smokey the bare

Greetings all,

So, in conjunction with my first grow, I decided to build both a veg cab and a bloom closet. The details about building the cab are in my journal, but I decided it made more sense to do the closet as a separate thread here in construction.

Since this is my first attemtp at building a closet for blooming (but not my first closet), all advice and/or comments will be appreciated. Thanks.

The plan is loosely based on a thread I read here at the Garden by a fellow called scrub. If you would like to see his plans, which are really quite good, then look here.

My closet will be approx 2x4x6, but rather than plywood will be built out of white thermofused melamine. I selected these dimensions because my grow light will be a 430W HPS with a lumen rating of about 53K. I am told that you need about 7.5K or so for every square foot in your grow space. I will have 8sqft, so this sounds about right to me.

Here is a simplistic front view:



I am using melamine for a number of reasons. First, it is very inexpensive, less than $25/sheet in my neck of the woods. Second it is made from recycled wood. Melamine is a nice reflective white, which means I won’t have to line my cabinets at all. It is also easy to clean and maintain. The plastic coating is completely waterproof and resistant to most chemicals.

On the down side, the interior particle board is built out of wood chips and some resins that can get rather yucky if they get wet. Not only will they de-bond, but they will release some rather nasty chemicals into the air. Therefore, proper caulking of the cabinets will be important. I will use a silicone-based caulking designed for kitchen and bathrooms.

This closet will cost me about $300 to build. Since I want to maximize my use of materials I found the 2’x4’ footprint to be very useful in making up my cut listHere is the basic material list, not including the stuff I need to grow

- 4 sheets of 4x8 5/8” (16mm) melamine

- 1 90CFM 1.0 Sonnes bathroom fan
NB-1: Since my interior grow space will be about 40 sq ft, a 90CFM fan will exchange the air twice a minute. This should be more than enough to keep the temp down (hopefully). Besides, since my closet will be in the basement the outside air will be pretty cool as it gets sucked in. Sonnes is a measure of sound. A Sonnes of 1.0 is less than 35db. Very very quiet. Me like.
NB-2: This is the single most expensive piece of the closet. It cost me around $140. If I had gone for a louder fan, or a Stanley blower, I could have really kept the costs down. But this will stay nice and quiet, which is important to me.

- About 100 confirmat screws (more about these later)

- 8 euro-style hinges
NB: The two doors are going to be heavy suckers. One of the problems with melamine is that it is quite dense. I figure for 5’ doors I should use 4 hinges a piece.

- 2 pieces of 8’ 2x4 studs
- These will be used to form a base for the closet to sit on, and perhaps to hide some of the duct work for air intake and electrical in.

- Some 1.5” PVC piping with 90 degree pieces
- These will be used to build the air intake light traps and also to act as a light trap between the top mechanical area and the bloom area for electric wiring
NB: My understanding is that you want the air intake area to be larger than the air outtake. My bathroom fan will be using a 4” tube to connect to an existing bit of duct work. This means I will need multiple intakes. I am figuring on having four of them, giving me 6” total which hopefully will be enough to give me the negative pressure I need

- About 10’ of white/black plastic.
- I don’t know what this stuff is really called. I picked it up at my local grow shop. It is thick and heavy black on one side and white on the other. As you can see from the plan there will be a 1” frame around the inside of the closet, slightly recessed behind the doors. I will use Velcro to attach a sheet of this stuff to act as both a light barrier, and to keep the interior of the closet well sealed.

- some type of wall mounted fan for air circulation inside the closet.
- I may end up using DC fans, but I think I need something later

- Some electric wiring, a CGFI receptacle, probably a switch, and a good heavy duty timer.
- There are some nifty auto controls available at the grow shops, but they are out of my price range for this project. Maybe next year.

- Silicone caulking to get all the joints water/light tight
- I’ll want a good grade of caulk, which can resist the heat of the HPS lamp.

- Other stuff to I guess, as I get to it.

And now, a brief interlude is order I believe.

Peace

Attached Thumbnails

 

__________________
Be seeing you,

-J

smokey the bare

Greetings all,

Well since we ain't using any power tools yet, ya can smoke if ya got 'em (and I know you got 'em!). And remember, this is liberty hall, you can spit on the floor and call the cat a bastard.

