Oh My God, He Turned It INSIDE OUT!!!

[Capulator]

this is similar to what you were thinking right alternation?

 

[AlterNation]

Very similar, although not perfectly vertical, more like a cereal bowl or a donut, with an inclined screen, because i have low ceilings.

 

[Capulator]

Very similar, although not perfectly vertical, more like a cereal bowl or a donut, with an inclined screen, because i have low ceilings.

yep. the bowls are what I am running now, just not on casters. I imagine you could do bowls with this as well, so when you close it up you have nice big spheres.

 

[AlterNation]

by the way what design software did you use to make that diagram ?

 

[ttystikk]

Wow Cap, I love it! While my concept calls for somewhat larger diameter cans, splitting the whole works in half makes perfect sense- I'm running two plants per can anyway!

Could you model something up with halves of two 24" radius cans on each cart, one plant in each, the tubs plug into RDWC system as needed? I am guessing on the fly about a 26" overall width and 96" length- necessary because the diameter of each unit is a full 4 feet. This would still fit thru a 30" door with room to spare, and the tuffbox reservoir fits easily. Fit two of these together with a control bucket and voila! Instant two bulb setup!

I LOVE this. It needs mounts for the lights/movers and active air management with fans and intake ducting up from beneath the cart to completely self contained. Run these things in double rows for as long as you have space and cooling! The ability to simply roll them apart for interior access is awesome- would you need quick disconnect fittings to be able to do that? I'm just thinking about an extra coil of hose, and a coupler in the middle to pull apart. Temporarily store each hose end above waterline while you whirl and then put it back when you close up?

This is close to a ready to build concept. Suddenly, I don't want to do it any other way... just roll the cart from cleaning to filling to flowering, then on to the harvest room...

 

[ttystikk]

Very similar, although not perfectly vertical, more like a cereal bowl or a donut, with an inclined screen, because i have low ceilings.

These aren't designed to be tall; the tuffbox is 14", the canopy is 48", even with a shelf and casters it can be kept below 5' 8", so even a 6' 4" ceiling could be accomodated. You would want active heat extraction but that's manageable.

An 8 foot long by 2 foot wide table is very unwieldy. Maybe just do one half moon on each table, or about 50 inches.

 

[Capulator]

by the way what design software did you use to make that diagram ?

google sketch up.

Wow Cap, I love it! While my concept calls for somewhat larger diameter cans, splitting the whole works in half makes perfect sense- I'm running two plants per can anyway!

Could you model something up with halves of two 24" radius cans on each cart, one plant in each, the tubs plug into RDWC system as needed? I am guessing on the fly about a 26" overall width and 96" length- necessary because the diameter of each unit is a full 4 feet. This would still fit thru a 30" door with room to spare, and the tuffbox reservoir fits easily. Fit two of these together with a control bucket and voila! Instant two bulb setup!

I LOVE this. It needs mounts for the lights/movers and active air management with fans and intake ducting up from beneath the cart to completely self contained. Run these things in double rows for as long as you have space and cooling! The ability to simply roll them apart for interior access is awesome- would you need quick disconnect fittings to be able to do that? I'm just thinking about an extra coil of hose, and a coupler in the middle to pull apart. Temporarily store each hose end above waterline while you whirl and then put it back when you close up?

This is close to a ready to build concept. Suddenly, I don't want to do it any other way... just roll the cart from cleaning to filling to flowering, then on to the harvest room...

In the above design the res stays underneath and moves with the system. if you wanted to do RDWC and use a chiller, you would need to use flex pvc and unions. They sell this stuff at irrigation supply stores. not home depot---well... the unions yes but I don't think they have flex pvc. I am sure if you started building it out it would all come together. Ideally I would make the cart by welding it together out of stainless and then weld supports for the screen. You could even weld the screen together and make it all one slick unit.

Or, slap it together with some 2x4's and ply... and animal fencing.


For your design just make sure you have enough space to get in tot he room, and enough space to move the units back and forth.. I like a lot of access. having to crawl around and bend and twist around plants SUCKS.

