New Loft Grow Room - Input Appreciated

glad to hear from you. all those plants look pretty good, especially with what they've gone through.
hope the hempys do the trick, dwc has always seemed like a very fragile system to me

Nice !
I've also just put my girl in a small hempy and it is much much better. Very little maintenance, its been 5 days since ive watered now and dont expect ill have to any time soon. just 2 minutes per day of taking a look at the growth and adjusting lights if needed.
Cant wait to see those switched to 12/12

Jeez man, that's a platinum setup *Loft envy activated*

verticalgrow said:

g'day Lofty,
how big are the pots in the autopot system?
VG

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Hi mate,

They're 8.5L each.

Here's a pic with a 10L nute bottle plus a 1L jug for scale:

nicougrik said:

Nice !
I've also just put my girl in a small hempy and it is much much better. Very little maintenance, its been 5 days since ive watered now and dont expect ill have to any time soon. just 2 minutes per day of taking a look at the growth and adjusting lights if needed.
Cant wait to see those switched to 12/12

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I've just switched to 12/12 today. Pretty certain they've all rooted well.

The idea of RDWC was great but it wasn't meant to be this time.

Maybe on your next run eh? Good job that they survived and are doing great, can't wait to see how they sssssstretch.

It's been 6 days since I flipped to 12/12. I'm going to have to flower under 1.2kW per tent (2.4kW total) over the summer. When the temp outside goes over 25C and I have lights at full blast (4.2kW total) the room temps slowly climb to around 30C despite staggering the tents. The 12000 BTU air con unit I have can't handle hot weather plus massive lighting loads. I think being at the top of the house isn't helping much.

Hempies are doing really well. Much easier and less stress than RDWC. New growth is very healthy and there are no new signs of calcium or magnesium deficiency since swapping to tap water a week back.



Those are 4 Pineapple Express at the top and 2 Blueberry at the bottom. I supercropped them 2 days ago as they were starting to get tall but there was plenty of space between buckets. It seems to have made some difference.

The other tent has 4x Viper Cookies and 4x Purple Afghan Kush plus 1 Auto Dark Purple. The auto is about a week away from the chop I think. I haven't taken any pics today as the tent is in the dark at the moment.

The clones I planted are also doing reasonably well after a week in 20L buckets.



I've been watering them daily with around 200ml of nutes each around the stems. I'll give them another week to be sure they're rooted well and then move to larger volumes every few days.

looking good. i know the rewards from dwc are nice, but everyone i talk to that does it tells me horror stories about losing whole crops to root rot, or at least getting their plants stunted badly by it, costing them half their harvest or more. no ones ever told me a hempy horror story, at least not about root rot.

Roger A. Shrubber said:

looking good. i know the rewards from dwc are nice, but everyone i talk to that does it tells me horror stories about losing whole crops to root rot, or at least getting their plants stunted badly by it, costing them half their harvest or more. no ones ever told me a hempy horror story, at least not about root rot.

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Yeah, seems pretty common sadly. I imagine it's great when it works properly but if you get the lergie it's a complete nightmare.

I took some pics of the other tent. 4x Viper Cookies at the back and 4x Purple Afghan Kush at the front with the Auto Dark Purple finishing off in the middle.



The Purple Afghan Kush had a really hard time in DWC. Growth was slow, it was really short and stumpy. They've all recovered quite well in the hempies.

Also the mothers are growing really quick in the autopots.



Only 110w of T5 and just over 2 weeks old from clones. They're going to need trimming weekly and lots of training to keep them under control! Might have to take one of the T5 tubes out to drop them down to 55w as I was hoping for slow steady growth

loftygoals said:

Yeah, seems pretty common sadly. I imagine it's great when it works properly but if you get the lergie it's a complete nightmare.

I took some pics of the other tent. 4x Viper Cookies at the back and 4x Purple Afghan Kush at the front with the Auto Dark Purple finishing off in the middle.

View attachment 3701181

The Purple Afghan Kush had a really hard time in DWC. Growth was slow, it was really short and stumpy. They've all recovered quite well in the hempies.

Also the mothers are growing really quick in the autopots.

View attachment 3701180

Only 110w of T5 and just over 2 weeks old from clones. They're going to need trimming weekly and lots of training to keep them under control! Might have to take one of the T5 tubes out to drop them down to 55w as I was hoping for slow steady growth

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keeping moms in auto pots doesnt seem like a wise idea to me lol as they grow like monsters they look nice and healthy thou

Thc247 said:

keeping moms in auto pots doesnt seem like a wise idea to me lol as they grow like monsters they look nice and healthy thou

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Yeah, the idea was to have a mega low maintenance setup. Fill the res once a week and forget about them. From that perspective it's working well as the first full res is down to 1/3 after around 2 weeks.