Some of you may be wondering why I am using melamine rather than just building a simple frame out of some 2x4s and then sheeting it in plastic, which would be a much cheaper solution. The reasons are as follows:

- There is traffic in and out of my basement, and a plastic enclosed closet would look suspicious imo
- I am growing in my country house, which I rent in the winter, so I don’t want anything left over that looks like I have been playing with Herb
- While I don’t know much about growing Herb, I do know a fair bit about cabinet making, and utility cabinets in particular. I have all the tools I need to work with melamine.
- Both the cab and the closet will make useful additions to my basement, for the storage of stuff when I am not growing, or have moved on to other ways of growing

Yes, my closet will be more expensive to build than other approaches, but I hope it will be multi-functional, stealthy, and give me the space I need to try a number of different growing techniques including, SOG, ScrOG, and even a little bit of hydro later on

Now, back to our feature attraction.

__________________
Be seeing you,

-J

smokey the bare

Greetings all:

NB: For those who have read my journal, some of the following is redundant.

So, here is the space I started with:



Of particular note is the rather bad dryer duct line running overhead.

After some cleanup work, and some duct work, I ended up with this:



The flexible duct has now been replaced by a solid one, and the exit has had a Y splitter attached. The white thing you see if a backflow buffer that will stop air from the dryer going into the closet and vice versa. Here is a closeup:



I built the veg cab, mounted it, and started stuff vegging. Here is what it looked like:



Though I did make some refinements later, by mounting one fan for outtake and cleaning up the electrics a bit.

Yesterday I got all of my melamine. Here it is ready to be sliced:



I need to cut the following size pieces

- Back = 4’x 73” (I went a bit higher than I had thought because I have the height to do it.
- Sides = 24” x 73” (2 required)
- Doors = 24” x 73” (2 required). They actually need to be 1-2mm thinner than 24” but the kerf of my blade took care of that.
- Top/bottom = 24” x 46 ¾”
NB: I am considering mounting all of the mechanicals on top of the closet, and just surrounding it by some false panels. This would give me even more space inside. We shall see. If I decide to do it inside, I will need at least one shelf of these dimensions.

Note, after I finished all my cuttings, and upon reflection, I should have stuck with an even multiple of 12” rather than 73” My cutoffs are all around 22” which is not quite the size I was looking for. I should have gone with 72”. Ah well, you live, you learn, eh?

Peace.

Attached Thumbnails

     

   

__________________
Be seeing you,

-J

smokey the bare

Greetings all:

Technical Note 1 - How I work melamine.

Anyone who has worked with large sheets of material are aware that it can be a problem to cut. If you have a table saw, you can make nice accurate cuts, but trying to manoeuver the board is a pain, and can be dangerous. You can use a circular saw, but making an accurate cut with one of those is not easy. I use a system called a Circular Saw – Guided Rail (or CSGR). A couple of companies make these. I use one from a company called Festool. The idea is that you place your saw on a rail, put the rail on the line you want to cut, and slide the saw along it.

It is a wonderful system and I like it a great deal.

Here is a shot of me getting ready to trim the end of the sheet. The sheets are normally cut about an 1” larger than rated, because the ends get really dirty and yucky. So, I trim.



If you look close, you can see a clamp holding the rail to the cutting table, to prevent it from moving as the saw is pushed along the rail. The attached vacuum means that there is virtually no saw dust using this system. It is also very very safe to use.

After trimming one side, I must trim the other. I want this to be a real 90 degree angle, so I use a dry wall T-square (though any framing square would work) to make sure the rail is properly set. Obviously, I will be using a shorter rail than the 9’ monster used in the previous photo:



This final shot is on my matching Festool work table, that allows me to use my saw as a replacement for a mitre saw. It is very accurate and fast, but only can handle board sizes up to 24” or so (see that nice measurement again?)



Well, as of last night I got all the pieces cut, now I must tape some of them (see the next post when I get around to it), and start cutting some holes for the ducts, the light traps, and the fan. Then will come assembly.

However, not much will happen until this coming Friday, since I am on the road until then.

Peace.

Attached Thumbnails

     

__________________
Be seeing you,

-J

Spirit of Bear

Double up on the intake,,, you're restricting the flow way too much...

SOB

__________________

swifty

Looking forward to watching you build your cab. Looks like its going to be some quality work.

__________________
so much info, so little time

Mr. Nice - "Sh!t" Grow
World Wide Seeds - Blue Crystal

smokey the bare

SOB: Thanks for the info, much appreciated.

