My new Grow Cabinet

I love gisette too, sounds all warm and fuzzy and... you know. :) Where did gisette come from?

I would swear I posted this under site building but maybe I've had a little too much wine with my forums so maybe I posted in the wrong place.

The goodies have arrived, four packages, 62# of stuff!! Never had UPS arrive this early, especially when they had something I was dying to get. They usually get here about 6:30. I'm going to take my time ripping things to shreds and seeing what I have.... NOT.

 Gisette set width=540.

Thanks all, sorry 'bout the wide pics Peat, should have stuck to 520 wide for now.

I put the frame together in about 3 minutes and am waiting to finish it until we have a place ready for it, now that we can see just how big it is. Looks like I'll use an old coffee table with a 48" x 32" plywood base on top, put in the spare bedroom. Maere's (pronounced Mary, BTW) OK with that. The height won't be bad and we'll get use from something that's just been taking up room. I'll miss seeing my plants every time I go in the kitchen but it's gotten past a "sit on a table in the sunroom" project. We'll still have the original Classic in the sunroom with herbs now and lettuce later. Maere wasn't too happy with my making it look like a laboratory anyway.

Dunno what I'm going to do with the pump and airstones yet, Peat. They were cheap and didn't add to shipping so thought "why not?". I've researched and researched and still don't know what I want to do. I found a new 90 GPH submergible pump we had lying around so I can go several different ways without much cost. For now It'll be just the two deluxes minus light hoods.

Sadly, Maere just realized we won't be seeing the tomatoes and peppers when we go into the kitchen and is disappointed, as am I. I could have neatened things up quite a bit and put all the gadgets away but things progress and I'm ready for the next step. Regardless, it's going to be bare in the sunroom soon. I'll progress beyond having the Deluxes in the grow tent and bring them back once I decide what I'm going to do.

This is one heavy duty grow tent and won't allow any light (or heat) out unless I open a port. There' a 4" port for the vent fan up high blowing outward and a slit on the opposite bottom open for intake. I hope 80 CFM will be enough.

I'll be watching temps closely and we can always shut off heat to that room as needed or I can get more ventilation. I won't be using the included temp/hygrometer, I have an extra wireless unit for my weather station that gives all that info but more importantly has alarms I can set for temp/RH, etc. plus I'll have a running database of the conditions.

I've cut the plywood and Maere's back from getting some sitcky shelf paper to cover it with so it's time to get with it. More later...

So far I'm exuding patience.  I set up and closed the grow tent with a wireless sensor from my weather station and have almost 24 hours of history. I'm putting the lights in, temporarily with no venting and see what happens. I don't think it will be pretty. You can check out my grow tent temp and humidity at nmred.com/Wx plus a lot of other stuff but if you look, you'll see the grow tent conditions. Sorry about the broken links at the top but they've out of my control.

Thanks, Peat. I figured temp would go through the roof and RH would drop but WOW! the temp soared from 73* to 87* in less than an hour. The lamps are bright and HOT. You can see when I opened the tent and installed the lights, the temp dipped a little. Then I  zIpped up andI turned them on for an hour, then off. Within an hour, almost straight up and down temps. As the hanger cables come, they hang down 16", way too far for what I want so I'll have to rig up some sort of short tether for them.

Tomorrow I'll install the 4" exhaust fan and see what difference that makes. So far, we're hating to hide our plants and I'm slowly coming to grips with what I have so this could take a while...

I think the humidity will take care of itself once the plants and water are inside plus we have a humidifier that works it's tail off to keep the house's RH around 35%. The AGs and all our houseplants do well so I should be OK. The lamps may cook a little moisture out of the air but since the air will be replaced every 30 seconds or so I don't see that being a problem.

Just for data sake (2:15am 11/06/08) I put a small bowl of water inside to see what effect it will have on humidity. I'm seeing it climb fairly quickly. 'Course it's all closed up with no ventilation or light so it's just another useless data point that's interesting nonetheless.

Edited 11/07 AM... Decided to consolidate each day's comments into one post, editing and adding as I go. That should make less of a mess I hope. *****************************************************************

Gisette, maybe I should have made a blog or something for this. I like using it as a record of what I do and how it affects things. If you don't mind, I'll continue or you can move it where ever you want.

11.06/08

12:10pm  - I installed a 4" duct top left rear. I situated the duct and 80CFM fan on the outside of the tent, blowing out. I can already see temp rising and RH dropping as it draws in outside air.. My thinking about putting the duct and fan on the outside is to give me more room to raise the light hood. As it sits, it's 16" from the top of the tent and only gives me 30.5" to the floor. A Deluxe raised to the max has about 25" so I want to raise the lamps as far as I can. I'll give it an hour to stabilize then turn on the lamps. The images below update every 15 minutes and link to my weather station page for more info...

12:54... I forgot to put the recirculating fan inside. It's clamped on the right rear tent pole blowing out and downward.

13:45 - noticed the temp going up a couple of degrees and couldn't figure out why, I hadn't turned the lamps on yet and the little recircualting fan shouldn't cause any heat. The sun was shining in the open window and hitting the black cabinet! Closed the curtains.

