The Laws Of Organic Cannabis

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Subcool

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Air

First some things I see commonly done wrong by growers.
A window unit goes into a window.
It is not designed to be ducted with cardboard or vented into a garage. These things work marginally at high temps and without proper air flow all they do is use energy. I was at a grow this weekend that’s improperly vented and the power bill is 600 where it should be 300. That’s 3600 a year wasted that could go to making it work properly there fore saving money every year.
That will pay for a mini split that uses ½ the electricity as a window unit.
Think Green in your grow room!
Moving Air is a lot cheaper than chilling it so if your hoods are hot then your venting system sucks. You should be able to hold your hands on your hoods and glass and not have to move them. If they are generating heat then your now paying to Chill the room and that cost a lot more.
A 1200 CFM vortex uses like 1 amp a 10,000 btu ac uses like 8
Air is a Fluid! Think of it as water. Everyone go look at there venting flex if water was running through it would it cavitate and restrict and all those bends without elbo’s? So does air you just cant see it. Air has friction and just like any fluid just less but its still a huge factor in venting.

Lets look at the proper way to vent a closed system.

Moving Air is a lot cheaper than chilling it so if your hoods are hot then your venting system sucks. You should be able to hold your hands on your hoods and glass and not have to move them. If they are generating heat then your now paying to chill the room and that cost a lot more. A 1200 CFM vortex uses like 1 amp a 10,000 btu A/C uses like 8 amps which do you want running 24/7?

Air is a Fluid! Think of it as water. Everyone should go look at there venting flex. If water was running through it would it cavitate and restrict and all those bends without elbow’s? So does air you just cant see it. Air has friction and just like any fluid just less but its still a huge factor in venting. Its more costly to do properly but straight hard pipe has much less friction than flex duct. Along the same lines each hard bend you make in the flex can add as much as 15 linear feet to the duct design and enough of these mistakes and your not moving enough air to stay cool. A very common mistake is using the fan or blower to push air through the hoods and this is incorrect. This causes a positive pressure on the hoods and your temps wont drop like they will if you Pull the air through the hoods using the fan. This is accomplished by mounting the fan near the ceiling of the room and connecting a large trunk line that all the exhaust lines coming from each hood tie into using short even lengths of Flex duct.

Technology Note**
The new 8” cool hoods work really well and even though 8” flex is expensive it has much less restriction than 4” flange fitted hoods and less restriction than a 6” vented hood. You can get away running much more flex duct with these hoods but the steel ducts will last basically as long as you will. In our design build we will be using hoods with 6” flanges.



WE want to install a hard pipe system as our main trunk line this will prevent friction flex is used only as short connecting tubes.
This may seem like over kill but you have to master your environment when growing indoors!
Ok first I cut a 8" Dryer Vent in and tore off the flapper and cover.
We then attach a 8" elbow and a 7 foot section of pipe to go from down low to up high.
At the top of the ceiling below the plate we come through with the 8" duct using an elbow 8"
As this duct passes through MzJill's hydro room we chop in a 6" hole to provide fresh air for her hood. Being close to the intake it will get lots of good clean fresh air and stay cool even with the smaller duct.
We now enter the main bud room with the 8" pipe all joints are sealed and taped as were using co2.
Using a factory 8x6x6 Wye fitting I terminate the fresh air intake feeding each hood with a very short piece of 6" flex but I use elbows at the fittings to reduce friction and turbulence.
A properly vented movable hood using 6" flex and an elbo and a long sweep. No short hard turns to restrict air flow.
The new hood straight through these hoods are cool to the touch.
 
