NOTE: Everything in red are answers/questions posted by me.

Bulbs - Both will produce heat so you will need to have a intake and exhaust fan. MH is for veg and HPS is for flower. Ideally have both at same time. If you can only get 1 get the HPS. Get a decent bulb.

Safety - yeah will be fine in tent just make sure to vent to keep heat down and air circulating.


Attic Ducts - Do you keep the ac on when hot and heat when cold? around 70? If so you can just buy T's connects and flexible duct from home depot. That way will circulate filtered air in to the tent and will alway be at 70 or atleast fresh air coming in will be before heating up. Your exhaust should leave room as well. if you dont care about smell you dont need a carbon filter.

The Good Doc has a few good words of advice. The main concern is that your probably wanting to grow in your attic. what is the ambient temp during the day and at night? Based on budget, you may only be able to do this during the fall/winter/spring. basically 1 or 2 grows.
You can find good deals on GrowLab tents online the size your looking for should be around $200.00. (GL120)
You can fit 6" hydrofarm hood in all of GL's tents that are larger than the GL60. GL60 will work, you just have to rotate the hood and expect some pushing out on the edges.

Some tents say they have ventilation ports, but some are 5" (for 4" ducting) and not 7" (for 6" ducting). So, if they come with 5" ports, you can mod like Good Doc said. It works, you just have to buy the 6" double flange kits. or 8" which ever size fan or ducting you go for. ($15-18 a pair).

Odor control - you can build or buy a filter. Building your own will save you only 100 or so bucks. It just depends on the size of filter which is based on how you vent the tent.

You can vent the tent with one inline fan ( ducting* -> tent** -> open space / plants -> filter -> ducting -> tent**-> ducting -> inline fan -> ducting -> vent to outside )
and vent the lamp with another ( ducting* -> tent** -> ducting -> Hood -> ducting - > tent** -> ducting -> inline fan -> ducting -> Vent to outside).

* ducting length is optional depending on where the cool air is at. if the room is cool, no need to have long lengths of ducting, just enough to create bends in it to keep light from entering the tent.
** the ports of the tent may be to small, so using the flange kits and cutting the the tent is a must. for the hood, you will need to have these flange kits installed not to close to the top of the tent on opposite walls, there needs to be room and extra room for the filter to be hung.


if you can only afford 1 inline fan, you can vent the hood and tent all in one step. ( ducting* -> tent** -> open space / plants filter -> ducting -> hood -> ducting -> tent**-> ducting -> inline fan -> ducting -> vent to outside)

lighting
go with what ever you can afford, 400/600/1000. plus the cost of power. depending on where you live and how much electricity you already use, your bill could go up quite a bit. with these wattages. check with your local electricity company website to see if they have an energy calculator. also see if there are tiers for usage and look at past energy bills to see what you will be charged for running the extra 400/600/1000 watts per hour (remember that these actually are the bulb wattages and not the ballast wattage which is higher).

depending on your budget for this area, you can go with digital or magnetic. i'm interested in the C.A.P. Extreme Ballast's. they have a lifetime warrantee. So far the only other's are 5 year.
http://www.horticulturesource.com/c-...f66012e417e110

Lumatek ballasts are good too. quite as hell.

No matter what people say, all ballast will be just like many other electronic products on the market. Some may just be defective, or not all the ballast in the batch were tested fully. Electronic/digital ballasts need to be scrapped when replaced. magnetic, all they need to do is replace the defective part.


You will also need to control your humidity. if it's to high, you will get mold or thc levels will be low.


take a look at what other people are doing, price shop, etc... you're the only one that knows your growing environment and you can sketch out what you need on top of what anyone has suggested.

Expect to spend around 1000 when all said and done, unless you build the room from stuff that is just laying around (which i have seen quite a bit of). but in the end, if it's done right for your environment, you will save money in the long run.

Dirt will cut your costs a whole lot, and will make things simpler. But remember to get staralized soil! Other wise you will get bugs, hopefully the ones you get if you don't get steralized soil are not the bad ones.

You will still need nutreints. Don't ask what is best, its what works for you. I or anyone else can only speak from the experience of the crops that they have run with those individual nutes.

You can do simple hand watering, which will save a whole lot. Just remember to get a ph & ppm meter at the very least. Also a thermometer & a mosture meter of some kind. You need to know the temperature of your room, humidity of your room, ph of your nutes & ppm(not as important with soil but still an issue).

If you are going to get a tent, spend the 300 or more on a good one. I have found some nice stuff on ebay, for about half the cost of a store. Make sure to get the silver interior, and one with multiple duct options! Other wise just making a Panda Film room is cheaper and as good or better.

If money or electricity is a big issue, you could always drop down to 1 or 2 400watt setups, or go with several t5 lamp setups. You can get good results with either way. But remember, you get what you pay for! & You have to pay to play! Every corner you cut, comes with the possibility of a lesser quality or quantity yield.

5 Plants with the right nutes, co2 & lights could possibly yield up to 20 ounces or more. I wouldn't expect this your first time, or if you cut lots of corners. If you have a stunted crop, you could expect from 3 to 7 ounces from all 5 plants.

If you wanted to, a grow table is a very cheap and easy way to get into hydro ponics. You only need to buy, one pump, one table one resevoir, and one grow mat the size of your table. A 4 x 4 would work just fine for any where from 5 to 12 plants. With this type of setup, you could get away with using a two part hydro nute setup like FloraNova from Gen Hydro. Add a sugar booster and co2 during the right times, and you will get a good yield.

