Vertical Slab 600w 64 Plant Grow

Hey guys.

Some of you may remember me when i first started out, my first grow journal and all the problems/mistakes i encountered. I have learned a fair bit since then! Check out my sig to catch up if you didn't see that.

So anyway, here i am, on grow #3 and i am stepping up since grow #2 was pretty damn successful. Time for vertical growing! The set up hasn't been built yet, but i have nearly all the bits i need.

The vertical set up will be as follows:

5'x5'x6.5' Tent
16 x 1m rockwool slabs (designed for vertical use so the grain in the rockwool is different, if anyone wants to use the same idea, make sure you get these) set up in an 8 sided frame
1 x 600w HPS in a 5" custom cool tube (perspex, i hope this doesn't melt!)
6" inline fan and ducting sucking right from the bulb, connected to an automatic fan controller
8" carbon double length filter for exhaust to go into
80L tank, pump, timer, 16 drippers
Frame is made from 2" PVC tubing, set up in an octagon shape, guttering around the bottom

The Build:

Skip this bit if you like, it is a long read.

The slabs will be placed vertically on the frame and held in place with velcro. The ends will have the plastic removed, the drippers will feed from the top, and drain out to the guttering below. The gutter will drain back into the tank. An 18" floor fan will be placed face up under the frame with a fan controller so it beats a slow breeze up the plants from below. The bulb will be suspended inside the 1m long cool tube, wire "butterfly" ties to keep the bulb from touching the sides of the tube.
The tank will be under the frame (the frame will be sat on 4 small side tables) and will pump up a half inch pipe to the top of the tent, away from the electrics, where it will split into 8 x 4mm feeder pipes, then a splitter and 2 x dripper spikes. The manifold will be sealed in a big ball of silicone once it is connected so no leaks occur, as will each splitter.

I would like to take this time to point out suspended water fixtures above electricity is incredibly dangerous. In this set up i would like to point out that all electric components will be secured away from any possible leaks or failures. Even then, all care is taken to seal any connections to protect against pressurized leaks which may cause spray. Be safe, where possible keep water below waist height and electricity above waist height.

The 16 feeding tubes will be of suitable length to allow the frame to be turned 180 degrees in each direction without causing the tubes to be pulled tight. This is very important for access to the slabs, as this will all be in a 5'x5' tent and i can only get to it from one side. I will use air hose for this, as it is a lot more flexible than standard micro irrigation lines. This will save me pulling out all the spikes just to get access.

The cool tube will be held in place within the frame at the top, and secured with something at the bottom. I have some pip clips that could hold it into place. When i make it and get photos, you will see how i will do this, it is difficult to explain. At the top of the cool tube, the bulb will be suspended mid way down. This will be secured with wire ties so it doesn't touch the sides of the tube and the cable folded over the top and secured with a bit of tape for the moment. Then the 6" duct will be split up the side by about 3 inches, and this duct taped over the top of the cool tube with the cable coming through the split. Secure and make as airtight as possible with half a roll of duct tape, put a secure clip on the cable so it doesn't slip through the hole, and we have the cool tube done. When i need to change the bulb, i release the clip, slide the bulb to the bottom open end of the cool tube, change, pull back up into position, and re-secure the clip.

This duct gets connected to a 6" inline fan with temp controller which then feeds into an 8" carbon filter via a reducer coupling. I know a 6" fan is a little oversized, as the CFM rating is huge, but the controller should keep it at a sensible level with scope to pump that heat out if needed. This will hopefully keep things at a nice steady temp.

The Grow:

So once this monster has been put together, i will be able to put a minimum of 64 plants inside (4 each slab) as rooted cuttings (i have a 120 site X-Stream propagator for this) and prop them up inside the frame, surrounding the tube. This will give me about 20" from the face of the slab to the edge of the tube as growing space. The plants are not intended to be vegged, they will get flowered right from the get go. I will veg them in propagation to the right size of about 4-5". After about 2-3 weeks in the frame, these should have stretched out and produced an additional node. The lower stems get removed and these get used for cuttings. Two cuttings from each young plant, then the best 64 get picked from these in the next cycle.

