# I did it .......... my waaaaay!!!



## MrMeanGreen (May 19, 2014)

Decided to throw my style out there with a few pics. Ya don't really get the full effetct from the pics as I can't get a wider angle but ya can get the general idea. What you got to remember is that my bud is all the way round, not just the parts facing the light.

Room is 8ft x 8ft x 6ft high. Angles are deceiving, the plants are about 5.5 ft tall and about 3ft wide.

3 stacked 600w cool tubes. Extractor is fitted to the bottom of the stack and now pulls the heat through the floor and down into my kitchen where the warm air exits frow under my kitchen units. This is a clean extraction as inlet comes from outside room and does not need a scrubber.

  

I also have a second extractor that scrubs the dirty air from the room and pumps down into my bedroom. If you haven't already worked it out, my room is in the loft. There is also an extra 600w bare bulb outside the ring (you can see it in the back ground) of plants but summer is coming, temps are rising and it just spews to much heat.

Each plants is individually caged which in my opinion is a no brainer, more work to set up but worth it. There are litterally 100 reasons to do this but that for discussion later.

  

Each plant is on its own lazy susan /bearing. This was an excellent find, each bearing can hold over 200kg and are available on ebay for just £4.50 each. These give me total access to each and every plant equally and allow for easy rotation, feeding, inspection, maintainance and training. I have just bought a high torque, low rpm motor and intend hooking them up to rotate about once every 5 mins. Rotating manually at the moment but automated will follow. The motor was just £20.

 

In hindsight I have made a few errors, training shoud start at the very bottom of the plant. I stripped the bottom 12" which put my lower light out of work pretty much, not alot of green to feed. The same goes for the top of the plant, the main top cola's almost have a light all to themselves, not very efficient I know. Will be topping or super cropping next run to allow the top ring of growth to push up to the top light and maximise efficiency.

My aim next run is to get a 5ft barrel of green on each plant. Could waffle on but too much text is boring, heres a few more pics of plants, 1 week left of 8 but will prob leave a bit longer.

 

Slag me off, ask questions, rip me to pieces, I am a stubborn old fuka and welcome it all.


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## Mt Doo (May 19, 2014)

Well beautiful set up I hope to get mines to look like that one say

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Rollitup mobile app


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## Maine Buds (May 19, 2014)

Wow super cool! Love the idea off the automated rotation. I would just have them constantly rotating but super slow. Super frosty bud what strain ?


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## MrMeanGreen (May 20, 2014)

Maine Buds said:


> Wow super cool! Love the idea off the automated rotation. I would just have them constantly rotating but super slow. Super frosty bud what strain ?


It's AK Lemon, a cross between...... yes you guessed it, AK47 and Lemon haze. Been running it for years, always lovely citrus and a pretty good yielder.


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## Maine Buds (May 20, 2014)

MrMeanGreen said:


> It's AK Lemon, a cross between...... yes you guessed it, AK47 and Lemon haze. Been running it for years, always lovely citrus and a pretty good yielder.


Looks really yummy! It's your own cross?i like ak and who dosent like lemon flavor!


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## MrMeanGreen (May 20, 2014)

Maine Buds said:


> Looks really yummy! It's your own cross?i like ak and who dosent like lemon flavor!


I'd like to say it was my own, but naah, not my creation.

I was hoping to get some to get some juices flowing about the pro's and con's of static plants and a fixed area tubular grow v's rotating plants and increased surface area. It makes sense to me but maybe almost tripling your grow area might not be the way forward.


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## BenFranklin (May 20, 2014)

Jaw dropping...... Man, I wished I had taller ceilings... hehehehehe


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## Mt Doo (May 21, 2014)

Jjo ol 999oo ointment 8 I 888 I k op oll l o l o


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## Roscko (May 21, 2014)

Now that's pretty damn creative +rep.


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## cat of curiosity (May 21, 2014)

very nice. what do you pull per plant? how long a veg period?


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## Mt Doo (May 21, 2014)

Sorry I was looking at the thread and walked away from my phone and my son got to it. 

A Bitch A Blunt And A Beer, Lifes Great


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## MrMeanGreen (May 21, 2014)

cat of curiosity said:


> very nice. what do you pull per plant? how long a veg period?


 This is my first run with this specific set up. The 2 in the pics are coming down in about a week so will let you know but I am hoping for 7-8 oz per plant. If my memory serves me right, I vegged for about 3.5 weeks.


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## cat of curiosity (May 21, 2014)

MrMeanGreen said:


> This is my first run with this specific set up. The 2 in the pics are coming down in about a week so will let you know but I am hoping for 7-8 oz per plant. If my memory serves me right, I vegged for about 3.5 weeks.


very nice. i'm watching this thread to see the end result.


