My new grow room as a beginner

[tomatoesarecooltoo]

The easiest way to handle that is to get something like a dryer vent connector from Lowe’s etc. they have them in different sizes and you can run it horizontally in the attic and out of a gable. No one will know what it is

Thats what I did and painted over it to match the house.

 

[amekins]

I finally have my room all set up and ready. It is a 10' x 11' room I've been using this forum a lot and reading up on a lot of information. I also have tons of friends who grow too but I personally haven't done it before yet. It would be nice to get feedback and any suggestions that you guys might have.

Man....building the room to how I wanted and was satisfied with it was a shit ton of work. The ducts were the worst part and the part I hated the most. I'm running a 2x 10 inch q-max fans, one for intake and one for exhaust with a charcoal filter on the exhaust. I used insulated ducting and shooting my exhaust up into the attic. I think most people have their intake set up so it shoots out somewhere around the floor but mine comes out from the ceiling with a insulated duct hanging down and shooting down into the room. I didn't want to cut open a hole in my hardwood floor and there was no option for a window duct for the room. I also panda filmed the walls and install some lining on the hardwood floor. I used pond liner which I got as an idea from of my other friends. It's pretty thick so it is really durable and pretty easy to clean up. I'm using 4x 1000 Gavita HPS lights. I have HLG 600 V2 Rspec LED lights coming on the way but I probably won't switch to them until later Spring. I also got some wifi hygrometers so I can keep track of my temps and humidity on my phone whenever I want without having to go into the room and have alerts set up to alert me if temps/humidity is too high or too low. I also have two 16in Hurricane wall fans.

Welcome to the farm! You’ve clearly been doing your homework! Happy grows.

 

[dezahp]

dam no mini split dog ...i would definitely look into one once you turn those light up 100 percent it’s gonna get hot as shit in there

I live in nor cal so usually pretty good weather and doesn't get too hot. I'll be switching over to LEDs by Spring too before it gets hotter in the summer. I'll worry about extra cooling if I need to if temps require it. For now just running my exhaust alone brings in a lot of cold air

 

[dezahp]

I've been super busy but have an update and new headache. I bought a ultrasonic humidifier to try and up my humidity because it was dropping to 35-40%. I checked on the girls today and I'm seeing a bunch of their leaves covered with white powder. I freaked out because I don't want my first grow end up being a failure with powder mildew. I then start thinking and doing some research and it could be white powder from the minerals in the tap water I'm using for the humidifier. So I grabbed a dark shirt and wiped down my panda film and look and behold...white dust/build up. What do you guys think? I'm PRAYING it's not powder mildew. Guess I'll have to grab a wet rag and carefully wipe down the leaves and see if it comes back ....then it'll probably be powder mildew.

If it's the humidifier and tap water, which I'm hoping it is, then I guess I was wrong thinking it was ok to use it since it tested 18pp and will have to get some distilled if I wanna use it.

 

[tomatoesarecooltoo]

Looks like powdery mildew to me. In my experience mineral scale has more of a hard edge to each spot if that makes sense. PM kind of fades out from each colony, which is what I see on your leaf.

The dust on the panda film could just be dust.

Edit: here is a good example of limescale on leaves, see what I mean?

https://www.gapphotos.com/images/LargeWebPreview/0221/0221215.jpg

 

[Checkler92]

I've been super busy but have an update and new headache. I bought a ultrasonic humidifier to try and up my humidity because it was dropping to 35-40%. I checked on the girls today and I'm seeing a bunch of their leaves covered with white powder. I freaked out because I don't want my first grow end up being a failure with powder mildew. I then start thinking and doing some research and it could be white powder from the minerals in the tap water I'm using for the humidifier. So I grabbed a dark shirt and wiped down my panda film and look and behold...white dust/build up. What do you guys think? I'm PRAYING it's not powder mildew. Guess I'll have to grab a wet rag and carefully wipe down the leaves and see if it comes back ....then it'll probably be powder mildew.

