New Loft Grow Room - Input Appreciated

Hey guys,

I've been planning my new loft grow room for about 3 months and been working on it for about 6 weeks. I was aiming to get growing at the start of Feb but am a couple weeks behind as it's been a lot more work than I thought.

I'd been thinking of growing for a few years but never had anywhere suitable. It needed to be hidden away from prying eyes. So one night a few months back I opened up the loft hatch to see if it would be suitable... wow!


Loads of room but dusty, cold and drafty! No way was it suitable like that. There was loads of junk up there. 4 TV aerials laying around, a garage door which had been broken into pieces and someone decided to store in the loft?! So I got cleaning, cleared the central area and started laying a chipboard floor. This was hard work with no proper lighting, dust was everywhere but I got there eventually...



With a floor done I could work without being scared of putting my foot through a ceiling (came close a few times!). I ran 2.5mm mains cable off the upstairs mains electric supply in a ring. I wired up 5 double sockets for a start which should be able to supply 32A 240V (7680 watts max) in total.



Now for insulation. I decided on celotex between the rafters. I've only gone with 50mm which I think is enough (I have my own FLIR camera arriving soon so I should be able to take a good look at the roof myself ). The U value of unfilled cavity walls of this house would be 1.6 W/mk while the celotex has a U value of 0.44 W/mk which means the roof should be loosing about 4x less heat than the walls (it's not quite that simple because I'm leaving the timbers uninsulated other than some aluminium tape but you get the idea... 50mm of celotex should be plenty in theory).



This was quite a challenge! The rafters were all different widths apart and some were at wonky angles... but I got there in the end.



I used expanding polyurethane foam to seal off the corners completely and aluminium tape on all joins.



This week I've been building an insulated stud wall on the party wall to keep out any stray noise/smells from the neighbours. I'm almost done. Just need to tape up the studwork. It's been pretty hard work because I have a no power tools or hammering after 6:30pm rule (common sense IMO) and most days I'm at work during the day... anyway we got there eventually!



So I'm almost at the point where I can get started growing. I didn't want to germinate anything and not have things setup properly then mess around with small plants in the room while I'm sawing timbers and insulation.

Today I went and cleaning up the house. I've even changed the bathroom extractor fan outlet to a larger grill (the old fan didn't work and the old grill was badly yellowed anyway). I've repainted the bathroom ceiling and loft hatch with Dulux Trade Diamond paint which is supposed to be 10x tougher than normal paint so can be cleaned to remove any signs that I've been using the hatch

I'm relatively limited for headroom particularly around the sides where the roof slopes in. So I've bought 2 8x4 foot Roof Qube tents. They'll go in the middle obviously and I'll probably link them together in the future. I'm planning a RDWC setup and have bought most of the bits. Then I'm a little stuck with how best to use the rest of the space? This was my thinking (grey lines are load bearing walls or massive 2x15 inch beams):


So I'm thinking I can build 2x veg cabinets into the corners to get my plants started for 2-3 weeks and then move them into the central tents. The whole loft area is going to be supplied with air from a single side vent which was already in place and I'll be venting into the bathroom via an extra large extractor fan vent which is carbon filtered. The central tents are going to run their own 8 inch carbon filter too so any air going into the house will be double filtered from flowering plants. I'll be running a 265W dehumidifier in the grow room and then a 500W dehumidifier in the house to keep condensation down. I have an industrial Ozone generator which I'll run if I open up the tents.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Comments?

Planning something special for lighting too... water cooled DIY COB LEDs being cooled by a car radiator and a 16inch 1800cfm car radiator fan blowing over it

Nothing? Oh well

Mate that looks out if this world what I'd give for that space plus you done a sterling job fixing it up keep at it bro defo know what you're doing by the looks of it crack on mate can't wait to see this fired up
Atb

Thanks

Never done a grow before so a little apprehensive about it and defo don't want to get caught!

Have just ordered some pond liner for the floor. By my calculations the central floor area should hold over 1000 litres (If I have a barrier around the edges a minimum of 4 inches high) before it starts overflowing. Considering there's not going to be that much water up there in the first place it should survive a full on disastrous complete system water loss without damaging the ceilings below... that's the plan anyway

Gonna be starting with 8 Blueberry fem seeds. I'm setting Friday 19th Feb as my seed start date now. Should have the cabinets built and the roof tested with the FLIR camera by then *fingers crossed*

Nice job, looks good. Do you think you'll need any air conditioning in the summer months?

Love this setup looks like your in for some fun..

It's so nice to see it done right!

Usually it is, "hey, I put some cardboard up, and now I can't figure out how to stabilize temps and why my ceiling is sweating!"

I wish you the best.

You will need to trouble shoot air movement and humidity, but sounds like you're figuring that out.

One day at a time.

You won't know what's gonna change until you change something !

