Vertical NFT room build, couple of questions

French1965

French1965

Member
My fellow growers!



Since vertical growing in my country is not that populair I descided to ask my questions on this forum, I hope you guys can help me out.
I drawed the room design down, with numbers matching my questions, I hope this is clear enough. I have quite some experience with indoor growing on dirt, but want to make a switch to hydro. I love the way NFT works so I descided to start working with that. I am able to read the plants through EC and Ph so I think I will be fine. Also I would love to do a vertical grow for a change, simply because no one is doing it over here and 1gr/w is considered the standard of a good grow, I would love to see how I can do better than that.


I will be running with 99 plants and 4 HPS lights (probably 4x600w) in cooltubes. Available room size is 2m X 2m (6.5 ft x 6.5 ft). Will not be using Co2.


Here are my questions matching the drawing (I know in my drawing the upper channel is a bit high, that will be at normal height in the real room):

1) I currently have a 150 liter (39 Gallon) watertank available. Is this a proper size for the amount of plants?

2) I am thinking of running 4 tubes (or more if neccesairy, depending on the size of the outlet extractor) to the fan(s) in the center to bring in fresh air passively. Will this do the trick and give the plants enough fresh air circulation?

3) What size of outlet extractor will be needed here? Normally I take 1m3 for every watt I have on lights, so that will be around 2400m3 (7874 cubic foot). Since I will be using cooltubes will I probably have less temperature problems so I can probably take a smaller one, but I would love to have a little overcapacity so I dont have to run it at 100% and make unneccesairy noise.

4) I am thinking of placing to fans on the floor blowing air up, hitting the plants before hitting the outlet extractor. Thoughts on this? Is 2 a overkill? I see a lot of vertical growers still using clipfans from the top, my opinion is to always take cold air from the bottom and remove hot air from the top.

5) Is my NFT drain good to go the way I drawed it? So all stacked in line?

6) My NFT pipes have a total lenght of 6.5m (21.3 ft) holding around 25 plants per channel. Is a drop of 3% enough? So every meter I drop 3 cm. Total drop on the 6.5m is 19.5 cm (0.6 ft or 7.6 inch)

7) Can I run my cooltubes this way? So connected to the main exctractor? Or would I need a separate extractor for the cooltubes? I could imagine that the extractor will not be happy with the hot air, since the air is also cooling its motor. For that reason I always thought its better to push air through the cooltubes instead of sucking it through them. In that case, what size of extractor would I need to have optimal cooling in both double lighted cooltube channels?

8 ) What is the optimal distance between each netpot hole for our crops? Will probably be growing indicas SOG.

9) How much light can I run in the cooltubes? I often hear 600w is the max for a cooltube. is 4x750w an option?

10) I know its probably hard to give exact numbers on this, but in what rance of L/h or G/h waterpump do I have to look to have optimal water flow? Maybe anyone with a similair system can give me some ideas? I know it depends on the height the pump can lift the water, but I still see lots of difference in the numbers between different pumps matching the height.

11) I forgot my question I had while drawing, probaly smoked to much :eyesmoke:



I know its a lot off questions, but thanks in advance guys!

Drawing.jpg
 
Airwalker16

Airwalker16

Well-Known Member
French1965 said:
My fellow growers!



Since vertical growing in my country is not that populair I descided to ask my questions on this forum, I hope you guys can help me out.
I drawed the room design down, with numbers matching my questions, I hope this is clear enough. I have quite some experience with indoor growing on dirt, but want to make a switch to hydro. I love the way NFT works so I descided to start working with that. I am able to read the plants through EC and Ph so I think I will be fine. Also I would love to do a vertical grow for a change, simply because no one is doing it over here and 1gr/w is considered the standard of a good grow, I would love to see how I can do better than that.


I will be running with 99 plants and 4 HPS lights (probably 4x600w) in cooltubes. Available room size is 2m X 2m (6.5 ft x 6.5 ft). Will not be using Co2.


Here are my questions matching the drawing (I know in my drawing the upper channel is a bit high, that will be at normal height in the real room):

1) I currently have a 150 liter (39 Gallon) watertank available. Is this a proper size for the amount of plants?

2) I am thinking of running 4 tubes (or more if neccesairy, depending on the size of the outlet extractor) to the fan(s) in the center to bring in fresh air passively. Will this do the trick and give the plants enough fresh air circulation?

3) What size of outlet extractor will be needed here? Normally I take 1m3 for every watt I have on lights, so that will be around 2400m3 (7874 cubic foot). Since I will be using cooltubes will I probably have less temperature problems so I can probably take a smaller one, but I would love to have a little overcapacity so I dont have to run it at 100% and make unneccesairy noise.

4) I am thinking of placing to fans on the floor blowing air up, hitting the plants before hitting the outlet extractor. Thoughts on this? Is 2 a overkill? I see a lot of vertical growers still using clipfans from the top, my opinion is to always take cold air from the bottom and remove hot air from the top.

5) Is my NFT drain good to go the way I drawed it? So all stacked in line?

