Reflector+and+Lumatek++-+1000+W.html

Carbon Scrubber setup: I plan on having another scrubber and fan just filtering the air inside my grow tent since I want to have a CGE setup.

http://www.horticulturesource.com/c-a-p-custom-automated-products-can-100-combo-w-8-high-output-fan-p9051/?osCsid=b92890f7f9e00a2fb3da8cb5e3adce19

I've decided to start with soil in 5 gallon buckets with drain tables underneath to make flushing easier. Hope to setup a reverse osmosis filtration system with a drip feed setup on a timer.

If needed, I will pick up a 12,000 BTU Portable AC Unit that I plan to use with a climate controller.

C.A.P. Climate Controller:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290468176785#vi-content

Anyone with any suggestions or questions feel free to post. This is my first grow, and I am eager to learn as much as I can.

Hey I'm sorry if this post gets you excited from a response but I am not an experienced grower like that lol... But best of luck to you man. It seems like you know what your doing and have done all your research this post is way above my head but hey in a couple months if its up and running come post some pics of your setup i would love to see first hand what youve constructed. I had a 1000 budget and ended up with a CFL / Tube light 4x4 mini plant station. I just want 1-2 oz per plant 6 in the setup.

Personally, I think you are better off going with 5 x 600w hps over 3 x 1000w hps. You will be able to cover more space that way. The Magnum XXXL should be a great hood to go with, I plan to upgrade to one in the near future.

Check out greners.com, they have great prices on most of the stuff you'll need. Good luck

My first thought is you'll never be able to exhaust a room that size through a dryer vent. And it will be pretty hard to get good light coverage of an 8x11 room with 3x1kw lights.

I don't want to go the 600 route because I am planning to eventually have 4k watts of light in my flower room and because it will be more cost effective. Keeping in mind that I plan to have a bigger grow space to work with in the future.

Good point on the dryer exhaust not working. Decided I'm gonna exhaust the air up through my floor heater vents. I'll just have the setup as: basement air - canfilter - grow lights - exhaust above into house.

3 1000 watt lights 30 plants in 3 gallon pots, go soiless sir. good nutes and u will luv the results.

I actually want to scrog my plants. I was thinking more along the lines of 6 x 5 gal buckets per light. I am hopefully gonna figure out a system for a perpetual harvest.

MedicalJay said:

I actually want to scrog my plants. I was thinking more along the lines of 6 x 5 gal buckets per light. I am hopefully gonna figure out a system for a perpetual harvest.

Click to expand...

Shit, if you've got 3000 watts of light then no need to do a scrog. With that much light and that much of a budget I'd be going for big donkey dick buds with bag appeal.

Anyway, if I were in your shoes I'd try to start smaller. Save some of that cash until you've got a grow or two under your belt.

Wolverine97 said:

My first thought is you'll never be able to exhaust a room that size through a dryer vent. And it will be pretty hard to get good light coverage of an 8x11 room with 3x1kw lights.

Click to expand...

i notice you are a pessimist when it comes to everyone else.

a 1000w bulb can easily do 6 feet 6 to 9 feet 9 at the smallest end that is 36 square feet x 3 = 108 square feet, 9 feet x 9 feet is 81 square feet x 3 = 243 square feet his flower room is 8 feet x 11 feet = 88 square feet absolutely no problem, stop talking absolute crap you are starting to get to me, and have you not heard of climate control.

WeeGogs said:

i notice you are a pessimist when it comes to everyone else.

a 1000w bulb can easily do 6 feet 6 to 9 feet 9 at the smallest end that is 36 square feet x 3 = 108 square feet, 9 feet x 9 feet is 81 square feet x 3 = 243 square feet his flower room is 8 feet x 11 feet = 88 square feet absolutely no problem, stop talking absolute crap you are starting to get to me, and have you not heard of climate control.

Click to expand...

How so? That's only a bit over 34 watt/sqft, and each light in a room that size would have to cover an 8'x3'8" area which is not ideal. If you had them all on light movers it would be fine, but yeah...

it looks to me like you on the right track and i do agree 3000 wil be a real good start for your room. I run 3000 ina 7x11 room, there just lined up down one side leaving me room to work on the other. i also agree w/ mongo frog go with a soilless medium there much easier to work with and controll your feeding ect. have you picked out your co2 producing unit for a cge you need a solid co2 system. Check out tankless water heaters, theres a couple threads here on it. I just installed one and for less then 500 bucks I'm compleatly setup and it f'in rocks perfect co2 at 1300-1500 ppm all day.in just two days i can already see the plant loving it.

mrduke said:

it looks to me like you on the right track and i do agree 3000 wil be a real good start for your room. I run 3000 ina 7x11 room, there just lined up down one side leaving me room to work on the other. i also agree w/ mongo frog go with a soilless medium there much easier to work with and controll your feeding ect. have you picked out your co2 producing unit for a cge you need a solid co2 system. Check out tankless water heaters, theres a couple threads here on it. I just installed one and for less then 500 bucks I'm compleatly setup and it f'in rocks perfect co2 at 1300-1500 ppm all day.in just two days i can already see the plant loving it.

Click to expand...

awsome man. the 3000 watt set ups r great. how do u have your lights set up? in a line or 1 centered between the 2?

there all in 8 inch cool tubes in a row with 10" between each fixture. so they cover a 11' long by 4' wide row, all cooled by a 650 cfm fan, straight in straight out.

bajafox said:

Personally, I think you are better off going with 5 x 600w hps over 3 x 1000w hps. You will be able to cover more space that way. The Magnum XXXL should be a great hood to go with, I plan to upgrade to one in the near future.

Check out greners.com, they have great prices on most of the stuff you'll need. Good luck

Click to expand...

^^^^ What he said.

sup wolverine

OldGrowth420 said:

sup wolverine

Click to expand...

Wassup mang? Haven't seen you around in a while.

Your going to have a hard time keeping the room cool with 3000 watts and no a/c

I apologize for not updating this thread.

A good friend gave me 5 clones of Skywalker OG! Amazing bud, look it up (Exclusive to Southern California). They have been in veg for about 6 weeks. I am still in the middle of clearing space to set up my flower room.

I use Canna and I use it sparingly (I just now worked my way up to half strength) since I know the most common mistake for beginners is over-use on the nutrients.

Just a couple weeks ago I transplanted them into 5 gallon buckets with soil called roots organic formula 707 (Smells like shit)

I topped my plants as well as super-cropped them (I am amazed by the results!)

I ended up going with 2 x 4' 8-bulb T5's for my veg.

I also built my own aeroponic cloner, which I will post pictures of shortly.

I ended picking up 2 x 1000 watt lumatek ballasts w/ Enhanced Blue Spectrum HPS Hortilux Bulbs
2 x Magnum XXXL 8" AC Reflectors

A couple CAN fans and a CAN Carbon scrubber.

It's funny how many times I've changed the layout of my grow room. I'm glad that this week I will finally start construction of my flowering room.

More pics to come!

Plants look good. Those are gunna bud out nice under the 1000s. Lots of colas w/ the supercroppin. Sub'd

Gonna put my plants into flower in about a week. I just cut several clones off of the plants because they were getting too big. I finished my aeroponic cloner so I can start up the next batch of clones.