This afternoon I've spent a couple of hours working on the floor. I had to fit in new boards around 2 large 2.4mx0.6m boards which had been placed up there previously and had been hammered in with nails (prone to squeaks). Well the joins between the new and old boards were really squeaky and the old boards were coming loose in places. I had considered ripping up that section of floor and just replacing it with new but it seemed quite a waste of time and effort just to eliminate some squeaks. So... I bought some steel mending plates:
After an hour with my impact driver, 19 mending plates and 300 screws... the floor is completely squeak free The old nails have been reinforced with screws too so it should stay squeak free for good

I also had another look at the layout and hit a stumbling block! I hadn't considered the space the loft ladder takes when it's up in the loft (as I'm never up there with it fully up). So I climbed up while the ladder was still up in the loft and checked out how much space it takes... Luckily with some juggling I can still fit my tents in But the tent nearest the ladder needs to move over so it's in the recess in the party wall. That means the veg cabinet on that side gets bigger and the one on the other side gets squashed to make it pretty worthless. So it looks like I'm having 1 larger 8x8 veg room now rather than smaller ones on each side... will make my life easier in the long run too

Here's the new layout:

Today has been quite productive. Had a day off work

I've sealed off the loft completely now so wanted to check for heat leaks with my new FLIR camera. Put a 2000W fan heater up there over night and in the morning it was 34 degrees in the loft. -3 outside this morning... There was frost on the outside of the roof and the average roof surface temp was around 1.5C. Exactly the same as the neighbours There were no hot spots and the windows from both houses were around 5-7C (so were loosing a lot more heat than the roof). So we have successful heat stealth (can't show pics of the house for obvious reasons)

Also built the veg room walls and have the floor ready for the pond liner to go in. Just waiting for some double sided tape to arrive and I'll be putting the liner down... hopefully this weekend.

On track to get the seeds going by the end of the week *fingers crossed*.

I would just suggest some 3mil plastic, it helped me out a lot with my loft grow room.. Helped contain smell and water from going to the floor (celling) below. Maybe it's just me but I want to keep all the moisture in the room and not let it out. Room looks fucking sick tho man i would have been pumped to find that room!

real nice fucking job, lofty. sometimes it takes a while for folks to read the thread depending when you post. You won't have a problem in the summer time with heat and or moisture build up? and like @a senile fungus says you have to keep an eye on the airflow and moisture re: for the house itself. i like the progress pictures, makes the rest of us go up into the attic, look around and think...

edit: super first posts!

Indagrow said:

I would just suggest some 3mil plastic, it helped me out a lot with my loft grow room.. Helped contain smell and water from going to the floor (celling) below. Maybe it's just me but I want to keep all the moisture in the room and not let it out. Room looks fucking sick tho man i would have been pumped to find that room!

Click to expand...

Yeah, gonna be putting 0.3mm pond liner down with a 4 inch minimum border around the walls. That should hold more than triple the amount of water in the whole RDWC system in the event of a catastrophic leak

BarnBuster said:

real nice fucking job, lofty. sometimes it takes a while for folks to read the thread depending when you post. You won't have a problem in the summer time with heat and or moisture build up? and like @a senile fungus says you have to keep an eye on the airflow and moisture re: for the house itself. i like the progress pictures, makes the rest of us go up into the attic, look around and think...

edit: super first posts!

Click to expand...

Thanks

The loft is sealed apart from 1 vent from outside which will blow in and 1 vent going into the bathroom extractor grill. I'm gonna vent into the bathroom (double carbon filtered air - once out of the growing space into the left space and then filtered again just before it hits the bathroom) and have 2 dehumidifiers ready to go (one 265W to run in the loft and one 500W to run in the house). Hopefully that should be enough to control temps and humidity.

I'm not going to be running AC. Not needed in the UK climate. We get about 2 weeks of hot weather a year if we're lucky!

If I really get stuck with temps in the summer I could make a second vent into the house but I really want to avoid that if possible. At the moment I could rip everything out and leave no trace within a day if I really needed to but making a second vent hole in a ceiling would make that impossible.

I'm subbed up. Your build out is awesome man can't wait to see some plants and lights in there.

Amazing craftsmanship. Since its a attic grow I would do co2 to make venting less of an issue then you could have completely sealed rooms with a portable air unit plugged into the walls for when the temp starts reaching 95 degrees. So you don't have to have a room blazing hot or pushing out suspicious amounts of hot air out of the roof.

EDIT
Just make sure to have a co2 reader in the rooms below the grow to see if it leaks. If so I think you can figure it out.

I like it. Good job. Does it have one of those fold down ladder? Those suck.

Looks good and clean. Have fun. I'm subbed.