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Subcool

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The Exhaust System (It sucks)

The heart of our system is a 1200 cfm Vortex tied in with 10" hard pipe and elbows. It feeds a 12" phat filter mounted in the attic above this room. Think of it as the lungs of the beast pulling all the cool air through the hoods and across the bulbs. The hot air is then forced upward and into a large carbon filter that prevents any smells from being broadcast outside the grow area.
You can see the new hood hooked up with wide sweeping turns with no restrictions.
Since this room is supplemented with CO2 all joints are sealed with tape and all flanges were caulked and sealed using silicone. This may seem like over kill at first glance but as I type this its over 100 degrees outside and while running 4400 watts in mid summer our max temperatures are staying under 80 degrees.
Another 6" tap travels into the veg room to vent the 1000 MH hood notice I used hard rigid flex to reduce friction I am a good ways from the main trunk at the end of the run its always good to go big on the last run. This is the very last connection on this run and the hood is pulling free from the room. This makes up more of the supply air needed by the large Vortex fan. This causes the entire area to be negatively pressurized which prevents any escaping smells.
This garden will be capable of supplying Edibles, Tinctures, and dry herbs to patients in need.
 
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Subcool

Guest
Indoor Theory Lighting

Lets discuss a few ways to construct a indoor grow room. According to your local laws, each state has a different limit of plants that can be grown in a space. I find it best to always have less plants budding than allowed so we will be learning to keep our plants in the vegetive state longer than normal all the while training and shaping the plants for maximum production indoors. In my youth we would run as many as 40 plants under 1000 watts in a 6x6 area. Now we design bud rooms to run between 4-6 plants in the same area with the same wattage lights. The yield is very similar and the main difference is the amount of time the plant is grown under an 18/6 lighting schedule. The plants are topped and shaped to form a wide bush that will finish with multi-headed and at a height of around 5-6 feet. Think of each area covered by a 1000 watt light as a 6x6x6 Cube that you are going to fill with Cannabis. By using 3 separate areas designated as Cloning area, Vegetive area, and Budding area, you can continually harvest medicine every 60 days.

We are going to use some firm measurements in this teaching example but almost any configuration will work that allows the three areas to be constructed. Every light/bulb has a foot print. This means the area that can properly be covered for maximum production.
They are as follows
1000 Watt Hoods…………6x6
600 Watt Hoods………….5x5
400 Watt Hoods………….4x4
250 Watt Hoods………….3x3

The design we will be teaching is a 12x6 Budding room with 2000 Watts of HPS lighting. The vegetive area is 6x6 with 1000 Watts of MH lighting, and a starting area 4x4. I also use a small shelf with fluorescents for cloning.

I am a huge fan of specialized grow bulbs and have had great results with both Agrosun and Hortilux brands. I use vented hoods as heat is your #1 enemy indoors it will zap your bulb life, and bring on a myriad of other problems, like bugs, stress, and additional watering and crappy cannabis.
Much has changed in the field of lighting and you must be careful not to place these super efficient grow bulbs to close to the canopy. Light intensity can cause fox tailing or dreading of the buds and hot spots in the center of the canopy. Keep your high tech hoods and bulbs located at 16-18” above the canopy. Some plants actually perform better and yield more with this height. Sativa strains are very susceptible to this fox tailing trait and the vented hoods allow a grower to keep his hoods very close. This is a wrong application!

I like to use small chain and S hooks mounted to a 2x4 beam I install.
This allows you to secure the small beam to the crossing studs above and hang the lights evenly on the center of the room and not where the studs happen to fall.
Once our hoods are in place its time to mount the fan and hangers for the main trunk lines that bring air into the room and exhaust it into the filter above.

I know that was a long ass answer but I needed to update anyway.

Any questions??

Sub
 
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Slick

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Thankyou very much Subcool that was an amazing read and I learned a hell of alot that I would never even have considered beforehand. One thing I noticed though is you obviously wrote that up before posting it and in the post 3 above mine you have the paragraph about air being a fluid twice.

Thanks again, you are a gentleman and a scholar.
 
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rome

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WOW! One of the best grow guides ive ever read!! thanks for sharing!! K+ !!
 
Kosmo

Kosmo

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very well documented setup subcool

dont see enough of them nowadays

Keep up the great work mon :)
 
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xchaoticmetalx

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Great thread sub, I agree with ya on using the rapid rooters for starting seedling. Ever since the 1st time I used them, I have got almost 100% germination with every strain. They def work great.
 
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Bugkillerbob

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Tutorial

THis is great Sub thx. I think I saw this some time ago and cut and pasted it all including pics. Now I will just bookmark it.
 
