6'W X 3'D X 8'H Closet grow, Qs about lighting and veltilation.

Hello, just signed up. I've grown a couple times in a greenhouse, once with the help of a 70W HPS. Was a long time ago, during the overgrow days. I'm now wanting to set up a closet for a perpetual indoor grow, and I don't quite remember everything I knew, nor am I sure if there is some better technology available now.

It's a personal grow, and I'm aiming for highest quality possible, yield is good, but not what I'm going for.

for a 6'x3'x8' space how much CFM of of ventilation is adequate? how much is ideal?

I'm planning to split the space, to keep mothers and clones vegging in the bottom, and the flowering up top. Being 8 feet high, I was thinking I would go about 2.5-3' for the veg and keep the flower section 5-5.5'

Being a long space, a 4 foot fluoro will fit nicely with a foot on either side. For the veg section, I'm planning to put in 4 tubes, haven't decided which yet, might just go with T8s, or maybe some of the newer T5s I figure around 150-250W of fluoro for the veg should be good?

As for the flowering, I'm not entirely sure what to do yet. The new T5s are very efficient and seem like they might be the way to go. Do they have the pink grow fluoros in T5s yet? I'd think they'd be better than 3000k or 6500k, as they waste no energy making green light, which plants don't use. From what I'm seen, you get better quality budding with blue spectrum as well, and that's what I'm after.

I'm also thinking I might throw in a black light tube, for UV, and maybe put an IR lamp on a timer to come on when the plants go to sleep. Going to read more about that.

I can also throw in my 70W HPS, and was thinking I'd probably get another, mount each on the ends of the fluoro fixture pointing inward a bit.

More lighting source with different spectrums will produce better quality will it not?

Keeping everything else simple at first. I'm going to be growing different strains, to start, bubblegum and ak47 from serious, and sweet tooth from barney, so I think I'm just going to grown normally. Might go scrog later on, but I dunno how well it'd work growing different strains. I'm pretty sure I'll have more than enough room to grow everything I need for myself and my roommate anyway, so I don't really need to maximize my space.

Thanks for any advice in advance!

Sounds like you have everything you need. I don't know the aproximate amount of CFMs you need to pull, but experts say that all the air in the space should be recycled every 5 minutes. I purchased an Active Air 4 inch in-line fan with a rating of 165 CFM, and it works great for me. My grow room is almost exactly the same size as your closet. It cost me $109.95 and it was the smallest model they carried. I feel like you can get a fan that has a CFM rating of half that and it would probably be fine, unless you really do put all those lights in there, then I would say you need to get a fan at least the size I got. As for the black light uv thing when they go to sleep, I don't think it is neccessary. Just open the door to your closet a little and that would simulate the light of the moon, of course you would have to have the light off some time in the day. I don't know if I misunderstood that part. I have never tried scrog...don't know what that is. Good luck

I cant really help at all with the technical stuff, but I can help with the SCROG idea. While SCROG does maximize your space, it will also maximize your yield. With more space you can develop a larger screen to SCROG with. It will easily double your yield. Keep in mind there is a lot more maintenance with a SCROG and it will require more of your time. So if your lazy, or just dont want to spend that much time in your garden then dont SCROG.

Having different strains that you dont have experience with becomes a small problem in a SCROG, Im assuming you have feminized seeds. The problem is that you wont be able to judge how much each will stretch during flower. Also if they have different photo periods you could get into some real trouble. SCROG is all about timing, so you want to grow strains that flower and mature together. Im not really that familiar with your set up to speculate on how exactly you should SCROG it up. Depending on your space, using different screens for each strain is probably the best idea.

I would deff consider scrog with the height restrictions your working with.

Well, I just went back and looked at my space, and i think I'm going to include the built in shelving unite beside the closet. It's another 3X3X8. I think I'll just use half of it or so for my mothers and clones, and the other half for storage of growing crap. Then I can just use the whole 8' height in the closet for flowering. I don't think I'll do scrog at all yet, maybe I'll give it a go with separate screens later on, after I've done a couple grows to get the hang of things.

What's a good size to keep your mothers? I don't really now how much height I need for them.

Still reading more about what I want to do for lighting. I originally read some stuff that lead me to believe that the new T5 fluoros would be better, but now I'm seeing more saying that HPS is still the way to go. I just dunno whether to go HPS and supplement with fluoro for more spectrum, or fluoro and supplement with HPS. Will one HPS in the middle of the rectangular space like that work well? I imagine it would be better to have 2 for more even lighting, but if I move the plants around I suppose it would be fine. Then maybe just add fluoro side lighting? I guess I'll just figure it out. Wish I could find some info on what to do for the highest quality possible, I'll keep searching.