Typical co2 range is around 400ppm.. However co2 is a heavy gas you will find less in your attic (mine read 213) I had to supplement just to get it back to 'normal levels' although you said uk is cold with the heat that comes from these added lights you may want to think of some co2 action. I HAD to run it coupled with silica to battle some hot temps, hopefully this isn't the case for you

Very nice!

loftygoals said:

Today has been quite productive. Had a day off work

I've sealed off the loft completely now so wanted to check for heat leaks with my new FLIR camera. Put a 2000W fan heater up there over night and in the morning it was 34 degrees in the loft. -3 outside this morning... There was frost on the outside of the roof and the average roof surface temp was around 1.5C. Exactly the same as the neighbours There were no hot spots and the windows from both houses were around 5-7C (so were loosing a lot more heat than the roof). So we have successful heat stealth (can't show pics of the house for obvious reasons)

Also built the veg room walls and have the floor ready for the pond liner to go in. Just waiting for some double sided tape to arrive and I'll be putting the liner down... hopefully this weekend.

On track to get the seeds going by the end of the week *fingers crossed*.

Click to expand...

g'day Lofty,
are u going to be using hps?
great to see 110% effort & thx for sharing
VG

whitebb2727 said:

I like it. Good job. Does it have one of those fold down ladder? Those suck.

Looks good and clean. Have fun. I'm subbed.

Click to expand...

Yup squeaky aluminium fold down ladder. Sucks but that's what I'm working with... I've oiled it up and it's not too noisy now.

verticalgrow said:

g'day Lofty,
are u going to be using hps?
great to see 110% effort & thx for sharing
VG

Click to expand...

No probs. I'm going with DIY water cooled cheapo chinese COB LEDs. I'll post some pics when I'm working on the lights but it'll involve:
96x 100W COB LEDs running at 45W each (4300W total in the 8x8 flower area)
Water cooling with a 40x40cm car radiator and 16 inch 1800cfm car radiator fan

I used to be into PC watercooling way back in 1999-2003. When I first got started there were no specialist pumps available (everyone used pond pumps), a handful of waterblock manufacturers, dodgy tubing etc. Putting together this water cooling setup should be a doddle and cheap too

Each 4x4 light (1080W at the wall with 24 COBs) will cost around £240 for me to make. I actually already have all the bits and made a 90W air cooled unit as a test (which is now going to sit in my clone tent). The 2 big advantages of my setup I can see are:
1. all the heat will get pumped directly into the radiator which will be outside the grow area.
2. the LED units will be upgradable if the grow proves to be a success and I feel the need (CREE CXBs would add another £3-7,000 to the cost of the lighting! No way I'm investing that much before I've even seen a seedling!)

So... here's an update!

Managed to get the veg room walls up. Got all the edges sealed up etc also wired up 2 more sockets on the stud wall and joined the mains ring together neatly (previously it looped back on itself as the stud wall wasn't done yet):



Got the floor all swept up. Clogged my vacuum cleaner filters and killed the motor cleaning up there! Installed the pond liner on the floor. Used a combination of double sided tape and a staple gun (don't worry, only stapled the edges! haha) to maintain a 5 inch high border all the way around:



Here's a bit of a sneak at some of my supplies... I need to get everything up there and outta my damn bedroom soon! Starting to get annoying



Tonight I've been setting up my seedling/clone tent:



Barely any noise. I measured 22db (whisper quiet) at 2.5m. No way anyone can hear anything outside the room... and I want to keep it that way!

I'm planning to germinate in paper towels and then move to rockwool cubes to get established, then into a clone king 36 to grow a bit more, and finally into RDWC.

I've setup a 4 inch fan and carbon filter but they're not turned on yet. I'm running my 90W LED light just to keep some warmth in the tent tonight and have a thermometer/hygrometer monitoring the environment until I can check on everything in the morning. I also have a 9W heat mat attached to a thermostat. It's set to keep the seeds at 21C (70F) and the probe is sitting inside 2 plates with damp paper towels and my seeds

So which seeds have I picked? Well I bought quite a selection and also got a load of freebies I probably wouldn't have picked myself



12x Blueberry
10x Purple Afghan Kush
6x Viper Cookies
6x Northern Lights (3x Sensi Seeds and 3x Ministry of Cannabis)
6x Pineapple Express
3x Chocolate Mint
3x Super Lemon Haze
2x Lemon OG
2x Pineapple Kush
1x Sour Diesel
1x Chocolope
1x Critical Jack
1x Kandy Kush
1x 24k Gold
1x Blue Venom
1x Auto Dark Purple

All fem seeds So what's the plan? Well I'm gonna start with 8x Blueberry freebies as there's quite a chance that I'll f*ck them up on my first grow So I'm not gonna be too precious about them... I'm only utilising 25% of the potential grow area but am aiming to be 100% operational (8x8 veg and 8x8 flower) for the second grow.

My todo list for the next 2 weeks:
1. setting up my reverse osmosis water filter unit
2. setting up room ventilation
3. putting up the large tents
4. building the RDWC system
5. building the water cooled COB LED lights

Long way to go!