I was basing my ratio on what I read at the GrowFAQ which stated that the intake need only be slightly larger. What I may end up doing is putting a number of 2" intakes and buy some cpas to cover them. Then I should be able to adjust the air flow, and maybe get some finer control over the temp/RH in the closet.

Hey 'dere swifty. Welcome aboard and all dat jazz.

I'm really much more of a hacker and slasher than a fine crafstman when it comes to cabinet work. I tend to favour speed over quality when building utilty cabs. The slicing of the boards only took 1.5 hours or so and it'll probably take me another hour to cut out the holes for the pipes and the fan. Hinges and system holes will add a couple of hours to the project, and the assembly will probably be another 2 hours as well.

And then I'll have to mount the lights, velcro and stuff, but hopefully that should go in pretty fast.

Call it 8-10 hours total. Say a weekend's work once you got all the stuff you needed.

If I was building a fine cabinet of this size, it would take me easily 4 times as long.

Peace

__________________
Be seeing you,

-J

smokey the bare

Greetings all,

A week has come and gone, and I only had a short weekend (actually less than a day) to work on the closet. This puts me a week behind where I would have liked to have been by this point, since I am on the road again this week, and won’t be able to work on the closet again until next weekend.

So this is what I managed to get done.

After cutting all the main pieces, I started making the various cutouts. First I did the top of the box. I laid out where I wanted the pieces to go:



The big silver box is the top of the bathroom fan. The pipe will be cut down to about 4”. I am using 1 ½ “ pipe, but if I did the project again I would probably go with 2”. The ballast is quite heavy, which is why I am going to place it on the side, where it can get better support.

The ballast gave me another small problem since I can’t thread the wire from the ballast to the fixture in its current condition. As you can see, it is permanently attached and won’t fit through an 1 ½” pipe. So I opened up the fixture and this is what I found:



I will have to clip the white and black wires, unscrew the green, which will allow me to pull the wire through the light trap tube and then re-attach. Not the hardest thing in the world.

I then cut some holes in the top.



The cutout for the fan was made with my circular saw. The cut out for the pipe was made with a hole saw attachment for my drill. This is a much cleaner approach than using the much cheaper spade bit, which I only use for the roughest of work.

I then made some cutouts in the bottom piece.



There will be six intakes, each one using a 1 ½” light trap. Again, the down pipe will be cut to about 2” so it just lies flush with the bottom of the box. The light trap is made out of two pieces of ABS piping, loose fitted. I also bought some caps, so I can increase or decrease the amount of fresh air coming into the box. Hopefully this will allow me to fine tune the temp/R.H. in the box.

Here is a better shot of how the light trap/intake will work.



Again, the pipe has not been cut to size yet. To prevent critters and dust from getting into the box I will use some screening and a dust filter on each pipe. I will also use silicone caulk to make sure each pipe is well sealed all around.

In order to keep the base of the cabinet off the floor I built a small stand our of 2x4s



Obviously still missing the back piece. I may “face this” with some scraps of melamine for a more finished look. The size of the frame is about 41x17, so as to allow space for the intakes.

Here is an idea of what it will look like:



Still needs tweaking, but getting there.

This weekend I also did all the edge banding for the project. I really don’t like edge banding, but it’s a great deal easier than any other type of finishing I have found, so I do it. Here are the tools of the trade:



From left to right there is a roll of tape (comes in different colours and finishes depending on the material you are working with). Next there are two trimmers (the green and purple things), since the banding is always wider than the material and must be trimmed to size after it has been applied. Next comes a roller, to press the banding against the particle board after it has been ironed on. This is a critical step! Finally an iron to apply the banding. While any old iron will do, the one I have is well suited to the task. You have to be careful not to let the iron run too hot, or you will get black marks (burns) on the banding.

I banded the fronts of the sides, top and bottom, and all four sides of the doors.

The last thing I did this weekend was to drill the hinge holes on the doors, and the system holes on the side panels for the hinges and shelves. I covered how to do this in my grow journal, so I will not be doing it again here (unless I get a request to do so).

That’s about it for now. Next weekend I assemble the whole, install the frame for the plastic barrier, put in the hardware, and get to blooming!

Peace.

Attached Thumbnails

     

     

   

__________________
Be seeing you,

-J

smokey the bare

Greetings all,

Just a quick update. Progress has been a bit slower than expected, due to company visiting all weekend long. However, I did get the closet carcass up against the wall.

