new - modular grow room DWC - easy pea-sy

So I thought about where to put this for a while. I don't plan on documenting my grow.. so it's not a journal. I plan on using this set up to experiment with alot of different theories I've been looking into and kind of learning and demonstrating mistakes as I make them to help. So do I put it in grow room set up? Maybe, I thought.. but I kind of want more people's input as I'm testing - and we all can agree this forum does get the most traffic... so hopefully everyone will bear with me on this one

So, I have had to repeatedly rip apart my room because of unplanned "emergencies".
I build my rooms so they were nice and sturdy, and everything supported and braced etc.. which makes it a day and a half rip down - on the first set up. The second was set up in a big closet but also had to go.. this took me about 8 hours, but I still have repairs to make before we move.
I threw up the next area in about 5 minutes and moved plants. Another emergency that needed attention in that area.. all just an unfortunate series of events - maintenance that required immediate attention.. so as frustrating as it was, is sometimes unavoidable .. took me about 10 minutes to clean up... so I thought.. why not design a set up that is not only easily ripped down, but is somewhat advanced as it's put together.

I am looking for input on the ideas and construction, but please let me post all the information first.. save your comments till you see sponge bob stoned!

View attachment 1127676 I needed to design a set up that was stable, but easily taken apart and stored. I built 10 of these panels and built a roughly 5X5 room out of ripped 2x4's.

View attachment 1127683I covered each panel with Panda film and attached panels together at top and bottom with a total of 12 screws.

View attachment 1127688Room is easily taken apart in sections to work on plants and easily rotate placement. I was going to hold contact points together with clamps, but couldn't find any reasonably priced for the size required.

View attachment 1127690 I use a 1000 watt HPS in a cool tube. I have a 250 CFPM inline vent fan that I use to pull air over the bulb.

In a 5X5 room the 1000Watt is the perfect size to run at optimum levels.

View attachment 1127691A home made carbon filter - 10lb filter and I use a 4" vortec to pull air through it. I may have to move it higher.. It's taking up about a foot of vertical space.. so I'll have to see how it impacts the grow.

Do we post now?

I keep reading new growers being told "to start in soil first - hydro's unforgiving"...
I started growing in hydro... and have had great success with VERY LITTLE effort.

I have been experimenting and found some stuff that I find works well (or better) than without.. but please feel free to offer advice and input - I am always learning - or trying to.

I am going to start backwards with my flowering set up first and move on to veg later.

I grow in plastic totes. In 6"pots.

View attachment 1127703 I take 6" sturdy pots and turn them into air pruning net pots with the help of a wood burning kit. I use these pots from the time I plant them as clones right through to harvest..

View attachment 1127710I made a template and cut circles out of the tote lids using my wood burner again.. takes a while, but you don't crack the plastic like you can with using a hole saw.

View attachment 1127715Here's a start at what they look like. I stack the totes 2 high until the light is at the ceiling.. then drop them to the floor and drop the light again to finish them off.

View attachment 1127737I mix my nutes (3 part GH) and ph at 5.8. I use a pump with a long hose to fill my res'es.

View attachment 1127738I don't fill every hole with a plant.. But having the holes allows me to move them around easily. The entire tops of the lid are covered with panda film _I don't have pic of.. but I will have more pics up later.

These totes have the pots in the res.. the roots grow out into the res.. the only thing I have in the res is an airstone or two.

I only PH adjust when I top up nutes.. about once every other day I just top them up and it helps keep the ph in check while allowing it to fluctuate normally.

Ph is important - but you can do more harm than good by always messing with it...
I have a little more work to do on the set up - ran out of cash while putting it up and have to wait a day or two for the last few parts...
So I don't have temps, or RH, or anything yet... once I have the room sealed I will let everyone know where I'm at on conditions.

That's a great idea, but wouldn't pvc pipe had made it even easier to take down and set up? You don't have to use glue at all the joints, a single screw will hold it together. A neighbor has a pvc coldframe and she can set it up and take it down in a minute's time. Just a thought...

Lol, sorry bud. I thought you were done. My bad.

It's cool bud - I'm done for the set up part.. I just want input on the set up and where my variables are.. then I can use the link for future testing - for background so I don't have to explain everything over again..

