First Grow Ideas - let me know what you think so i can get this started

CollieGreens

Active Member
Hello, I've been wanting to start my first grow for a while now and think i may have found the perfect setup for a reasonable price; which was my major worry as I'm pretty skint. These are my ideas:

Cab - Size H122, W36, D50.3cm. http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/6150552.htm local B&Q offers a cutting service so i am going to have a MDF board cut up for the door; which will be hung up with some concealed hinges. Whole thing will cost around £40; which to me sounds not too bad.

Light - An Ebay seller was selling 150w hps bulbs with ballast (no reflector) for £30; which should do the job

Growing Medium - I was planning on buying a DWC bubble bucket; one of the smaller ones

Ventilation - Use one of the drawers as a shelf at the top to cut fan holes for extraction; then other holes at the back of the space for the air to leave. I was planning on just using passive intake; do you think the temps will be manageable ? The fans i saw were something along the lines of Silent Antec fans; that were suppose to be silent and very powerful. Ive seen someone else ue them on this site in a Rubbermaid grow box. A small clip on fan will also be used to circulate some air.

Odor - When the time comes to it i mite try making my own carbon filter; have had a look at some posts around this site for how to make one.

Any recommendations of help on my idea is very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance. keep well. peace x
 

pistolpanda

Active Member
Sounds pretty good, but a few things could use some work. With a HPS, you've got a lot of heat, especially in such an enclosed space. For something that big, you'll need a fair amount of fans, especially if you're using computer fans. I'm not sure if passive intake would be enough, if it's not, just grab a few intake fans and you'll be set. For the odor, I imagine you'll put a carbon filter on your exhaust fan. If your exhaust fan is a computer fan, you can go a few ways. One of them is to make one of these pretty things, or alternatively you could buy something like this and put it over your fans with a drier strip for extra safety. However, there is an easier way you can do it, which is to skip the carbon filters all together which gives you optimal airflow and buy yourself an ONA Block. They're relatively cheap and work phenomenally.
 

CollieGreens

Active Member
Cheers for the reply panda, possibly a cheap and cheerful CF&Fan package which I've seen for £50 could be a better approach. Ah walmart; a great store for you people in the US. The up-side of pc fans is the the quietness; want this to be reasonably stealthy. Do you know whether you can wire up multiple computer fans to one plug, instead of having 6 separate plugs.

Thanks again
 

pistolpanda

Active Member
I suggest newegg for the fans if you can wait for the shipping. As for quiet fans, I would recommend 80mm for intake and 120mm for exhaust. I assume you know how to wire the fans to an adapter, as you asked about separate plugs, so, to wire them all to the same adapter you just wire them all to each other and then wire them to the adapter. Here's a link to a little DIY guide in which they do what I've described. If you're going for quiet fans, I would suggest these. I've got some and you can barely hear them. I'll put together a quick little diagram for you so you can wire your fans.
 

pistolpanda

Active Member
Phone charger, anything will work. Most people have 12V adapters laying around the house, I used one from an old Super Nintendo. They are the ones with the big round tips. I prefer to use heavy duty one, for example the SNES charger is 120V input with a 12V output, so I run all six of my fans off of it. I've got a PC case grow, so I have one 120mm exhaust fan and five 80mm intake fans. 5-6 fans should be fine for your grow, if not, put a frozen waterbottle in the space and it'll lower your temperatures by around 5°F. Here's that diagram, I know, it's bad.

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EDIT: Forgot to mention, it depends on what your fans are rated for. If your fans are too much for your adapter, they'll run slow.
 

CollieGreens

Active Member
Ill do what you have done and use a larger volt input charger to power all my fans. May decide to just use 120mm fans as it saves buying a different size holesaw bit for my drill. Thanks again mate you have been massively helpful.
 
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