There is a crack in everything...

a senile fungus · Jan 29, 2017

Humanrob said:
I've run heaters in tents before, if you are venting the air out its a lot of electricity in the end. This run my biggest electrical impact is the dehumidifiers.

The thing about my garage is that even though it is partially insulated, the temps fluctuate a LOT depending on the outside temperature. So I have been adjusting things almost daily. A previous owner divided the garage, and the back 2/3's were made into a room that has insulation in the walls... then they started to insulate the roof but ran into problems and just stopped. So currently there is a large opening in the ceiling (of the "room" space) which I have covered with plastic... but no insulation there. Among the long list of projects, I'm going to cover that hole and insulate the ceiling and vent the roof for passive summer cooling. That should seal up the room area much better.

I have a cool tube for my 600w HID. Kind of ironically, to varying degrees I'm just pumping the warm air back in. There are two passive intakes and one is taking cool air from the room and the other is getting warmed air. I think that's why some of my plants reacted to the cold and not others -- depending on which vent they were near there could be as much as a 10º difference in air temps.

This looks pretty odd, but it actually works. The ducting on the left is from the output on the cool tube exhaust fan, the ducting on the right is the intake vent at the bottom of the tent (on one side). The closer I put them, the less ambient air mixes in and the warmer it gets which gives me some control. It's a PITA to monitor but it has kept me going for this grow.

View attachment 3887990

I bought a motorized damper for around $80 plus a cheapo thermostat from.hardware store for $20.

When the temps.in.the room rise above the set limit, the damper opens and allows cold air into the room to cool it down some. I run a humidifier to.battle the dry cold air.

It works really well for my winters here in MI. My room has been within ten degrees all winter, and I'm running about 2kw constantly in various rooms, building is 22'x11'.

Humanrob · Jan 29, 2017

Organja said:
Genius with the box man! I am considering doing some very similar setup. Although I have a room outside of the growroom thst is fully insulated it's basically a pump house, where I was going to use as an air mixing box to get the inputs I need. I'm like you, the fluctuation of temp is out of control! I need to insulate walls still, and figure out how to encapsulate the footer in the room or build a floor to raise everything off the cold concrete!... good times

Thanks! A friend jokingly referred to it as "another successful ghetto solution".

Since my garage was already partially converted, I'm working with what I have. The folks who did it actually put down carpet over the concrete in the room part, so I guess that's a good thing. That space serves multiple purposes, it is also my workshop and a storage area, so in its current configuration there is only room for one tent in there. Luckily I only have the one patient, and as long as my summer outdoor is at least mildly successful, I don't need to grow much inside. That said, as I watch the incredibly sparkly sugar-coated first harvest dry and cure, I'm reminded how beautiful indoor can be. Small, but beautiful.

Humanrob · Jan 29, 2017

a senile fungus said:
I bought a motorized damper for around $80 plus a cheapo thermostat from.hardware store for $20.

When the temps.in.the room rise above the set limit, the damper opens and allows cold air into the room to cool it down some. I run a humidifier to.battle the dry cold air.

It works really well for my winters here in MI. My room has been within ten degrees all winter, and I'm running about 2kw constantly in various rooms, building is 22'x11'.

Good info! Once I have the room fully insulated, I'll have more options, including just heating the room in the winter. I like the damper thing, that sounds useful. I would love to be able to grow year round out there, but that would take heat in the winter, a damper system spring and fall, and AC in the summer. That's a hell of a commitment....

a senile fungus · Jan 29, 2017

Humanrob said:
Good info! Once I have the room fully insulated, I'll have more options, including just heating the room in the winter. I like the damper thing, that sounds useful. I would love to be able to grow year round out there, but that would take heat in the winter, a damper system spring and fall, and AC in the summer. That's a hell of a commitment....

I thought i needed A.C. too but it turns out moving enough air is enough. Unless you're running a crazy amount of wattage, or your ambient environmental temps are way up, simply moving.enough air through should do it.

I ventilate the rooms in the spring, summer, fall, and use.the thermostat to.bring.cold air in the winter. I do.have an A.C. setup, but it uses as much power as a light. I'd rather have an extra light and more plants and just remove the heat with a massive blower.

Humanrob · Jan 29, 2017

a senile fungus said:
I thought i needed A.C. too but it turns out moving enough air is enough. Unless you're running a crazy amount of wattage, or your ambient environmental temps are way up, simply moving.enough air through should do it.

