See I grew on the front porch in winter time - used an air conditioner to exchange air - and a small propane buddy heater to keep the porch at 65 degrees . The bonus was that the buddy heater let off massive amounts of co2 . I was seeing 1500ppm with the heater set to low . I actually had to exchange air frequently to keep it below 2000ppm .
Upstate New York in the winter. Snow piled high but warm inside. A friend of mine in the Army was from Watertown. Makes me cold just thinking of it.
The propane heater is a twofer—heat and CO2 but, yeh, 2k PPM is too much.
Being as it’s summer here and 85-95 degrees daily , I don’t have that option . I do have the ac infinity regulator , sensor , controller and a bottle - I just need to have it filled .
I didn't realize that it got that hot upstate. 85+CO2 is a good combo. How are you sealing the grow area?
My goal is to pull 2 lbs from a 4x4 everytime . I’ve gone under on several occasions , growing in several different systems , but I’ve also gone over That mark on a few occasions as well . Hopefully I can manage the heat , and get this crop to the finish line , headache free .
If you can get that much CO2 in there, that's great. I'd add more photons and go easy on the time using the blue channel. Blue photons are great for "short, compact plants" and blue encourages the formation of more leaves but it has a downside, per the attached paper.
The Kind maxes out at ~950. With that level of CO2, another few hundred µmol would do well for you. I'm keen on the GlowR80's which add about 250µmol of 660nm light. I added a pair to my Growcraft flower light for my most recent grow.
I used Grok to work through some of the details of adding them to your Kind and the results are, well, about as close to optimal as you can get. I uploaded the flower spectrum and the 12" PPFD map for your light as well as the PPFD map for the GlowR80's. Grok got the PPFD wrong the first time though but the second pass looks good. The "conversation" is
here.
The 57% estimate from Grok will be lower in real life because the PPFD for the R80's falls off pretty quickly but you're still going to get a good PPFD boost from just 80watts of input power for $120.
At high light levels, a pound a plant (auto or photo) is no big shakes. The trick is lotsa photons but it's got to be lotsa photons early in the lifecycle. The goal is for "canopy closure", meaning that the plant covers the entire lighted area. Blue photons will reduce plant size but encourage lotsa leaves. I've used a veg light for a few years and, yup, the plants are short and stocky at first but the flower light (now flower light + the R80's) will tend to give bigger plants.
For my next grow, I'm going to run the veg light for 4-5 weeks, instead of the normal 6-7 weeks, and then run the flower light. That might be a good recipe for you, as well. I get it about the benefits of blue light but I the Bugbee paper on what I call "the blue photon penalty" makes me want to cut back a little on the amount of blue.
The one perk to growing photoperiod is if mistakes are made , they can be fixed with little to no ill effects , with autos - you better be dialed in and on point because one f$&@ up , will massively effect yield and quality in some instances . It sucks being on a timer .
Yup! Someone described autos as being like a dragster—they go really fast but one screw up and, you're done.
the good thing about hydro, to my way of thinking, is that there aren't many surprises because nothing is in the root zone unless we put it there. As long as we "measure twice,
cut pour once", we should be in good shape.
As far as my cooler design , I actually haven’t even started it . I’ve been icing the buckets down with frozen water bottles 2x a day. I imagine it’ll be a little less problematic when I’m in flower 12/12 . I intend to run my lights from 8pm to 8am , and miss the heat .
"Dif" is an issue. Will your daytime temps, sans light, be lower than your night time temps when the lights are on?
I do have all the shark bites , pex , heat gun , and a 27 or a 42 gallon tote .
I’ve seen it done with the pex ran inside the buckets , physically in the nutrient solution , but I like the idea of it being radiant - and having a quick connect coupler for each bucket , so I can disconnect , dump , wash and refill easily . I also don’t want to take up root real estate .
My intentions were to use the same concept we use for radiant in floor heat - take the aluminum plates/pieces we use to screw the pex to the floor , bend them around the bucket and glue them down . Use a heat gun to coil and form the pex to the size of the bucket . Then just fill with cold water daily As well as some ice. The aluminum should dissipate heat from the black bucket “working as a heat sink “ and the cold water coiled around the bucket several times should lower temps. If it doesn’t work then I’ll absolutely go inside - but I feel I can build my own “water chiller” for a fraction of the price of an actual water chiller , and get the same results . I’m guessing around 100 bucks as I have everything to do it aside from the pump
Interesting idea. I sounds like a good idea but, my degree was in history, not physics.
Key issue is to ensure that there's lots of consistent contact between the buckets and the coils—you can get that by forming the pex around the bucket (I had to look up pex - cross linked poly = the same stuff that's in my hips!).
What about a bucket within a bucket with the cooling water running through the outer bucket?
$100 is dirt cheap and that's for a cooler plus the tubing. That's a great price.
looking forward to my next 3 runs of white truffle , GYAT , and apes in space …