6) My NFT pipes have a total lenght of 6.5m (21.3 ft) holding around 25 plants per channel. Is a drop of 3% enough? So every meter I drop 3 cm. Total drop on the 6.5m is 19.5 cm (0.6 ft or 7.6 inch)

7) Can I run my cooltubes this way? So connected to the main exctractor? Or would I need a separate extractor for the cooltubes? I could imagine that the extractor will not be happy with the hot air, since the air is also cooling its motor. For that reason I always thought its better to push air through the cooltubes instead of sucking it through them. In that case, what size of extractor would I need to have optimal cooling in both double lighted cooltube channels?

8 ) What is the optimal distance between each netpot hole for our crops? Will probably be growing indicas SOG.

9) How much light can I run in the cooltubes? I often hear 600w is the max for a cooltube. is 4x750w an option?

10) I know its probably hard to give exact numbers on this, but in what rance of L/h or G/h waterpump do I have to look to have optimal water flow? Maybe anyone with a similair system can give me some ideas? I know it depends on the height the pump can lift the water, but I still see lots of difference in the numbers between different pumps matching the height.

11) I forgot my question I had while drawing, probaly smoked to much :eyesmoke:



I know its a lot off questions, but thanks in advance guys!

View attachment 4590096
Click to expand...
Holy Shit if you pull this build off.....I'll be so very impressed.
 
thenasty1

thenasty1

Well-Known Member
French1965 said:
My fellow growers!



Since vertical growing in my country is not that populair I descided to ask my questions on this forum, I hope you guys can help me out.
I drawed the room design down, with numbers matching my questions, I hope this is clear enough. I have quite some experience with indoor growing on dirt, but want to make a switch to hydro. I love the way NFT works so I descided to start working with that. I am able to read the plants through EC and Ph so I think I will be fine. Also I would love to do a vertical grow for a change, simply because no one is doing it over here and 1gr/w is considered the standard of a good grow, I would love to see how I can do better than that.


I will be running with 99 plants and 4 HPS lights (probably 4x600w) in cooltubes. Available room size is 2m X 2m (6.5 ft x 6.5 ft). Will not be using Co2.


Here are my questions matching the drawing (I know in my drawing the upper channel is a bit high, that will be at normal height in the real room):

1) I currently have a 150 liter (39 Gallon) watertank available. Is this a proper size for the amount of plants?

2) I am thinking of running 4 tubes (or more if neccesairy, depending on the size of the outlet extractor) to the fan(s) in the center to bring in fresh air passively. Will this do the trick and give the plants enough fresh air circulation?

3) What size of outlet extractor will be needed here? Normally I take 1m3 for every watt I have on lights, so that will be around 2400m3 (7874 cubic foot). Since I will be using cooltubes will I probably have less temperature problems so I can probably take a smaller one, but I would love to have a little overcapacity so I dont have to run it at 100% and make unneccesairy noise.

4) I am thinking of placing to fans on the floor blowing air up, hitting the plants before hitting the outlet extractor. Thoughts on this? Is 2 a overkill? I see a lot of vertical growers still using clipfans from the top, my opinion is to always take cold air from the bottom and remove hot air from the top.

5) Is my NFT drain good to go the way I drawed it? So all stacked in line?

6) My NFT pipes have a total lenght of 6.5m (21.3 ft) holding around 25 plants per channel. Is a drop of 3% enough? So every meter I drop 3 cm. Total drop on the 6.5m is 19.5 cm (0.6 ft or 7.6 inch)

7) Can I run my cooltubes this way? So connected to the main exctractor? Or would I need a separate extractor for the cooltubes? I could imagine that the extractor will not be happy with the hot air, since the air is also cooling its motor. For that reason I always thought its better to push air through the cooltubes instead of sucking it through them. In that case, what size of extractor would I need to have optimal cooling in both double lighted cooltube channels?

8 ) What is the optimal distance between each netpot hole for our crops? Will probably be growing indicas SOG.

9) How much light can I run in the cooltubes? I often hear 600w is the max for a cooltube. is 4x750w an option?

10) I know its probably hard to give exact numbers on this, but in what rance of L/h or G/h waterpump do I have to look to have optimal water flow? Maybe anyone with a similair system can give me some ideas? I know it depends on the height the pump can lift the water, but I still see lots of difference in the numbers between different pumps matching the height.

11) I forgot my question I had while drawing, probaly smoked to much :eyesmoke:



I know its a lot off questions, but thanks in advance guys!