First I assembled the sides, top and bottom:



Note the Jet clamps at the corners. More information about these, and the confirmat screws used to hold the closet together can be found on the opening couple of pages of my first grow journal.

I had to make sure the 2x4 base I had assembled wouldn’t slip around so I screwed it to the floor using Tapcon concrete screws.



These are pretty easy to install, but they do require a special bit, and a drill with a fair bit of power. I drilled through the 2x4s and then used a fostner bit to enlarge the holes so I could keep the hex head well below the surface. Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of what that looks like.

I then put the back on the closet, and lifted it into place. While the closet was quite heavy it went up fairly easily. I was able to manage it on my own.




While it is somewhat difficult to see I have drilled six screws into the back of the closet to hold it tight against the wall studs. This is IMPORTANT. Unless the closet is secured it could easily tip over. I also used some smaller screws to tighten the closet up against the veg cabinet, making them look more like a single piece.

Also, I have placed the fan on top just to see how it will look. I am pretty pleased with my measurements, everything seems to be where I thought it would. The air intakes on the bottom are not yet glued into place, though I did cover the holes on the bottom with screening, but no air filters.

I also started to assemble the reflector, and learned something important.



They are covered in a protective plastic coating! Kids, make sure you take these off before turning on that expensive HPS bulb, eh?

And speaking about goofs. How about this one?



Remember that white baffle I bought to keep the air flow from the clothes dryer and closet away from each other? You can just about see it at the top right hand side of the photo. Well, last night the wife was drying some clothes and she told me that after an hour of drying the clothes were still wet. I felt around the dryer, and found it was burning hot in places! I checked all around and discovered.. that I had put the baffle in backwards!

Fucking stoners.

So, I changed it around, and everything worked fine. Except for the water that had accumulated in the steel duct, that had to be drained. Feh.

Peace.

Attached Thumbnails

     

     

__________________
Be seeing you,

-J

smokey the bare

Greetings all,

Well, I haven’t had a chance to update much over the last week, but as you will see over the next couple of posts, a great deal of progress has been made.

When we last were together, I had just finished installing the fan, which is working well, but I had to do some additional trimming so I could fit the cover on.



Why oh why didn’t I not listen to my own words? Remember what I had said early on about leaving the caulking to the very VERY last thing. Well, of course I didn’t listen to myself, and had caulked the closet wait too early, which made for a big mess.



Happily, I did allow the caulk to dry, so the saw dust did not stick to the caulk. BTW – I am using silicone caulk, the type used in bathrooms and kitchens. It is kinda more difficult to work with, but it is mould and mildew resistant, and makes for a nice tight seal.

There was also some work to do on the bathroom fan. I sealed up all the holes with duct tape, to prevent leakage, and also drilled some holes in the base.



The pencil points to one of the holes I drilled. I also used the double sided tape to mount the fan to the melamine top of the closet. I did this to decrease any sound from vibration. The fan is now nice and tight to the box.



I ended up not having to install the second baffle since the bathroom fan had one installed.

Onward!

I also managed to get the doors installed.



While I really like euro-hinges, and I understand how to use them, in retrospect I should have used ordinary hinges, and here’s why.



My intent all along has been to build an inner frame that I would use to mount Velcro onto, to allow me to attach a plastic seal (see next post). I had forgotten that the euro-hinge extend into the cabinet. Now I could have put the inner frame behind the hinges, but that would have meant losing close to an additional inch of space, which I didn’t really feel like doing. All of which meant that making and mount the inner frame turned out to be a lot more bother than I had intended.

Including more sawdust.



Kids, never, and I mean never, do your caulking until everything else is done.

IAE – my first idea was to glue and screw the frame, but it turned out the screws countersunk into the pieces worked fine. BTW – if you ever want to glue anything onto melamine you must use special melamine glue. Anything else simply won’t stick. Make sure you wear rubber gloves when you work with the stuff cause it will stick to everything.

Given the dimensions of the box, I also needed a fair bit of Velcro



This proved to be pretty expensive, about $1.20/ft and took me some time to fine. I would have preferred black, but all they had was white.

So then I mounted the tape.



Note that I have mounted both sides. I do this to make it easy to mount the plastic screen. Which I will do, in the next post.

Peace.

Attached Thumbnails

     

     

     

__________________
Be seeing you,

-J