Starting a new grow. and it has been a while.

dbz

dbz

Well-Known Member
Due to Covid-19, I have had increasingly hard times sourcing medicine. After a lot of back surgeries and chronic pain all the doctors where I live want to do is put you on Oxys forever. They don't want to give them to you for breakout pain occasionally, they want you to go to a pain clinic and take 90 a month. Anyways, I digress, for me on most non-breakout normal days my medicine is enough. Due to everything with quarantines and difficulty of travel I have decided to do something I haven't done in 15 years and that is produce my own.

I have a 3x3x6 grow tent already.
I ordered a Phytomax-2 400 light (this was Black Dog LED's suggestion for the footprint, and after a lot of researching I only read good things about them) It should be here in a few days
I am going to start out with a KindSoil grow, I ordered that and am going to use PROMIX BX with mycorrhizae as the top of my medium
I ordered an AC Infinity Cloudline S4 for my exhaust
Hon & Guan 4 inch inline carbon filter
Inkbird Humidity and Temperature controller
A small humidifier and a small dehumidifier
I have a heater in the room hooked up to the inkbird for the winter
Ordered some Rope Ratchet Straps for hanging items
Got insulated ducting from a hardware store
Got some 4 way Tee pvc and straight pvc to make a movable frame that will slide up the tent poles to attach a scrog net to
Have some Bruce Banner and Sirius Black coming (since I am going to try and SCROG I will only grow one type at a time but I will vegetate the other in another chamber)
I did a lot of gardening in my time especially with chili peppers and have a nice Hanna PH EC meter

It will be a couple weeks before everything gets in (the seeds might take a couple weeks) and I plan on posting updates, but as someone who has been out of the game a long time, I guess I just want to say is there anything I'm forgetting?

Also at Black Dog and the higher end COB led light companies they recommend ambient temps between 82-85, since my days of using HID this seems exceptionally high to me, but they explained that with the lack of IR intensity the ambient will be closer to plant real temp while leaf temp under HID is actually a few degrees higher than ambient.

I do a lot of composting and gardening outside of other things so I am trying out Kindsoil and then maybe moving to creating my own hot soil mix.

I was struggling with the idea of how to prevent light leak through the passive intake on the tent, but I think I will just use a flat carbon furnace filter for that (It is a 4x12) or maybe I will use the two ductholes at the bottom with S ducts and filters.

Anyways, I am sure open to any pointers or omissions I might have in my thinking before beginning my project.

Edit: I realize a lot of people just come on here spinning thoughts but I will post updates and everything above has already been ordered or arrived. (I done spent the money)

Which btw Black Dog LED I have to say was exceptionally helpful and unbelievably friendly, their chat option on their site is very nice and you end up talking to someone knowledgeable quickly (No I am not paid by them).
 
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dbz

dbz

Well-Known Member
Renfro said:
So take the pills, use what you want and sell the rest at a dollar a mg.
Click to expand...
I prefer to not mix with such substances at all. I appreciate the advice, and it may would work for you, but I may be a bit weaker, and I don't wish for that temptation that seems to rob me of lucidity more than that which I use to be productive and effective in what I need to do for a living.
Edit: also I have already made the investment and plan on seeing it come through to fruition.
 
Renfro

Renfro

Well-Known Member
dbz said:
I prefer to not mix with such substances at all. I appreciate the advice, and it may would work for you, but I may be a bit weaker, and I don't wish for that temptation that seems to rob me of lucidity more than that which I use to be productive and effective in what I need to do for a living.
Edit: also I have already made the investment and plan on seeing it come through to fruition.
Click to expand...
You didn't get what I meant. Take what you want (none) and sell the rest. You can make good money on them scripts...
 
dbz

dbz

Well-Known Member
Renfro said:
You didn't get what I meant. Take what you want (none) and sell the rest. You can make good money on them scripts...
Click to expand...
I know what you meant, but that doesn't help my sourcing problem, nor do I wish to sell anything. I realize this may seem odd given my inclination to produce, nonetheless, as contradictory as it may seem...therein lie my lines.
 
Renfro

Renfro

Well-Known Member
dbz said:
Also at Black Dog and the higher end COB led light companies they recommend ambient temps between 82-85
Click to expand...
Yes, you need warmer temps with LED in order to achieve optimum leaf surface temperatures. Cool temps will dramatically slow growth and reduce yields.
 
dbz

dbz

Well-Known Member
Renfro said:
Yes, you need warmer temps with LED in order to achieve optimum leaf surface temperatures. Cool temps will dramatically slow growth and reduce yields.
Click to expand...
Thank you,
I know they know what they are doing, just having someone currently much more experienced with such things gives me a bit more ease in set up preparation.
 
dbz

dbz

Well-Known Member
I forgot to mention I did get an exhale CO2 bag as well. I was hoping in as small of a grow as mine is it would suit the purposes.
 
