Help me design my CFL stealth Cabinet. Any advice is appreciated

Hi all,

I plan on building a 4 foot tallx4 foot widex 1 1/2 foot deep cabinet or converting a dresser into my first cfl grow box.

Im super excited but wanted to get some advice first. I wanna be able to put in probably around 5-10 plants and I am looking to be able to get about 1/4 lb every harvest.

I am wondering how many watts of cfls i would need to pull this goal off or if maybe i should buy some envirolites instead(as i have heard good things about these). I wanna use cfls or envirolites because they put off less heat or else i would use hps lights. I figure with cfls or envirolites i will have to worry about ventilation less and wont have to worry about cooling my cab as much. but who knows maybe im wrong. Thats why I am asking for your advice.

I will be using foxfarm ocean forest soil. I have some NLxskunk, Blue Cheese, and Himalayan Gold seeds layin around i will use and im not sure what size pots i should use. Or maybe i thought i would try some short autoflowering strains like lowryder or AK47 and do a sog method with more plants.

I plan on buying a 300 cfm fan and charcoal filter to mount inside to control odor.
I also need this to be stealth and seal off all light so i will use weatherstripping foam and panda film that i have laying around.

The main solution i need is the lighting. I need to figure out what lighting i should use to obtain my goal of a 1/4 lb.

Any advice will be appreciated and i will begin to look on craigslist for a dressor or armoire.

I would look for a light also. I just picked uppp a new 400w hps for 50 sill in the wrapp

In that size of a cabinet - I'd pick up a 250w HPS for your main bulb, and manufacture a DIY cooltube. That way you'll get to use every single inch of your cabinet.

I'd even consider putting your HPS in the middle of the cabinet, vertically, and arrange your plants around it. You can use a few CFL's overhead too. You'll get some huge buds if you lollipop your plants.

But in a 4x4x1.25' space, you could easily fit a 400w in a cooltube at the very top of the cabinet, and using PVC tubing, make a light baffle. If you're pulling a few hundred CFM through your cooltube (and the PVC convoy) you'll cool the bulb without any problem.

atleast 200w of 2700k clf per plant or itl stretch abit

200 watt per plant (clf wise)! Thats loads! I have seen quite splendid results from these pc grow cases that only have 125 watts in total. These suffice 2 maybe even three plants. I'm running a stealth at the mo - 6 auto's of diff varieties - 250 watts of cfl to be upgraded to 375 in a few weeks. There is no stretch so far, looking very healthy and starting to bud on 20/4. Temps, nutes and humidity are just as important as light seemingly. I sold my 250 hps cool tube as temps got too high in the grow space available that is pretty small.