Lil Roach builds a flower room

Instead of just running the grow room build on my normal thread, I'm opting to make it a stand alone thread. I'm not sure I'll be offering anything new here, but it can be a guide to someone that is considering building their own 4'x8' grow room.

I'm building this room with the option of running CO2 at some point in time. This involves a room that can be sealed (putting a ceiling on it instead of using the basement ceiling), and the option of having the lights cooled with both the intake and discharge outside of the room. I will be going with non-CO2 to begin with, and later down the road adding the CO2 and air-conditioning. So in the beginning the same fan that cools the hoods will also be my exhaust system. Intake will be passive.

I first looked at grow tents and found that the biggest complaints of tents are the zippers crapping out. From my experience with zippers while tent camping, I have a disdain for zippers to begin with. I also prefer a door vs. flap that has a lock on it. My landlord knows I grow, but I don't want him to be able to see how much I'm growing. A lock will also slow down rippers and will allow my surveillance system to call me (more on the camera system in a different thread).

I'll be lighting the room with two 600w HPS lights and hoods. I'll post the links to these in a future post.

Here is my pretty accurate cost list. Every time I put a list together I'm off by a bit....but this is pretty close:



I'll be posting progress pictures as I go. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to chime in.

And so it begins.

Here's my starting point. I'm putting the new room where I had built shelves only 2 years ago. Part of the negotiations between the wife and I is that I'll relocate these shelves elsewhere in the basement.



And down they went.



One thing I'm going to have to figure out is how to reroute my current flower room's intake fan. It's not a thing of beauty, but it has constantly run for about 2 years 24/7 and did a great job getting cool air into the room. If you can't tell, it's a desk fan that I taped a few pieces of 8" ducting to.



I'm also going to have to put an access plate in the ceiling of the new room to be able to get to the outlet I'll be using to power the room. If I didn't go with some sort of way of getting to this plug once the room was built....it'd be pure hell if somehow it became un-plugged.



One thing I have to consider is the height of the new room. My original plans were to have it around 76" tall that would give me a little wiggle room between the room and the basement ceiling. That would be a good measurement until realizing the door is 80" (81.5" needed for a pre-hung door). I can either go with a 83" room and it'd be tight, or chop the height of the door to fit a lower height....or do both.

Getting wood.

At my age, "getting wood" only means a trip to Home Depot.

One thing I'll be doing that will make life much easier is to have Home Depot make some of my cuts in the particle board. Considering that my "poor man's pick-up" is my 1993 Caprice Classic station wagon with a tailgate that recently has decided not to drop down anymore (I can't put my wood in the back door....double meaning intended), and the fact that navigating a 4'x8' board down into my basement with it's many tight corners is a pain in the ass and my back, I'm having all the sheeting cut into 2' strips.

The 2'x8' strips are easier to carry and navigate, and easier on my back. I also have limited room to work in the basement and these cuttings will help. I'll just "splice" them together as I build each wall.

Here's a (not to scale) layout of the basement for those that like this stuff:

You might be able to gleen something from mine...

https://www.rollitup.org/search/2757483/?q=Thoughts&t=post&o=date&c[title_only]=1&c[user][0]=875648

As my back starts talking to me as I haul 16 2x4's and 14 2'x8' pieces of particle board out of the car, through the kitchen and down the stairs....it's saying "Why the hell didn't you get a fucking tent?"

I had no good answer. I'm now praying to the Vicodin Gods to allow me to move again as I'm stuck to this chair.

I'm looking at all this wood, boxes of screws and assorted tools and the phrase:

"Some assembly required"

runs through my head.

I'm going to build this thing in a modular style since I really don't have much room to work in the basement. While I don't have the specifics of how I'm going to do this, it's my idea to build it one 2'x80" section at a time. There will be two of these sections on the left and right walls, and four along the back. The front will be built once the other three walls are complete and it'll frame the pre-hung door.

I'm going to screw together the framing to the particle board and then attach each section as I go. I'll be using 4" strips of particle board to "splice" the two foot sections together, and along the back there will be a centered two 2"x4" support boards.

I'm going to attempt to build this thing away from the basement walls and move it into place before finishing the front wall. The outlets for exhaust and intake will be pre-cut before assembly. There will be a center beam for structural support and will be where I attach the hoods.

I'm thinking I'll be using 6" flanges (the same flanges used for carbon filters) to attach the flex venting to outside of the room.....I'm still debating on this.

I'm babbling now....the Vicodin has kicked in.

It looks like I had better get a move on with this grow room project as my kitchen is filling up with parts and pieces including a couple of computer parts orders.

The hoods, clamps, and insulated venting have arrived:





I'm off to the basement to start this build. Let us pray I keep all my fingers.

Meet Buzz.

I rescued Buzz the cat from spending the rest of his life in a trash heap as that's where he was heading when cleaning out the basement for this project. He looked at me with is starry eyes and I just knew he was meant to be the mascot for the new grow room.



With Buzz's watchful eyes, he oversaw my start on the new grow room. Here's the left-side wall:



The flange at the bottom right is the passive intake port. I'll be attaching about 8' of flex ducting that will be low and on the floor behind the shelves to be as far away as possible to the exhaust....and will be drawing from the coolest part of the basement.



