Oldschool meets newschool!

Hey guys! I took a few weeks in my spare time to read the HUGE 3070 thread here and halfway through, ordered my stuff. I was guided by a new friend at another site, I feel I was led the right direction! A little background, I used to be a big HPS grower but had to take a few year hiatus to cool off. Well I'm back and the lights have changed a lot since then but I'm ready to roll with them now. Had you asked me if I would ever use LEDs to grow a few months ago, I would have said never, yet here I am at my first journey. Hope you guys enjoy, more pics/posts to come!

The cabinet is a 2x4 frame osb sheet box basically in an non-air conditioned location but needed to be somewhat stealthy due to family/friends etc that may be over. The inside dimensions are 23"x24"x67" and it's insulated an all sides and top except door. I put a shelf just above a 14gal tote that will be the reservoir and put a 2' Botanicare flood/drain tray on the shelf for the perpetual sog. Sides of cabinet are covered in panda plastic.

I ordered (4) CXA3070 cobs with AD bin, then ordered (4) 1500ma drivers from China, the heatsinks and fans were free from a friend. I used two piece holders and Insignia thermal compound to hold them on. The fans are 12v but were tested at 5v and will be run around there since they performed well at the lower voltage.

Enough talk for now, here are some pics!

Couple more

And I built a DIY 25lb carbon filter to cover ventilation and smell. I'll add a couple coumputer fans above the tray for circulation.

Nice job.

Looking forward to your grow. I love watching diy projects.

That's a bad ass build , good job

the dopest said:

Couple more

Click to expand...

Thank you! I have been trying unsuccessfully to pop some beans I've had that were not properly stored for almost 10yrs and it's driving me nuts. I can get 100% germ rate from new schwag seeds right next to the good genetics but the good ones are just too old I guess. My old grow friend heard of my misfortune and sent me some beans to get back rolling. First few I popped are Girl Scout Cookies x OG Kush femle crossed with one of three males, a Tom Hill Haze, Malawi Gold or OG Kush x Chemdog so these should be some real interesting plants. They are seedlings now so it may be a while before you guys see anything flowering but I do have a few schwag seed plants in early veg that may run down the pipe first to make sure everything is working properly. The good genetics will be vegged out until preflowers and females will be cloned. I will probably save any males also to make more seeds but they will not run in the same cabinet.

Awesome build. I've been a fan of the diy cabinet ever since I started growing and built my first stealth cab inside a dressar. Very clean. Looks good. I have a question...do those grates on your lower intake block all light going in and out of the cab?

Hey Werm11, thanks for stopping in! Those "grate" are soffit vents from home improvement stores. They will not completely bock the light alone so I use a "cut to fit" activated carbon filter material to assist. I put one vent cover on the outside and one on the inside with a few pieces of the filter material in between. The filter does three things, helps with light leakage in/out, keeps dust to a minimum and provides a bit of odor control if there is a power outage and the filter/fan is not working to keep a negative pressure environment.

Any other questions, feel free to ask!

Wow I never considered fan failure odor control, but any stealth cab builder should, impressive!

Thanks Tim, I think everyone should be ready for any type of emergency. My first really large grow was 10 yrs ago, I had just filled a spare room and hurricane Katrina came through and wiped out power. We were in a duplex with neighbors and even worse, my girl's family came to stay with us due to the storm. Power was out for two weeks, I had about 50 plants that had to be taken out in the night and destroyed due to smell.
After that episode, I started using a small 15 lb carbon filter on the intake and a 50 lb on the exhaust for good measure. I could have had a rotting goat in that room and you would have never known. :biglaugh:

Here is my temporary veg cab. I had a Cree PAR38 18w in there but after seeing what these COBs do, I went ahead and swapped it out with another CXA3070 on 1500ma like my flower cab. The COB is 3x the wattage but produces WAY less heat. I measured the heat fins on the PAR38 and got 119* F average, the fan/heatsink on this cob is 3*F above ambient, plus I can raise lower it easier.