I can't upload sponge bob stoned.. so pretend it's there.. go for it boys and girls, if anyone has anything to suggest - have at it.

Magnificient said:

That's a great idea, but wouldn't pvc pipe had made it even easier to take down and set up? You don't have to use glue at all the joints, a single screw will hold it together. A neighbor has a pvc coldframe and she can set it up and take it down in a minute's time. Just a thought...

Lol, sorry bud. I thought you were done. My bad.

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I re-read your post and didn't "get it" the first time... so this is an edit:

I have the panels built to be able to stack and not rip off the panda film and have to put it all back together.
I can stack them in a closet and no one will ever see them. then I put a few screws in and it's together and the room's back in order like nothing happened.

cost was the main reason for going with wood, it's also easier to work with and cut....how did your neighbor attach the panda film to the structure?

cowell said:

I re-read your post and didn't "get it" the first time... so this is an edit:

I have the panels built to be able to stack and not rip off the panda film and have to put it all back together.
I can stack them in a closet and no one will ever see them. then I put a few screws in and it's together and the room's back in order like nothing happened.

cost was the main reason for going with wood, it's also easier to work with and cut....how did your neighbor attach the panda film to the structure?

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She don't use panda, clear plastic. She uses, actually borrowed from me, Elmer's spray glue. I was thinking about building a curtain out of mylar and pvc tubes. I'll go do that now and post the picture back here.

There it is. My new reflector panel built in about 5 minutes. It's 4'x6' to make use of 2 pvc pipes and 4 corner joints I had on hand. I only used elmer's spray glue to attach the pipe joints, that way if I ever want to take it apart I can, but it will stay together until I want to take it apart. I just built the frame and laid it down on the mylar blanket and then used elmer's spray glue to bind it to the frame. Four of these panels would be a suitable grow area for a 400 watt mh/hps.

By the way, my plants seem to get a lot more light than they were getting.

I like em! How are you going to use them in your room? The answer may make this a mute point but..

Question - how would you run venting with that? Mylar is hard to do anything with but make reflective panels I would think.. not for your grow room structure. and to hold vent holes, and power cable holes, and I attach my fans to the walls, and my electrical is always above the water.. so I need to be able to attach cords, power bars, thermometers, lights, filters, etc to something. I did toy with the idea of using PVC for it at one point and because of cost to buy is prohibitive for me when I had the 2x4's sitting in the garage

do you have any pics of your room set up that you can link?

If you are working on a room too.. feel free to bounce ideas here too if you want.. it's all about building a better mousetrap bro.

I usually make my room air tight with panda and then attach mylar in a 4' strip around the middle of the room.. I am out of it.. and panda.. get more on Wed.

I have this room running 18/6 for now.. I am taking some clones tomorrow, and going to do some defoliation.. let it veg a few weeks where they sit, and then switch for flowering.

I am going to be running 6 plants every 3 weeks in this room.. and I am building another 2X2 for a 250 watt HPS I have as well... will be running an 8 week strain in there (2 plants only)

Magnificient said:

View attachment 1128096View attachment 1128098View attachment 1128099

There it is. My new reflector panel built in about 5 minutes. It's 4'x6' to make use of 2 pvc pipes and 4 corner joints I had on hand. I only used elmer's spray glue to attach the pipe joints, that way if I ever want to take it apart I can, but it will stay together until I want to take it apart. I just built the frame and laid it down on the mylar blanket and then used elmer's spray glue to bind it to the frame. Four of these panels would be a suitable grow area for a 400 watt mh/hps.

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Just noticed.. the size and light you listed. You wouldn't want to use a 400watter in a 4X4 room.. you'd want a 600watter for that size to be running closer to optimum range.
(a copy paste from my grow room calculator 4x4x6 room -120volts spits out this)

Your room is 16.0 squarefeet, please review the three levels of reccomendation bellow suited to your grow room

Lighting
The minimum recommended lighting for your area is 400 watts
Ventilation
The minimum flow rating of your fan should be 80.0 Cubic Feet per Minute (CFM)
Power Requirements
This setup will require 4.3 amps to be available at all times for safest operation*
Lighting
The optimum reccomended lighting for your area is 640 watts
Ventilation
For optimum ventilation the flow rating of your fan should be around 88.0 Cubic Feet per Minute
Power Requirements
This setup will require 6.9 amps to be available at all times for safest operation* Lighting
The maximum reccomended lighting for your area is 960 watts
Ventilation
Going this way you will require a fan with a flow rating of at least 104.0 Cubic Feet per Minute
Power Requirements
This setup will require 10.4 amps to be available at all times for safest operation*
Additional Comments
Getting to these points and or over it is highly reccomended the grower use Co2 in their room as your plants will only be able to photosythesise a certain amount of light before needing a Co2 boost to benifit


I'm not saying you can't grow in that size, but I think you would find the results substantially increased if you put in a bigger light. I'm in a 5X5 room with a 1000watter.

