Low watt/Hi yield/Tiny vertical grow chamber

Hi fellow cannabinites...

I have done several low-watt indoor SCROG grows, under 126w T5 flouro finished with a 150w HPS.
Yield was not-so-good, I've learned how crucial the timing is with a scrog....I waited too long last time in veg, and ended up with 12" of plants budding ABOVE my scrog screen......OOOPS!!! But in general, I've been happy with the outcome of my low watt set ups.

I've decided to do another project....this one is plastic 55 gallon drum fitted with 6" X 36" rockwool grow slabs. The slabs were trimmed down to 33" and the bags cut for drainage/oxygenation....each slab has five plant sites, for a total of FORTY sites inside the barrel!!!
They are held in place by rain gutter downspout hanger straps riveted in place. Zip ties were planned, but I didn't want to have to cut them and waste them every time I wanted to take out a slab an inspect it or whatever. For now i am planning to hand water the slabs as needed, next time I'll probably do a drip rail and timer set up, but for now I'm just going to do it this way to see how well it works. Of course I have a choice of grow mediums as well, but for now I'm gonna try rockwool and see how it goes. There will be a tube of 1/4" screen that will hold the light fixture and bulbs....for this I've chosen the dual 50w "biaxial" flouros by Phillips. They are 22 1/2" long, so they will penetrate well into the barrel, and no plants will struggle to find light in there. Each bulb produces 4,300 lumens in the 3,000K range....they are basically high performance T5's packed into a long "double" tube design...the "tube" of 1/4" steel screen will keep the plants from actually contacting the bulbs, but will allow them to get within about 2-3" inches of it so the buds can gobble up those rays!

Ventilation will be from a 4 inch "mushroom" vent from the hardware store, mounted in the bottom of the barrel on the inside. The lid of the barrel will hold the lamp ballast (very small) the light fixture and plugs, and will also hold a 96 cfm "snail" fan from hydrofarm, mounted sideways on the lid, with the suction side facing the inside of the barrel over the lamp fixture. this will draw cool fresh air from the bottom of the barrel, up through the plants and over the warm bulbs. I intend to upgrade to 150w HPS for the next grow I do in this, so I'm planning ahead and doing some overkill on the ventilation....flouros wn't cause me any heat probs with that fan, neither should a little ol' 150 HPS.


I will be using 40 rooted clones of skywalker this time around....probably not the best choice, but they were freebies!!!
I kept the clones short, and I am vegging them for one week while they are still in clone tray, but with the dome OFF during that week of veg...to get them used to the new "open" environment with less humidity BEFORE they go in the barrel, and I'll also keep the 24" T5 clone light as close to them as I can to keep them from stretching out. for the clone tray I've used the 24" "Jump start" by Hydrofarm....

I've attached some photos of the work in progress...
I will have more photos soon of it 100% completed....
I will also upload photos of the grow as it goes, and will illustrate any problems, etc for you folks on here.

Happy Growing!!!

That's really interesting. I'm curious to see your lamp. I was thinking flouros sort of defeat the purpose as they usually don't even have reflectors and the ballasts are big and absorb light. Haven't seen any that don't although I haven't really looked too hard. Would be interesting to do stuff like this, I bet you can yield surprisingly well in this setup. Looking forward to the results.

Please come back

Every now and then I see a thread start a project that looks awesome and it does not end up being finished, online at least. I hope you return man.

yea im pretty interested to see how you yield and how they grow... subd

Brilliant!

I agree fucking genius!! You get some rep for this dude! You gotta keep us updated.
My only questions are how much room do you have between your light and grow medium for the plants?
And how many of those "biaxial" bulbs are you planning on using? 2 would give you 8600 lumens which is damn close to the 10000 most people shoot for.

nice set-up and grow plan. + rep

ever thought about putting the slabs on the outsside and drilling hole in the side of the barrel to plant? this would give you more room inside. then you could just do a 400w in a cool tube

but all in all great idea +rep

polyarcturus said:

ever thought about putting the slabs on the outsside and drilling hole in the side of the barrel to plant? this would give you more room inside. then you could just do a 400w in a cool tube

Click to expand...

That's a pretty awesome idea too. Although less stealthy.

Dont under estimate the 150 I got one in a 2x2x5.5 and mys temps with juat a cirulation fan is steady 85

Where are the plants going to grow? Do you intend on flowering in the barrel or is it just for your young clones?

-Dude

Awesome man, Where did u pick up those lights at and for how much? I might do this

Hi cannabinites......yeah I know....it's been awhile.....but I'm baaaack!

The Googlestapo closed my email account coz it got hijacked and was being used to send spam...forgot my password...couldn't recover it....so I created a new account on here...I'm now known as P.H. Downes

So....lots of new stuff to talk about with the barrel project:
First of all, the rockwool slab idea has been ejected for good...first i was hand watering, but all the nutes were wicking to the bottom and starved out the plants on the top of the barrel. So I built a hoop shaped drip rail and experimented with the timer but it was always either too wet or too dry for the finicky little skywalker bitches....

Moving on:
Now the barrel has a 4-bucket recirculating deep water culture system. Works GREAT and of course DWC is the fastest most vigorous growth you can get..
It pretty much smokes rockwool for growth rate and finish time....I put TWO drain/fill ports on the buckets for redundancy, so if for some reason the roots obstruct a port, there is another one...so much less chance of the pots overfilling and flooding out onto the floor (Grrr!) I learned my lesson about redundancy long ago...same goes for the air bubblers. I try not to use just one pump, coz if it croaks, ALL of your bitches croak too.