I ventilate the rooms in the spring, summer, fall, and use.the thermostat to.bring.cold air in the winter. I do.have an A.C. setup, but it uses as much power as a light. I'd rather have an extra light and more plants and just remove the heat with a massive blower.

My first year I ran grows one after the other through the entire year in closets I set up... I was really into it and nothing would stop me. But its a battle. Fall, winter, and spring here in NW Oregon are VERY wet, so there is no way I can move air in and out of the house or garage (tried that, lost an entire crop to PM). The rooms have to be (at least somewhat) sealed and I need dehumidifiers running. During the summer if I stick with COB lighting and skip the HID light, and run the lights at night, I can leverage a lot of air movement and inside/outside exchanges -- and that's when the damper thing would be helpful. But... during the summer I have an outdoor going, so I tend to focus on that and skip the indoor. It's all interesting though, I like to keep my options open.

Organja · Jan 30, 2017

Humanrob said:
Thanks! A friend jokingly referred to it as "another successful ghetto solution".

Since my garage was already partially converted, I'm working with what I have. The folks who did it actually put down carpet over the concrete in the room part, so I guess that's a good thing. That space serves multiple purposes, it is also my workshop and a storage area, so in its current configuration there is only room for one tent in there. Luckily I only have the one patient, and as long as my summer outdoor is at least mildly successful, I don't need to grow much inside. That said, as I watch the incredibly sparkly sugar-coated first harvest dry and cure, I'm reminded how beautiful indoor can be. Small, but beautiful.

Dude our garage setups are almost identical from the sounds of it! I wanted one side of my room to be grow room and the rest to be my "shop" workspace area for other whatnots.

Cool stuff! I'll be picking your brain for ideas soon enough I'm sure!

keep up the good work HR!

Humanrob · Jan 30, 2017

Organja said:
Dude our garage setups are almost identical from the sounds of it! I wanted one side of my room to be grow room and the rest to be my "shop" workspace area for other whatnots.

Cool stuff! I'll be picking your brain for ideas soon enough I'm sure! keep up the good work HR!

Thanks bro! I don't seem to have as much brain as I used to, so pick gently and take everything with a grain of salt... lol...

(Didn't mean for that to sound like a zombie culinary suggestion... "my brain is old, it might taste better with salt". wow, I am having a random morning.)

Organja · Jan 31, 2017

Humanrob said:
Thanks bro! I don't seem to have as much brain as I used to, so pick gently and take everything with a grain of salt... lol...

(Didn't mean for that to sound like a zombie culinary suggestion... "my brain is old, it might taste better with salt". wow, I am having a random morning.)

My biggest Hangup is how to build doors on a 3x9 grow space. That sits within an 8x9 area. So they can't swing too wide out. If that makes sense.
I've been seriously considering roll up doors. Like storage unit style roll ups!

Humanrob · Jan 31, 2017

Organja said:
My biggest Hangup is how to build doors on a 3x9 grow space. That sits within an 8x9 area. So they can't swing too wide out. If that makes sense.
I've been seriously considering roll up doors. Like storage unit style roll ups!

I looked into those a few years ago for a shop I was building. You just need to make sure you are getting one with good seals on the sides -- it will probably be sold as weather-proofed but four our needs its (more?) light proof? Seems like a cool idea, if you get something like an 8x8 you would have a huge amount of access to the plants! I guess if you run your lights during the day and don't use the outer room at night/lights off, then if the main room is dark the seals won't matter as much.

Organja · Jan 31, 2017

Humanrob said:
I looked into those a few years ago for a shop I was building. You just need to make sure you are getting one with good seals on the sides -- it will probably be sold as weather-proofed but four our needs its (more?) light proof? Seems like a cool idea, if you get something like an 8x8 you would have a huge amount of access to the plants! I guess if you run your lights during the day and don't use the outer room at night/lights off, then if the main room is dark the seals won't matter as much.

For sure I've seen various options which seemed to really increase the cost. I just need to find a local shop and see what they cost locally. I can't think of any other option, assuming I could install the door myself without a contractor...