14:05 Turned on the lamps and it's still not looking pretty, it's 82* and still slowly rising. Will tape a bottom vent wide open to see if that has any effect.

15:50 - Packing tape doesn't stick to ballistic nylon and the vent flap kept shutting, they need velcro to hold it open. Used two sets of super magnets to hold it open but temp was almost 83*. I unzipped the bottom front's zippers to give a little more ventilation and it went up 0.2*. Closed them and am monitoring room temp. We closed off central heat but I can feel a definite change in room temp. It's almost 3* warmer than the rest of the house already and still rising. Open the Bedroom door to let heat escape.

Next idea is a deep tray of water with two airstones adding humidity, I hope. Will rig it up and BRB.

16:20 - Put in deep tray of water with airstones. The water came out of our Brita pitcher in the 'fridge so it's temp will drop temps for a while, then we'll see what effect it really has, if any. The room temp is almost 5* above the norm, up to 76*. Hopefully leaving the door open will dissipate some heat and make Maere happy.

19:00 - Opening the bottom vent and the bedroom door has cooled things down to tolerable levels, 79* right now. The water and airstones don't seem to be doing much for humidity and the @#$% noise is almost unbearable no matter what I do with the Elite 802 air pump. Now I remember why I paid a fortune for a big, quiet air pump for the aquariums. It's making ten times the noise of the two fans, the dog, me, Maere, 3 computers and Billy combined and is irritating as can be. I'll leave the lights and air pump on overnight to see how things progress but the air pump is gonna go. What's a  good, quiet air pump that won't break the bank?

So far it seems to be teetering on the edge of usability but I'm not about to put my tomatoes and peppers in there yet. I just put one of the mother tomato plants in there with an aquaglobe just to see what happens. Maere trimmed them way back and brought them in for the winter but they're slowly dying with very little light in the utility room but still have decent tomatoes growing.

Hmm... there is just as much noise coming from the airstones as from the pump. Might have to get a 2' deep well to put 'em in if they help humidity. Here's a couple of pics, best I can do in a small room that serves as our junk collector. The open pic's lamps are so bright it blacks out everything above them but the tent is 16" higher. It is definitely a work in progress.

11/07/08

Midnight - Unplugged the air pump for sanity's sake.

9:00 - Plugged the infernal thing back in. Humidity dropped from 28% to 23% overnight and is coming back up fairly quick, up 3% in 90 minutes. The tomato survived the night.

11.9.08 - 11.13.08

Been experimenting with different times and settings, watching temp and humidity. I have the lights on 16 hours and off during the heat of the day for now. Have added three potted adult tomato plants with one still hanging in the utility room for a control. We see a difference overnight with tomatoes turning red and lots of new growth. Am trying an experiment with redneck watering - a narrow necked bottle stuck in the soil, a poor man's version of these that we have in two of the plants. They work fairly well for small indoor plants but are expensive and need to be filled every day or more, a tedious task.

Am going to the hydro shop tomorrow and get some sort of hydro setup to use as these plants die. Still don't know what I want to do but a tilted piece of corrugated fiberglas panel draining into a 5 gallon bucket on the floor with a pump feeding water rings every 30 minutes or so is awfully tempting, not to mention cheap. Having to worry about different heights in an ebb & flow system sounds like too much work unless Peat can enlighten me. I think I'll have plants in different stages so will need to raise smaller ones closer to the lamps as well as using the high/low hangers and modify the hangers for the T5 lamps, they're 16" long and take up 1/3 of the tent.

Conclusions so far:

• Having a tray of water with airstones raises the RH so little it isn't worth the noise or space. The essential cooling fan changes the air every 30 seconds so it's futile.
• In a hot environment with a light tight tent, change the light timing so its on during the coolest part of the night. Even T5s give off a lot of heat.
• It's not as enjoyable as seeing our plants all the time and harder to maintain.
• It needs more head space. 48" sounds decent but with lights and pots, it's not much more than an AG deluxe but it is lots bigger.

We've had a dozen green tomatoes sitting, doing nothing for almost two weeks in the utility room. I trimmed up three of the four and put them in the cabinet. We've picked 5 ripe tomatoes and have a few more almost ready. One plant has grown 2" in a day. The tomatoes aren't huge but I think they were just ready to ripen and get on with it.

The aquaglobes are neat but hold maybe a half pint of water, the bulb part is 3.5" in diameter if you want to do the math. My saying redneck watering system meant using a beer bottle but Maere had a much better idea....

You have to realize these were $1 each at the end of the season. They were in 6" peat pots and evidently stuck in larger hanging baskets with no consideration for the roots or drainage,  they just wanted to get rid of it all. They're like a sieve if watered outside the li'l pot. I did a little root damage but the jug is only about an inch in the soil. Hey, it's an experiment, we'll all be better to see what happens. Next project is to put a 2/3 strength bloom formula in every other bottle. Dunno if I can empty that many bottles, tho.