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What Do You Do To Keep Your Rooms "green"

  • Thread starter Thread starter CelticEBE
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What Do You Do To Keep Your Rooms "green"

CelticEBE 57 Replies 5,749 Views
Page 3 of 3 · Replies 41–58 of 58
#42
living soil
predatory insects as opposed to chemical sprays
self irrigated pots for water conservation
self made and foraged fermented plant extracts for "nutes"
no bottles

I use minimal inputs that have not circled the globe on a freight ship 4 times. everything I use is found or sourced locally...

however I dont believe in being "green" as that is just a marketing gimmick... and for a more expensive set of products...

I am simply self sustainable.
 
#43
SeaF0ur said:
living soil
predatory insects as opposed to chemical sprays
self irrigated pots for water conservation
self made and foraged fermented plant extracts for "nutes"
no bottles

I use minimal inputs that have not circled the globe on a freight ship 4 times. everything I use is found or sourced locally...

however I dont believe in being "green" as that is just a marketing gimmick... and for a more expensive set of products...

I am simply self sustainable.
Click to expand...
Thats more along the lines of what I MEANT. I am on the path to becoming more and more self sustaining....hoping to go "Off the Grid" in a few years and just live off the land. I'm curious about your fermented plant extracts. Please tell us more.
 
#44
If you live in a breezy rural area this is the way to go,10kw wind generator makes power 24/7 365 as long as theirs a breeze!

Way cheaper then 10kw of solar and warranted for 30 years.
 
#45
fishwhistle said:
If you live in a breezy rural area this is the way to go,10kw wind generator makes power 24/7 365 as long as theirs a breeze!

Way cheaper then 10kw of solar and warranted for 30 years.
Click to expand...
Yeah.....I'm coastal NorCal.....and we get more wind than sun.....so I have been looking into wind turbines. I'm also keeping a close eye on the Tesla batteries. at 3500 fr a 10kw unit.
 
#46
SeaF0ur said:
living soil
predatory insects as opposed to chemical sprays
self irrigated pots for water conservation
self made and foraged fermented plant extracts for "nutes"
no bottles

I use minimal inputs that have not circled the globe on a freight ship 4 times. everything I use is found or sourced locally...

however I dont believe in being "green" as that is just a marketing gimmick... and for a more expensive set of products...

I am simply self sustainable.
Click to expand...

Hi SeaFour

I am very interested in moving into the same territory as yourself, and not to get the I saved the world badge from greenpeace. More because like most things once you sive away all the bullshit and get to the fundamentals things usually end up simple cheap and merely require a lil graft on your behalf, which for me is far better than going into a grow shop and becoming known and blowing 100 bucks on 2% of a 5 buck bottle of molasses. Anyway I would love to know have you done any threads relating to this? I read a whopper thread here last night which blew my mind probably in a link in this thread all to do with ROLS and that article with Nestor Garrido I gotta tell ya it gave me a pure organic boner, fantastic stuff altogether. I would love to hear the process you apply. Until last night I thought switching out to Iguana juice would give me that taste,lol
 
#47
I start with this...

IMG 20150526 123220


I fill the large containment vessel with dynamic accumulator plants... dandelions, comfrey, nettles, yarrow.. whatever I have around me at the time... or alternately, for fish hydrolysate, whole ground up fish... the first small bottle is a waterlock. it keeps the pressure up in the containment vessel and slows the release of decompositional gasses... stage 2 is filled with activated charcoal... the gasses pass through about 5 inches of carbon filter to handle the foul odors...

I do this indoors.

for fish hydrolysate, lactobacillus is added to speed things up
and its best to blend the fish well in a blender, then strain the larger bones and scales out.

for plant fermentations, water is added... lacto is optional.

used at about a teaspoon to tablespoon per gallon depending on final thickness/how much water was added...

My soil mix is designed for water only, so the teas and such are a lil something extra...

IMG 20150116 142656

I have a thread on here for my self irrigated planter buckets,
and the last tip I got is to mulch not only to conserve water loss from evaporative effects,
but also to give the predatory insects a happy home...



