Ok this is my current project, and I'm seeking advice from anyone and everyone who might be able to shed some light on my design. I was aiming for inexpensive, small, and effective - something that can be in an apartment building! This is what I have come up with:

The container I decided to go with - A styrofoam cooler, air tight, spacious, easy to work with, inexpensive, and already white!


The red squares are where I intend to install my fans. Later on, when I need it I want to install a carbon filter on my exhaust fan.
The black circles are where those light fixtures are going to be mounted horizontally, I think all of the lights together will give an even and adequate light distribution for my plant.
The lights consist of 2 pairs of soft white CFL's, 1600 lumens/23 watts (=100 watt incandescent)


The cover to the box - that is a 3300 lumen soft white CFL @ 55 watts (= 150 watt incandescent). I plan to have this mounted in such a way that I can adjust the height of it to sit just over the plant at all time. (And when the plant is too high, I have an extra cooler, and will set one bottom piece inverted on top of the other and remount my dome light)


All advice & criticism is welcome, I'm a newb

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I believe that the greatest of minds were stoners.
Styrofoam cooler - first grow ever!

the lights might be alittle to hot for styrofoam.

I actually took that into consideration, but those bulbs really don't produce much heat at all, I could have one turned on in my pants all day long and it probably wouldn't bother me :P What are your thoughts as far as design goes?

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I believe that the greatest of minds were stoners.
Styrofoam cooler - first grow ever!

Really interested as to how well this works out.

You should do a test with the lights to make sure heat isn't an issue.

Funny you should say that, right now I have two of the lights turned on and just laying on the bottom of it, (closely monitored, mind you! I don't want my place to burn down) I've had them there for 30 minutes now and still not even getting warm. I wonder if anything higher than 23w would get much hotter..? CFLs are pretty damn efficient as far as heat/light ratio goes

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I believe that the greatest of minds were stoners.
Styrofoam cooler - first grow ever!

Still no issues, and aside from my experimental observations, a little research taught me that the melting point for polystyrene (styrofoam) is approximately 240 degrees celcius, a temperature that no CFL would ever reach. So as far as safety and melting, it checks out! Good question though, it's something I didn't really think about when buying my supplies. (Stoned...)

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I believe that the greatest of minds were stoners.
Styrofoam cooler - first grow ever!

Awesome. I'm going to go pick up some supplies tomorrow and try a similar setup for my first grow. Worst case scenario I ruin an $8 cooler.

Haha that was my perspective on it too, if you don't spend much money you can't risk wasting much money Plus I'm pretty confident it's going to have great results, I'll be posting more pics as I progress.

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I believe that the greatest of minds were stoners.
Styrofoam cooler - first grow ever!

my 26w cfls run hotter than my 42w...

also, just to be safe... there are lots of fire-retardant spray "paints" on the market you could use... i used to work in the oil field and covered all my clothes in them before going out. :P

Also, if you monitoring the cfls, then the lid is probably off.... shut the lid for a good while, let the heated air not escape, and see how much hotter those cfls can get

Not a problem with the fans you plan on installing.... bur what if they stop working?? Not raining on your parade, just prying to get you to test a bit more - I'd hate to see your next post be about you setting your apartment complex on fire while you were at work!

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I DO grow weed - Dandelions to be specific.
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I like the setup nice and clean and pretty much anyone can do it.