Lighting Building a Wardrobe to grow autos on CFL, please help me with the top lights. - Resolved

[gsbm2312]

Latelly I been reading a lot and dreaming even more with my first experience growing cannabis and since I won't be able to set up a whole HPS(greenpower) sys with noisy vents and ofc damn of a high consumption of energy in my place yet, I felt like building a wadrobe and filling it with CFL lamps instead.

I know many people will still insist that HPS is the best, but a hps lamp and it's ballast would cost A L O T!
The eletronic (hybrid) balast would cost around 410 USD, each lamp would cost 140 USD (400W Philips green power), a cooltube would cost 170 USD , so it's just FAR AWAY beyond my possibilities by now... WISH I COULD TOUGH!

But since I am a newbie with very little money I think CFL won't give me temperature problems... so I wont need a super EXPENSIVE vent as well.


Let's get to the project:

First of all I don't know the size of it YET, and the pots aren't in scale because I have NO IDEA about their size... but this is the main IDEA of my setup.

I just want to be able to grow some few "short sized" automatic strains there... Im gonna be smoking it pretty much alone so theres no need of super huge yields.:smoke:


I were considering the possibility of copying AndyBotwin's lamps layout (click it so you can open the image), mixing 2700k with 6500k bulbs in the beginning and then latelly only 2700k on the hooded lamps.

The lamps I picked for the hood are:
Philips Twist 42W - Color 2700k - 2800 lumens per lamp
Philips Twist 65W - Color 6500k - 4000 lumens per lamp

The hood itself may be redesigned if I feel like I need more lamps...



As you can see my design, you will notice that I'll be having T5's all around the place to pump in the veg.

The incomplete area on the right side of the wardrobe will be also made of wooden and I intend to DRY, cure, store my growproducs... cleaning scisors, hooks for LSTing... EVERYTHING.

So my wardrobe will be 100% functional. :thumbs:


Please don't flame me! It's my VERY FIRST PROJECT!

Any advice will be VERY wellcome!


My only problem will be to do it all by my self... I never built anything but I can make a wardrobe without problem (i think). I just don't know how I'll set up the electricity I will be projecting it all.
I'm already researching how to power these t5 lamps...


Please rate my idea and help me to aprimorate it!

 

[Scott817]

Everything looks pretty good except you dont need intake fans. You only need holes that the exhaust can suck the air through so you get the right hydrostatic pressure in your box. Also I would add another exhaust hole with a pc fan as you might not need the carbon filter setup all the time as those fans are pretty loud. This way when you are in veg or the plants dont smell very strong you can just use the other fan and keep it quite and cool at the same time.

Your light choice is fine. CFL;s are a good way to get started.

For Height you should go at least 48" and its better to have 60" or more for taller plants.

Pretty cool design overall and you might want to look at TeflonDummys cabinet to see how his stuff fit as he had a good setup as well with a 2 level cfl design he worked up.

 

[gsbm2312]

Thank you very much for the support you've been giving me Scott! Those are very important details!
I'll follow your advice and let the intakes passive, but I am afraid that perhaps it might increase the propention to MOLD...
A good ventilation system may prevent that from happening, right?



I'm really glad I've found AFN! It is by far the best forum I've ever made part of!

This is my project after added the intake and also I edited the possible drying, curing room, nutes room...
I also added a space for my growing diaries, its a good thing to have nearby because since its ILEGAL in brazil, if the police get to ever find it out Its an evidence that I am not a drug dealer, but a regular user.
You know... lots of people here are charged for "drug dealing" just because they have a "big" amount of weed... which only prooves that my country still lives the DARK AGE!

Sad that some judges are still ignorant and deny the usage of medicinal marijuana... so its like if they catch you with 2 cannabis plants they already charge you for drug dealing.
(little do they know that we are actually in love with our plants and we certainly wouldnt sell our precious nugs!)



