hollowed out dresser auto grow.250 watt hps or 400? or 2 150watts?

This is my first indoor grow ive had good luck outdoors and now im ready to grow year round. I have a hollowed out dresser im planning to grow autoflower,s in. I have three fem easyriders and 3 fem auto ak's on the way from attitude. The inside space of the area is 3.5 feet tall by 3 feet wide and 20 inches thick. I plan on buying a cooltube for w/e light i get and placing 4 inch ducting to each side, then attach the ducting to two 65 cfm fan's mounted on the back one intake one exhaust. I will also have atleast one 32cfm fan pulling air in from the bottom of the box and an extra 32cfm exhaust fan towards the top of the box expelling the warm air. I know this is a small area but im good at woodworking and can put in more fans if needed. Everything will be sealed were no light escapes. I dont wana get greedy and overdo my lighting but i also dont want airy buds with a tiny yield. Whats the best lighting system out there for this size space? any help much appreciated.kiss-ass. i,ll prolly hafta do a 250w hps but if possible id be much happier with a 400 ne advice??

I had something very similar a number of years ago and I used a 250W HPS. It worked great, in fact, I was worried at the time, that it might have been overkill but I actually pulled off many harvests with the old cabinet. It was modeled off of NIMBY's old stealth cabinet plans from OG. Wow, the good ol' days! Anyway, the 250 Watt was more than enough, you also need to consider the heat that can build up in such a small space. I built a cooltube with a pyrex back-a-round tube and you might want to consider the same thing, I found that all the stuff I bought I had to build the cabinet around; it was easier building stuff around my cabinet instead. Along with my DIY cooltube I also incorporated a hood that fit my grow space perfectly. One more thing you might consider, building a small SCROG in your cabinet, that will increase your yield. Good Luck!

cool man thanx for the help it is much appreciated. Im glad to hear a 250w will be plenty. how many plants did you usually have under your 250 wattt .I have thought about the heat issue a lot, and if its to high i might just run a small bit of duct work off of my central heat and air under my trailer house and have it come up through the floor straight into my box. sounds like a lot of work but making this thing as good as possible is part of the adventure.. i plan on getting a hood that fits the top of my box as well as i can find. and ill put reflective material on the walls. Sorry to be a noob but what is scrog i know ive heard of it but im drawin a blank. ill be posting pics later this week

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=29593

Here's a copy of the plans I used to build my cabinet. I didn't actually build it, I hollowed out a dresser like you did. The original design has a room for mothers on the left hand side of the cabinet and above that, a compartment that is the control room where the ballast and the fan are kept. If I could do it all over again, I would leave out the room for the mothers and just clone from the plants I was flowering. In other words, divide your cabinet and SCROG two plants independent of one another. There should be more than enough room. I had two plants and my grow space was 21"x 16"! In other words, start one plant and take a clone to start your second. When your second plant is growing, take a clone from that plant to start you next plant and so on. You can keep doing this forever practically. I would just build a control room, a separate box in one of the upper corners of your cabinet but instead of using computer fans, buy small bathroom fan. Mine was 70CFM and worked great. Build your control room to fit your bathroom fan. You'll put two 4" holes in this compartment, one for exhaust and the other for intake, where your cooltube will go. The fan will suck air from your cooltube and blow it outside of your cabinet. make sure you have some way of getting air into your cabinet though too. That's also very important. One more thing, you might want to put a filter over the inlet holes so that you don't get dust all over your plants. Good Luck!

http://www.drugs-forum.com/growfaq/1635.htm

Here's another good link that explains how your grow box should be vented and how large of a fan you're going to need. Good Luck!

Dude I hve the same exact area dresser that I'm setting up now. We can help eachother...I just bought a 250watt hps myself.

Here's my little thread with some pictures of what I did so far. https://www.rollitup.org/indoor-growing/215937-lighting-my-grow-box.html I just went out and bought a 250 watt hydrofarm convertible hps system. I've got 20 feet of 4" air ducting, 2 80mm computer fans, 1 120mm computer fan that I've wired to a/c adapters. (I'm not sure if this is enough to keep the box cool, I think I'm going to sneak my skinny oscilating fan in the corner of the box. I'm going to drag the box into my attic once I make cuts on the box for ventilation. There is shutters in my attic that I'm going to attach the exhaust and intake ducting to for fresh air. I've already put up the mylar in the box, and used cauking to seal off the corners of my box. The only thing that concerns me with my box is that the plywood I bought for a door is flimsy, and it doesn't seal when I close it. I'm going to have to put like 3 latches on the handle-side to seal is down.

East said:

Here's my little thread with some pictures of what I did so far. https://www.rollitup.org/indoor-growing/215937-lighting-my-grow-box.html I just went out and bought a 250 watt hydrofarm convertible hps system. I've got 20 feet of 4" air ducting, 2 80mm computer fans, 1 120mm computer fan that I've wired to a/c adapters. (I'm not sure if this is enough to keep the box cool, I think I'm going to sneak my skinny oscilating fan in the corner of the box. I'm going to drag the box into my attic once I make cuts on the box for ventilation. There is shutters in my attic that I'm going to attach the exhaust and intake ducting to for fresh air. I've already put up the mylar in the box, and used cauking to seal off the corners of my box. The only thing that concerns me with my box is that the plywood I bought for a door is flimsy, and it doesn't seal when I close it. I'm going to have to put like 3 latches on the handle-side to seal is down.