PadawanWarrior

PadawanWarrior

Well-Known Member
Renfro said:
You didn't get what I meant. Take what you want (none) and sell the rest. You can make good money on them scripts...
Click to expand...
Or save them for a rainy day. I have a few here in case we need them. It'd be nice to have a stockpile though, lol.

But they are super addictive, so we only take them when we really need them.
 
Renfro

Renfro

Well-Known Member
dbz said:
I do have an exhaust vent, Should i look into CO2 and stage it at off times with the exhaust fan or not worry at all about CO2?
Click to expand...
I would only bother with supplemental CO2 if you have a sealed room with air conditioning. If you are running exhaust fans to cool the room using a thermostat then I suggest doing a test with the lights on full power. Time how long it takes for the room to heat up and the blower to kick on. Then time how long it runs, then again how long it stays off. If it's running more than 20 - 25% of the time then your exhale bag can't even put out much CO2 in the time allotted, let alone time for the plants to use it. I wouldn't worry about CO2 in your situation as it's a waste of money. If you have a tank of CO2 you could ramp up the PPM quickly after the blower kicks off, at least then the plants could use the CO2 for most of the time the blower is off, but then it will kick on and blow your money outside. You would go through CO2 quickly and it wouldn't be worth it.
PadawanWarrior said:
so we only take them when we really need them.
Click to expand...
We? lol your multiple personalities acting up again?
 
Renfro

Renfro

Well-Known Member
With CO2 you need to consider a 20 - 30% yield increase and weigh that against the cost of the CO2 supplementation. In my case I have rooms that run natural gas co2 generators, 4 ton minisplit AC, dehumidification. Natural gas for my CO2 generator costs me about $30 a month per flowering room. The extra yield in my case is about 5 - 6 pounds per cycle. So in my case the cost of the natural gas is a drop in the bucket.
 
Renfro

Renfro

Well-Known Member
Another factor to consider, as biomass increases so does transpiration of moisture into the air. It is often the case that when we have mature plants and a larger biomass : room volume ratio, we would need to dehumidify the air adding heat and prompting your exhaust fan to kick on sooner, or just vent for the RH% if the ambient RH% is low enough to bring your numbers down. In either case your CO2 is wasted.
 
Renfro

Renfro

Well-Known Member
PadawanWarrior said:
It'd be nice to have a stockpile though, lol.
Click to expand...
At one point over about 3 years of stockpiling them up, I had collected a little over a 2000 of the blue 30's and about 400 of the purple 20's and about 300 of the green 15's. Had em all sealed in vacuum bags and tossed in the freezer. Then I got a girlfriend lol.
 
PadawanWarrior

PadawanWarrior

Well-Known Member
dbz said:
Due to Covid-19, I have had increasingly hard times sourcing medicine. After a lot of back surgeries and chronic pain all the doctors where I live want to do is put you on Oxys forever. They don't want to give them to you for breakout pain occasionally, they want you to go to a pain clinic and take 90 a month. Anyways, I digress, for me on most non-breakout normal days my medicine is enough. Due to everything with quarantines and difficulty of travel I have decided to do something I haven't done in 15 years and that is produce my own.

I have a 3x3x6 grow tent already.
I ordered a Phytomax-2 400 light (this was Black Dog LED's suggestion for the footprint, and after a lot of researching I only read good things about them) It should be here in a few days
I am going to start out with a KindSoil grow, I ordered that and am going to use PROMIX BX with mycorrhizae as the top of my medium
I ordered an AC Infinity Cloudline S4 for my exhaust
Hon & Guan 4 inch inline carbon filter
Inkbird Humidity and Temperature controller
A small humidifier and a small dehumidifier
I have a heater in the room hooked up to the inkbird for the winter
Ordered some Rope Ratchet Straps for hanging items
Got insulated ducting from a hardware store
Got some 4 way Tee pvc and straight pvc to make a movable frame that will slide up the tent poles to attach a scrog net to
Have some Bruce Banner and Sirius Black coming (since I am going to try and SCROG I will only grow one type at a time but I will vegetate the other in another chamber)
I did a lot of gardening in my time especially with chili peppers and have a nice Hanna PH EC meter

It will be a couple weeks before everything gets in (the seeds might take a couple weeks) and I plan on posting updates, but as someone who has been out of the game a long time, I guess I just want to say is there anything I'm forgetting?

Also at Black Dog and the higher end COB led light companies they recommend ambient temps between 82-85, since my days of using HID this seems exceptionally high to me, but they explained that with the lack of IR intensity the ambient will be closer to plant real temp while leaf temp under HID is actually a few degrees higher than ambient.