The issue is that they're growing faster than I expected under 110w of T5! I removed all large fan leaves this week which has helped slow growth significantly. I guess I'll keep defoliating the big stuff.

Anywho... took some pics today. 12 days into 12/12.

Here's the Pineapple Express (back 4) and Blueberry (front 2) tent:



And here's the Viper Cookies (back 4) and Purple Afghan Kush (front 4):



Clones in the veg area are also coming along nicely at just under 2 weeks:



Today was the first time I filled their hempy reservoirs completely. I did 7 days of watering 200-250ml a day. Then 3 days of 500ml per day and finally 2 days of 1L per day before I watered til run off today. Pretty certain they've all rooted to the bottom of the buckets now. It'll probably be a week or so before I need to water them again which is nice!

What a great tread loftygrow. I am really impressed, i love watching grows where there is put max efford into the build/design process. Well done! Im glad you switched from rdwc to hempy, seems to me like a very good choice. Loving the water-cooled cobs btw, never seen someone watercool them, great work. I am also working on lights with cree cxa3050 and some full-spectrum leds, but nothing major like your grow. Thumbs up from my side! I am def following along your thread from now, have a great day and best of luck friend!

kkmmbb1 said:

What a great tread loftygrow. I am really impressed, i love watching grows where there is put max efford into the build/design process. Well done! Im glad you switched from rdwc to hempy, seems to me like a very good choice. Loving the water-cooled cobs btw, never seen someone watercool them, great work. I am also working on lights with cree cxa3050 and some full-spectrum leds, but nothing major like your grow. Thumbs up from my side! I am def following along your thread from now, have a great day and best of luck friend!

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Thanks

Good to hear you're doing a LED build. Take your time and I'm sure it'll turn out well. You'll constantly be coming up with new ideas and ways to improve the lights. I promised myself no tinkering for at least 2 grows; else I'd already be at it!

Hempy buckets was definitely a good move for me. My RDWC setup was doomed but they've taken to hempies brilliantly. Thinking back 4 weeks ago I took 40 clones because I thought the whole crop was toast and I'd have to start again.

I posted this thread to give others ideas. If it wasn't for other people posting their setups and ideas on forums I probably wouldn't have even started this grow room in my loft, wouldn't have thought of building DIY lights and wouldn't know what a Hempy bucket was... sharing is caring?

Good luck with your grow!

Day 15 of 12/12. Taken some more pics.

Blueberry (front 2) + Pineapple Express (back 4):



Purple Afghan Kush (front 4) and Viper Cookies (back 4):



I'm having to use a 2m length of guttering to water the plants at the back now. No way I'm getting through that jungle

I also finally chopped the Auto Dark Purple yesterday at just over 8 weeks old. Apparently it was supposed to be ready in 45-55 days. Got some fruity smelling purple buds off it which I have my drying in my newly setup drying tent (60x60x140cm tent with a drying rack, 6 inch carbon filter and dehumidifier in the room)... hopefully in a few days I'll post some pics of the good stuff.

loftygoals said:

Day 15 of 12/12. Taken some more pics.

I also finally chopped the Auto Dark Purple yesterday at just over 8 weeks old. Apparently it was supposed to be ready in 45-55 days. Got some fruity smelling purple buds off it which I have my drying in my newly setup drying tent (60x60x140cm tent with a drying rack, 6 inch carbon filter and dehumidifier in the room)... hopefully in a few days I'll post some pics of the good stuff.

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G'day Lofty,
i heard Auto Dark purple was great for back pain.
Those DIY lights seem to be working a treat
VG

hi Lofty,
How are your plants doing?

EDIT *while browsing the page, you've updated * cool

verticalgrow said:

G'day Lofty,
i heard Auto Dark purple was great for back pain.
Those DIY lights seem to be working a treat
VG

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Look forward to trying it

Yeah, the lights seem to be working well. Only time will tell...

420 Boy said:

hi Lofty,
How are your plants doing?

EDIT *while browsing the page, you've updated * cool

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Amazing. Comparing my pics from 10 days ago to today they've twice the size

Just want to say WOW. Solid effort, doing something like this has been my dream for many years.

Almost 3 weeks since flip to 12/12.

Pineapple Express (back 4) and Blueberry (front 2):



Viper Cookies (back 4) and Purple Afghan Kush (front 4):



Clones now 20 days since transplant into hempies (gonna have to top and train them as I need to let them get to 8 weeks veg... have drops the LEDs in the veg room to 450w only):



Also dried the Auto Dark Purple freebie which I grew along side everything else. Came to 9 grams dry which isn't great... but considering it was a freebie auto, had root rot, nitrogen toxicity and was transplanted from DWC to a hempy bucket during it's short life (45-55 day strain)... I'll take it

Pineapple Express doing particularly well 25 days after flip:




Everything seems to be going to plan at the moment