Humanrob · Feb 1, 2017

I've been thinking and researching more, and now I'm not sure if the cold temps are what caused the deformities. I think I may have had the 600w HPS too close and I had "bad foxtailing". The only references I could remember for how close to run a 600 to plants (this was my first time using HPS with indoor plants) had to do with heat, and they would give the hand test. Other things referenced leaves burning/bleaching as an indication that it was too close. With a cool tube, there are no direct heat issues, but I learned that you definitely can have too much light.

I find it interesting that when you start plants indoors and then take them outside, you have to "harden" them -- get them used to the strength of the sun gradually. And yet I've never seen the sun bleach a leaf or cause the kind of growth issues I've had now with both COB and HPS lights in terms of getting the light too close. This is relevant because I'm trying to decide if this indoor test of seeds I intend to run outside has proven them to be genetically weak, but I think they'll do fine under the big light in the sky. Screwing them up has hurt the test in terms of getting a look at bud potential, but hopefully we'll still get to sample some decent buds out of it.

By a lot of measures, this is the weakest and definitely the smallest grow I've done in a long time. Since last summer's outdoor has us covered for meds, I guess there was no pressure and lots of aspects were experimental or new to me. It should serve its purpose of providing us with more variety, hopefully there will be no shortage of tasty samples. And I've gathered a bunch of new information while being reminded of what works and what doesn't. So its all good.

"Bad Foxtail" illustration vs. my plant

vs.

Week 5+/- of flower (4+/- to go) in the 2x4 and the 3x3 (which also has two clones up front with about 2-3 weeks left on them)

Organja · Feb 1, 2017

Humanrob said:
I've been thinking and researching more, and now I'm not sure if the cold temps are what caused the deformities. I think I may have had the 600w HPS too close and I had "bad foxtailing". The only references I could remember for how close to run a 600 to plants (this was my first time using HPS with indoor plants) had to do with heat, and they would give the hand test. Other things referenced leaves burning/bleaching as an indication that it was too close. With a cool tube, there are no direct heat issues, but I learned that you definitely can have too much light.

I find it interesting that when you start plants indoors and then take them outside, you have to "harden" them -- get them used to the strength of the sun gradually. And yet I've never seen the sun bleach a leaf or cause the kind of growth issues I've had now with both COB and HPS lights in terms of getting the light too close. This is relevant because I'm trying to decide if this indoor test of seeds I intend to run outside has proven them to be genetically weak, but I think they'll do fine under the big light in the sky. Screwing them up has hurt the test in terms of getting a look at bud potential, but hopefully we'll still get to sample some decent buds out of it.

By a lot of measures, this is the weakest and definitely the smallest grow I've done in a long time. Since last summer's outdoor has us covered for meds, I guess there was no pressure and lots of aspects were experimental or new to me. It should serve its purpose of providing us with more variety, hopefully there will be no shortage of tasty samples. And I've gathered a bunch of new information while being reminded of what works and what doesn't. So its all good.

"Bad Foxtail" illustration vs. my plant
View attachment 3890690 vs. View attachment 3890692

Week 5+/- of flower (4+/- to go) in the 2x4 and the 3x3 (which also has two clones up front with about 2-3 weeks left on them)
View attachment 3890686 View attachment 3890687

It all looks dank to me boss...

Humanrob · Feb 1, 2017

Organja said:
It all looks dank to me boss...

Thanks Organja. This is the first year I'm only doing one indoor, I used to do around 4 per year. Going into this grow I didn't think about it too much, but now that I'm coming down the final stretch and making my mental list of what I've learned and what I'll do differently next time, it's hitting me that next time is late November/early December. Previously I'd take down a grow and clean the tent and start again. This time I'll be packing up one of the tents and storing it inside the other one for 8 months. Very strange feeling.

Organja · Feb 5, 2017

How's things HR?! What's the good word?!
Hope all is well!

Humanrob · Feb 5, 2017

Organja said:
How's things HR?! What's the good word?!
Hope all is well!

Not much new. The first wave from the 2x4 is jarred, nothing special but it should all be smokeable in a couple of weeks. The next group still has a few weeks to go, I'll get some pics when they get closer to being done.

Humanrob · Feb 25, 2017

(This thread is worthless without pictures....)

