Build or buy?

So I'm going to put together a veg space separate from my current grow tent so I can run perpetually. My question is: Is it better to build a 2x4x4-6'ft. "cabinet" or just buy a cheap tent for $100-ish? This will be holding a couple 4ft. LED shop lights and maybe light ventilation. Input?

Found a deal on a tent I couldn't pass up. Move along.

I bought a few tents and ended up just using one and having my veg area open in the room due to height issues. One of My flower areas is in a 4x4 tent though.

I use tents much easier than building your own if you've got the cash for it.

I picked up a cheap ipower 4x2x5 for $70. It's actually like 32" deep which is nice extra depth. I throw some pics up of the set up in about 1.5 weeks.

If I have enough cash I would buy it, anyway it doesn't cost much. Congrats with purchase.

LED Grown

yeah, I am half way through flowering my first grow...
Fair to say I started with 1 x 120x120x200cm tent...
Now ALREADY i have 140x140x200cm tent for flowering and another 80x80x140 cm tent for clones/seedlings to go with the original 120x120x200cm tent lol!
Aslong as the tent you buy is mylar and not aluminium and has good zips and tough made it will last forever.
If you have money available its always much wiser to buy the tent, that way all the vents/ducts are already there its just a matter of hooking up the lights and fans after that.

I find those tents are too short. I wasted a lot of money on those damn chinese pieces of crap. If you get a tent, make sure you get the adjustable height tents, like the Gorrilla brand. You cannot flower tall plants in the 6.5 feet tents. too close to the lights.

My first tent thingy was 4 pieces of 4'x8'x3/8" plywood. I had a plywood lid on it and a step up the side so I could take the top off in the morning and put the lid back on 12 hours later. The interior was painted white. It grew massive hydro and soil grown buds outside in the summer. I fashioned a small door in the side large enough for servicing and watering.

Jumfrey13 said:

I find those tents are too short. I wasted a lot of money on those damn chinese pieces of crap. If you get a tent, make sure you get the adjustable height tents, like the Gorrilla brand. You cannot flower tall plants in the 6.5 feet tents. too close to the lights.

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That's the whole problem right there. Jesus, if you're going to go to all the trouble to design and manufacture the damned things, just give us an extra foot or so, will ya?

What are they thinking? It's a fantastic product idea except for that one very serious limitation, one that makes it almost useless for a lot of growers. Even if you're doing a SOG or SCROG (which are really the only methods I think you even can use in a tent), by the time you add the height of the reservoir, the 6 inches or so of the pots or cubes, plus the 3 to 3.5 minimum of the plants (and even that's only if you use indica dominant strains), you can easily be within a foot of the light. It's really frustrating, because they're a great idea otherwise.

A grow box that you can screw things into is always has more versatility and can be clandestine when it has to be. Same box different grow.

I already have a 3x3x8' Gorilla tent with a 600w Ushio in a Yieldmaster 2 AC hood. I pull between 1/2-1pb per grow depending on strains and number of plants. This tent should allow me to harvest 1-2 plants every 4-5 weeks once the rotation starts. I'll be dropping some Breeders Boutique Fireballs here in an hour or so

Figgy said:

I already have a 3x3x8' Gorilla tent with a 600w Ushio in a Yieldmaster 2 AC hood. I pull between 1/2-1pb per grow depending on strains and number of plants. This tent should allow me to harvest 1-2 plants every 4-5 weeks once the rotation starts. I'll be dropping some Breeders Boutique Fireballs here in an hour or so

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Right on. Those gorilla tents are nice because they come either adjustable height wise or they come extra tall. That is the main missing link with those Chinese knockoff tents which are only 6.5 feet tall. I have four tents which are just sitting in my shed

One way to give yourself an extra foot and a half or so is to build a small platform with plywood and 2x4s, put the tent on the platform, and put the reservoir outside the tent. That lets you put your tray right on the floor of the tent, and that extra headspace can really come in handy if they grow more than you expected during the flowering phase. Because the problem is, you often don't really know how much headspace you're ultimately going to need until the tops of your plants are already smoking.

I like that idea Skunk . You can build a base and plumb it thru the vent holes. A flood and drain would sit nice on the bottom and be out of the lights.

Another modification that I would suggest for those tents is to reinforce the top poles. Most of them come with 5/8" hollow stainless steel poles for the top braces, but by the time you're done hanging lights and fans and filters and Christmas ornaments or whatever, those poles are flexing pretty badly. I wouldn't trust $5000 worth of White Rhino under all that hanging stuff when the poles are that flimsy. I found that you can get half-inch diameter steel rods from Lowes or Home Depot, precut in various lengths, and just slide them inside the hollow tube. Yeah, it adds more weight for the vertical poles to support, but they can handle it - they have plenty of compressive strength; just suck at flexural stress. I brace the two interior poles that are used to hang hardware, plus the two side poles from which those other two poles are suspended. The two side poles that don't bear any weight, I just leave alone. All they need to do is provide stability to the frame, and they're plenty strong enough for that.

I also don't trust the plastic corner brackets, or the plastic end pieces on the interior poles - the ones that are supposed to attach the interior poles to the side poles. So I use copper plumbing fittings on the top corners (bottom corners don't matter, because they're not bearing any weight) and use eye hooks inserted into the hollow ends of the interior poles to hang them from the side poles. By the time I'm done bracing that top frame, I could use it to pull the engine out of my car.