mogie
Well-Known Member
Contributed by SCW:
The Setting
For those of you who can grow in a 10' room under 1000 watt lights, I envy you, but many of us can't devote that much space and effort to pot growing. We've been chatting here for many moons about micro cabinet growing, and I'm a big fan of the concept. But for those interested in some real production, I'm talking 1/2 pound to a pound or more every crop, I can show you how to do it easily in 2-4' of wall space.
I'm proud of my system, and of the yield, and I have good reason to advocate the specific methods I've practiced. But there are many ways to skin this cat, and I don't mean to offer a solution for all time, just one. One that works.
Your Space
We start with a wall. You need airflow through the cabinet, so an outside wall is best. You need to be able to get air into the cabinet, so if you can punch holes through the wall with a hole saw, all the better. You need to get air out of the cabinet as well, so if the eave / soffit line is accessible, that's a great place to dump air.
It helps if the cabinet is not the only thing on the wall. A wall of cabinets, with our factory just being one of the bunch, is perfect; hide in plain sight, basic Sherlock Holmes [a later reply suggested that 8 cabinets are unusual and not too stealthy as a result - ed]. But a couple of cabinets standing by themselves will not look out of place in a garage or storage room, particularly if they are surrounded by tool racks and other normal clutter of a working space. With all the recent chat about refrigerators as growing cabinets, that might be the first place I would suspect!
Each cabinet takes up 2' of wall space. Why 2' and not some other dimension? Because the engine of this factory will be the 250 watt HPS, and that is a light that can best handle a space about 2' square, 2 1/2' tops. Further, standard size storage containers, which are used for growing and for reservoirs in this system, fit right snuggly into a 2' interior space.
The Cabinets and Utilities
Note: The incoming power source should be on a GFCI circuit. If you wire up wall sockets around the cabinet as I did, only the first one need be a GFCI. All the other power outlets can take off from the first GFCI circuit. Never gang up GFCI circuits. If you are using power cords, buy a GFCI stub cord and put it in the main line. Transformers, motors, submerged pumps, HID lights; a recipe for fire or shock. You have been warned!
Each cabinet system occupies a footprint of just about 2' square. A standard floor to ceiling height of most finished spaces is 8', which is just right for this setup. I recommend plywood for the walls, as insulation is not necessary, and the thinner the walls, the more room for buds. You can design hollow spaces in the cabinet walls to carry electric power if you like. I ran a power supply wire into the hollow walls of the cabinets and installed standard wall switches and outlets to supply power to the various systems. It isn't necessary to be so neat, but it appealed to me, so I did it. You can supply electricity with cords snaked up through the floor or from a nearby wall plug, so long as the wire is sufficiently thick; at least the same gauge as the wall supply, and you will need at least a 15 amp circuit with little or nothing else on the line like maybe a garage light).
Water is a nice luxury if you can plumb a faucet outlet into the cabinet next to the reservoir; a drain would really be cool. If not, being able to run a hose to the cabinets will save a lot of time. I don't have water in my cabinets, but I can drag a reel hose into the outbuilding I use easily. I use quick connect fittings to connect the hose to the reservoir for topping off and filling.
The doors need to fit nearly airtight, but not perfect, as the fan blowing air out of the space creates a slight vacuum that sucks the door in. It would be better to create an overpressure in the space, but that complicates sealing the doors quite a bit, so I recommend the ventilation fans suck air out of the cabinets rather than blowing in. I sealed the doors in my units with foam weatherstripping, using strips of 1 x 2 boards to frame the opening and mounting the foam along the 1 x 2's. The board strips were mounted on the interior walls so that the foam stood slightly "proud" of the outside of the cabinet, allowing the door to crush the foam slightly as a seal. The foam also effectively seals the light inside the cabinets. I can stand next to the cabinets in the pitch dark and see only a few tiny cracks of light coming out around the hinges, where I didn't get a perfect seal.
The Basic Layout
Let's first focus on a single cabinet, taking up 2' square of space, 8' tall. We'll need three separate compartments in the cabinet, each with its own door to allow working in one compartment without blowing a dark period in another.
