liquidcooled
New Member
Hi, I'm looking to get back in the game after 10 years of not growing. I'd like a couple of experienced growers to chime in with some input on here about the plan I'm proposing to follow to get things going again on a smaller scale than before. Maybe your experience can save me a few pitfalls.
A lot has changed in 10 years. Back when I grew, I used 1000W single ended HPS on agramovers over a couple of ebb and flow tables (2 flowering rooms and a cloning / veg room). I used 6500K T8 flourescents in the veg room to keep the node spacing tight. It worked pretty well, but it all ended when federal agents and county sheriffs showed up at the door one day on 2009. That really sucked. I lost all my crop, gear, guns, and cash that day.
Now it's legal and I can have 12 flowering plants where I am, 40 veg plants, and an unlimited number of small plants (less than 12" tall and less than 12" wide). Since I have the opportunity to grow a decent harvest without breaking any laws nowadays, I'm going to stay within the confines of the law.
I have access to a huge selection of genetics, so that's not a problem.
I'm looking to set up 3 5' x 5' grow tents with 4 bubble buckets each. I'm going to start with one tent and test my setup and make sure it's doing what I want before setting up the other two. I live in a place where the weather is beautiful 6 months out of the year and it's a frozen wasteland the rest of the time. The tents will be in some extra space on the living floor of my home.
Here's what I'm proposing to do for my lighting.
3 rows of 4 CXM-22 Gen4 pushing about 65 watts per cob on liquid cooled aluminum heat sinks with the wide angelina reflectors. In theory, that should give me about 400btu/hr in waste heat from all 12 cobs, but in practice it'll be a little less. I'll use an aluminum PC radiator as a water to water heat exchanger and put it in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket on standoffs. I'll put the bucket on a float fill (and place it on a tray with a drain in case the float malfunctions) and monitor the temperature of the water in the bucket. When it reaches about 100F, I'll put cold water into the bottom of the bucket and let heat stratification stack the water in the bucket so the hot water flows out the overflow drain at the top until the temp is below 100F. That should cycle every couple hours if my calculations are correct. I have a deep well so my water is always cold. On the cob side of the heat exchanger I'll run a 50/50 mix of distilled water and heating grade propylene glycol with the reservoir up high to eliminate air bubbles. It probably wouldn't hurt to run an anti microbial in there too. I haven't really decided on the drivers yet, but I'm pretty sure that 4 cobs to a driver is how I'll end up going. 12 cobs at 65W each should give me adequate PPFD without me actually having to shell out $525 for a PAR meter.
I'm going to put my vents on timers to change the air in the tent twice hourly unless the temp is high and then I'll kick them on until it cools off. 4 inch vents should be plenty for a 5' x 5' tent.
I want to put the bubble buckets on a central reservoir outside the tent so I can drain them and flush them without having to disturb the roots and the diffusers all tangled up together at all until after harvest. I'll circulate the nutrient solution from the reservoir so it's always fresh in the bubble buckets.
It's a fairly complex system with a lot of moving parts, but if it all works as it should, it should be fairly trouble free.
In the short term, I'm going to try to rewire a couple of low power chinese red and blue lights so that I can turn on the reds or the blues independently to suppliment at different parts of the cycle. It won't give me far red, but if you look at the spectrum of the CMX-22 it lacks blue and it lacks anything close to deep red. I think the el-cheapo lights might be a good temporary solution until I can afford to buy or build something to supplement light when I need it.
Let me know what you think. I'm open to ideas that might save me some aggravation and money. I'm coming back into this after 10 years, so even though I consider myself a moderately experienced grower in the way I used to do things, I have to look at myself as a total noob because of all the changes and advances in knowledge and technology since I got out of it.
A lot has changed in 10 years. Back when I grew, I used 1000W single ended HPS on agramovers over a couple of ebb and flow tables (2 flowering rooms and a cloning / veg room). I used 6500K T8 flourescents in the veg room to keep the node spacing tight. It worked pretty well, but it all ended when federal agents and county sheriffs showed up at the door one day on 2009. That really sucked. I lost all my crop, gear, guns, and cash that day.
Now it's legal and I can have 12 flowering plants where I am, 40 veg plants, and an unlimited number of small plants (less than 12" tall and less than 12" wide). Since I have the opportunity to grow a decent harvest without breaking any laws nowadays, I'm going to stay within the confines of the law.
I have access to a huge selection of genetics, so that's not a problem.
I'm looking to set up 3 5' x 5' grow tents with 4 bubble buckets each. I'm going to start with one tent and test my setup and make sure it's doing what I want before setting up the other two. I live in a place where the weather is beautiful 6 months out of the year and it's a frozen wasteland the rest of the time. The tents will be in some extra space on the living floor of my home.
Here's what I'm proposing to do for my lighting.
3 rows of 4 CXM-22 Gen4 pushing about 65 watts per cob on liquid cooled aluminum heat sinks with the wide angelina reflectors. In theory, that should give me about 400btu/hr in waste heat from all 12 cobs, but in practice it'll be a little less. I'll use an aluminum PC radiator as a water to water heat exchanger and put it in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket on standoffs. I'll put the bucket on a float fill (and place it on a tray with a drain in case the float malfunctions) and monitor the temperature of the water in the bucket. When it reaches about 100F, I'll put cold water into the bottom of the bucket and let heat stratification stack the water in the bucket so the hot water flows out the overflow drain at the top until the temp is below 100F. That should cycle every couple hours if my calculations are correct. I have a deep well so my water is always cold. On the cob side of the heat exchanger I'll run a 50/50 mix of distilled water and heating grade propylene glycol with the reservoir up high to eliminate air bubbles. It probably wouldn't hurt to run an anti microbial in there too. I haven't really decided on the drivers yet, but I'm pretty sure that 4 cobs to a driver is how I'll end up going. 12 cobs at 65W each should give me adequate PPFD without me actually having to shell out $525 for a PAR meter.
I'm going to put my vents on timers to change the air in the tent twice hourly unless the temp is high and then I'll kick them on until it cools off. 4 inch vents should be plenty for a 5' x 5' tent.
I want to put the bubble buckets on a central reservoir outside the tent so I can drain them and flush them without having to disturb the roots and the diffusers all tangled up together at all until after harvest. I'll circulate the nutrient solution from the reservoir so it's always fresh in the bubble buckets.
It's a fairly complex system with a lot of moving parts, but if it all works as it should, it should be fairly trouble free.
In the short term, I'm going to try to rewire a couple of low power chinese red and blue lights so that I can turn on the reds or the blues independently to suppliment at different parts of the cycle. It won't give me far red, but if you look at the spectrum of the CMX-22 it lacks blue and it lacks anything close to deep red. I think the el-cheapo lights might be a good temporary solution until I can afford to buy or build something to supplement light when I need it.
Let me know what you think. I'm open to ideas that might save me some aggravation and money. I'm coming back into this after 10 years, so even though I consider myself a moderately experienced grower in the way I used to do things, I have to look at myself as a total noob because of all the changes and advances in knowledge and technology since I got out of it.