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t2am

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just curious, why do you cook the soil outside? whats the purpose? and can it be done indoors if one doesn't have the best neighbors?
 
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Subcool

Guest
mainly temperature the sun speeds the process if you have a warm spot indoors it will work just as good.

Sub
 
Texas Kid

Texas Kid

Some guy with a light
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Big up Subby, gotta say thank you, bow down and say I'm not worthy...I have been runnin your soil mix now for a couple of months now with awesome success..

I have been in hydro so long that it is not even funny, I'm the Waterbaby for god sakes but as i have morphed into a different grower and provider over the last year my style has changed significantly. When I was sneakin around, closet growin or confined space growin, hydro was the only way to go plus i was growin only for myself and plant counts were relatively low. Now that I have multiple patients, patients plants, and deal with quite a few despensaries it is much easier and forgiving to run a very nice soil mix over hydro. I can move them around, hand them off to patients, mother them out, whatever and all I do is top water plain ol water, no nutes, nada.

I have almost converted my entire grow over to soil but I am still clingin to a hydro table of two, can't get away from it still get more, faster, and stronger out of hydro but the overall convienence and performance is far better in this soil.

Thanks again my brutha, the tutorial is what I followed to a T and it is definately livin up to the name "Super Soil"

Tex
 
darksideX

darksideX

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heyho Mr Subcool..big up,this thread is a very nice read,and absolute informative ..thanx for takin' time for this:bow ..ur work is impressive man!:)
 
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Subcool

Guest
Big up Subby, gotta say thank you, bow down and say I'm not worthy...I have been runnin your soil mix now for a couple of months now with awesome success..

I have been in hydro so long that it is not even funny, I'm the Waterbaby for god sakes but as i have morphed into a different grower and provider over the last year my style has changed significantly. When I was sneakin around, closet growin or confined space growin, hydro was the only way to go plus i was growin only for myself and plant counts were relatively low. Now that I have multiple patients, patients plants, and deal with quite a few despensaries it is much easier and forgiving to run a very nice soil mix over hydro. I can move them around, hand them off to patients, mother them out, whatever and all I do is top water plain ol water, no nutes, nada.

I have almost converted my entire grow over to soil but I am still clingin to a hydro table of two, can't get away from it still get more, faster, and stronger out of hydro but the overall convienence and performance is far better in this soil.

Thanks again my brutha, the tutorial is what I followed to a T and it is definately livin up to the name "Super Soil"

Tex

Brother man you sure make me feel good I always worry that it may not perform for others as it has for me and if its working for a water guy then I must have it dialed in. The run off on that mix is about 6.2 so I was worried some strains might be on the low end of cal mag absorption so I was worried but if you getting great results on a bigger scale then I am feeling great about the current mix.
thanks for the props buddy :)
 
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40AmpstoFreedom

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Anyone use this with pro-mix bx and get good results? Only soil I think i have access to thats any good.
 
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LeanMeanMrClean

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thanks dude~ive been struggling keeping my room cool in the summer.and warmer in the winter.first i started with a portable.they suck,let smells out and dont cool as efficiently as a mini split,or even a window unit for that matter.next was a window unit exhausting the way it was meant to be outside.eventually it kicked after about 7months.not even maybe 6.the solution was obvious after that.an 8in vortex fan hooked into the celing,with another 8in hooked to a 24in phresh filter.circulating the room in the air and cleaning it,to ensure no smells escaped through the door...

my question is this,i have 3 areas.a 4x4x7 veg tent.a main 12x8 room,and 7x7x3 closet.2 6 bulb t5s in the tent.400w mh in the closet.and 2 1k lights in the main flower room.rather than have all the ducting hooked together the tent and closet vent into the main room to then get sucked in my either of the 8in fans and then out of the room.

is their a way to cool my rooms more efficiently?
like hooking everything together?i figured the extra ducting would inhibit airflow rather than help it.all the bends id need to take just to connect the 3 fans seems a bit excessive..the next step for me will be a mini split if i can afford one anyway....
until then i need to be as efficient as possible.what would you guys do?
 
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