I used an RV crapper tote tank for my low profile reservoir/control.
The tank holds ten gallons, lays low, and is easy to disconnect and take out to the garden for the plants outside
Inside there is a $7 submersible pump from harbor freight....works just fine to circulate the nutes and keep fresh nute in each pot at all times.
It's just gravity drain anyway, so I didn't want a gnarly high volume pump...coz it might not drain the pots as fast as the pump fills them up...just in case, I installed a valve on the "out" line of the pump so I can regulate the pump volume if necessary (wasn't necessary with this chintzy harbor freight pump)

The lights are called F55's they are 55 watts each, high output and in the "bud" bandwidth.
They are 4,300 lumens each....so the barrel is rockin' 8,600 lumens in a very small space, in close proximity to the plants.
I veg the plants until they are about 1 1/2 feet tall, give 'em a hefty foliar feeding the day before I move them, then they go in the barrel.
They climb and seek and wrap around that light like it's heaven on earth

I built a rabbit cage wire guard around the lights, and zip ties them together so they can't clang into each other or rattle around and get broken.

As you'll see in the photos, I didn't use a mushroom vent fan inside like i originally planned....the snail fan on top is already overkill enough. I had to make a plenum for the fan so it would accept round flex ducting...So I used an old protein shake container I had laying around.
It has no ventilation/temperature/humidity problems either.

Right now it's rockin' a VERY aggressive BC big Bud/Afghan Kush strain....it's OBNOXIOUS!
This stuff just shades out other plants, outcompetes them, kills them!
It's even more agro than Blue Dream, which to date has been the most aggressive I've grown until now.
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And pardon the way I posted the photos....I was having problems with uploading them.....they are all there tough

Zerran elar....I got them from lightingsupply.com
The Duder...yeah it's just for flowering stage. I move them in to the barrel when they get about 18 inches tall

Hey thanks.....all a' youze for the compliments and good input

Polyactarus....yeah I considered putting them on the outside...but then I thought of dribbles coming down all the time, and I aced that idea.
Plus there's enough room inside where crowding isn't really a problem...because it's so many lumens in such a small reflective space, it bathes the plants in light from pretty much every direction....now that it's running DWC pots, it's just four (bigger) plants essentially doing the same thing...chasing that light!
Because the bulb is vertical, they grow up...and around...and even without tying them down they kinda train themselves to grow real nice in there. And with 8,600 lumens in that small space they grow up to be very voluptuous little ladies indeed

I'm diggin all the input about this, man thanx y'all !!!

I'll be posting the photos soon

Oh yeah...PS....This might interest some of you watt-misers out there:
I grew this BC/Kush mix in a rubbermaid trash can lined with .99 cent store windshield sunblocker-reflective thingies.
I used spray adhesive to glue the cheap-o reflective stuff to the inside of the can.
I modified the lid....riveted a piece of sheet metal after I made a cardboard template of the shape I needed.
I drilled a hole in the sheet metal, ran the electrical cord through and spliced it back together.
I cut a hole for a computer fan in the lid, too....ultra low wattage, and it takes the heat out, brings the fresh air in
Where the handle-like indentations are on the bottom of the can I drilled ventilation (intake) holes so the computer fan pulls the cool air from the bottom up.

This is ONE plant in a 1 gallon DWC pot vegged under a 23 WATT (!) spring-shaped cfl in the 6,500K bandwidth....JUST LOOK AT HER GO!!!
Seems like the low wattage makes them REALLY reach out for the light...in the can they don't get lanky like they usually do under a low-watt cfl bulb.
You can also lower the lamp when they are babies by just pulling some slack through on the electrical cord.
It's always good to keep those cfl's as close as you can get them to the plants.
She got finished under a 150w HPS with another 23w 6,500K bulb to enhance the bandwidth during flowering.
Helps her keep growing big while she's becoming a lady




---Low watts is good watts---

"There are limits to self indulgence...none to restraint" ---Mahatma Ghandi

Oh I wanted to add that the hydrofarm snail fan on top of the barrel is whisper-quiet....(a good thing)
The air pumps are inside the barrel...pretty darn quiet inside like that...Also, the more the plants fill out, the quieter it gets in there....

This is cool too:
You'll see in the photo of the outside of the barrel I used a 3 mil black trash bag to line the barrel...I cut the bottom of the bag out...slipped it in the barrel just as if i was putting a liner bag in a trash can. Got the bags at home depot they are called "contractor clean-up bags" cost about twice as much as regular hefty bags, but regular hefties still get light penetrating right through them...I even tried doubling them up (wasted 2 perfectly good hefty bags tryin')

So go thick...or go home. ha ha ha ha

Check it out:
THEN I put the reflective bubble wrap inside the barrel...That way there's no "rebound" light escaping the barrel that gets bounced around behind the bubble wrap.
I like the bubble wrap stuff coz it's a sound insulator, heat insulator, and has no focal points in the reflective material (like foil or mylar) that can burn plants.
Once that heavy duty bag liner was in there...there was only a little bit of light escaping where the pump in/out lines go through the hull of the barrel.
No biggie...threw a rag over it, there was absolutely no light leakage after that.....

8,600 lumens X no light leakage + efficient use of space per watt = celebratory medication session!!!!....(cough!)

Cool. The first set of pics don't work though.

yeah I dunno what happened....they worked at first, then they didn't so I'll try to reload them later....
here's some vid of the four plants inside the barrel in four recirculating 1 gallon DWC pots...
(hopefully the vid will work!)

[video=youtube;_e9eC3m6aYk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e9eC3m6aYk&feature=youtu.be[/video]

peace,
pH.D