This grow is taking forever. The 12/12 from seed plants are on day 112 and are all over the map, ranging from maybe a week away from being ready to much longer (one still has entirely white/light hairs). And my pair of clones are not much better, 10 weeks and 2 days since switching to 12/12 they are not ready yet. Part of the problem was probably the cold snap, I think that shut them down for a week or so. Recently I shut off the pair of 4000k Optics in the 3x3 and just left the 600w HPS running, I'm hoping that going full warm spectrum and a little less light will mimic the natural fall light changes and inspire them to finish up.

And in the 2x4 I think I fucked up. The plants looked to be in the final stretch and I decided to simplify my lighting -- I had 300w of COBs, a Mars light I had added to warm the tent up, and a pair of lizard/UV lights that came on for a couple of hours per day. I decided to strip everything out except for the 300w of COBs and just finish with that setup (I've done full grows under just those and they do the job). The problem is there are two pairs of 3000k on either side, and one pair of 4000k in the center, and I think removing the red-leaning Mars changed the overall kelvin profile to a more cool dominant mix. That's the only thing I can think of as a cause for some of the plants starting to produce fresh new white hairs this late in the game -- even though they had previously had more than half their hairs go darker. It's not like they went back into veg... but it seems like they reverted into an earlier stage of flowering?

New hairs or not, another few days and I'm going to start chopping them down. The trichomes are mostly frosty not clear, and buds are fat and dense.... so in the big picture, it's just time.

Live. And. Learn. And then learn some more.

Rocket Soul · Mar 18, 2017

How did your grow end up, Rob? And picks are baaack

Humanrob · Mar 18, 2017

Rocket Soul said:
How did your grow end up, Rob? And picks are baaack

Thanks for the interest, RS. Ya, pics are back, but I stopped taking them at the end, it got too embarrassing. A lot of aspects of the grow went south. In the end, I had enough plants going that the ones that made it will carry us, and now I've got a half dozen more strains in the stash. So its all good.

Things I need to do differently in the future:

* The seeds I made were all weak, probably because the father was a pathetic neglected specimen. This year the boys will be taken better care of.

* I have to control the environment better, the cold weather really fucked things up. Some of the plants did something almost akin to going back into veg, after things warmed back up they stressed and had a second wave of hairs start growing. Instead of recognizing this as the bad sign it was, I let them keep going until some hermied, others got bud rot. As confirmation, the clones and seeds I purchased were stressed and slow to finish but only the ones I crossed had major issues.

* I switched lights up late in flower. Just plain stupid. Won't do that again.

* I had never grown in such small pots (1 and 2 gallon), and I overcompensated by using too much nutes and I think too much water. I also had too much light. I basically beat the crap out of the plants by over doing things.

These are the last pictures I took, back on February 21st...

Rocket Soul · Mar 19, 2017

Humanrob said:
Thanks for the interest, RS. Ya, pics are back, but I stopped taking them at the end, it got too embarrassing. A lot of aspects of the grow went south. In the end, I had enough plants going that the ones that made it will carry us, and now I've got a half dozen more strains in the stash. So its all good.

Things I need to do differently in the future:

* The seeds I made were all weak, probably because the father was a pathetic neglected specimen. This year the boys will be taken better care of.

* I have to control the environment better, the cold weather really fucked things up. Some of the plants did something almost akin to going back into veg, after things warmed back up they stressed and had a second wave of hairs start growing. Instead of recognizing this as the bad sign it was, I let them keep going until some hermied, others got bud rot. As confirmation, the clones and seeds I purchased were stressed and slow to finish but only the ones I crossed had major issues.

* I switched lights up late in flower. Just plain stupid. Won't do that again.

* I had never grown in such small pots (1 and 2 gallon), and I overcompensated by using too much nutes and I think too much water. I also had too much light. I basically beat the crap out of the plants by over doing things.

These are the last pictures I took, back on February 21st...

View attachment 3908902 View attachment 3908903 View attachment 3908904 View attachment 3908905 View attachment 3908906 View attachment 3908907 View attachment 3908908 View attachment 3908909 View attachment 3908910

Im sorry for the problems u had, but those budshots are look nice

Humanrob · Mar 19, 2017

Rocket Soul said:
Im sorry for the problems u had, but those budshots are look nice

Thanks bro. The last lesson/reminder I had was that grows take a long time, and there is no sense going into one unless I'm all in. Now that I'm doing one summer outdoor and one winter indoor, I need to make each one count. I'll be way more focused next year. Maybe I'll brush the dust off this thread and let the saga continue.

There is a crack in everything...

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