Building a new grow house from scratch

[Lordsburgthc]

It's gonns be a dwc and I'm going to have Mylar all the way around.

 

[jagle]

cool cool.

so what you gonna have for youre first run? 2 600watts in the one bay? and 4 plants?

 

[Bubblehaze]

It's gonns be a dwc and I'm going to have Mylar all the way around.

You should consider using b/w plastic or white paint. You cannot clean mylar when its dirty its done. If you ever have to spray you will most likely ruin your mylar. Just an fyi from someone that wasted money on mylar.

 

[Sica]

*cough* um, why so many seperate rooms all doing the same thing? five rooms to flower? why not 1 big one and one small one for clones/mother. Much easier to manage, less lights, more air, more stable environment. Make it simple, seriously. If your new, try get clones, skip the see if they're male or female and if you miss it, your crop is wasted. My suggestion is the top 3/4 of your space make for flower, bottom 1/4 (closest to door) for grow and clones, you don't need much setup for a mother and some clones and it won't matter if light leaks out or in when you open the door (to the plants anyway)

 

[Sica]

My proposed setup for you would be split the room 75/25 as above. Start with a 1000w MH lamp for your mother running 18/6 and setup a tank (50l/80l?) of water with a water pump in it with a digital timer that waters for 2mins every 2 hours to your mother plant with water PH of 5.8 and half strength nutrients while the lights are on, no feeds during the 6 hours off. Suspend the light about a meter above your mother and get a thermometer to keep temp at 26 deg celsius. Put a return line from the bottom of your pot to your feeder tank to return the waste water. This tank should be emptied and cleaned with a 1% solution of bleach every 2 weeks. During this time you can basically wait til its empty, fill it up with water, add nutrient and adjust ph. very simple, not at all advanced but will keep your mother alive and comfortable and the 6 hours sleep with let her stretch to give you clones.

For your clones, i suggest buying a 50l tub that has a lid (preferably black) turn it upside down and you got a humidity dome. Spray it with water and sit on a small table in the corner away from the light. You don't want direct light on the clone box, only the heat and thus humidity. Put a thermometer in there and move it around to find wherever you can that will make it around 26 degrees celsius inside. Get another container with a lid (10l?) and fill it with water and i add a few drops of rhizotonic and adjust PH to 5.8 i then leave that tub with its lid on next to the mother (you want the water to be above about 16 degrees celsius). You place your clones in the upside down box and spray them once a day for a week or two and you got yourself newb plants.

For flowering i would suggest working on the same system on a larger scale (200l tank reservoir, 50l feeder) using about 400w per square meter and keeping temperature around 26-28 deg celsius. You can start this system with one plant, then add as many as you want by adding on pieces or taking them away. Your main work will be filling up the reservoir, check ec, check ph and adjusting light heights if they get too close to the light.

If you have no experience cutting your own clones, i suggest just setting up the mother room first and practice. Grow a plant to a foot tall, then take cuttings off each main branch tip. Do this on the same day every week, once a week only. Cutting does stress your plant and it will take it a couple days to recover. Besides that you need to wait a week for it to grow the 100mm to take more cuttings. The bonus off this, is each week, the tip your cutting will split into two new branches if you leave two nodes below your cutting.

I've missed plenty but you get the overall idea. As for medium, i suggest 50% hydroton (bottom of pot), 50% perlite (top half) as this gives good nutrient holding capacity and good drainage and aeration. I have successfully used the above setup for three years running 9 week cycles from 1k veg, 4kw flowering and maintaining 4-5 plants in the room producing an average 3-5 pound dried, less the $2k power bill. The point i'm trying to say is, start with the simplest, least riskiest system you can come up with then stick to it and learn from every mistake you make, and you will make plenty:)