20,000 Watt Medical Grow Op Construction

mellokitty said:

if you want to pick one of their brains, i just happen to have a Stealth spammer on my garden thread.

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collective gardener said:

I the predators helped, I couldn't tell. We're back to spraying. I've found that the Ortho Petrolium Oil works the best. It actually kills the eggs. We alternate that with Aza-Max, and a Pyrethium bomb in the Veg room every 2 weeks. We stop all spraying 3 weeks into bloom. We're hoping that the new plants will have enough oil on/in them to deter the mites in the last 5-7 weeks (the Laughganis take 10 weeks).

I have had the exact night time CO2 problem. I chose to vent at the start of lights out. But, I'm not sure if it was a problem. I would worry more about any time you have elevated CO2 levels during lights on...even an hour. The plants get addicted to the highest level they experience. If you ran 1500 ppm, and then went to 1000, your plants would grow slower than if they never had CO2 at all. I learned that first hand. So, the 1700 ppm time could be getting your plants "used to" that level, and then not maximizing growth during the 1500 ppm times.

My commercial growing buddy did a great test to prove this. He had a 2 room flip for blooming. One room he ran at exactly 750ppm during daylight. The other he ran up to 1500ppm, let it drop to 1000ppm, before running back up to 1500ppm. The 700ppm room grew MUCH faster and bigger. Since then, I've always just used 1000ppm, but used equipment that would keep every part of the room exactly at that level. I had 4 meters in the room, and kept adding fans and changing fan locations until I get every meter reading the same. I don't feel that one meter is enough. At least not enough until you get your air movement dialed in. Fortunately, I have access to several meters from a friend. Given their price, it could get expensive. When we seal the room in June, and add CO2, we'll use several meters to achieve consistant levels.

Anyways, I think it's up to you. I'd see how much extra gas you're using if you vent the room at night. Or, if everything is rocking perfect, why change?

Which water cooled gen are you using? Are you using a water chiller? How big is the gen? How big is your room? How much gas do you use? Cost? I'm in the market and like the water cooled units. My buddy says they suck, but he hates anything newer than 10 years. Sorry I couldn't give you a better answer. Maybe someone here knows if the high night levels are bad. I know that I'm going to use my CO2 to BLAST the mites with some insane ppm level. I want to find out what levels will kill a mite and what level damages a plant. I hear that it's the best way to kill every single live adult mite in the room.

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hellraizer30 said:

It very known that mites build a amunity to it, the adults eat it and before they die they lay eggs and the new born
Sport a bit of a amunity. As generation go by that amunity grow stronger then you end up with a super mite,
Why they say use several different things to fight them.

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medicine21 said:

I am curious to hear about your experience with these lights if you don't mind sharing it.

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collective gardener said:

The worst 2 I know of are the 357 Magnums and the 8ISIS-FX1's.

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medicine21 said:

I am curious to hear about your experience with these lights if you don't mind sharing it.

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Wolverine97 said:

Really? His reply didn't tell you enough?

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medicine21 said:

I am not sure why you feel the need to answer questions that are not directed at you... I was hoping CG would share some details of what he tried to do with the lights (coverage area, plant size, veg time) and then why he didn't think they performed (poor veg growth, stretching, poor bud formation, low yield, longer flowering period, etc...)

I am not an LED fanboy, but I saw some real results with both the ISIS and the Magnums now and simply curious why it didn't work out for CG.

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mr.smileyface said:

Hey CG ive got a question for you. I want others to learn so i didnt pm.
Do you think its a good idea to run a CO2 burner with co2 controller on a reverse thermostat?. A basic oil filled thermostat, but on a heating setting. And set to turn off when your room hits 29c, no matter what the co2 levels.
Also my store owner told me not to run my sulpher vaporizer when the co2 controller is on. Unforantly my co2 controller is close to my sulpher. But i run the sulpher for 45 minutes before the lights go on while the controller is off. Im just wondering why He said not to.

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mr.smileyface said:

Yea i figure the temps are more important than the co2. Since it doesnt know how hot your room is.
I guess you just have to find the right numbers. Really? no sulpher. weird. why not

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collective gardener said:

As I stated above, keeping my bloom room under 40% RH 24 hrs/day has always prevented PM, which would be the only reason to use sulphur. I also have my "canary in a coal mine" little OG that will get PM long before anything else. If she gets it, I just lower the RH a little. I know that my growing brothers and sisters north of the border have serious PM problems and most use sulphur. Here in So Cal, it seems that keeping the bloom room RH under 40% will keep it under control. All of my growing pals here adjust RH to control PM.

When I was using the predators I was advised to raise my RH to help the predators take hold. With the higher RH came the PM on the OG. We endured it for a while, hoping the predators would get a foot hold and start wiping out the spider mites before the PM started to spread. Well, the predators never really seemed to do much, and the PM started to spread to other plants in late bloom. So, we dropped the RH to 25%, removed ALL buds and ALL leaves with PM, kissed our predators goodbye, and started spraying again. Between the Dr Doom Bomb in the veg room, the Aza Max and Ortho Petrolium Oil on all plants before week 3 of bloom, and the manual removal of all affected leaves, we have knocked the mites WAY back. I'm also going to get some of that charged water stuff for the late blooming plants. It feels much better to be actually DOING something about the mites rather than just waiting and hoping for the predators to work. After the Dr Doom bomb, Helper D inspected 20 affected leaves and found only dead mites. We're going to drop 3 more bombs 10 days apart and keep hammering them with the sprays.