If it's the humidifier and tap water, which I'm hoping it is, then I guess I was wrong thinking it was ok to use it since it tested 18pp and will have to get some distilled if I wanna use it.

I ran a humidifier and know all about that mineral scale. Just from my exsperience when you wipe your finger on something that moves air it will seem slightly stickybut Not so much if it’s mildew I had a pretty bad outbreak of PM ended up using mammoth works really well also kept aphids and other insects away.

 

[dezahp]

Man if it is likely PM then damn this sucks since I've been working tirelessly on the room and busy at work too so this adds another headache. I guess the only upside to things is that this happened during veg...I will have to see how I want to fight this and treat the room this weekend.

 

[tomatoesarecooltoo]

Hey man if you want to fight its thats your choice but I would start over personally if I had it this far along in veg. Went you treat it it likes to disappear and pop back up at the worst time. It lives inside your plants, only the spores are on the outside. Might have had it all along from the clones you got without it showing. Just my 2 cents and I am sure you will get some opposing viewpoints. Good luck and keep growing, every grow is a learning experience but especially the first one.

 

[tomatoesarecooltoo]

Is it on all the plants?

 

[dezahp]

Is it on all the plants?

No it was just on a few but my exhaust and oscillating fan have been on throughout the day. So if it PM then it would ideally be spread throughout the room already right?

 

[tomatoesarecooltoo]

No it was just on a few but my exhaust and oscillating fan have been on throughout the day. So if it PM then it would ideally be spread throughout the room already right?

Oh in that case I would cull the affected ones and treat the rest and treat/clean the room. Glad to hear its not all of them.

 

[BurnzYzBudZz]

Always use RO water in your humidifiers doubt you got PM that fast. It’s probably from the tap water.

 

[dezahp]

Always use RO water in your humidifiers doubt you got PM that fast. It’s probably from the tap water.

Man that's what I'm really praying for... I'm honestly expecting the worse for it to be PM cause shit always turns for the worse lol most of us can't ever catch a break lol it's either one thing or another. I wiped down most of the leaves with a wet rag and waiting to see if it really is PM. I'm gonna be running my rooms at 80F for the next day or two and not run the humidifier at all. How long do you think for it to really reappear again on those leaves to confirm if it really is PM? I felt like it wasn't that hard to remove the white coating so hoping it isn't mildew...

 

[Tornadohunting420]

One of the first issues I'm encountering is keeping an ideal environment that I want. I want to be able to keep veg at 70F-78F at 50-60 humidity. I'm running the lights at 3 feet at 600 watts and will gradually bump up later. I'm only running 2 lights so far on the back side of the room where the girls are directly under. I don't see a need to turn on the other two lights right now. I'm hanging my hygrometer near plant level and one up on the wall above light line. After my first night lights off cycle, I found it hard to maintain a temp above 66F, was generally at 64-65F. I'm doing a 18/6 cycle with lights off from 9am-3pm. I tried various things like also turning off my exhaust fan but obviously my humidity would shoot up and was up around 77-80 humidity. I'm also not running my intake fan at all since the exhaust fan is already pulling enough air from the intake duct without running the intake fan. The exhaust fan is also on the lowest setting and also is still really strong on low. It should be a good thing but I wish there was even a slightly lower setting lol. I tried putting one of my personal small heaters in the room but it didn't help much at all. I'm thinking I may have to get a bigger, better working heater. I saw some people recommend putting the heater next to the intake to warm up the air from the intake but I don't have that option since my intake duct comes out from the ceiling. I also thought about the option of turning off the exhaust during night and get a dehumidifier but I want fresh air going to the girls all the time. Plus, my neighbors house on both sides are really close and I also store a lot of things in the attic where I'm shooting the exhaust into so I want to also prevent any odor build up.

I also would ideally want my humidity around 50-60 but even with my exhaust on the lowest, my humidity is at 44-45% at around 75ish temps during day. Any ideas or tricks to slightly increase the humidity?