IMG 20140507 152324
 
#48
Wow guys, I've been waiting for this thread all my life!
I live on an ecovillage-sort-of-thing (We don't have enough of a population to be called a village but we're off-grid) I think we have the equivalent of $20 between us on the farm (in the desert might I add), but we eat healthily every-day.
I haven't done an indoor grow in years but I've been itching too for a while now.
I have a friend who only used supplemental light to elongate daylight hours in his greenhouse and these ran off of solar and he had some schweet bud. Although I'm not sure where it becomes semi-outdoor or greenhouse when you grow like this. Where do we draw the line?

Here are some ideas I have from my farm and others here in SA:
- Use Vermicompost as a growth media in all my pots (Re-used paint-buckets).
- Inter-cropping and mulching are great for pest control, as well as collecting predators (I put all the frogs and lizzards I find on my plants.)
- Nutritous teas (Comfrey for flowering, Earthworm tea for Micro-fauna and flora, willow for root-growth, etc) instead of bought nutrients.
- Fermentation tanks instead of CO2 generators
- Making your grow-room airtight saves on cooling and heating.
- Capillary-mat or capillary bed watering systems saves water.
- Another friend tried heating his Mini-grow (4 plants, small box) with a little compost bin, however spider mites and pathogens destroyed the grow, so we built a heating system with flues of water that ran out from a huge compost pile outside to into the grow-room which increased room temp by 8 degrees kelvin. It was an idea we got from a compost heap that heats 50 showers on a Sustainable farm we visited.
- Reusing Growth media has always had good results if I rebuilt it proper.


Let's keep this thread going and growing.
 
#49
SeaF0ur said:
I start with this...

View attachment 512469

I fill the large containment vessel with dynamic accumulator plants... dandelions, comfrey, nettles, yarrow.. whatever I have around me at the time... or alternately, for fish hydrolysate, whole ground up fish... the first small bottle is a waterlock. it keeps the pressure up in the containment vessel and slows the release of decompositional gasses... stage 2 is filled with activated charcoal... the gasses pass through about 5 inches of carbon filter to handle the foul odors...

I do this indoors.

for fish hydrolysate, lactobacillus is added to speed things up
and its best to blend the fish well in a blender, then strain the larger bones and scales out.

for plant fermentations, water is added... lacto is optional.

used at about a teaspoon to tablespoon per gallon depending on final thickness/how much water was added...

My soil mix is designed for water only, so the teas and such are a lil something extra...

View attachment 512470
I have a thread on here for my self irrigated planter buckets,
and the last tip I got is to mulch not only to conserve water loss from evaporative effects,
but also to give the predatory insects a happy home...



View attachment 512471
Click to expand...
Dude thats frickin awesome
 
#50
You could buy worms and get a worm box together and quit buying zone or sm90 or run uv...huge waste of time and money. Ewc can be almost free and the tea is so far superior compared to any other options in my mind. It's natural, most people pay for benes, taste alone is worth it if u won't do it for the awesome roots or saving the earth.

I use a transmission cooler to cool my 220 l air pump in a 50 gal barrel of water. Never heats it up.

I have been planning on building a pumpless uc system based on a fish tank underground filter. Using rising bubbles in a pipe to carry water up and then gravity fall into the next bucket. Still working on the design of the bubble pipe.

I was wondering about solar on the floor of room to run small pumps or fans.. probably wouldn't work.

And last. I have a 18 foot deep 1 acre pond with a bubbler in it. I have been considering scraping a old ac for a radiator to put on a floatation ring. Secure ring above bubbler. Have the bubbles drive the 55 degree water through my radiator. Then a pump that cycles water from radiator to another radiator in my res for a chiller. Think it would work great. All parts easy to clean compared to radiator on bottom of pond and figuring out how to move water thru it. And as long as lower than 70 degrees, my chiller stays off. Pump, hose, scrape radiator. Could run non toxic anti freeze in winter.
 
