Autotown Update
Infrastructure Special!
Day 44 (4), Day 36 (2), Day 31 (3)
I don't know about you guys, but I believe that there's a lot of luck in a successful grow. Yeah, we can plan our asses off and cover all our bases, do all watering and nutes optimally, manage our light and growing method perfectly, and STILL things can come out of nowhere and screw up your plants. Maybe it's something strain specific that objects to something you're doing. Maybe your tap water had a dam break or something in the system where you live and the ph in the water you're using goes wacky for two weeks. Or maybe you went outside in the woods doing whatever and came back and immediately worked your indoor plants - and you dragged something in you're unaware of, like bugs or mold or whatever. Any number of things can and often apparently DO go wrong and we spend a ton of time figuring these things out and correcting them. So you gotta' have a little bit of luck.
That said, lol, today we made a major infrastructure change to Autotown. Went ahead and got an 8000 btu AC unit. I have it so that half of where the air comes out is blowing directly into the bottom tent vent, and the other half where the air comes out clears the corner and goes into the garage. I started it at 66 degrees to test and lowered it to 64 degrees. It is not a perfect seal at the port, however, this is 8000 btu's. At 64 and high fan it blows hard, cold, dry air. The goal was to cool down Autotown during the six hours of the day when it's the hottest and the sun shines directly on my garage door. That heats the crap out of the door and Autotown is five feet away. And it's the lesser quality tent, certainly no Gorilla. It heats up quickly when the garage door heats up. I have managed it to today by keeping the garage door all the way closed and the house door all the way opened, but even with the intake AC at the top blowing on full force cold, the girls were still going up to 85 degrees for about six hours a day. And that was with just the REDS on the two blurples that flank the quantum board. With both BLUES and REDS, it was almost 90 degrees, so that lasted ten seconds and I switched to the reds. It was barely manageable and I got away with it when Autotown was mostly in veg. But as you see in the picture below, she's definitely in bud now. Six of the nine you can actually see buds on, and the three Pineapple Express in the middle row (sweet spot for the biggest plants) appear to me to be in preflower. Which is great cuz I can finally use only one nute mix. Lmao. Anyway, if this worked, it would keep the tent at an acceptable level during those six hours a day and after that I'd be able to do whatever I wanted with the temperature, while using the quantum board at 100% and both blurples at 100%. In short, I wanted to be able to HAMMER them with light while maintaining the right environment. This was a $360 dollar experiment between the AC unit and the necessary 50 foot extension cord to reach a GFI that was free, all the way in my bedroom. So I really wanted it to work.
I set it all up and wheelchair-proofed it and taped open the vent as wide as it would go and tested the AC at different speeds and temperatures and it was during the hottest part of the day. Also experimented with how open to keep the house door. It is necessary to keep the garage door open six inches to vent the new AC unit's heat that shoots hard out the back, and I blocked off the open space other than for the exhaust, to make a seal of sorts that's plenty good enough. In the end I figured it all out. Basically what happens is I can create two separate climate zones in the garage. The back where the Gorilla photo is gets cool air from the house. The AC unit supplies the necessary extra cool ari to the Auto tent along with cooling the area where my table is. Front and back zones.
Here's where the luck came in.
It works. Perfectly. I can now control both tents to a very very fine degree. Way more than I hoped for. And Autotown is running at full power. It is brighter in there than I can imagine. So I used the Korona app and tested my par numbers. Before, with just the REDS on, I was averaging about 1050-1100 par across the canopy of all nine plants, even in the corners. It was brilliant and would have and will work just fine. Better than fine, in fact. BUT....A LOT more light would be better. As much as they can take is the goal. I'll switch to the reds only on the blurples for the last two weeks of budding and let them serve then as supplemental reds, which will be great, but until then, for maybe three more weeks, they'll stay as you see in the picture, assuming they can take it. We just started and I am watching them like a hawk. Reason being two fold: one, I would watch carefully anyway, but two, like I said, I tested the par numbers. I am now hitting 1700 on the plant in the middle and 1500 on all the others. That's ridiculous. It's CO2 territory. I don't really think my two CO2 Exhale bags are going to cut it, lol, so I expect to have to dial down the quantum board whatever percentage is necessary. But that isn't going to happen unless the plants tell me it has to. Otherwise they're getting HAMMERED. But they've taken everything I've thrown at them so far and not one plant has blinked. They are up to 100% on the Tiger Bloom now and even that doesn't faze them. A tablespoon of molasses with every watering. No problem. CalMag mini flush every third or fourth watering. No problem. Tons of nutes since they were in the Dixie cups. No problem. So MAYBE, just maybe, they can take these light levels too. I tried to get a picture of the par numbers with another phone but it's WAY too bright in there. I did get the temp/humidity, and that is reading WORST CASE SCENARIO for six hours a day. And that is amazing.
So here's what it all looks like. I included some pictures with the blurples on REDS for comparison. It's dramatic.
Photographs:
- New AC unit and placement
- Wheelchair-proofing (lol)
- Blurples full spectrum (Veg and Bloom on) and Quantum board at 100%
- Blurples on REDS (Bloom) only and Quantum board at 100%