The top compartment is for flowering, and should be 4' tall. Why on top and not in the middle? The heat will be generated by a 250 watt HPS light in the top of the cabinet, and that heat needs to be removed. If the light was up against the floor of an upper cabinet, it could roast the roots of the plants above. Heat rises, so let's put the biggest heat source as high as possible.
Why should the flowering cabinet be 4' tall? Because if you follow these plans, the relationship between the height of the container, the stem length to the scrog canopy, the thickness of the scrog canopy, the distance between the lights and the canopy and the thickness of the light hood fits almost ideally in a 4' tall space. It would be difficult, in fact, to change the relationship between the elements of the scrog system with a 250 HPS light. 4' is not the minimum space required; I get by with 44" in one cabinet be stealing an inch or two from the stem length and the light gap. But more than 4' is probably wasted.
Next in line is a mother compartment, to be lit by a single 70 watt HPS bulb. I'm currently maintaining 8 mothers under the one small bulb, more than adequate [correct pruning is the key - ed]. The 70 HPS runs very cool, but even so, this mother space needs to be ventilated.
The height of the mother cabinet is negotiable. First subtract 4' for the flowering cabinet (no less than 44", trust me). Then figure the space needed for the reservoir on the bottom. Include some air space above the reservoir for access to mechanicals. The leftover height goes to the mothers. They don't need much. Probably the minimum height would be 2' or so.
Cloning can also be handled in the mother compartment by installing a small shelf on the upper part of the wall; nice and warm up there, good for rooting. I mount a 20 watt stick floro above the cloning shelf, a recent addition just for the hell of it. It was working OK just with the side-lit HPS. Cloning only happens every two months, so the shelf could even be made to fold up against the wall when not in use, allowing more space underneath for another couple of DNA storage units (mothers).
Finally, heat rises, but water runs downhill, so the lowest compartment holds the reservoir. An 11 gallon Rubbermaid storage container is the perfect size.
There you have it, an integrated system of mothers, clones and flowering plants, all in a 2' footprint. I get about 2 ounces per foot of scrog canopy with a 250 HPS, so we're talking 1/2 pound per crop here on a good day.
But, let's take this a little further. The mothers only need to produce 4 clones per crop, and are obviously capable of making many more. So, how about another 2' cabinet next door? Two more 4' tall flowering cabinets could easily be supported by the mothers, and now you're talking 1 1/2 pounds per crop. That's 3 ounces per foot of floor space, mothers and reservoir included.
I have a second cabinet, but three crops at once is more work than I care for, and the electric load of the lights and fans probably is excessive for a 15 watt circuit, so I modified the plans a bit, and built three compartments. The bottom compartment holds a second reservoir and pump, which allows more time between topping off than if one reservoir was servicing the whole unit; I'm lazy. The middle compartment is another 4' flowering cabinet, but note that it overlaps the mother cabinet next door and shares part of the wall of the upper flowering cabinet in the first stack.
I cut out a passage way in the shared wall, so that the two flowering cabinets both share the same air system, a 200 CFM Dayton pancake mounted in the top of the upper flowering cabinet. To help the airflow along, I mounted two 100 CFM axial fans in the passage way. I can light proof the passage way by mounting a darkroom air grill, a special plastic baffle that allows air to pass through but blocks light. The damn things cost a fortune, but they work well. That allows me to flower in one cabinet while the second cabinet is working vegetatively. Usually the two cabinets are in flowering mode, and I remove the darkroom grill to assist airflow.
That leaves 2' on top of the second cabinet; guess what goes there? How about the ballasts for all the lights? Keeps the heat from the ballasts out of the plant spaces, and eases the load on the fans.
By using two flowering cabinets, I only grow about two ounces per square foot of floor space, including all
reservoirs and mothers. I don't think most room growers include the mother area in their yield-o-rama reports, so I bet this system stacks up pretty well even against the 1000 watt crowd, except for the real pros getting 3-4 ounces per foot.