I do a lot of composting and gardening outside of other things so I am trying out Kindsoil and then maybe moving to creating my own hot soil mix.

I was struggling with the idea of how to prevent light leak through the passive intake on the tent, but I think I will just use a flat carbon furnace filter for that (It is a 4x12) or maybe I will use the two ductholes at the bottom with S ducts and filters.

Anyways, I am sure open to any pointers or omissions I might have in my thinking before beginning my project.

Edit: I realize a lot of people just come on here spinning thoughts but I will post updates and everything above has already been ordered or arrived. (I done spent the money)

Which btw Black Dog LED I have to say was exceptionally helpful and unbelievably friendly, their chat option on their site is very nice and you end up talking to someone knowledgeable quickly (No I am not paid by them).
Click to expand...
I would've picked a different light if it was me. I'm not a fan of LED's that need fans to cool them. I appreciate they're built here in CO, but I ain't drinking the Kool-Aid.
 
dbz

dbz

Well-Known Member
PadawanWarrior said:
I would've picked a different light if it was me. I'm not a fan of LED's that need fans to cool them. I appreciate they're built here in CO, but I ain't drinking the Kool-Aid.
Click to expand...
I get it, I am going to do a grow and then if all goes well do another chamber with COB leds. If I ever go much bigger maybe I will do DE. I just wanted something reliable and warrantied to start out with and I may have overpaid for advertising. I hope it works well.
 
dbz

dbz

Well-Known Member
Renfro said:
With CO2 you need to consider a 20 - 30% yield increase and weigh that against the cost of the CO2 supplementation. In my case I have rooms that run natural gas co2 generators, 4 ton minisplit AC, dehumidification. Natural gas for my CO2 generator costs me about $30 a month per flowering room. The extra yield in my case is about 5 - 6 pounds per cycle. So in my case the cost of the natural gas is a drop in the bucket.
Click to expand...
I was thinking about this, and well the room my tent is in, is roughly 12x12'. It is a sealed room, and I have a portable air conditioner in it that intakes from outside and exhausts outside. The floor is hardwood, but covered in 1 inch foam. All of the walls are covered in insulating foam, the door is air-tight. It isn't airtight but it is tighter sealed than most rooms (It was originally done so for acoustics as a recording studio). I suppose I might entertain the idea again if this goes well and I make the whole room a grow room, then I could just simply raise the CO2 level of the whole room, although by what I have calculated (not necessarily correctly so, but I figure 1152 cubic feet at a 1000ppm concentration would require around 1.152 Ft^3 of CO2 to raise it to that level and the air in the room as it isn't sealed perfectly airtight may exchange once every 4 hours leading to about .9 pounds a day) that would cost me around 30 bucks a month on just CO2. I am stupid for not thinking of the exhaust exchanging the air. It is something I may look into in the future, but only if I am growing enough to justify it. Not to mention then I'd need to at least do some baffled controlled intake and exhaust. Maybe one day.

For now, I hope I can do decently as is with what I have gotten to get me back into it :)
 
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dbz

dbz

Well-Known Member
Update:
I got in the light and unpacked and attached it inside the tent, also the humidifier and dehumidifier. The Exhaust fan is taking forever in shipping and so for a trial run I have a bagseed that I had outdoors and moved in. Testing temperatures without the exhaust fan made me realize just how much heat still high wattage LED puts out, so I moved a portable 14k AC into the room. Now Ambient room temperature is around 65 and the tent temperature fully sealed with light running is around 88-90. Kind of encouraging in a way, The exhaust fan won't be needed much as without it, my temps stay stable near 90. It won't have to kick on a whole lot.

This makes me think I may be able to use a little CO2 but we will see.

Before moving in the portable AC, I thoroughly cleaned and washed everything in it, wrapped the tubing and put insulating foam around where the two pipes are coming through the window.

We will see how this bagseed does while waiting on seeds, exhaust and hot soil for Bruce Banner grow.

(The bagseed came from Wedding Cake, packaged from a store in DC. It was the only seed in the half ounce of that strain that I received, who knows maybe it's a girl)
 
A

Apalchen

Well-Known Member
Other than bringing in a plant from outside (gotta watch for pest). Everything you said seems on point and a better equipment list than many I see posted.

I wouldn't worry about the C02 yet, until you max out your available floor space you gain more yield by adding more lights. Once the room is full of lights then I would add C02 if you can cool it without exhausting. If it goes the way most people do you will at least have a bigger tent for flower soon and be using the current one for veg.

As long as you don't exceed your portable ac cooling capacity you could just vent your tent back into the room it's in and use that like a lung room. But it wouldn't be very economical with just one tent going to fill a whole room with C02. If u add more tents that's a route I would consider but you might overpower your portable ac at that point.
 
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