The idea is i produce only a single cola from each of these 64 plants. Now some of you are starting to think about Heath Robinson and his flooded pipe vertical grow. That is what inspired me to do it, i just don't have the room for that size of grow. So stealing other ideas from various sources, i have come up with this. None of it is particularly original, but that is kind of the point. I want to use methods that have worked for other people From these single colas, Heath gained about 1/2 oz per plant. I am expecting to get half of that, and if i get more, bonus. But i am not nearly as experienced as him or many of you, so i like to keep it real.

16 oz from 64 plants should be perfectly doable, so about 450 grams, giving me 0.75 grams per watt. Not bad for reasonable expectation. Now if i do indeed get the same sort of results as Heath, i will be looking at 900 grams, so 1.5 grams per watt. Now wouldn't that be just lovely?

So this is what is to come. I shall post some photos when it is all built up and empty, then show you the progress of the plants week by week for you all to comment. It may work, it may fail miserably, it is a first for me growing like this so i am not expecting much.

I will be planting mostly Blue Cheese with some Critical Kush as well, then i have some seeds of my own hermy accident which is Critical Kush crossed with some unknown strain. That should be an interesting cross as they were both completely different but equally lovely smokes. Cannot wait! I am, however, expecting some trouble with the Blue Cheese. It seems to be a very weak and stringy plant, and growing it out horizontally may require a lot of support, which will be difficult. I plan to have a lot of those little green canes handy to shove in the slab to try and support them. Also the Critical Kush is a freaking overachiever when it grows, so those bad boys will need strategic placing. Probably put them near the top so they don't block the fan at the bottom.


Please feel free to post your comments, ideas, criticisms and support below.

Green Troll

I grow 12x12fs when we try with clones it does not come out well.
I read Heath Robinson" vert grow article,he talked about the benefit of
not running a reflector and placing a fan on the floor blowing up at the light. GL!

Subscribed

Forgot to take a photo of my mothers, so to make up for the lack of bud porn, here is a pic from my last crop.

Sounds interesting, subbed

Hmm.. Will be following, never followed a vert grow before so am very interested.

Mah Mummas!



As you can see, I have done a little ScrOGing to try and get as many even cuttings as possible when the time comes. Sorry for the washed out colour, i don't normally have a problem with MH screwing up the picture. But lemme explain what i have here.

First pic is (one) of my Blue Cheese plants. There are two growing, and i am happy about that, as the second one that is in front was a bit of a rent to start with, but she soon caught up. Some lovely growth, no problems with this strain, she is one hardy bitch! But she is also a bit weak, when flowered, she WILL collapse under the weight of her own fruits. I think this is mainly to do with her stem growth, she doesn't grow in a straight line up, she will zig zag naturally, weird. And she is SMELLY!

Second pic is of my Critical Kush, a nice rapidly growing cross of OG Kush and Critical Mass (they didn't spend too long on the name). This is the strain that produced that monster cola in the previous pic. And that was flowered when the plant was only 5 weeks into veg and about 18 inches tall. She finished at 3 feet, the top foot being that bad boy.

Third pic is of my overall set up. I know some of you are going to SCREW about the condition of my ground sheet. That, my friends, is limescale. That is why i use RO water now, because that shite was clogging everything up. It is difficult to get off without using harsh chemicals and i don't want my girls breathing that in so it stays there for now. The dirt on the right is a little bit of coco from me just fluffing up the surface, and i just chucked it to the side. I am messy, sue me xD

As you can see, other than a couple of odd spots one a couple of leaves, they are in beautiful condition. No calcium or magnesium deficiencies as you can see, and i DON'T use calmag with my RO water. I have recently bought some for a backup but so far so good, it is not broken so i shall not fix it. But it is there if i need it later down the line.

My up turned bucket serves as a table for my temp/humidity gauge. Humidity (not that you can see) is a little low at the moment, which i am going to keep my eye on, it is at about 36-40%, which is unusual. Normally i suffer with humidity, not lack of it. Temps sitting at a consistent 25-26 degrees C with lights on, 22-23 degrees with lights off.