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## lickalotapus (May 25, 2014)

Very intesting,I love the idea of rotating plants ,, 
I'm on my first vert grow now ,4 northern lights around a 250w mh ,soon to be around a 600 with a screen


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## ttystikk (May 27, 2014)

This is very intriguing, because of course we all know a plant doesn't need direct light all the time to produce well; the sun moves, progressively exposing various parts of the plant to light and shade throughout every day. The only exception is when cloud cover is thick enough to fully diffuse light from the sun.

I went a different direction; instead of rotating my plants, I've trained them to look like radar dishes, with the lamp/s at their focal point. This gives me ideal coverage and intensity but of course the back side suffers- and gets stripped to minimize this.

If your approach means less larf removal, I'm very interested. OTOH, if there's a big dead spot inside the plant and the whole thing fails to weigh, we're back to square one on light rotation. After all, this IS still light rotation; you're just rotating the plant instead of the light.


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## MrMeanGreen (May 28, 2014)

ttystikk said:


> This is very intriguing, because of course we all know a plant doesn't need direct light all the time to produce well; the sun moves, progressively exposing various parts of the plant to light and shade throughout every day. The only exception is when cloud cover is thick enough to fully diffuse light from the sun.
> 
> I went a different direction; instead of rotating my plants, I've trained them to look like radar dishes, with the lamp/s at their focal point. This gives me ideal coverage and intensity but of course the back side suffers- and gets stripped to minimize this.
> 
> If your approach means less larf removal, I'm very interested. OTOH, if there's a big dead spot inside the plant and the whole thing fails to weigh, we're back to square one on light rotation. After all, this IS still light rotation; you're just rotating the plant instead of the light.


Well it's down now, gimmi a few days and I can lay some numbers down.

In aswer to your question on dead spots, I stripped everything out from the cage back to the main stem, I wanted to maximise air flow and minimise popcorn. No internal dead spots.

The latter half of flowering they started to show signs of bleaching, they were only about 8 inches from the bulb. This 
makes me feel a constant but slow rotation would ease this problem. The quarter turn daily just wasn't enough.

Just need to get my finger out of my arse, get my thinking cap on and work out how I am going to link my pots up and motorise the rotation on 6 plants. 

I have given up on the perpetual element for the next grow, mother nature and changing seasons / temps etc just fooks all the timing up and plants just aint where they are meant to be when I need them to be. Alot of wasted light this grow but we live and learn. New girls are now in and just had the final repot. Will post some periodic pics to show start to finish.


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## MrMeanGreen (May 30, 2014)

The results are in. 9 oz off each plant, will prob lose another half oz burping over next few days.. I am not comparing penis size here so don't go gettin fruity. I am sticking with this method for a while and see what happens wihtout the mistakes and a few tweaks.


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## MrMeanGreen (Jun 10, 2014)

I thought the automated rotation was going to be a proper ball ache, mainly around mounting the motor and transfering the torque / rotation to the plants. Turned out to be a breeze in the end. Decided rotating each pot individually was the way to go, far to complicated hooking all 6 pots upto 1 motor.

I a not going to lie, I am pretty stoked about how this all worked out, construction was litterally half a dozen screws and a few scraps of wood.



A piece of 18mm ply (approx 10x6 inches). The bearing is screwed down on the left. The motor is 6v 3 RPM and geared for high torque. I dropped the voltage to 3v and it now does 1 revelution every 5.5 minutes. It is mounted on 2 x 2inch pieces of dowel with a soft tyre wheel attatched to the prop shaft. Having kids that love to pull their toy cars to bits has its advantages.



Here's a close up to show how the wheel and motor is mounted.



Next I dropped the pot drip tray onto the bearing, centred it and drove a screw through middle to keep everything in place. The wheel now pushes up tight to the tray.



Finally on goes a pot, the heaviest I could find was about 15kg but the bearing can handle upto 280kg and the motor didn't bat an eye. I have just installed the first prototype in my flower room and it works a treat. The whole thing, not including the power source cost just over £10 and took no more than 15 mins to put together.

Considering my my last grow and ony turning 1/4 a day manually, I have high expectations for this addition.

Another bonuses with this setup that I forgot to mention is harvest and trimming

I keep my sweet leaf, love the oil. Stripping the fan leaves takes seconds, the extra support the plant has from the cage allows you to yank em off without damaging the plant and being able to rotate the plant also speeds trimming up loads.

each plant has its own cage so as you harvest and trim your branch, you simply hang the branch you just trimmed back on the cage where it came from. No need for webs of string all over the place to hang ya bud. And with the automated rotation still running it shoud give improved air circulation,a more consistant and equal dry.

