Indoor First Indoor - CFLs - Mephisto's - SCROG / LST

[KapScot]

Been a while - lots of real life going on (in for an operation and back out and then back in again (sigh)..) thank god I gave the girls a damn good soaking before abandoning them for several days at a time.

These were taken last week I think between hospital visits - tbh it's difficult to tell thru the haze of prescribed drugs at the moment.



I came back to find the Toof Decay in pre-flower and the house smelling of weed (nice) so had to quickly invest in a carbon filter to placate 'her who must be obeyed', and it also gave me a wee project to keep me focused. Been having lots of temp problems tho and have been trying out various fan and extractor positions within the cabinet to try and figure out the best combination. Air movement and extraction within such a small confined space is pretty tricky. It would be easy to roll out a total overkill extraction method but I'm trying to keep a balance of not too noisy fans and passive intakes. I'll write up a bit on my fan experiences later once my heads back together.

The one thing I didn't really factor into such a small space was the size of the carbon filter and extraction fan, so where I thought I might get away with three plants this is definitely going to be a two plant grow. I did consider putting the fan and scrubber outside the grow room but it's just not feasible given the cabinet location and a desire to be stealthy and also minimise the noise generated.

I suppose that means 'Little Puff' will be joining her friends outdoors this time around... aww.

 

[KapScot]

Cooling ... meh it's a dark art to be sure...

Time for a more joined-up update. Having just had a rather warm week outdoors the cabinet temps were pushing 29-30C, which given that it could get a lot warmer gave me some serious head scratching in cabinet design and airflow to consider. One of the first things that became apparent is that using a 6" circulation fan while creating a pleasant breeze with the cabinet door open - turned into a veritable tornado with it closed (I left the mobile in there recording a video for a minute after closing the door to check it out). I guess the resulting whirlwind just overwhelmed any efforts to direct airflow within the cabinet even to the point of negating the LEDs own cooling fans. So out went the 6" fan for a start. I then tried mounting the filter extraction so that it was drawing more air from the top... this resulted in a temp rise of 2C as whatever dynamic had changed in the airflow it certainly wasn't resulting in more hot air being drawn from the top of the LEDs.

Back to the drawing board and relocating the filter in the corner furthest from my passive intake. Now I'm pretty sure I have enough air intake venting - there's no perceptible difference in volume of airflow with the cabinet door open v's closed to suggest otherwise. I then went on to create a chimney like enclosure out of card - so that the filter could only draw air from the top of the cabinet, again this resulted in an increase in temps rather than a decrease. So it was back to playing with the positions and purposes of my two 120mm PC fans. One was blowing air across the front of the LED units, and the other downwards onto the plants. Having PC's in bits all over the place I grabbed a third fan and tried out several sets of positions and have nailed one that seems to work at a 21C ambient room temperature with the cabinet temp then running at 26-27C, so even allowing for a much warmer day (the room in general gets a lot of sun), I should still say under 30C for optimum conditions. This has two fans blowing in the same direction, one across the LED surfaces the other across the plants, the third fan then blows down from the top of the cabinet towards the filter which now has a board separating the filter's potential air intake space from the bottom of the cabinet.

I will try and add photo's later so you can see what I mean.

In conclusion, small cabinet cooling is a pain in the arse and I'm sure it's dynamics will change as the plants fill the space. You just have to try out different combinations to see what works. I'm already thinking about a new cabinet design which will actually mount the two LED units with only the actual LED surfaces within the cabinet - so that all their own cooling vents are outside the grow space. But that as they say is next years project... If temps get too high again this year the only recourse I have is it to find cooler air, but even adding ducting to draw air directly from outdoors may not be sufficient if it turns into a hot sunny day - the outside wall is south facing and I'd imagine the temps on rising air heated by the external wall would be much higher than the room's ambient temperature.... and I'm damned if I'm adding aircon to a small cabinet in Scotland ha ha!

So the only advice I could offer a new cabinet grower is to try out different fan positions and combinations to see what works - and remember that anything in the cabinet that you add can drastically change the pattern of airflow. Experiment... experiment and don't give up

The Mephisto's

The Toof Decay is stretching out and wanting to break thru my screen - definitely flowering time for this girl. She'll have to suffer some bondage if she stretches much more though. The Sour Hound is in preflower, I'm waiting to see her stretch tho, she's still looks like someone's sat on a grass plant and compressed it into the pot.



The Duurty Magic is now destined for the outside grow and I'll update her progress on that thread, she'll be joined by one of new Mephisto F1 Hybrids, a Skylar White which I germed a few days ago.