I pulled free one of my feeding tubes, a home made device. A bit of 4mm air line with a knot tied in one end. I then cut little notches out of it every couple of inches and i lay this on top of my coco. This gives me a nice even watering. If any of you use a Wilma system and coco, you will know why i do this. The supplied arrow spikes are damn useless.

My Bionaire tower fan is simply amazing. Oscillating, with on/off breeze setting gives a nice air flow under the canopy of the plants. A TINY bit of wind burn on the CK lower leaves, but nothing to stress about. I would suggest one of these fans to anyone with a tent grow. Take up so little space compared to a 6" oscillating clip on fan and do so much more option wise. I actually have two of these, but only using 1 at the moment.

Inside the tank i have an air stone donut, about 5", these are great, this sits directly under the pump so the water drawn is freshly oxygenated. You can see a 2" golf ball sitting on the side there which is not connected, and you can see that has suffered some limescale as well, so i removed that. I also have a 4 foot "air curtain" running the length of the tank, and this is crap. Do not buy them, they are useless. The air bubbles produced are huge, infrequent and very unevenly spaced along the length of the pipe. I recently bought some 6" flat plate ceramic air stones so i am going to see what they are like.

What you cannot see is the light, a 400W MH under a parabolic shade. These are great shades. This is in a 4' x 4' tent using the Wilma 8 pot system. The system is great, but when i had all 8 pots filled, it was very crowded. Should have got the larger 4 pot system. I run RO water with Canna Coco nutes at 1.6 EC and 5.7-5.8 PH.

I will get a pic of these after about a week so you can see the growth rate. I love my girls.

Just found something that is very similar to what i am building! I didn't know these were commercially available, but to be honest, at that price i would build my own anyway!

http://www.hg-hydroponics.co.uk/eco-system-mk-2---18-slab-2147-p.asp

Brilliant , wish i coulda rep'd you Again for this), maybe another time but id like to sub up for this.. Great reading though..

A week later
A further 5 days later!

These girls are doing great. Started on the frame of my slab grow, time consuming and a pain to put together, i had to resort to duct taping the fixings together so they wouldn't pop back out again but this is the top section.


More will get built this weekend, then cuttings next weekend and we can fill it up! Stay tuned.

Couldn't you get some pvc pipe cement, thats what we used to use on swimming pool drains before we poured the concrete so i know that would never come apart

http://www.toolstation.com/shop/p59068?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=googleshopping&utm_campaign=googleshopping&mkwid=eu1PzJt7&pcrid=26799054623&gclid=CMahiN7tjLsCFWTnwgodSGEAUg

Green Troll said:

View attachment 2912182A week later
View attachment 2912183A further 5 days later!

These girls are doing great. Started on the frame of my slab grow, time consuming and a pain to put together, i had to resort to duct taping the fixings together so they wouldn't pop back out again but this is the top section.
View attachment 2912190

More will get built this weekend, then cuttings next weekend and we can fill it up! Stay tuned.

Click to expand...

Those ladies are lookin healthy! Excited to see your elaborate system come together.... everything looking good so far, except the taped PVC! Was the tape temporary just to fit it? Or permanent? I'm going to have to agree with reddiamond... you need some "Christies red hot blue glue"(homedepot $3)and are you going to have 4 feeds for each of the 4 outputs coming from the manifold? 64 plants..... GOODLUCK!

The PVC cement is messy and time consuming, and i wanted to be able to adjust or break it down if needed. The tape was a nice fast fix to the problem Once it is in position, it would be too awkward to take it apart just to cement it back together again, so it will be permanent. I will keep an eye on it, make sure it is not going to harbour any nasties, and it will all get bleach cleaned after each harvest.

