teh_ren

I am planning a new setup and I am looking for some advice, also i just want to bounce some ideas back and forth.

I am thinking about a 4' x 4' area where I will make my own homemade hydro hut with PVC pipe (Probably 2" to 3" or so) and some tarps or something. I want to hang a 600W Digital light in the hut, I am thinking about hanging it vertically (Point down basically) in a cool tube that will be attached to some 6" duct so the air cooling the light is being sucked from outside of the hut and blown outside of the hut, allowing me to run Co2 inside the hut :-) . I was thinking about putting 4 x 5 gallon buckets and have the buckets linked and attached to a res so water goes through them (Kind of like dalton, with a few slight changes). I was thinking about getting an MH bulb and an HPS and giving the plants like 3-4 weeks of MH light on 18/6 then switch them to flowering, that should yield a pretty good size result right? Could I expect 8-12 oz's a plant if I change my res every week, use some good food and with the Co2 added? I know if I put a 1000W hps in there I could expect awesome results, but they put off WAY to much heat, and I might be building 2 of these. I would be running some AK-48 through the first time and order some new stuff from Hanfs.

From what I have seen Dalton gets some AWESOME results because his plants are not only in a nice DWC but they also get a constant flow of new water which has to be just awesome for them. I have also seen some people post with their LST to get more bud from smaller number of plants, i believe hanging the light next to the plants should give off more bud then having the light above, I might add in some extra light in t8 and t5 and CFL form, but the main light would be from the side at 600W. The room that the hut is in is kept around 68 - 75 degrees during the day. So the 600W should have some good cooling. The hut will have co2 so if it get a little warmer in there that is not that bad. Since I plan on making this myself I am going to place the buckets into a elevated floor so that the lids of the buckets go on to of the floor and make a good seal to help keep the Co2 in the plant area. The floor will be covered in the same tarp so it will also keep heat and light away from the bottom of the buckets and all water pipe connections.

I am just wanting to get some feedback from you guys because I am about to spend a bunch of money on this and my wife would kill me if it was not perfect / well planned out. Any help would be great. I will try to draw up a diagram of the setup tomorrow @ work.

Thanks guys.

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Closet Soil grow, Fluro's only (Bombed, I hate soil)
600W HydroHut 3'x3' Grow (Done)
My 3rd attempt at a first grow - (Done) Closet Hydro w/ 400W MH light.
Lost like I am on abbreviations? cecil_b's Grower's Dictionary v1.2

teh_ren

I had some time to get some pictures put together. I left the pictures in PNG format so they are layered, if anyone wants to use them and alter them for suggestions go for it.

Image 1:


This is a side view of what the 4 buckets will look like. The water will flow in from the bottom with the help of gravity, once the water hits the 3" outlet it will go into a big 3" PVC pipe that all 4 of the plants drain into and will go back into the rest. The 1/2" plywood is just an estimate, not sure on what i will use. The buckets weight will go on some sort of stand, probably will create some custom stands with wood so I can keep a section open for the water inlet. I want the inlets on the bottom so I can drain the entire system from one res. I have some nice 5-6" aistone disks that petsmart has, its awesome, that along with their $40 air pumps that they have the plants should explode. I also feel this might help with a good mix in the buckets since the water does have to travel from the bottom to the top, and the air moving in there.



The system will be setup with 4 buckets, this only show 2, the other 2 would be behind them. The buckets will be raised about a foot off the ground. The idea is I will place a 300GPH or so pump in the res and have it pump water through a 1" flex hose into the 3" or so PVC pipe that will be about 2" taller then top of the buckets. The pump will only have the pump the water up the flex hose, gravity should then level out the water level between all of the buckets and then dump itself back into the res. The on / off switch is for emptying the entire system into the res where I will pump the water into a drain, then right away place R/O water in the res and turn the pump on the get the buckets full again so the roots don't hang and dry out, I am thinking 5 -10 minutes should be about all. If I feel the need I could put some sort of plastic sticks or something in the bucket so give the roots some support.