I am sold on the cobs, sweet veg cab, I got to plug in my spare PC fan 110 volt, and see how quiet it is, may use it for air movement like your doing, , good looking plants

I really need to see how your flood drain work s when y you get set up

The flood drain is really simple. There is a small fountain pump that will go in the tote below that tray and it's hooked up on a timer. It pumps water up to the tray and there is an overflow vent that prevents the tray from overfilling, the excess runs back to the reservoir and after the timing cycle(usually 15 mins twice a day), the water drains back through the pump so the tray empties. If I notice the pots drying out between cycles, I increase feedings to three times, then judge from there if I need to add another cycle. I do not feed with lights off, only when they are on so the 15 minute cycles I'm talking about are during lights-on.

Totally hands free watering. I simply check the water level, ppms and pH daily and top it off if needed. Once per week, I empty out the reservoir and start over fresh. I tried organic soil, dwc, nft and several other methods and for me, this is absolutely the most simple and effective method I tried. I grew like this for years with little to no problems ever.

The larger the reservoir, the more stable it will be. Too small and the ppms/pH will fluctuate rapidly along with needing to refill constantly.

So what goes in the flood tray, and don't say plants lol, do you full the tray with rocks or gravel, or net trays or net pots,,,,,(edit I went and watch ed a few videos on you tube with flood drain, so I don't sound like such a knob

Ignore my plastic (grow)cups, they are temporary. I usually start seeds/clones in either small rockwool starter cubes(1"x1") or standard peat pellets. Once rooted, they go into 3.5" square pots with a single layer of hydroton at the bottom filled with coco. I veg a few weeks or until the plants are 8-10" or so, then they go into 5.5" square pots with usually two layers of hydroton at the bottom and either straight coco or 50/50 coco hydroton mix fill. When they are transplanted into the 5.5" pots, they go into the tray to flower. The only thing in the tray is 5.5" pots. The pots I use are commonly called ORCHID pots or Kordlok pots, I prefer the 3.5 and 5.5 in the "deep" versions found on the link below.
http://www.novoselenterprises.com/products/square-pots.asp

I grow perpetually so every couple weeks, I put a couple plants in flower and try to time it so that the cycle will continue. I'll probably have up to 16 plants in this small tray so that's about 2 plants every two weeks for 8 weeks of flowering. After the first 6 weeks, the tray should be full and remain full from there on out. Every two weeks I take two out and put two new ones in.

That's the main reason I didn't build the COBs on one frame, I can have them at different heights to accommodate plants of all ages.

EDITED, forgot to mention I also use a bamboo stake in each pot to support the plants once they put on weight.

I started all my plants in peat pellets and then cups of garden soil while I waited for my coco to arrive. After swapping lights, my plants went yellow fast, I could not correct them so I finally rinsed the soil from the root balls and transplanted into coco. Just a few days later and they have already recovered and had major new growth. This is under a single CXA3070 running about 56w.

Back to the flower closet, it needed to be stealthy as possible and the sides of some pics are blocked out but the hidden door blends right in and can not be detected easily. I will be adding more camo to it but you get the idea.

I have four plants showing female so far, three are from unknown decent schwag seeds and one is a Girl Scout Cookies x OG Kush that was hit with pollen from a few different males, I'm waiting for the maker to try to identify which pheno this is. All of the females are on the right, the tall one in back was in soil in a cup but I filled around it with coco when I transplanted to a plastic pot planter so it is raised and hand fed. The rest are bottom fed twice a day right now automatically with the pump in the reservoir below. All the plants on the left are either suspected males or unknown so far. I will save any GSCxOG cross males to make more beans but they will be separated so the whole cabinet does not get pollinated. I will be taking cuts from the females for fill and adding them perpetually as they are ready, the cabinet will get flipped 12/12 tonight so pull up a chair.

I think it could well be time to potup, budget a gallon per month, or liter per week, but then again you would know that ....right? lol