I've added blocks of wood at about 5' from the floor for the clamp fans to attach to.



Here's the left half of the back wall. The flange here is the optional intake if I want to go with CO2. I'll be blocking it off when using the passive intake.



It appears that my work meets Buzz's approval.



I planned on working until the cordless drill's battery dies....but dammit, it's got a good battery and I quit before it did for the night. I figured I'd stop while I haven't hurt myself too bad and will save that pain for tomorrow.

So.....if you've been reading this thread up till now you're probably saying "Man.....he's got a lot done in one morning....including a shit-ton of typing and picture taking"....you're very observant.

This project started to take shape about 3 weeks ago and I have this thread started on another grow site that I copy and pasted here to this point to get everyone up to date of my thought processes going into today.

From here on in it'll be real-time posts.

The only real challenges I've had so far is the shitty 2x4's that Home Depot has. I spent 1/2 an hour picking through the pile to get the least crappy boards.....and that was from their so-called "premium" pile. I would guess that I had to look at 8 boards to find one that barely was straight. I can't imagine building a house from that crap.

I'm glad I had the particle board split down the middle as maneuvering in close quarters has been a challenge too. I know the "splices" will not win any awards for being attractive, but I don't think that the plants will care.

bravedave said:

You might be able to gleen something from mine...

https://www.rollitup.org/search/2757483/?q=Thoughts&t=post&o=date&c[title_only]=1&c[user][0]=875648

Click to expand...

Nice grow room my friend! I'd kill to have a barn to build something in. I too am in cold country (upstate NY) and would build something very similar to what you've done.

My basement, with the help of my original flower room's venting into it, is really never cold. Last winter when it got below zero outside I had to open the heating vent to the basement and it never got below 70 degrees.

My biggest concern is heat. With my original grow room when it got to be 90 degrees outside temps in the flower room were in the 90's too. This was caused by "heat loop" where my intake would draw in the warm air discharged by my exhaust and heat up the air even more. The intake and exhaust were about 15 feet from each other, but it still happened. I just switched my lights-on to run at night and that helped.

With the addition of the second grow room I may have heat challenges as I'm doubling the number of lights. I have a few options:

Run the two flower rooms opposite light cycles.
Put a portable A/C unit in the basement to cool the common area.
Only go with one flower room during the hot summer months.
Make this the time when I opt to go with a CO2 set-up and have an A/C unit in the second flower room.

Last summer heat wasn't an issue since we didn't get that many 90+ degree days....the summer before though we had a 3 week stretch of 90+ degree days and it was a challenge.

My late father loved to do woodworking....and probably was one of the things he missed most once his Parkinson's kicked in.

After his passing I inherited some of his tools, and it's a rarity that I have had a chance to use them. During this project I found his wood clamps to be of great use.



In true form, I followed my father's ability to cut himself while working with wood.



This is what it looks like driving a screw about 1/2 an inch into the palm of one's hand.

I'm a true amateur compared to my father though.....he had many visits to the ER when working with saws, and even knocked out the power to about 200 homes when he fell a tree onto a major power line. To hear him describe it "The whole sky lit up!" He quickly loaded his chainsaw and boogied. To this day no-one knew what he did.

The sections to the three walls are completed. I'll be joining the left and left-back wall together to form a corner, and then do the same for the right side. I'll then put the two halves together. The front wall will be built one cut at a time once I get the door.

The whole thing about building something in bit's and piece's is that tolerances can make or break a project when putting these pieces together.

Considering that I abide to "measure once, cut twice, throw away the board and try again" ideology (I always buy extra wood because of this), and my tolerances are exact plus or minus 1/2", and if someone with OCD were watching me work their head would explode, the odds of this coming together are slim.

So the moment of truth arrived. Putting together two halves of the room.



At this point I'm pretty convinced that there's no fuckin' way these two will fit in the space. I had to break out the 10 ounce persuader (AKA hammer) to budge it a fraction of an inch at a time....."No fuckin' way!" was my chant as I kept going.......until.....

Vola'!



OK.....it actually fit! Now the moment of truth.....are these walls standing square? I'm envisioning the top of the walls being about an inch off the bottom and more use of the persuader will be needed....So I put the truth-teller (AKA level) to the walls....







Close enough for government work!

There's more tweaking to do to get it perfect, but it's now time to smoke a fattie and call it a day.

I think your total cost is wrong?

LOL.....Me too.

I put the ceiling/roof on the room. It's so nice to have things come out as I plan. According to the roof, the room is perfectly square! I think this is a first for me!

I didn't get the door yet....there was 60 mph winds that day and there's no way I was going to attempt to carry it alone from car to house.....did that once with a piece of 4x8 piece of plywood and it got away from me in the Home Depot parking lot. Thank God the owner of the car it banged into wasn't around to see it.

So I'm on a temporary hold until I get the door as I'll be framing around it instead of framing it before hand.

I do have to ask advice.......

What do you think about my using the same fan/ducting that will cool the lights in the new room to vent into the original room as an intake for that room? With 400 CFM pulling air through the lights they shouldn't warm the air too much....thus not warming up the original grow room too much???

I really have to give each flower room their own names instead of new/original. I'm open for suggestions on that too.