 

[Capulator]

FWIW...

My wall o' dank is in some kind of chow mix (really I reuse all my media so at this point its a mix of peat, perlite, coco, and hydroton :wacky:)

You don't get quite the growth rate, but you get very good growth when dialed in (to be honest almost as good). Plus, no chiller necessary. I veg to around 24-30" and usually they will go to about 5-6'. If you can veg them in a separate area under the same lighitng, I would go chow of some kind or peat and perlite. Less hassle. Guaranteed pulls.

In this set up you could easily do a side by side. one chow and one recirculating, or 2 chow and 2 different nutes. Or, one soil, one chow etc etc etc... options are endless.

I do not use a chiller when I use rockwool croutons and ebb and flow.. and I get very, very good growth.

Also, maybe hit up dynomite about his mad skill with rockwool flock. He kills it with that stuff.

-Cap

 

[tags420]

Sound like it will be fun to watch. In theory it all makes sense and looks good.
Comes down to what do you expect to yield per 1Kw?

 

[ttystikk]

Sound like it will be fun to watch. In theory it all makes sense and looks good.
Comes down to what do you expect to yield per 1Kw?

Any 'expectations' of yield would be premature. As far as educated guesses go, my best guess is based on what I've personally managed and what I've seen of other's work. I just ran an 8x8 zone with 4 magnum xxxl 'ocho' hoods, conventional canopy, etc- and got 1.5lb per light. That isn't as good as many here claim, but it was a personal best. So, that's a floor; unless I screw something up, I should get at least 1.5 out if it. If I don't, I'll look for where I blew it.

Now, on the much more fun game of speculating about how this might yield! First, I think that if I really dialed my conventional space in- the one described above with 4kW over trellis- I think I could get 8-9, or about 1 gram per watt, or 2.2lb per light. I'm pretty sure I can match this output without working at it.

Since the space to light utilization of this machine is so high, I feel certain that all parts of the interior canopy are getting better light than they could in a conventional setup. This leads me to think that 3 or 4 lbs are possible, or about 2 grams per watt. If I did this my first time out with the machine, I'd be thrilled!

Now, to compare canopy size with my conventional grow: I ran two trellises in my 8x8 with a walkway between. The two trellises were 3.5x7 feet, for a total of 49sq ft. This trellis' area will be 4ft high x pi x 4 ft dia. = 50sq ft, or very close! And this one has just one bulb. Pie in the sky theorists might say that I could see as much yield here as the whole room done conventionally! I say no; I'm running less light, and there is a curious phenomenon going on with canopy surface areas inside cylinders; as the canopy grows towards the light, its surface area shrinks! If it grows a full foot towards the light, the canopy area would shrink by half! This is a built in recipe for over crowding which to my mind really limits the potential yield.

So, after all that, my BEST educated guess is 3 on a first run and a good shot at 4+ once I get gain familiarity with its quirks.

 

[tags420]

1.5 per light is more than respectable for a lot of people. You're trying to do 1.5/plant here...outdoor numbers baby. That would be sweet. Esentially the same yeilds per meter^2 but making 2.5X the canopy out of the same floor size. Turning about 20ft2 into 50ft2.
What is the distance from bulb to center stalk?

 

[ttystikk]

1.5 per light is more than respectable for a lot of people. You're trying to do 1.5/plant here...outdoor numbers baby. That would be sweet. Esentially the same yeilds per meter^2 but making 2.5X the canopy out of the same floor size. Turning about 20ft2 into 50ft2.
What is the distance from bulb to center stalk?

You have definitely caught the crux of the idea- the plan is to maintain a constant distance between bulb and canopy by moving the bulb through the cylinder along the centerline. The stalk enters the trellis right at the bottom at the halfway mark between either end. I plan to install a plant that's already been grown out to 12-16" tall and topped several times in veg to fully prepare it for the job of filling in the entire 25 sq ft!