#51
I've used pea gravel in hydro too before. Not best but did love how the weight held plants steady.
 
#52
Ok, here's a long distance outta the box. Take ur bho scrape and all your stem waste, grass, wood chips and build a gassifier to run your generators to run your power. Very simple. Lol

I went to greenhouses to help with overhead. My favorite is actually in my avatar. 12 foot tall, 25 foot long. It's nothing more than heavy 5 mm fiber reinforced plastic with 5 of those tsc fence panels made 1/4 steel, 50 inch tall and 16 foot long . Heavy duty zip tie or wire the panels together. They are $20 each and very strong. Put a ledger off barn 12 foot up and pull plastic on panels and secure panels to ledger with plumbers strap. Cheap. $240 for 5 panels, ledger, like 20 years of plastic, tee stakes are pounded in 10 foot away from barn to keep fence panels froom sliding out. I can add more details if anyone needs. U could free stand it with a few rows of cinder blocks. If only use panel with no lean on building or blocks, hoop will be only 6 foot. Which probably could work in city, hidden grows, or just small plants. For the money spent, it's freaking amazing. The cost of less than one month of electricty. One bag minimum of happy frog per plant(optional but worth the money). Water them and the result is Lbs of product for less than 400 bucks. And after you pay, every year after is basically free. Plastic rolls up on side, and fence posts lock plastic up from panel pressure on hot days, plus I put in a gable vent. Oh, you might need an attic fan and thermostat for 50, and a dehumidifier in fall. I'm looking into making my own auto flower seeds to make humidity not a problem. And do more smaller plants, but get more harvest. U can put gutters at base to catch run off rain or if going lean to, u can collect rain off roof.
 
#54
CelticEBE said:
The title is a bit misleading. I'm not talking about your plants.....I'm talking about offsetting carbon footprints and being kind to the environment.

I'm about to set up a new spot and have been bouncing a LOT of different idea's around in my head on ways to recycle, reuse, and reduce waste and what not. So I thought I would start a thread and see what you guys have come up with in your rooms.

This is one example of what I am talking about.

Geothermal HVAC.

Ground temps in my area stay pretty stable at 55 degrees. From the research that I have done burying 500' of 1.5" abs would give me 1 ton of cooling capacity. A water/glycol solution would run through the closed loop system via a pump and then into a water cooled air handler and then back to the "Earth Loop". So if I needed 5 tons of cooling I would use 2500' of 1.5" abs.

The start up costs may be a bit more, but I see quite a few advantages. Running a pump 24/7 would use a LOT less electricity than a 5 ton water chiller. I would also loose the noise of said water chiller...which my neighbors would appreciate I'm sure. Not much maintenance involved with the pump or the air handlers.

Not sure if I will be doing this on my upcoming project or not.....but it is something I will definitely be doing in the future.

So, this is just one of the idea's that I have running around in the hamster wheel in my skull. What do you guys and gals do to stay GREEN?
Click to expand...
Ever get any further with this? Bump for geothermal cooling.
 
#55
To help my grow reduce the carbon footprint I use Urine , milk & wormtea , make my own compost from the hen house , water from mountain stream , that's my usual way but on the last 2 runs I've trampled all over the earth using imputs my sister sent me at Xmas time .
 
#57
Herb Forester said:
I meant strictly the geothermal HVAC
@CelticEBE
Click to expand...
I actually met a guy in Arcata who has a business doing consults and designing systems for people. I spoke with in depth about the whole thing and pretty much came to the conclusion that I could do passive intake rooms for a lot less.

This is something I am going to play with in the future. I'm hoping to go offgrid in a few years and may setup a small indoor environment.

I also had some idea's about water cooled co2 and using the warm water created in a loop to warm a flooring area for vegging plants.
 
#58
Yeah me too on the Co2, was thinking just free hot water and run the shop floor hydronic on a circuit with summertime cutoffs on a geothermal loop. So many options to use wasted energy...
 
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