The Setting
For those of you who can grow in a 10' room under 1000 watt lights, I envy you, but many of us can't devote that much space and effort to pot growing. We've been chatting here for many moons about micro cabinet growing, and I'm a big fan of the concept. But for those interested in some real production, I'm talking 1/2 pound to a pound or more every crop, I can show you how to do it easily in 2-4' of wall space.
I'm proud of my system, and of the yield, and I have good reason to advocate the specific methods I've practiced. But there are many ways to skin this cat, and I don't mean to offer a solution for all time, just one. One that works.
Your Space
We start with a wall. You need airflow through the cabinet, so an outside wall is best. You need to be able to get air into the cabinet, so if you can punch holes through the wall with a hole saw, all the better. You need to get air out of the cabinet as well, so if the eave / soffit line is accessible, that's a great place to dump air.
It helps if the cabinet is not the only thing on the wall. A wall of cabinets, with our factory just being one of the bunch, is perfect; hide in plain sight, basic Sherlock Holmes [a later reply suggested that 8 cabinets are unusual and not too stealthy as a result - ed]. But a couple of cabinets standing by themselves will not look out of place in a garage or storage room, particularly if they are surrounded by tool racks and other normal clutter of a working space. With all the recent chat about refrigerators as growing cabinets, that might be the first place I would suspect!
Each cabinet takes up 2' of wall space. Why 2' and not some other dimension? Because the engine of this factory will be the 250 watt HPS, and that is a light that can best handle a space about 2' square, 2 1/2' tops. Further, standard size storage containers, which are used for growing and for reservoirs in this system, fit right snuggly into a 2' interior space.
The Cabinets and Utilities
Note: The incoming power source should be on a GFCI circuit. If you wire up wall sockets around the cabinet as I did, only the first one need be a GFCI. All the other power outlets can take off from the first GFCI circuit. Never gang up GFCI circuits. If you are using power cords, buy a GFCI stub cord and put it in the main line. Transformers, motors, submerged pumps, HID lights; a recipe for fire or shock. You have been warned!
Each cabinet system occupies a footprint of just about 2' square. A standard floor to ceiling height of most finished spaces is 8', which is just right for this setup. I recommend plywood for the walls, as insulation is not necessary, and the thinner the walls, the more room for buds. You can design hollow spaces in the cabinet walls to carry electric power if you like. I ran a power supply wire into the hollow walls of the cabinets and installed standard wall switches and outlets to supply power to the various systems. It isn't necessary to be so neat, but it appealed to me, so I did it. You can supply electricity with cords snaked up through the floor or from a nearby wall plug, so long as the wire is sufficiently thick; at least the same gauge as the wall supply, and you will need at least a 15 amp circuit with little or nothing else on the line like maybe a garage light).
Water is a nice luxury if you can plumb a faucet outlet into the cabinet next to the reservoir; a drain would really be cool. If not, being able to run a hose to the cabinets will save a lot of time. I don't have water in my cabinets, but I can drag a reel hose into the outbuilding I use easily. I use quick connect fittings to connect the hose to the reservoir for topping off and filling.
The doors need to fit nearly airtight, but not perfect, as the fan blowing air out of the space creates a slight vacuum that sucks the door in. It would be better to create an overpressure in the space, but that complicates sealing the doors quite a bit, so I recommend the ventilation fans suck air out of the cabinets rather than blowing in. I sealed the doors in my units with foam weatherstripping, using strips of 1 x 2 boards to frame the opening and mounting the foam along the 1 x 2's. The board strips were mounted on the interior walls so that the foam stood slightly "proud" of the outside of the cabinet, allowing the door to crush the foam slightly as a seal. The foam also effectively seals the light inside the cabinets. I can stand next to the cabinets in the pitch dark and see only a few tiny cracks of light coming out around the hinges, where I didn't get a perfect seal.
The Basic Layout
Let's first focus on a single cabinet, taking up 2' square of space, 8' tall. We'll need three separate compartments in the cabinet, each with its own door to allow working in one compartment without blowing a dark period in another.