View attachment 4590096
Click to expand...
cool idea. i like nft, but ive never ran it vertically. here are my thoughts
1. you will want a bigger reservoir. what you have will work but you will end up refilling or topping off damn near every day
2. should be fine, you could probably have sufficient intake with 1 or 2 fans though. but if youre doing something this fancy, why not seal it up and run co2?
3. if youre going to extract air, do it with your light cooling fan(s). put a carbon filter on the floor as the open end and run the air through your light tubes
4. good idea
5. seems alright to me
6. probably fine. a little more incline would also be fine
7. see 3. kill two birds with one stone. its always more efficient to pull air than it is to push it. fans should have no problem dealing with the heat
8. depends. considering the size of the room, i would go rooted clone straight to flower and probably reduce plant count. i would think 30 cm or so but its hard for me to estimate having never run a vert setup before. its also been a minute since ive ran any single ended lights, so i could be under/overestimating growth potential
9. no idea, ive never ran a cool tube before
10. a 1000 gph pump lifts water just fine for me, but im not running it into a manifold. you should look into this further
another thought- however you end up spacing your plant sites, offset them every other row to minimize the plants growing into each other
check out the vertical growing forum too, theres probably some useful info in there
 
French1965

French1965

Member
Thanks for your answers Nasty, appreciate that!

- In what range of reservoir size should I be looking? I can imagine that the bigger the reservoir gets, the higher the lowest nft channel will end up.
- Co2 might be an addition for the future. Also because I dont have a AC, I cool with the passive incoming fresh air and extraction through the fan.
- The carbon filter on the ground seems interesting. Only problem im thinking of than, aren’t the cooltube channels way to small to pull all that air? Should be a large amount with 4x600w and no AC.
- I love the idea of offsetting the plants, will definitely do that, thanks!
 
thenasty1

thenasty1

Well-Known Member
French1965 said:
Thanks for your answers Nasty, appreciate that!

- In what range of reservoir size should I be looking? I can imagine that the bigger the reservoir gets, the higher the lowest nft channel will end up.
- Co2 might be an addition for the future. Also because I dont have a AC, I cool with the passive incoming fresh air and extraction through the fan.
- The carbon filter on the ground seems interesting. Only problem im thinking of than, aren’t the cooltube channels way to small to pull all that air? Should be a large amount with 4x600w and no AC.
- I love the idea of offsetting the plants, will definitely do that, thanks!
Click to expand...
get the biggest res you can fit in your space. bigger=more stable+less maintenance. you might be able to connect your current res to a larger one via float valve, but depending on how much water ends up in your system during a feed, it might end up overflowing by the time the pump shuts off and that water returns to the res. i dont know anything about cool tubes, but they should be fine to pull whatever amount of air through as long as you dont have a drastically oversized fan connected to them
 
French1965

French1965

Member
thenasty1 said:
get the biggest res you can fit in your space. bigger=more stable+less maintenance. you might be able to connect your current res to a larger one via float valve, but depending on how much water ends up in your system during a feed, it might end up overflowing by the time the pump shuts off and that water returns to the res. i dont know anything about cool tubes, but they should be fine to pull whatever amount of air through as long as you dont have a drastically oversized fan connected to them
Click to expand...
The space is not the issue, I have plenty of room next to the growroom where I will mix my nutrients, propagate and dry. The problem is that most big reservoirs are really high so my nft channels will be to high. Offcourse 2 reservoirs with 2 pumps will be a solution, only thing is that you have to do every measure and feed twice.

and formthe cooltubes, the normal size fan I use for a 4x600 setup is a 2400m3/h. The cooltube channels are only 160mm in diameter, might be to small.
 
Airwalker16

Airwalker16

Well-Known Member
French1965 said:
The space is not the issue, I have plenty of room next to the growroom where I will mix my nutrients, propagate and dry. The problem is that most big reservoirs are really high so my nft channels will be to high. Offcourse 2 reservoirs with 2 pumps will be a solution, only thing is that you have to do every measure and feed twice.

and formthe cooltubes, the normal size fan I use for a 4x600 setup is a 2400m3/h. The cooltube channels are only 160mm in diameter, might be to small.
Click to expand...
Not at all. Botanicare in particular sells very low profile reservoirs.
 
Airwalker16

Airwalker16

Well-Known Member

12/12 From Seed Experiment - 21 Strains

Super---- HDS, I like to take a sampling of buds at different stages when they get that far along to compare the smoke characteristics. (and in a hurry to try any new strain) Ahhhh------that first article smoke.:bigjoint: I hope I'm wrong -------I guesstimate between 2.0-3.0 lbs. A~~~
www.rollitup.org
 
French1965

French1965

Member
Hot Diggity Sog said:
Sure...I'm an open book.
Click to expand...
Can you check out the questions in the first post?
After reading your treat I decided to go for a 50mm drain instead of a 40mm and make it removable, and will be using 2x 396GpH waterpumps. I also will be dropping the cooltubes to main extractor idea and just get a extra extractor fan just for the cooltubes. I would love to run without them, but with outside temperatures of 86f it will already be hard enough in keeping it cool.

How big of a rez did you use in the octa eventually? Pretty small right? Didnt had any problems with that?
 
Hot Diggity Sog

Hot Diggity Sog

Well-Known Member
27 Gallon rez - worked great, no problems at all. What I've found is that PH and EC fluctuates more and more as the grow progresses and rez changes need to be done more often. For example, PH and EC would remain consistent and rez changes were only needed about every 2 weeks during early veg. By early flower, rez changes every 8 or 9 days. And near the very end of flower, rez changes every 4 days. Not sure if size of rez played much of a factor in that.
 
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