 

[Dion]

dark art indeed

 

[KapScot]

Update

I took out my screen (for this grow anyway) and just got about about the Toof Decay with some soft bendy ties. I really should have done this sooner as trying to train the main stem resulted in a definite crease rather than a bend (hey ho I'll learn), hopefully by now she shouldn't have much more stretching to do. I'm still trying to find a good watering balance - so she may have been left a bit dry on occasions and a bit wet on others - so there's a bit of claw visible some of the time but as this comes and goes I think I can safely say it's watering and not nutrient related.



With the Sour Hound being so dense I took out 4 fan leaves around the top of the main stem to allow more light to get to the side bud sites. These leaves weren't really in a tuckable position so got the snip.



The Duurty Magic (Little Puff) is still in the cabinet - definitely a dwarf pheno going on here - so I potted her up into a 1Gal long thin pot and she's playing the Hockey Pokey (Inside/Outside?) game with me till I decide what to do with her. While there's space she can stay in the cabinet. Starting to stretch and flower but is just a bonsai.

 

[Coffee&Kush]

Looking great!!!

 

[knocker powell]

dude, you're like a mad cabinet scientist. am very impressed/envious of a) your carpentry skills and b) your analytical thinking. The plants look great and I'm sure you're on your way to a beautiful harvest. - well, you deserve to be. keep it up, sir. am fully subbed up to this grow. also, hope you're on the mend. cheers kp.

 

[KapScot]

Update

I had to take the girls out for a day to swap out standard ducting for some acoustic stuff - which means that it now sounds a little less like a hoover in a box according to the wife. Despite the same diameter it does seem to reduce the airflow slightly so I'm back to watching the temps as we get into warmer weather. The only other change in growing regime is that I now run the main extraction 24/7 to keep down the humidity - hence the need for quieter ducting. It wasn't needed during veg stage but I don't want any mouldy bits taking hold.





I suspect I will give the cabinet a break after this grow (during our warmest time of year), which also means I won't be panicking about how things are going when I go on holiday for a few weeks. Or I could just revert to my 'starter setup' and put the extraction fan back at the top without the filter - would be nice to come back from holiday to some 4 week olds but I'm not sure I trust the daughter to give them daily check-ups for watering etc.

The plants are looking good(ish) - it looks like the Toof Decay has a bit of a Calcium deficiency going on. It's so hard to tell what's going on under LEDs it's easy to miss summit until you see them in natural lighting. I'll know to feed more and sooner next time + I was warned that growing under LEDs turned some plants in CalMag whores so have only myself to blame.

The Sound Hound isn't showing any of these symptoms (yet) so I'm keeping her feeding regime the same for now but with some added SeaCal n Epson in between full feeds. I guess different strains have different requirements so I'm not surprised and since it's my first grow totally indoors I'm still impressed with the results so far.

The Duurty Magic (Little Puff) has spent her last few day's in the cabinet - there simply isn't room for her in there - so she'll be added to my outdoor growlog now.

 

[Dr. Babnik]

Really beautiful.

 

[KapScot]

Oh no... I dropped off the radar...

Sorry folks lots of real life and crap got in the way...

Both plants finished beautifully... I will post a 'backlog' on how the first ones ended up - yields etc.

I'm onto grow [HASHTAG]#2[/HASHTAG] now having left the cabinet 'fallow' over the summer. Without introducing much better cooling aka more extraction or forced fan intakes (both too much additional noise for me) it was obvious that cabinet temps would snake upwards of 34C in summer (cabinet now runs at about room temp +5-6C normally, but there is a bit of a temperature runaway when ambient room (passive air intake) rises above 24C - at this point cabinet gain hits about +10-12C << I can't figure out why but it's not a linear graph lol. The room the cabinet is in is south facing and can get pretty warm if it's sunny and ambient temps are high, so summer is outdoors I guess \o/ It's a three season cabinet LOL tho it does make a great alternative to central heating that room (sshhh i'm not sure the wife has realised that radiator has been switched off). The downside... in winter I wonder how good the Rhino filter is going to be cause it's not like you have the windows open often

So grow [HASHTAG]#2[/HASHTAG] is (sorry folks I'm hooked) - Another pair of Mephisto's (surprise) - honest I'm just saving the last of the Duurty Magic's in the same way you save at least one of the nice chocolates in the box for next time

The reason really is that they fitted my cabinet perfectly (well the small, small/medium ones), so the current ones (day 30 ish) are from the Illuminautos Collection with a Sour Hound (F2) Mitchs Choice and a Sour Crack I was going to do a Grapecrinkle for some xMas extract brownie goodness but I've ended up with a couple of ounces for extract in this years rather better outdoor yield.

So many beans ... so little space...

 

[Dudeski]

Glad to see you back spiff! Thought the cabinet is badass.