The top compartment is for flowering, and should be 4' tall. Why on top and not in the middle? The heat will be generated by a 250 watt HPS light in the top of the cabinet, and that heat needs to be removed. If the light was up against the floor of an upper cabinet, it could roast the roots of the plants above. Heat rises, so let's put the biggest heat source as high as possible.
Why should the flowering cabinet be 4' tall? Because if you follow these plans, the relationship between the height of the container, the stem length to the scrog canopy, the thickness of the scrog canopy, the distance between the lights and the canopy and the thickness of the light hood fits almost ideally in a 4' tall space. It would be difficult, in fact, to change the relationship between the elements of the scrog system with a 250 HPS light. 4' is not the minimum space required; I get by with 44" in one cabinet be stealing an inch or two from the stem length and the light gap. But more than 4' is probably wasted.
Next in line is a mother compartment, to be lit by a single 70 watt HPS bulb. I'm currently maintaining 8 mothers under the one small bulb, more than adequate [correct pruning is the key - ed]. The 70 HPS runs very cool, but even so, this mother space needs to be ventilated.
The height of the mother cabinet is negotiable. First subtract 4' for the flowering cabinet (no less than 44", trust me). Then figure the space needed for the reservoir on the bottom. Include some air space above the reservoir for access to mechanicals. The leftover height goes to the mothers. They don't need much. Probably the minimum height would be 2' or so.
Cloning can also be handled in the mother compartment by installing a small shelf on the upper part of the wall; nice and warm up there, good for rooting. I mount a 20 watt stick floro above the cloning shelf, a recent addition just for the hell of it. It was working OK just with the side-lit HPS. Cloning only happens every two months, so the shelf could even be made to fold up against the wall when not in use, allowing more space underneath for another couple of DNA storage units (mothers).
Finally, heat rises, but water runs downhill, so the lowest compartment holds the reservoir. An 11 gallon Rubbermaid storage container is the perfect size.
There you have it, an integrated system of mothers, clones and flowering plants, all in a 2' footprint. I get about 2 ounces per foot of scrog canopy with a 250 HPS, so we're talking 1/2 pound per crop here on a good day.
But, let's take this a little further. The mothers only need to produce 4 clones per crop, and are obviously capable of making many more. So, how about another 2' cabinet next door? Two more 4' tall flowering cabinets could easily be supported by the mothers, and now you're talking 1 1/2 pounds per crop. That's 3 ounces per foot of floor space, mothers and reservoir included.
I have a second cabinet, but three crops at once is more work than I care for, and the electric load of the lights and fans probably is excessive for a 15 watt circuit, so I modified the plans a bit, and built three compartments. The bottom compartment holds a second reservoir and pump, which allows more time between topping off than if one reservoir was servicing the whole unit; I'm lazy. The middle compartment is another 4' flowering cabinet, but note that it overlaps the mother cabinet next door and shares part of the wall of the upper flowering cabinet in the first stack.
I cut out a passage way in the shared wall, so that the two flowering cabinets both share the same air system, a 200 CFM Dayton pancake mounted in the top of the upper flowering cabinet. To help the airflow along, I mounted two 100 CFM axial fans in the passage way. I can light proof the passage way by mounting a darkroom air grill, a special plastic baffle that allows air to pass through but blocks light. The damn things cost a fortune, but they work well. That allows me to flower in one cabinet while the second cabinet is working vegetatively. Usually the two cabinets are in flowering mode, and I remove the darkroom grill to assist airflow.
That leaves 2' on top of the second cabinet; guess what goes there? How about the ballasts for all the lights? Keeps the heat from the ballasts out of the plant spaces, and eases the load on the fans.
By using two flowering cabinets, I only grow about two ounces per square foot of floor space, including all
reservoirs and mothers. I don't think most room growers include the mother area in their yield-o-rama reports, so I bet this system stacks up pretty well even against the 1000 watt crowd, except for the real pros getting 3-4 ounces per foot.