Any comments would be awesome, i will be drawing up the hut layout tonight hopefully.

Attached Thumbnails

   

__________________
Closet Soil grow, Fluro's only (Bombed, I hate soil)
600W HydroHut 3'x3' Grow (Done)
My 3rd attempt at a first grow - (Done) Closet Hydro w/ 400W MH light.
Lost like I am on abbreviations? cecil_b's Grower's Dictionary v1.2

GardenDragon000

600w in a 4'x4' is only 37.5 watts per square foot, 50 is said to be optimal/average....a 1000 would give you 62.5 wpsf which would be perfect imo...if your worried about cooling use a higher CFM 6" inline on your cooltube, or if you can still find them, use an 8" cooltube (maryland hydroponics was offering them awhile ago) with a high CFM 8" inline...I don't think you'll have a problem cooling a 1000 with a regular 300-400cfm inline in 120 cubic feet(im guessing, you didnt mention your height) though..people cool there 1000's on here with 465 daytons which after ducting ducting probably are pushing about 200cfm..

8-12 oz/plant is not impossible but highly unrealistic for a new grower and with the lighting you propose to use. If you got 8oz/plant x 4 plants you would have 2 lbs, off of a 600w light that would be near 1.5grams per watt, I don't think even nasa is capable of that efficiency lol!

Theoretically you could get anwhere from 0 grams, to more than a pound...but the "standard" is around .5g/watt, so lets say you throw that 1000w in there, you should end up with about a pound yeild, which would be about 4oz/plant, which sounds reasonable.

penguin

thread moved to Construction


penguin

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teh_ren

Thanks Penguin,

GD00, I know a 1000W would be better, but they generate WAY to much heat and draw to much power, so we are trying the 600W Digital.

I just picked up my 600W Digital with a hortilux super HPS bulb and OMG is it bright, its freaking awesome, to tell you the truth its way brigther then my magnetic ballast 600W and its very close to my 1000W megnetic, i cannot really tell the difference, except the heat.

__________________
Closet Soil grow, Fluro's only (Bombed, I hate soil)
600W HydroHut 3'x3' Grow (Done)
My 3rd attempt at a first grow - (Done) Closet Hydro w/ 400W MH light.
Lost like I am on abbreviations? cecil_b's Grower's Dictionary v1.2

sleepyrz

a 600w at 1 foot puts out the same amount of lumens a 1000w does at 1.5 feet

teh_ren

what about a 600W Digital Hortilux? LOL

I just had the light plugged in for about an hour and I get get my hand about 8" away from the light and really do not feel much heat, it would not burn a leave for sure, that was just a pure bulb, I did not even have it in the cooltube yet with my new 160CFM fan hooked up to it. I am so freaking excited, this should be awesome.

Plus the way I figure it I can run 3 of my 600W lights and still be under 2 1000W in power consumption, which is important because a 1000W should be almost alone on a 15am breaker, and I only have access to like 3 of my room.

__________________
Closet Soil grow, Fluro's only (Bombed, I hate soil)
600W HydroHut 3'x3' Grow (Done)
My 3rd attempt at a first grow - (Done) Closet Hydro w/ 400W MH light.
Lost like I am on abbreviations? cecil_b's Grower's Dictionary v1.2

teh_ren

so a hard lesson learned. PVC is not that great for making something like this, especially with 3/4" pvc, you really need to use 1 1/2 or 1 3/4" or 2" pvc for it to work, its not really worth it if you ask me.

Tomorrow (or sometime this week) I will try it again with 2"x4"s. I think making it from wood is going to be way easier. I will let you know how that goes.

__________________
Closet Soil grow, Fluro's only (Bombed, I hate soil)
600W HydroHut 3'x3' Grow (Done)
My 3rd attempt at a first grow - (Done) Closet Hydro w/ 400W MH light.
Lost like I am on abbreviations? cecil_b's Grower's Dictionary v1.2