I promise to get some pics up in a few days. We have 5 beautiful Laughganis at week 9 that are breaking branches from the bud weight...a problem I love to have. I harvested Godzilla and his buddy today. Those DWC plants had zero larf (un-usable buds) on them. Their size would allow us to have 48 Bubba plants in the bloom room. Needless to say, I'm very anxious to see how much they weigh, as this will give us a good estimate as to the yield we can anticipate out of the Bubbas. We have yet to try a run of the Laughganis in DWC. Although everyone LOVES the product, we will be running less than 25% of this strain. The 10 week bloom doesn't bother me as much as the ridiculous amount of pruning needed to keep them growing right. Anyways, pics to come tomorrow for sure. After that, I'm taking 10 days off so will not be posting. Just don't think something bad happened.

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collective gardener said:

I do my math a bit different.

I have a couple old aluminum fuel tanks I removed from a boat in my shop. They both have 1 1/2" fills. I connected the tanks fill nipples together with 1 1/2" hose. I then put a garden hose in one tank full blast from the household pressure in the shop. Since the tanks were cut in half to remove them, I could see the water go from the first tank to the second through the 1 1/2" hose. At full blast the water level in the 1st tank was only about an inch higher than the second the whole time. Even IF I was using the same volume of water (which I'm not), the volume will be flowing through 8 pipes, not just 1. A small water level difference is fine. In fact, it could vary several inches with no effect on the system. I'm thinking of supplying the buckets with solution via a ribbon flow AND a couple spray fittings. A 30 micron filter should keep clogs to a minimum. The return water to res will be under water. To maintain O2 saturation in the res, I'm thinking a second small pump with elevated sprayers blasting the surface with a dozen streams of water.

I like the thinset idea. I'll just dilute the shit out of it with silica sand to prevent a strong bond with the slab (I do need to move out one day).

The T-5 1 system (basically a cloner, but just with an air stone), and the T-5 2 system ( air stoned buckets to a central res) are complete and growing plants. The T-5 2 plants are now touching leaves (after just 6 days!) and need to be moved into the new designed bucket system under 2 1000 watt MH's. This MUST be built tomorrow. Then I just need to keep building one 8 bucket system at a time to keep recieving plants as older plants are harvested from bloom. In about 10 weeks, the whole op will be 100% DWC. I've started the flush on our first 2 DWC plants today...known as Godzilla and his buddy. From previous experience, this flush will take less than a week, as opposed to 2.5 weeks with the coco. I'm really looking forward to the final yield results of these 2 plants, as they are the exact sized plants I can grow to fill out the room and stay under our plants limit. Up until now, we've been kind of "freestyle" with any total yield calculations. Now, we can start fine tuning and pumping up the yield over this summer. Once the DWC is perfect, it will be time to seal the rooms, add the ductless A/C system, and fire up the CO2. Play time is over. It's time to get serious. Helper D's job is about to kick into overdrive.

I checked out your grow. Very nice. I'm a fan of those vertical light systems. Have you checked out Kitty's vertical bare bulb settup? The Canadian Kitty that hangs here...not the basement grow Kitty.

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rosecitypapa said:

I like your hands-on visual math - makes perfect sense to me. One of the benefits of hydro is all the experimenting, designing, building and tinkering that goes on. Your to-do list is great, growth driven!

It's unfortunate about the mites and pm issues. When using Azamax, do you only use it as a spray? Have you tried watering with it to be taken up by the plants systemically? I'm currently doing a greenhouse ghetto grow and just started using that product this way. Hopefully, that and the increase of silica in my nutrient mix will keep these pests at bay. I had tried the ladybug route, it was fun having them everywhere but I think they just slowed the mites down as opposed to eradicating them.

On an esoteric note, an obscure field I came across while researching pest management is Radionics. At first blush, it looks like some new-age hocus-pocus gadgetry but in researching it, learned that it had it's roots in agriculture. They had done trials to demonstrate it's effectiveness with pests and it worked unexpectedly well. Since there isn't sufficient scientific proof on why it works, it hasn't gotten into the mainstream. Once I have my grow a bit more on autopilot and not building as much, I'm gonna build a machine and give it a go. It's along the line of using vibratory physics and modulating frequency to some effect.

Thanks for the tip about Kitty's, I'm psyched about vertical growing!

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collective gardener said:

I've never used these stupid lights. I was responding to spam with spam. So, once again, for the record: 357 Magnum LED's and the 8ISIS-FX-1's LED's are some of the worst on the market....spectrum is all wrong. When one burns out after about 2 weeks of service, it takes your household computers with it...some sort of LED energy surge.

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TheLastWood said:

Have you ever seen the battery powered mosquito deterents? Uses a sound frequency we can't hear to keep them away. Maybe along the same lines.

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onegreenthumb said:

Hey I have had a big problem with spider mites, and used all the bullshit, hundreds of dollars and for what, only to slow them down. These little bastards are tough. Then I was talking to one of the salesmen at my local hydro shop and he told me that one of the guys that works their makes a solution to kill spidermites! I said how much? 50 a gallon he said. I thought, that is steep, but fk it I am desprite now. He mixed right thier in a gallon of water with essential oils and stuff( that main smell is of rosemary). I tried it right away thinking that it will do no better than any other store bought solution. I dowsed my plants completely, and no SHIT have not seen another mite since, and I had an infestation! He said to do two applications one week apart, which means today for me again. I have not seen a mite but will spray again for prevention. It does not harm plants at all, this stuff is seriously amazing.

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