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nice with the aircooled 250 you can get that light has closer has 3 inches from the top of plants

i was thinkin of the same concept but get some dank strains too and just throw em with the autoflowers

Idk where to get the glass for a cool tube setup

East, a flimsy plywood door is exactly what you want! I attached mine with Velcro!! Yes, Velcro!! And because it was flimsy the negative pressures of the cabinet helped to hold your door in place. The round tube I used for my cooltube was a bake-a-round tube, they work great and they're 4" around which makes them very practical as well.

hey man sound like you got a plan i was thinkin of building a plexiglass box , but i like the ac idea i was wanting to do something like that i was thinking bout making a adjustable perforated grow floor inside of the box, idk maybe a pipe dream


but adding a ac vent on the bottom under the floor you could open and close it when you need to circulate the air

sam75 said:

http://www.drugs-forum.com/growfaq/1635.htm

Here's another good link that explains how your grow box should be vented and how large of a fan you're going to need. Good Luck!

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thanks man those are two helpfull pages of info. i especially like like the formula for figuring airflow. i like the idea of building the little control room and just using the scrog method. I've took clones before and i love the idea of not buying expensive feminized seeds every time. good idea about filtering the dust id like to maybe put a carbon scrubber on. Your right about the computer fans its lookin like im goona buy a blower similar to the one in that article u posted. i am open for all ideas im buying my light and fans this weekend when i go to the hydro store. ill be working on getting my cabinet ready this week so hopefully ill have everything going by monday.

East said:

Here's my little thread with some pictures of what I did so far. https://www.rollitup.org/indoor-growing/215937-lighting-my-grow-box.html I just went out and bought a 250 watt hydrofarm convertible hps system. I've got 20 feet of 4" air ducting, 2 80mm computer fans, 1 120mm computer fan that I've wired to a/c adapters. (I'm not sure if this is enough to keep the box cool, I think I'm going to sneak my skinny oscilating fan in the corner of the box. I'm going to drag the box into my attic once I make cuts on the box for ventilation. There is shutters in my attic that I'm going to attach the exhaust and intake ducting to for fresh air. I've already put up the mylar in the box, and used cauking to seal off the corners of my box. The only thing that concerns me with my box is that the plywood I bought for a door is flimsy, and it doesn't seal when I close it. I'm going to have to put like 3 latches on the handle-side to seal is down.

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wow your right it looks like were workin with basically the same dresser. It will be cool to follow each other throughout our grows and maybe learn from each others mistakes. what strains are you growing?

iBlaze DrO said:

i was thinkin of the same concept but get some dank strains too and just throw em with the autoflowers

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ya that woud be cool except for the different lighting schedules if possible id like to put a blue widow plant in the corner and Lst it i just dont know how it would do on the autos light schedule

kho20 said:

hey man sound like you got a plan i was thinkin of building a plexiglass box , but i like the ac idea i was wanting to do something like that i was thinking bout making a adjustable perforated grow floor inside of the box, idk maybe a pipe dream


but adding a ac vent on the bottom under the floor you could open and close it when you need to circulate the air

Click to expand...

a plexi glass grow box would be really cool, it would be different to have a clear box that you could uncover and see the action goin. and the a/c thing is most likely gonna happen i like the idea of cold air whenever neeeded my only problem would be regulating when the airflow kicked on and off it would suck to have to open and close off the airflow by hand due to the fact it only kicks on when my central heat and air does

stronggenetics said:

ya that woud be cool except for the different lighting schedules if possible id like to put a blue widow plant in the corner and Lst it i just dont know how it would do on the autos light schedule

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you can run autos on different light cycles.
i am going to run mine under 18/6 so my non autos get some light also

iBlaze DrO said:

you can run autos on different light cycles.
i am going to run mine under 18/6 so my non autos get some light also

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true i may just end up doing that my seeds from attitude came in the mail yesterday, and along with my 6 fem autos they gave me a fem blue widow seed, and a fem blue hash. Im probably gonna try to fit all the autos in right now and save the others for next year and have those as mothers so i can pull off a bunch of clones for outdoors then when i have enough ill either move the mothers outside and start somethin else or just finish em under the 250. The sun would do em more justice though.

stronggenetics said:

a plexi glass grow box would be really cool, it would be different to have a clear box that you could uncover and see the action goin. and the a/c thing is most likely gonna happen i like the idea of cold air whenever neeeded my only problem would be regulating when the airflow kicked on and off it would suck to have to open and close off the airflow by hand due to the fact it only kicks on when my central heat and air does

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yeah but i dont kno if theres a meter that could open it to keep the air quality ya kno

but hey if you do it manually you can always go hit the fan swithc on the ac unit lol itll stay on til ya turn it off and yeah i was gonna paint the outside in metallic so it reflects on the in side but i kinda like the clear box thing lol

Ya lol i thought about that after i posted that last message of course the walls would be protected but you know it would be cool to have a clear one lol. Ya thats probably what im gonna hafta do{just leave the fan on the ac on} it would be to cool if theres was somethin rigged to the box that kicked a vent open if the temp got above a certain amount.