Bout to Blow Up the Basement

What's up, RIU? Let me first say this is so awesome what everyone does here. The resources I've learned from this community amaze me every day! This being my first post, just wanted to give some major props to all out there sharing great info. Ok, now to the exciting stuff.
So, I have a 12x15x8 sealed basement; besides one exterior door of course. The only things I'm firm on are Bubble Bucket System setups under 2 x 1000W (flower), 2 T5's (4 Tube for Veg), & a 3 bulb Shop-Lite (clones/seedlings). I'm planning on trying my first Closed Grow Environment (CGE). Any suggestions, recommendations, or advice would be much appreciated.

Won't be long now...

Dehumidification, cooling, co2 will all need regulation in your controlled environment.

basements are excellent for temp control. That being said i think you will still need a passive intake or an AC.

increase your air stone to the longest you can fit across the bottom of that bucket. whether 10"or 12". i have the same set up but for clones. i get roots in 9-10 days. also i am growing critical cheese from dinafem. its about 16" tall and stinks badly already. starting flowering next week. gunna take a few cuts off first.

Is a bubble bucket DWC? Dude you are biting A LOT of for your first grow.

Please for the love of fucking Christ, heed some of my advice. I started with 2 600's over ebb and flow tables and now I have a total of 42k watts in three locations. DWC in vertical bulb rooms and hempy in one of the smaller rooms (11k)


Anyways...
You ARE going to need a co2 system if it's sealed. So you also need a proper PPM controller.

You can probably squeek by with temps in the basement. Your going to want to run a Dehu at night to boost temps and keep humidity in check. Humidity will skyrocket when the lights go out in a sealed space.

Anyways...on to the more important things you need, don't go jizzzing in your pants about hoods and bulbs you need solid basic tools at this point
1. A GOOD PH meter. Blue labs have served me well
2. Ppm meter
3. A fucking good air pump.
Those Eco plus things are utter pieces of shit. They are loud, hot, and don't last. I have four of the 110L ones, you can have them just pay the shipping cost.
Pondmaster pumps!! Quiet, strong, not hot and wow..what a concept you can replace the parts when they wear out. Seriously. Quality shit there
4. Cheap air stones work fine. I have tried them ALL I settled on the 2" round ones (the grey ones). Plan to buy new stones every run. They just get clogged and it's not worth the hassle. We have tried boiling, bleaching, baking, blowing air while boiling.. Fuck it, just buy new ones. When you harvest 60k worth of bud, suddenly $200 for airstones doesn't seem so bad.

5. Run beneficials, run beneficials, run beneficials. End of story

6. By a light meter on eBay and use it.

7. Fuck T5 for vegging dude, get another 400 or better a 600 (you can buy $30 MH bulbs and drive them at 600. T5 are great for clones and baby plants. They LOVE that light..they just are not strong enough for anything over 14" tall

8. Always err on the side of under feeding. Always.

9. Read read and then read some more.

10 and lastly.. The only "boosters" I use are the following. I have always done side by side tests of thing to see how they work.

1. Sea green kelp extract. Foliar feed, add to tea before dumping in the Rez..Awesome stuff

2. Phosphoload. God I love me a little diaziminode and paclobuytrozol.

3. Liquid gold by dry flower products. It's a filmic acid spray and fuck it works so well. I spray every other day from about week 5 till week 8. Really helps out on weight.

^^ i have been around for a while and legaly def knows his shit, he can be a bit crude sometimes but his advice is always spot on.

I tried using salt away on my air stones, as recommended, buy new ones.

Me? Crude? Never.

I suppose I do have a "listen up dumbass attitude"

But if you have know the real details about growing indoors...it's astonishing that other people people don't research it themselves.

I don't even bother most of the time. Saw a guy in the hydro store buying a brand new magnetic ballast and a magnum Xxl hood yesterday. After the guy left I asked the clerk "what the fuck, don't people ever read before they buy shit?"

His reply "nope, they don't. We had a guy in here last week bragging about the 600 watts of t-5 he made a "flower chamber" out of.

legallyflying said:

Me? Crude? Never.

I suppose I do have a "listen up dumbass attitude"

But if you have know the real details about growing indoors...it's astonishing that other people people don't research it themselves.

I don't even bother most of the time. Saw a guy in the hydro store buying a brand new magnetic ballast and a magnum Xxl hood yesterday. After the guy left I asked the clerk "what the fuck, don't people ever read before they buy shit?"

His reply "nope, they don't. We had a guy in here last week bragging about the 600 watts of t-5 he made a "flower chamber" out of.

Click to expand...

This me might be dumb but what's wrong with using a magnetic ballast and a xxl hood?

They are both a waste of money??

Magnetic ballasts are fucking heavy and HOT as fuck! And where is this heat coming from...wasted electricity. Simple physics.
They also produce less light from the same wattage and don't offer a 10% boost in wattage and light like a digital ballast.

They also wear out over time and produce less and less light. And the staggering thing is..they are only like $70 cheaper than a good digital ballast.

So say you save $70 on your ballast at the cost of let's conservatively say 10% less light and yield. Hell let's say 5%. A 1k bulb will kick out 25 ounces with a capable grower. 5% less would mean 1.25 ounces less. So you lost out on about $250 (on the west coast anyways lol)

Plus you can mount them on the wall which is a real nice feature.