To directly answer your question, the stalk leaves the pot and enters the trellis directly. All parts of the trellis are exactly the same distance from the centerline- and therefore the bulb- at 24". Since the bulb is constantly moving along the centerline, each spot gets direct light continuously, alternating from above and from the sides as it moves.

 

[ttystikk]

Growing 3 elbow plants indoors is frankly not news anymore. Several prominent members here on the Farm do it every run!

My interest is doing it with less watts than the tree growers.

For those who are following along and wonder if an LED is made that would work:

420x pro 615w led grow light

This looks like an awesome light source for vertical gardens- just don't try it with a light mover.

 

[ttystikk]

In the course of doing a project like this, I try to do as much research as I can fit in. I always learn something helpful, and more than once it has saved me from disaster, or a blind alley. I recommend doing the same to anyone.

I've found several websites of manufacturers making growing systems much like what I've designed, but with an intriguing difference; they place the cylinder on its side and then rotate the whole thing, plants and all! I'm having fits trying to paste Web pages onto this site with my Android smart phone, so look around at rotogrow.com and at omegagarden.com The latter site even explains the strategy, saying that turning the plants upside down redistributes their auxins, a plant growth hormone, throughout the plant, thereby dramatically increasing growth rates.

I'm not planning to follow in their footsteps with my project, as my goals differ somewhat. I'm just shooting for better utilization of the light source, and the shape happens to be similar. Also, my plan just calls for moving the light source- not the entire ring of plants, roots and substrate! Seems a lot simpler to me, somehow.

 

[Capulator]

In the course of doing a project like this, I try to do as much research as I can fit in. I always learn something helpful, and more than once it has saved me from disaster, or a blind alley. I recommend doing the same to anyone.

I've found several websites of manufacturers making growing systems much like what I've designed, but with an intriguing difference; they place the cylinder on its side and then rotate the whole thing, plants and all! I'm having fits trying to paste Web pages onto this site with my Android smart phone, so look around at rotogrow.com and at omegagarden.com The latter site even explains the strategy, saying that turning the plants upside down redistributes their auxins, a plant growth hormone, throughout the plant, thereby dramatically increasing growth rates.

I'm not planning to follow in their footsteps with my project, as my goals differ somewhat. I'm just shooting for better utilization of the light source, and the shape happens to be similar. Also, my plan just calls for moving the light source- not the entire ring of plants, roots and substrate! Seems a lot simpler to me, somehow.

yep. rotating gardens are old news. :)

 

[ttystikk]

yep. rotating gardens are old news. :)

Wow, and they're bloomin' spendy too, right? I get that they're going for the disruption of gravity's effects on auxins- does this make sense to you?

I suspect that I'm going to gain most of the benefits of these systems in terms of efficient light utilization without the excess complexity.

 

[AlterNation]

On a small scale, they're not that hard to build. We had one in my middle school. I think we grew basil.

 

[ttystikk]

On a small scale, they're not that hard to build. We had one in my middle school. I think we grew basil.

Cool. How well did it work? I'm curious enough to want to try a head to head. My biggest worry about doing a roto grow style setup is the incredible number of clones you need to use! Until the laws linking plant counts to increased penalties are repealed, I'm not going anywhere near it, lol!

Seriously, one of my main goals is to keep my plant count to a minimum, hence using just two. If I didn't think I would be losing more than I'm gaining, I would use only one plant.

 

[AlterNation]

I think if it were practical for cannabis, more people would be doing it? Just my take. It was fine for small herbs like basil, but I couldn't imagine building one big enough for your purposes, really.

 

[ttystikk]

I think if it were practical for cannabis, more people would be doing it? Just my take. It was fine for small herbs like basil, but I couldn't imagine building one big enough for your purposes, really.

And yet many growers swear by sea of green techniques, and use them to impressive effect. If you're a good cloner, this can be a quick way to big yields- and there is no doubting the speed of eliminating veg times altogether.

I think one barrier is unfamiliarity, and another is cost for a commercial system. Then there is that plant count issue.