Just gorra wait for the rest of the motors now, unfortunatley they come on the slow boat from china so takes a week or so


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## Scrogmonkey (Jun 10, 2014)

Spinning plant pots?
I like the idea.
Take it on dragons den lol.


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## greenlikemoney (Jun 10, 2014)

Very very nice.


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## MrMeanGreen (Jun 10, 2014)

Scrogmonkey said:


> Spinning plant pots?
> I like the idea.
> Take it on dragons den lol.


Lol.... I can see it now with a rig in the back ground, budding plants etc.


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## Kannah-krazy (Jun 11, 2014)

Mt Doo said:


> Jjo ol 999oo ointment 8 I 888 I k op oll l o l o


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## Pinworm (Jun 12, 2014)




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## Deusracing (Jun 12, 2014)

Simply fantastic photos. great grow there loving it...

http://www.hydropon


MrMeanGreen said:


> Decided to throw my style out there with a few pics. Ya don't really get the full effetct from the pics as I can't get a wider angle but ya can get the general idea. What you got to remember is that my bud is all the way round, not just the parts facing the light.
> 
> Room is 8ft x 8ft x 6ft high. Angles are deceiving, the plants are about 5.5 ft tall and about 3ft wide.
> 
> ...


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## Pinworm (Jun 12, 2014)

Deusracing said:


> Simply fantastic photos. great grow there loving it...
> 
> http://www.hydropon


Are you even old enough to be European?


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## Deusracing (Jun 12, 2014)

Nope just young enough to be a proud lithuanian


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## Deusracing (Jun 12, 2014)

Old enough to hook this beautiful lil system up


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## Scrogmonkey (Jun 12, 2014)

Deusracing said:


> Old enough to hook this beautiful lil system up


Whats that spinning thing on top of the MP3 player? lol


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## Deusracing (Jun 12, 2014)

ITs old frisbee


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## texasjack (Jun 12, 2014)

Awesome engineering guy. Just keep those wires safe from water.


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## MrMeanGreen (Jun 13, 2014)

texasjack said:


> Awesome engineering guy. Just keep those wires safe from water.


Cheers matey, and thanx for chirping in. The wiring on the motor is now soldered and all the terminals are siliconed up, little to no risk there. Things are already looking better. The one plant with the motor is stood straight and leafage is looking normal where as the other plants that spend a full 24hrs in 1 position before manual rotation tend to lean and swist a bit towards the light. The rotating plant seems much happier. Just waitin on the other motors.


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## only1realhigh (Jun 13, 2014)

I really like your rotation idea with the motor, I rotated mine by hand when I did it, but I am retired and loved being in the grow room. 
The secret is, did it all grow to your expectation?


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## MrMeanGreen (Aug 4, 2014)

Hello all, it's been a while. Home life got a bit hectic for a while, zero spare time to get on here.

Update...

So I completed my new rig, 6 individually caged plants mounted on rotating drip trays. 3 x 600w cool tubed lights up the centre. 
New plants went in and away we went. Didn't notice that I hadn't changed my light routine back to veg from flower..... OMFG what a pleb I am. That cost me a month getting them back into veg. Then we were hit with a rare natural phenomena here in blighty..... A nice summer and high temps and my lights were on during the day. OMFG what a double pleb, 36-37 degree's, heat stress --> stunted growth and yellow plants. This is what happens when you don't pay attention. Sorted out the problems and got em back on track but my personal stash was running low and needed to get em flipped. My intention was to veg em up to 4ft then flip. I have found that vert only causes about a 50% stretch so a 4ft plant will finish at about 6ft. 

When the true vert light kicked in (No horizontal light) and rotation switched on I noticed my leaves starting to double curl. The tips were curling under and sides were curling round. It seemed like my leaves didnt know their arse from there elbow with regards to where the light source was coming from and didn't know which way to point the green matter to catch the light. Everything was dialed in enviromentally and feed wise, everything was bang on. I did 2 things, I put a timer on my rotation system, they now rotate for 15 mins every 45 mins and built a kinda relective umbrella around the top of the light tower to reflect the light down to the plants to give the illusion of the sun being above, which vertical light doesn't give. This worked a treat and the leaves opened up again over night. 

I now have 6 plants at about 4 ft tall. At about 5 weeks into bloom. Cages are only at about 50% effective coz I didnt get the vegging I wanted but all is looking good up to now and the plants are responding very well to the new rotating rig. 

I didn't lollipop this time so all the bottom of the plants have nugged up nicely. Buds are tight and plants seem to be loving it. I will get some pics up soon and if it is possible, I will post a short video clip showing it all in motion. 

Oh I forgot to mention, I have a couple of contol plants in there for comparison at the end. One plant is not motorised and only gets a quarter turn daily (manually) and one plant has no cage but rotates. Will talk about these another day when their results are showing a bit more.