The manifold is a 8mm to 8 x 4mm, and i have two of these. The entire set up will be 13mm split into 2 x 8mm, then from there to 16 4mm connected to 2-4l/hour drippers. I will test all this to make sure the slabs are getting even watering. The pump is adequate for the pressure needed for the lift, and the flow rate is much more than needed. I am toying with the idea of using 2 separate pumps. Just in case one fails over a week away or something, i will only lose half a crop. All trial and error for now. I also will be fitting a couple of CFL strip lights as "work lights" so i can turn the 600w off when working the garden without plunging my girls into darkness.

The biggest thing i am concerned about at the moment is the weight. I may need to add additional reinforcement to the frame. 16 slabs soaked through, that is a LOT to hold up. There will be a revised version of this frame being built shortly after this test run, and that will be made from 19mm steel tubing and custom made fixings. But for now, i may need to knock up some supports. We shall see how she holds!

Today i realized i have run short on PVC pipe after making some adjustments to the design. So while i am waiting for that to turn up, i refilled my cloning machine. I have been letting the rockwool cubes soak for a week (overkill i know) in PHed water, adjusting the water each day as the PH rose, until it became stable. I will soak the cubes tonight in the rooting solution i am going to be using for the first week or so, then maybe take the cuttings tomorrow.



I am using the 120 site X-Stream propagator. This is designed for clay pebbles, not rockwool, so my cuttings have to be longer to allow another half inch for the neoprene collar. Also the sprayers will be on a timer, 15 minutes twice a day soaking, otherwise they will drown. I will also have to keep the water moving for the rest of the time, so a couple of air stones will get used so it doesn't get stagnant. I have one seriously powerful air pump to deal with this for me, biggest damn thing i have ever seen. 720l/hour! My others are only about 200. This will be running both the prop and the main flowering tank.

I have the propagator under a single 200w CFL, but i have a 250w to try out as well, i will see how the cuttings respond.

I am grateful for your suggestions and comments guys, i am glad i can offer something interesting for you to follow. More pics next week, i shall keep you all posted on my progress.

Just loaded up the rockwool starter cubes into the net pots of the X-Stream and the damn things are about a quarter inch too tall. The neoprene doesn't sit snugly into the pot. Looks like i will have to make some custom ones myself.

And Cannas rooting nute solution, that is a sneaky bit of ripping off, it is already diluted a lot, so you still use 4ml per litre. So that was nearly a quarter of the bottle to get an EC value of 0.2. Cheeky bastards!

Oh well! Prop is set up, i will be taking 5 cuttings tomorrow to test the system out, make sure they actually take. See the progress over a week. Couple more pics tomorrow if i have time and remember.

Ok so i didn't get as much done this weekend as i wanted, but i popped in a couple of clones to see how they would cope with a 30 minute watering once a day for a week. I took 3 clones from different places on one of my mothers, one from the top, middle and bottom, back, middle and front respectively in the cloner.


As you can see, they look a little droopy. Aww!

Less than 8 hours later. Happy clones! Temps are 26C and RH is 99%.


So as for the work i did, i got my second tent up, and ripped it, thanks SJ DS junk, i wont be buying you again. Anyway a bit of Gorilla tape fixed that. So i built the second part of the frame and the water collection guttering. This is not exactly very stable and i think not an optimal device for collecting run off, but i have an idea for a little invention, so i will update with that once i have made it and it works. I did plan on using a big 18" fan for an upward draft to keep the plants happy and flappy, but i can't see how it is going to fit. The frame will sit on 4 of those little tables with a gap about that size between them all, forming a cross of void space. Looks like i am going to have to use 4 x 6" fans instead. I hope i can get 4 fans running off 1 single fan speed controller using a multi plug strip, if this is dangerous or not advised, please let me know!

The tent is 1.5m x 1.5m just so you can gauge the scale of it, going to be quite a large rig! I will see how 64 plants look for the first grow, and see if i can upgrade to 80 if i think there is enough space. I want to keep a good amount of air flow though, so we shall see what it looks like once it is loaded.

Let me know what you guys think so far and if you have any suggestions or ideas, please feel free to post them!

Well. My mothers have just gone plain crazy. After a week, i opened the tent to find them jumping out at me, burning themselves on the bulb, just mental.