This is the image updated:

http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/9299/growbo.jpg

 

[AndyBotwin]

Looks good, gsbm. I agree with Scott that passive will be fine for now. You can always add an intake fan later if you need to. Chances are no matter how well you plan things out, when you get everything set up and tested you'll need to make some changes. So I'd get the basics down and then tweak the final details once it's built. You'll be able to grow some good plants with CFL & T5, and you'll have a lot less issues with heat. :smoke:

 

[gsbm2312]

Should I really try to achieve 30.000 lux to be able to have a robust growth? Cos that sounds like MANY LAMPS... :S

 

[AndyBotwin]

Should I really try to achieve 30.000 lux to be able to have a robust growth? Cos that sounds like MANY LAMPS... :S

I'm not big on formulas when it comes to CFL and T5. Unlike HPS where you're lighting an entire grow area based on the square footage, florescent lights are all about getting maximum wattage as close to the plants as you can. I grew two plants with a nice amount of bud using 4 42w CFLs (along with some side lighting some of the time). They weren't tall plants, but that was fine with me because CFLs don't penetrate long distances like HPS can. So if you're growing plants that are 3 or 4 feet tall, you will have to add lots of supplemental light to get good bud development on the lower branches. In my opinion, what really matters is not so much lumens per square foot but rather how big the plants will be. With my new grow, I'm hoping to get my plants right around 2 feet tall. Florescent intensity starts to drop off pretty quickly as you get more than a foot away from the fixture, so a 2' plant will allow the top lights to penetrate well into the upper half of the plant, and the side lighting can be used on the bottom half.

All that being said, it's best to build your space 5' tall or higher if you can like Scott said. That way you'll have the extra head room if you ever decide to switch to LED or HPS. Plus it helps with temps since heat rises to the top of the cab before the fan removes it.

 

[agito]

I dont undestand why people mess about with cfls buy a 250-400w hps and dont look back the extra 4oz will make up for it. I have just bough a 200w maxibright cfl for my veg room is this not better and easier than wiring loads of fixtures up. your prices are way out a maxibright hps ballast is like £55 for a good coil ballast and £15 bulb (sunmaster) and £40 for a cool tube so around £110 so about $200 and yield 5-6x as much?

 

[AndyBotwin]

I dont undestand why people mess about with cfls buy a 250-400w hps and dont look back the extra 4oz will make up for it. I have just bough a 200w maxibright cfl for my veg room is this not better and easier than wiring loads of fixtures up. your prices are way out a maxibright hps ballast is like £55 for a good coil ballast and £15 bulb (sunmaster) and £40 for a cool tube so around £110 so about $200 and yield 5-6x as much?

No offense bro but you've already posted in an LED thread talking about how they're no good and now you're over in the CFL/T5 area doing it. People have lots of different reasons for choosing their setup and we support them all. I can go to plenty of other sites and read "HPS is the only way & everything else sucks" posts. Here we try to be helpful to everybody.

Generally speaking, you'll find that several small fixtures provide more lumens per watt than one large CFL bulb. You also have some flexibility regarding placement when you use several fixtures. I'm not saying you should do that, but there are reasons why others might.

 

[agito]

I'm allowed to post the flip side before I built up many of years of experience I used to skimp for pennys and it cost me in the long run ajusting his price may have opened up more options for him as he said he wanted hps.
I also mentioned the cfl option as it may have been cheaper and give him more lumens and good light spread with a good hood and if he wanted to go to hps he would already have the shade and he said he has no experience setting up making his life easiers as a cfl or hps is easier to set up.

so before you barge in read the post

 

[AndyBotwin]

I'm allowed to post the flip side before I built up many of years of experience I used to skimp for pennys and it cost me in the long run ajusting his price may have opened up more options for him as he said he wanted hps.
I also mentioned the cfl option as it may have been cheaper and give him more lumens and good light spread with a good hood and if he wanted to go to hps he would already have the shade and he said he has no experience setting up making his life easiers as a cfl or hps is easier to set up.

so before you barge in read the post

I can read just fine. I don't think you noticed but the OP in is Brazil, so the prices you're paying don't mean much to him. He's done a fair amount of homework, so give him the benefit of the doubt that he has researched what it will cost to get grow equipment delivered to his location. We have many members who are forced to pay a lot more for gear than those of us in North America or Europe.