new member just getting ready for first grow! tinkering with a few different ideas...

hi everyone

i'm very happy and thankful to have found this place. i've been browsing and reading a lot on here lately and have learned so much. i hope as i gain experience with this new "hobby" of mine i can contribute something in return...

my soon to be grow room is a little bit funky with it's dimensions... roughly 8x4 with a ceiling slanted from 6feet down to 4feet. the ceiling worried me a bit, but i figured what i would do is grow a shorter strain on the far side (i'm thinking white widow), and a taller sativa dominant strain on the other (still deciding on what strain). i think i will probably get about 22 square feet all together considering the doorway room, etc.

planning on lighting with a 1000w hps as that seems to be the best bet for this size room. covering all the sides with foylon. growing with soil for now and hoping to graduate from that process once i get my foot in the door with all these nuances.

as far as ventilation goes, i'm still dwelling on that a bit. i was thinking of constructing a tent or growbox in the room encapsulating the whole active grow area, but that seems like it may make it more difficult to actively manage the plants. i'm hoping to think of a way to vent it all together and have fairly good odor control. this is a storage room off of my bathroom so i'm trying to think of a creative way to make it as easy as possible. all ideas welcome of course!

anyway i hope to be up and running in the next 2-3 weeks, depending on how long it takes me to decide on my strains and have the seeds delivered and figure out exactly what i'm going to do for ventilation.... i've read too many accounts about that to want to have to cross that bridge deep into my grow. i'll be sure to keep everyone updated on my progress and look forward to hearing any and all feedback. thanks!

doesnt sound like the room has a window?

Ventilation is fairly straightforward. Old air/heat out, Fresh/cool air in. This is where you come in. You must provide details of the room/adjacent rooms. is this in a basement/1st floor/2nd floor? is this an apartment, house, rental or do you own? is there A/C? is there a chase. what equipment do you have now? Planning to buy? what type of grow are you going with? soil, hydro. There are many factors involved. give us a little more detail. Your standing there looking @ it, we have to imagine it. There are tons of guys/gals here to help. Give us something,something we can use.

thanks guys. there's no window in that room, it's a closet connected to my bathroom (which does have a window). leaving that door open wouldn't be a problem most of the day, i'm just concerned with odor control and trying to think of a way to concentrate all the outgoing air through a carbon filter, if that will control it. it's on the 2nd floor

oh, and planning on using a portable AC for that room

You'll want to make/find a hole near the top of your room for an exhaust. Most bathrooms have an extractor fan in them, so the simplest way could be to run ducting to that hole, it depends on the layout and how stealth it needs to be. To the exhaust you attach your carbon filter.
Then you need a hole for fresh air to enter. If you have a powerful fan extracting air from the room then leaving the door open will be fine, as air will be pulled into the room and through the carbon filter, and shouldn't let the smell leak out.
I'm not sure where you're going with the tent idea, you could maybe get one for vegging mothers and clones but I would keep your flowering plants in the main room, for ease of access. If you're vaguely handy with hammers and saws you could build a veg cabinet for a fraction of the price.
A kw light would suit that room size nicely, but how much space is going to be taken up by flowering plants? If it ends up being 12 sq ft or less, a 600 would suit better, giving easier temperature control.
It kinda depends on how hot that part of the house gets without any lights in it. If it gets sweltering during the day you'll need plenty of cooling to make it habitable with a 1000w light in there.

thank you very much hairy bob. i wish i had a suitable digital camera to show you the layout. it's a closet room off of my bathroom with a door. my bathroom fan is about 4 feet away from the door, across on an angle, so running a duct to it would probably raise a few eyebrows to anyone that may happen to come here from time to time. what i was actually thinking of doing, is drilling 2 holes in the closet door, 1 for the exhaust with the carbon filter, and 1 with a fan to blow new air in, and then putting a big fake decorative tree in front of it. another idea that has come to mind is building a semi-wall inside of the closet and constructing the same thing in there. it would cost me a square foot or 2, but if it made odor control a non-issue it would be worth it to me. the only thing that makes me indecisive about either is ease of access to the plants with tubing connected to the door/wall. the grow area will be at least 20 sqf

I think with the holes in the door you would blow air out then suck it back in. No fresh air. Depending on how your floor joist run or roof joist. you could put a vent in the top of your closet and duct to your bath vent then out. If it goes to the roof no problem to get to the bath vent. Just a thought.

Yeah don't put the intake next to the exhaust, you'll just cycle the same air around the rooms. Ideally they should be at opposite ends of the room, with the intake as low as possible and the exhaust as high as possible. You need to get the exhaust completely away from the grow room, and the intake.
You need to find a side to the room that you can put a hole in and make a fan blow out of it. Don't bother with an intake fan, at best it's a waste of electricity, at worst it either restricts the amount of air that can get into your room, or pressurises the room and creates odour leaks. So long as your exhaust fan is sufficient for the room and you have an intake hole, air will enter as fast as it is being extracted.

yep I was thinking about raising the bottom of the door a little. there are ways to block the light and still let the air flow freeley.

unfortunately putting a hole directly in 1 of the walls is next to impossible for me unless it's on the closet door. 2 of the walls go directly outside, 1 is along my bathroom wall with my sink and toilet, and the other is behind my kitchen where my stove and refrigerator are. drilling through any of them would scare me shitless anywho as there is asbestos. what are my other options for that area? i could possibly just keep the closet door open and use the entire bathroom area as needed and just stop having company if it came down to it. if that would somehow allow enough new air to get to it, and i could figure a way to concentrate the exhaust and carbon filter out. possibly with what you mentioned before of running the duct to my bathroom fan. what would you do in my position? thank you so much for your help thus far

better yet, now that i brainstorm on it a bit more... what if i drilled the 2 holes in the door, put the exhaust w/ duct to my bathroom fan, and for the intake i just made a hole with an empty duct, no fan, that i set up so that the other end of that duct was on the other end of the room? would that work?

If there's no way to duct exhaust out of the room without it looking obvious, I would try to find somewhere better to grow. There's no reason to set yourself up to get caught imo.
Keeping the closet door open is one option, and would work if you can run a good exhaust out of the bathroom. You need to keep in mind that you're dealing with a great deal of heat here, and it has to go somewhere. It's no good just letting it drift into the same area that intake air is coming from, as you'd be creating a closed loop which will only get hotter while the light is on.
Even if you can get heat out of the bathroom, can you really keep everyone out of your bathroom indefinitely? You need to plan for every eventuality when embarking on a project such as this, you really don't want to be caught out.

what are your wall made of Ie; drywall? If so you will have about a 4" space from wall to wall same with the ceiling. the wall with the plunbing on it may have more. alot of times that wall is made wider for piping. Good luck on what ever you do.

saygone said:

better yet, now that i brainstorm on it a bit more... what if i drilled the 2 holes in the door, put the exhaust w/ duct to my bathroom fan, and for the intake i just made a hole with an empty duct, no fan, that i set up so that the other end of that duct was on the other end of the room? would that work?

Click to expand...

Yeah that should work, if it's not going to look too shady and attract attention. Wouldn't want you to get busted.