As described you would be in to between 850 and 1400 dollars. It just depends on the deals you get at the time, and if you buy the black or white resevoirs. The magnetic or electronic ballast. T5 or HPS.

I agree with the above btw. If you only get one light, go with the biggest HPS you can afford. Most ballast do have a dual spectrem function at this point, so on the second crop you could always add the MH to your game. Or, for that matter, most companies do make a MH to MPS conversion bulb. So you have options!

I will tell you one big thing, I speak from personal experience with the cheap tents. Don't go cheap on the tent. DO YOUR RESEARCH!

To The Good Doc & msgmehere1, thank you for all your comments. I will only be growing in the colder seasons, I just went in my attic & took some pictures and did some measurements. I will post a few pictures and give the measurements below. On the odor control tip, odor will be a issue to me because I don't want my entire block smelling the goodness. I plan to get a 4 Inch Carbon Filter to take care of that, would this handle my 4x4x6.5 tent? For lighting I am considering getting a digital ballasts, I may actually go with the C.A.P. Extreme Ballast's as well. I haven't picked out a light fixture just yet but I want to get something for around 100$ - 200$, complete setup. Any suggestions would be great. Lighting will be one of the most important issues because it will be in the attic, as far as humidity goes; lets just say where I live it is usually up in the 80%'s.. Is there anything that I can do to cut down the humidity in tent down?

To snodegd, I keep my ac in the house around 75 degrees but I will consider keeping it out 70 degrees if nessasary. As far as for heat, I don't really use the heater that much because we have a fireplace that I use often when its cold, our cold winters might get down to like 40 degree max. I uploaded a couple of pictures of my attic, please excuse the mess. I just moved in a few months back & I plan to put floor down very soon. Also I have about a 6x6 foot area that I can play with minus the ac air ducts that around the area. The center of the roof is about 7.5 feet tall, I also have one of the those metal spiny things luckily right by the location I plan to setup.

Attached Images

	IMG_1291.jpg (60.6 KB, 14 views)
	IMG_1300.jpg (67.4 KB, 14 views)
	IMG_1298.jpg (75.4 KB, 15 views)
	IMG_1301.jpg (52.3 KB, 14 views)
	IMG_1302.jpg (66.0 KB, 12 views)

dude.. as far as anything goes as setting up a grow.. if your not 18.... dont do it.

If you are 18 then fuck the tent and build a actual grow space. Wither it be a closet or what.... do it right. it will pay it off in the end Big time.

How much revenue are you working with.. do you have only 300 dollars or 700 dollars? reason I ask is because lights can be more expensive... but sometimes you get what you pay for.

If you are planning on doing only a few plants... and thats it... then I would go with a hps lamp.... depending on the size of your growing room... space that to the wattage of your system. Digital ballasts will run you more... but they are silent, run cooler, use less elec and produce a brighter lamp. The old style core and coil ballasts are cheapier... but are noisy... can be very noisy and that will give you away to anyone in the same house.

Other people dont like the 600 watt lights.. I actually do. ITs a nice common ground between the 400 and 1000. If you are only doing a small area.. I would go with this wattage. Again.. hps.

if you are not 18.... again.. dont do it. wait the time and plan it out.

As far as seeds go... I order from Amsterdamseedbank - have ALWAYS had great success with them from shipping to germination. Prices might be a little higher... but you get it from the quality in their product.

good luck

__________________
my address is 420 - how fitting.

you could do a lot with that space!

I would say you could go with any ballast that fits your budget. CAP (magnetic) Extreme ballast (link from previous post) are currently the cheapest i could find.

Bulbs: http://www.plantlightinghydroponics.com/
great price on hortilux bulbs.

and for the hood, go with a hood that has 85-90% + reflectivity and matches the fan you want to use.

As for your filter, it depends on how you're planing on venting the tent and hood. if your connecting your filter to your hood then to your fan, i'd go with a higher CFM filter since your going to need to move more air over the light than if you were to have them on 2 separate intakes and exhausts. (all in one) If a filter is rated for 200cfm, and you need a fan running at 400+ CFM to keep the tents temps at 79-85, than the filter is doing double time and the air is not going to be filtered properly.
if you have one fan exhausting the tent (smell) and another exhausting the light (heat), than the 4" you have in mind will be fine.

I have a 630 CFM 6" venting 400w HPS w/ or w/o a filter (DIY), it is running at 60-75% full speed and it keeps the temps at around 4-8 degrees above the external air it is pulling it.


As for humidity, your probably going to have to decide how you want to do your setup. you'd have to have a hardcore dehumidifier to remove the moisture form the attic space, plus a pump or piping to remove the moisture from the machine. Check your humidity level's for the air in the ducts uses to push cool air into the attic, it may be lower than you think. It's the air leaks in the attic that may cause the humidity to be equal or a bit shy of what is outside of the house. if the vents cooling the house have a relatively low humidity, you could just splice off of one of those to use as your intake.

I am well over 18, parent's don't live with me, I live in my house with my girlfriend, don't rent. Building a grow room was a option to me at first (inside the attic) but I don't really have the space for that when it comes to height. Also I don't want to start an projects that don't need to be done when there are other portable options. The seeds I ordered are both medium size plants, I plan to stick with small plants.

People are giving you hella good advice. I didnt know what the fuk happened to me this week. I used that fukd soil like the good doc said and had whiteflies and silverfish all over hell and back within a week. I wondered how they got there. Guess the moral is. DOnt go cheap on the soil your gonna use if you use soil. I love this site...