This is them AFTER i took around 60 cuttings and chopped away the burned bits. And they have been crazy thirsty as well, i don't know what had gotten into them. The problem i face now is, i don't actually want them to grow any bigger...it will be another 8 weeks before i need more cuttings. Suppose i will just have to prune them back. I am tempted to flower them out to be honest, i could always make some new mothers. Maybe just 2 this time...

So tomorrow i will take the rest of my cuttings. I am going to dial back the nutes a bit, try and drop the temp slightly and hopefully they will calm down a bit.

The frame will get finished by next week, i will probably make a video of that so you guys can see it working, see how it's all put together etc. Here is a pic of what it looks like so far, you can see how it all will work (hopefully!).


Stupid bloody website is turning it sideways. Time to stretch that neck! Anyways you can see the main concept. You can see how i am going to strap it to the tent roof to give it a little extra support. It should be ok but it would suck if it collapsed! The main problem i am going to have is access to the back. You really have to just lean into it, and if it is loaded, i am going to have to take out the first 4 slabs to get in there. But, it is all work in progress, i will no doubt have loads of changes to make.

Next problem to solve is air flow. There is simply nowhere for my big fan to go. Looks like it will be a load of smaller fans. I will see how the 120mm PC fans i have cope. I have 8 of those bad boys

How about that? 4 sets of those.

My mothers were growing so crazy, i have stuck them into flower. These strains are insane!


This is what they look like now i have tied some of them down, taken all my cuttings, and i have taken my shade off. I will do a vertical scrog if they get too lanky while they are in flower. This is my first time scrogging, and i have more coverage with 3 plants than i did with 7. Amazing technique. Anyway, i shall keep you all posted!

Green Troll said:

View attachment 2920721View attachment 2920722
How about that? 4 sets of those.

Click to expand...

Not sure if they will give you enough air flow, could you get a smaller normal fan in there, say like a 9" or even a couple of 6" would probably do it.

They will be just fine, they are fairly powerful for their size. Enough to flow but not enough to wind burn with proper control, and plus, there are 8 of them. Each should push at least 80 CFM.

I wouldn't say 9" is normal size for tents, most hydroponic fans are 6", only 1 inch bigger than these, and you certainly don't see 8 of them in a set up! You have to imagine the arrangement, 1-2 fans would not do it, unless it is the big old 18" fan i planned to use, and even that had to be slowed to 50% of it's slowest setting using a fan controller.

You will see once it is built the spacing i have made between the slabs. This is a 16 slab set up barely fitting in a 5 foot tent. Similar set ups are 20-24 slab at this size. This will give a lot of additional space for flow. Just remember, these do not need to do anything other than gently move the air around. I have a 6" extraction which will give more then enough exchange, the entire tent volume once every 30 seconds at max flow. I will have this set up on a temp fan controller though, with a minimum of 30% speed, so assuming the volume removed is 30%, once every 90 seconds or so is still vastly higher than recommended. I know it is not all that simple, but is it all over engineered.

So with the same idea of ceiling fans, the fans will not only create flow and movement of the plants, they will do the job of pushing rising heat down towards the outlet of the cool tube.

I will be honest, 8 x 120mm fans i think will be too much. The rig will be set on an adjustable voltage transformer, and i also have a pulse relay to try and simulate inconsistent flow of wind. It will be a matter of testing how the plants react, i know what these strains can handle before they start to burn. My mothers are all moved by a single fan at lowest setting that pushes out no more than a single 6", and you can see how those beasts are doing!

One thing i will consider is where the airflow will be going. Rot and mold will occur at the base where the veg is densest, and with these fans i can move them to flow right down the stems if i need.

Along with the weight put upon the frame, airflow has always been a major concern. So i have strived to make sure the area is larger, the gaps larger, and the flow greater than other successful builds of this design. Worst case, i will have to add 2 oscillating 6" fans at the left and right side of the frame blowing directly upwards, this will give a bit of turbulence but create huge airflow within the tent, more than i think is needed.