Sorry, I had trouble getting back on here and went to another forum. My grow area is in a grow room. The whole room is used for nothing but growing, yet the plants take up a small part of the room. I won't need to vent through the mylar as venting is in another section of the room. I'll do a panoramic view tomorrow, but they're flowering and now is their dark period. The room is still being worked on, but it's functional for a few plants. The reflector panel I made is now hung from the ceiling. It's just there to reflect light back to the plants that would have otherwise been lost. I get a better idea of what you're doing now. I don't think a pvc/mylar structure would be what you need. I was thinking that you just needed a grow area, for which 4 panels like I build would do. I have 2 400 watt mh lights for my area and also some cfls and a 24" T5. I haven't been able to get cmh bulbs yet, but they're on my to-get list. My grow area is actually 4' x 7.5' x 8' while the room itself is something like 8'x12'. I don't need to use all that area as I'm just growing maybe 5 or 6 plants at a time for right now. I may do what you're doing and keep a constant flow of plants growing...I pretty much did that by taking clones when my older plants are still a month away from harvest.

I'll get the pics posted tomorrow so you can see what I'm working with.

I've read about taking clones from flowering plants.. how does that work for you?

cowell said:

I've read about taking clones from flowering plants.. how does that work for you?

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This is actually the first time I've tried it. I'm going to try and get some pictures now.

It didn't show up in the picture, but the screen is hung from the ceiling.
I have to do a little work to make this door air tight. Eventually I want to get some co2 in there.
That's my ionizer. It's a bit too weak for it's purpose, but it does a good job of keeping the odor down when the a/c is on.
That's the nutrients and items I've accumulated from this first grow.
I put a blind in the window then sealed it with drywall to keep the light in.

View attachment 1129486I'm using the t5 to get a little more light to the lower limbs on the tall pheno...I have 2 phenos of white widow: two of the plants are tall and sparse and two are short and bushy. I'm only cloning the shorter ones because they're said to have a higher yeild.
View attachment 1129488That's the carbon filter I made to back up the ionizer. There's a smaller carbon filter on the floor. All three odor control devices seem to do okay most of the time, but I keep dryer sheets on hand in case somebody pulls up. I'm not sure if I'll vent into my attic or into my basement when I put in a regular carbon filter.

Man, I love the valance over the drywall.. lol..

do you control RH at all? or temps? just curious how you did it if you do.

I go pick up my panda and mylar tomorrow.. so I'll finish off the room and update pics then.

cowell said:

Man, I love the valance over the drywall.. lol..

do you control RH at all? or temps? just curious how you did it if you do.

I go pick up my panda and mylar tomorrow.. so I'll finish off the room and update pics then.

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The room is a/c by day. The humidity stays at around 40, which is all right. It really needs vented, but I can't get it all done at once. I'm just taking care of problems as they come up and so far, in that room, there hasn't been any other than a very strong marijuana odor, which is pretty much taken care of. I like to stick my head in the room at night when the lights and a/c are off and I can almost get high off the odor. I have to get some better flowering fertilizer and maybe a blower today. I'm not sure what I'll spend my money on, but fertilizer for sure. I've been getting by with snow storm ultra, which is 0-0-3. I need something that has a full spread of n-p-k. Catch you tomorrow night.

ok.. so yesterday I cleaned up my veg room and took some clones.. I also started defoliating. It was hard to bring myself to do it.. but for the sake of experimentation.. I am going to do it. I didn't go for a full monty, but way more leaves than I would have thought I would have done. Hopefully someone who has done it before can chime in and let me know if I am not going far enough on them.

will post pics tonight of that... I will be working on the flowering set up today and will hopefully have everything together and running.