There are several tests of various hoods out there in terms of light pattern and output. The blockbuster is half the size of the mag and has more impressive numbers. It's all a gimmick my friend. Tell me this..the light from a bulb emits from the SIDES of the bulb, not the tip or base. Sure it sends the light out in all directions but hold a light meter under a vertical bulb and then to the side of it..the light is literally around 900% brighter.

So you have this super long hood...that is around 3 times the length of the bulb...and the side reflectors in the hood face down..so where exactly is all that light coming from to illuminate such a long pattern under the bulb?

When they came out I thought oh yeah!! These are bomb, then I took my light meter into the store..whoa..big but no more usable light. A finite amount of light comes from a bulb...you can only spread it around so much.

Here you go...

http://www.greners.com/reflector-test.html

The little blockbuster and the radiant scored above all the big hoods.

I only have one room with hoods in it these days. All the rest are just bare vertical bulbs (but are plants are limited and we grow MONSTERS

Cheers.

legallyflying said:

They are both a waste of money??

Magnetic ballasts are fucking heavy and HOT as fuck! And where is this heat coming from...wasted electricity. Simple physics.
They also produce less light from the same wattage and don't offer a 10% boost in wattage and light like a digital ballast.

They also wear out over time and produce less and less light. And the staggering thing is..they are only like $70 cheaper than a good digital ballast.

So say you save $70 on your ballast at the cost of let's conservatively say 10% less light and yield. Hell let's say 5%. A 1k bulb will kick out 25 ounces with a capable grower. 5% less would mean 1.25 ounces less. So you lost out on about $250 (on the west coast anyways lol)

Plus you can mount them on the wall which is a real nice feature.


There are several tests of various hoods out there in terms of light pattern and output. The blockbuster is half the size of the mag and has more impressive numbers. It's all a gimmick my friend. Tell me this..the light from a bulb emits from the SIDES of the bulb, not the tip or base. Sure it sends the light out in all directions but hold a light meter under a vertical bulb and then to the side of it..the light is literally around 900% brighter.

So you have this super long hood...that is around 3 times the length of the bulb...and the side reflectors in the hood face down..so where exactly is all that light coming from to illuminate such a long pattern under the bulb?

When they came out I thought oh yeah!! These are bomb, then I took my light meter into the store..whoa..big but no more usable light. A finite amount of light comes from a bulb...you can only spread it around so much.

Click to expand...

Please excuse the hijack, but it may be relevant to the op....?

What are you opinions on parabolic hoods with vertically hung bulbs? In this case a 600w sunmaster? Do they rate against traditional reflectors with horizontal bulbs?

They are good for vegging.

It's kind of dumb design really. The light has to travel so far to bounce of the umbrella.

I have a couple umbrellas somewhere. There are so big and flimsy though..just best to use a xtra sun wing really. For $30...shieet

What is your opinion on the Ebb & Grow bucket systems? I got one for cheap and was planning on using it for a vertical grow.

I currently have 6 ebb and grow control buckets (well actually the aqua hub DIY ones).

The big room has 24 plants in 20 gallon buckets and the smaller room has 16 plants in 5 gallon buckets

I don't use them for flood and drain, I use them in a DWC set up with a big central Rez. The control bucket maintains the water level in all the individual buckets and drains them all to the central Rez once an hour (I chill the central Rez).

Great system. If you want to try DWC in the future just flip the little switches in the timer so they are always "flooding" and only drain a couple times a day.

Ebb and flow is great though. Much easier, less dealing with air stones and chillers and root rot like DWC.

Vertical like vertical bare bulb? A stadium like set up or big trees?

Two 600w in a 48" cool tube. six plants in a 4ft circle, planning on 5ft tall plants. Wanted the bucket system so I could adjust diameter of circle until I had better handle on right distance. Want to eventually run a perpetual, but keep plant count below 25. (legal thing) Tried at bare bulb, but A/C ran constantly, humidity fell to below 14% in an hour (with no plants in tent). Am limited to 2-15amp circuits. Lights use all capacity on 1 circuit, A/C, pumps, chiller, and dehumidifier run off other. Have controls so only one of A/C, dehumidifier, or chiller can be on at any given time, priority to A/C, then dehumidifier, then chiller. Any two on at same time will trip breaker.

Are you in pdx? I am.

To maximize the light I would get a section of 4' tall wire fence, hang it from the ceiling with the bulb in the middle and train to it.
I would think you want the radius of your cage circle to be about. 16".

Your plants will want to grow through towards the light but you just keep poking them back.

Temps will likely be fine with a cool tube but at least one little desk fan blowing up in the middle of the cage.

If your in pdx ( and I meet first I could show you one of our vert set ups.

Great reading ! When I first started (just a walk in closet grow) I wondered if a hood really made a big difference Besides easier heat control?

No to pdx. Might be a security problem. I actually bought fencing already, but was unsure of the radius. 16" was where I had the lights when I scrogged horizontally. I planned to split the cage into 2 sections for access to the lights. When the lights are air cooled, my little 5,200 BTU A/C is more than adequate, but it won't run during lights off, so I had to buy a dehumidifier. A/C is fed in thru a 6" duct, planning to have it blowing up thru middle of cage, maybe. Got a nearly new 70 pint a day dehumidifier for $40 from a co-worker who bought it to dry out his carpet after a plumbing incident, so it only was run for a week. Will elevate it so I can put a 5 gallon water bottle under it for condensate. Have co2, but need to pick up a second tank. Using a Sentinel CHHC-4 atmosphere controller (heat, cool, humidity, co2) I live in Florida, won't ever need the heat function. Am limited by lack of electrical power. Can you post or PM me a pic of your set up?