Sorry for the long waffle. Laters


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## Multan (Aug 17, 2014)

nice bro! look forward to your results.


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## BuDz047 (Aug 21, 2014)

That's nuking futs. Would love to get a setup like that but I'm afraid of increasing my energy bill. I currently run a 600 w, 2 centrifugal fans, and 2 regular fans. That should be close to 850w that I'm running. You have 3-4 600 w, aren't you afraid of being caught with such high energy consumption?


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## er0senin (Aug 22, 2014)

BuDz047 said:


> That's nuking futs. Would love to get a setup like that but I'm afraid of increasing my energy bill. I currently run a 600 w, 2 centrifugal fans, and 2 regular fans. That should be close to 850w that I'm running. You have 3-4 600 w, aren't you afraid of being caught with such high energy consumption?


When you start getting up to 5000w, thats when you should worry. Anything below 2000w you could even run in an appartment for years no prob.


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## er0senin (Aug 22, 2014)

your plants look amazing! I myself started experimenting with vertical lights a while back... and i aint going back! Love it, but you made it an art!


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## BuDz047 (Aug 22, 2014)

er0senin said:


> When you start getting up to 5000w, thats when you should worry. Anything below 2000w you could even run in an appartment for years no prob.


Oooooooooooooh.


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## throwdo (Aug 22, 2014)

Just pay the light bill


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## ttystikk (Aug 23, 2014)

I pull 15-20 kW all the time... but I'm in Colorado. I also pay my power bill.

Do NOT steal power; not only is it a way to die very quickly, but it's a much more serious offense than growing weed.


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## JointOperation (Aug 23, 2014)

rotating plants slows down ripening.. so u will go longer into flower.. but u will also get a better yield.. its worth it to some. but not others.. all depends on your situation.. nice job.. get those walls white.. or panda film. or reflectix.. ull get better yields. .and wont need to rotate nearly as much


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## MrMeanGreen (Oct 31, 2014)

JointOperation said:


> rotating plants slows down ripening.. so u will go longer into flower.. but u will also get a better yield.. its worth it to some. but not others.. all depends on your situation.. nice job.. get those walls white.. or panda film. or reflectix.. ull get better yields. .and wont need to rotate nearly as much


I find that flowering time is not affected at all. My main bug bare is trying to get the vertical stretch I want. It's a catch 22 situation, put vert lights on and vertical growth almost stops or very slow at least. If you ya dont use vert light (horizontal light only) ya get vertical growth but the bottom half is all immature under developed shit. If ya switch light source to late, the lower branches don't yield well at all.

I still keep 1 of my 6 plants static while the others rotate for 15 every 15. I manually rotate the static plant every day or 2. I was expecting to see a plant with better growth on one side of the plant as back of the plant gets pretty much no light. This is not the case. If anything the hand roatated plant seems to be doing better, slightly more bud hair etc

I have a bit of a theory that if you give a plant all over light and get the bud sites going, once a certain size is achieved, growth continues on the dark side so to speak. My theory is that once a bud hits a certain size, it is allowed into the big buds club and gets a % share of plants food it generates regardless of light quality to that bud. 

Currently I am 2 weeks into flower and all is lookin good. I know I keep promising some more pics and generally don't (busy life) but will try yo get some up.


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## JointOperation (Oct 31, 2014)

ya iuno when i rotated i noticed that it took longer for everything to ripen.. then when i had it screened and didnt rotate shit.. 

lately.. i bend my main stems.. and it makes for like 10-20 tops works fucking amazing .. just pulled stuff down.. and took my clones off my mom.. my 3000w room at my boys.. we turned it into a 2000w.. instead.. and are running it barebulb .. hoping these 30 plants do well.. the only ones not going into flower is GG4.. my gg4 moms are starting to really take off.. should be able to get a good 10-20 clones off each plant soon.. going to run an entire 1000w light of gg4. asap.


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## m4s73r (Oct 31, 2014)

Ok so I have an option, not a cheap one, but effective

http://www.roxydisplay.com/male-base-children-revolving-rotating-electro-p/bs-na450.htm

at 80 bucks a pop, while not cheap, would do what you want.

Edit, there are some cheaper options out there from china... lowest i seen was 35 a piece.


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## MrMeanGreen (Nov 2, 2014)

m4s73r said:


> Ok so I have an option, not a cheap one, but effective
> 
> http://www.roxydisplay.com/male-base-children-revolving-rotating-electro-p/bs-na450.htm
> 
> ...


Cheers matey and thanx for takin the time, those rotators look the bollox but weight will be an issue. Total weight of a just fed mature flowering plant will probably smash the 35lb weight limit.


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## m4s73r (Nov 2, 2014)

I saw some with a 150kg rating, but they were running around 150/peice.


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