Humidity should be between 40 n 50 I even lower mine into the 30's. U may have a hard time keeping temps down with all those hps lights I run 1200 in a 4x4 n it's a task to keep it between 75-80 in flower.

 

[Tornadohunting420]

Man that's what I'm really praying for... I'm honestly expecting the worse for it to be PM cause shit always turns for the worse lol most of us can't ever catch a break lol it's either one thing or another. I wiped down most of the leaves with a wet rag and waiting to see if it really is PM. I'm gonna be running my rooms at 80F for the next day or two and not run the humidifier at all. How long do you think for it to really reappear again on those leaves to confirm if it really is PM? I felt like it wasn't that hard to remove the white coating so hoping it isn't mildew...

Remove the infected leaves cut em off

 

[dezahp]

I'm not having any trouble with temps. My exhaust sucks in cold air from the intake and is able to keep the room around 76-78F. That's why I don't know how I got PM so fast. Gonna be treat the room when I get home later today after work and cut off infected leaves like you said or just throw the whole plant away.

 

[dezahp]

Been super busy so a quick update. I sprayed the whole room and plants down Mammoth Canncontrol last weekend. I will be spraying them once a week on Sundays probably until week 2 of flower and see how they're doing. I will be topping this week on Friday. Can't wait until I flip them and start seeing them take off. I also need to create two roof vents for attic ventilation sometime this weekend or next. Appreciate any feedback or suggestions on how I'm doing .

 

[tomatoesarecooltoo]

Looks great!

 

[amekins]

Been super busy so a quick update. I sprayed the whole room and plants down Mammoth Canncontrol last weekend. I will be spraying them once a week on Sundays probably until week 2 of flower and see how they're doing. I will be topping this week on Friday. Can't wait until I flip them and start seeing them take off. I also need to create two roof vents for attic ventilation sometime this weekend or next. Appreciate any feedback or suggestions on how I'm doing .

Looking beastly! Nice job!

 

[dezahp]

So I have a few questions for you guys...So I am actually doing the room together with my brother. He has been wanting to completely follow his friend's room and recipe and completely everything he says without question and without even knowing the reason behind it. Needless to say...it has been a really frustrating experience and my research and learning more often than not goes to waste. Anyways, we were supposed to top this week. Honestly, I think we should have topped at least by last week already. Most of them were 20 inches tall already or more. Well I came home today from work and my brother and his friend just ended up topping all of them. From all of the topping I've seen and looked up, I haven't seen anyone really top like this. My plan was to top the majority of them but FIM just a few to compare.

The first picture is what most people I've seen top like and this is what I was told to do. The other 3 pictures is how my brother and his friend topped our plants.

Some other quick points I was wondering if any other people follow to or agree with too?
1. My brother's friend told him to not run the wall fan during veg. I read and thought that you should always run your oscillating wall fans to help make the stems stronger and provide better air circulation to the leaves?
2. I received my HLG 600 V2 Rspec LED lights this month. I swapped out one of the HPS lights with the LED in the room and did a mix of 2 HPS and 1 LED while still in veg until flower. He told us not to use LED because HPS is better for veg with the heat (this is without MH bulbs). I always thought the opposite and thought LED was better with the fuller spectrum for veg while the HPS bulbs are more red and yellow.
3. He told my brother a minimum 2 week "rule" of topping after transplanting. This one makes completely makes no sense to me...It doesn't matter about time but how your plants react and recover right? My other friend even tops and transplants the same day sometimes. Most of them have been doing good and growing tall with them up to 18-21 inches. I was told you should even start flipping once they reach 18 inches. Now I feel like we're way behind schedule from waiting 2 weeks after transplanting to 1 gal pots and topped when they're really tall. We could have long been topped and/or FIM'ed and already started having the extra stems growing out but now we just barely topped with his method with most of them 20 inches or taller.