Radogast: Grow Big Or Go Home

[Radogast]

I'm making a start at a big adventure: A block wall rectangular building, approximately 60 feet long, 24 feet wide with an 11-12 foot sloped ceiling. The goal is to pack it full of Marijuana plants in a perpetual grow with weekly harvests based upon soil and nutrients.

This is a ground up construction and startup. My ballpark estimate is 160 flowering plants @ 4 plants per 4x6' space in two flowering rooms on alternating light cycles. This will take up 2/3 of the space (40x24'.) The remainder will be: a pre-flower veg room (8x6') for about 20 teenagers to experience their growth spurt under flowering lights in full size pots, veg and clone room (10x12'), trim, wash, and hanging area(?), soil, worm farm, fertilizer and equipment areas.

The first 4 tasks are:

• Put in a mildly sloping floor on top of existing concrete floor with an air gap for insulation a sump
• Add 3 powered roof exhaust vents and passive intake vents.
• Add another 200 amp electrical utility box.
• Choose lights, size exhaust and intake openings, start working on layout and equipment

How can you help?

Recommend how you would light a 20x24' flower area. What specific lights would you buy? Assume I just won the lottery.

How would you size and control the exhaust (8', 10', 12' ?) in that 20x24' flower area to dump a relatively modest heat load, and some constant fresh air, with carbon filters?


Can you recommend any cool equipment?

• marijuana sniffing electronics for the exhaust ports
• reliable water purification
• trimming machine (up to 100 oz per week)
• soil mixing machine (small cement mixer?)
• mega-sized worm bin setup to recycle the fan leaves.
• Aroma control entry booth

 

[Amy Gardner]

Welcome back Rad - it’s really good to see you around! I have missed you a lot I’ll be along for the ride

 

[Tead]

Can you recommend any cool equipment?

• marijuana sniffing electronics for the exhaust ports
• reliable water purification
• trimming machine (up to 100 oz per week)
• soil mixing machine (small cement mixer?)
• mega-sized worm bin setup to recycle the fan leaves.
• Aroma control entry booth

Really.... they have sniffers for MJ?
Hook your main incoming water line to a whole-house filter. The carbon ones are super-simple to install.... you just connect them inline.
As for your trimmer, you're gonna need something better than a salad spinner. The drum types seem to work well. Dust off your plastic... it's gonna get stretched.
I think I'd steer clear of a cement mixer for soil. It will feel like you need it when your first put dirt together, but I'm not sure it seems worthy of a cement mixer on an ongoing basis. Love the imagery tho!
Gonna feed worms on fan leaves? Fun!
For aroma control, mount an exhaust fan to an entry portal area and hook the fan power to a switch triggered by the door opening. Negative airflow sucking in.

Recommend how you would light a 20x24' flower area. What specific lights would you buy? Assume I just won the lottery.

QB's all day long, twice on Sunday. No heat from the lights, and you can remote the drivers to an area you can easily exhaust the heat from. So nice. Hell, I had a plant grow into the lights the other day and it's so cool that it hardly caused any damage.



Welcome home!

 

[kelticBlue]

 

[Canadadoes]

Commented to Follow. very interested

 

[Amy Gardner]

QB's all day long, twice on Sunday

This! ^^^ QuantamBoards and/or samsung strips. @Graytail helped me build one and it’s the bees knees

If the budget really is endless, then Fluence - @Van Stank ’s plants don’t lie! Or NextLight - they are sponsors here. @neikodog speaks very highly of them.

But for something you can custom design and build for yourself, QBs and strips for sure. Budget LED, also a sponsor, sell QB components for DIY builds.

 

[Graytail]

Hey Rado! Good to see you again.

 

[Van Stank]

Hey Rad, gonna pull up a chair and join ya here if you don't mind! Good to see ya back around!

 

[Radogast]

Welcome back Rad - it’s really good to see you around! I have missed you a lot I’ll be along for the ride

Hi Amy gardner.

Thanks for supporting my totally opportunistic effort to make this grow my biggest and best grow ever I look forward to catching up with your Garden of Eden thread.

 

[Radogast]

Really.... they have sniffers for MJ?

I don't know! I hope so because I can't smell marijuana. Even as a non-current smoker, I just don't notice the aroma of the smoke or growing plants. And you know, no matter how legal the grow - advertising your location is bad for business.

Hook your main incoming water line to a whole-house filter. The carbon ones are super-simple to install.... you just connect them inline.

Plan accepted.

As for your trimmer, you're gonna need something better than a salad spinner. The drum types seem to work well. Dust off your plastic... it's gonna get stretched.

I've never see a machine trimmer. although this is about 500 times bigger than I've done before, big grow rooms don't scare me. Hand trimming a 4+ pound harvest does scare me. I'll gladly repurpose some lovely sugar leaves to avoid hours a day of sticky fingers.

I think I'd steer clear of a cement mixer for soil. It will feel like you need it when your first put dirt together, but I'm not sure it seems worthy of a cement mixer on an ongoing basis. Love the imagery tho!

I'm not talking a cement truck, but it takes me about 1.5 hours to mix 80 gallons of soil by hand. I'm going to need about 160 gallons for veg and 10x that much for flower. I'm thinking of a 3.5 cubic foot elecric cement mixer, a rotating bucket on a stand, to lightly remix up to 200 gallons a week of soil.

Gonna feed worms on fan leaves? Fun!

Waste not - get mightly fine worm compost

For aroma control, mount an exhaust fan to an entry portal area and hook the fan power to a switch triggered by the door opening. Negative airflow sucking in.

Negative airflow on demand - plan accepted.

QB's all day long, twice on Sunday. No heat from the lights, and you can remote the drivers to an area you can easily exhaust the heat from. So nice. Hell, I had a plant grow into the lights the other day and it's so cool that it hardly caused any damage.

Sounds familiar - what's the long name?

I wonder if any vendors are up sponsoring a side by side? I'd dedicate 4-6 clones of the same plant per quality light vendor for comparison runs.

Welcome home!

I sincerely hope I stick around and journal this. I get the feeling this setup will keep me busier than 10 minutes a day and two hours on harvest weekends.

 

[Radogast]

Nice to see you again KB
Does Maker's Mark go with popcorn?

 

[Radogast]

Commented to Follow. very interested

Subbed up to Plante Express-The Great escape!

 

[Radogast]

This! ^^^ QuantamBoards and/or samsung strips. @Graytail helped me build one and it’s the bees knees

If the budget really is endless, then Fluence - @Van Stank ’s plants don’t lie! Or NextLight - they are sponsors here. @neikodog speaks very highly of them.

But for something you can custom design and build for yourself, QBs and strips for sure. Budget LED, also a sponsor, sell QB components for DIY builds.

I was eyeing those samsung strips at the start of your journal. They look like something out of a sci-fi movie set.
I never said endless budget, but it's a small house sized budget so yeah i'll hit up the Fluence, NextLight, and Budget LED sponsors for quotes.

@Graytail , @Van Stank , and @neikodog are names that carry weight

Thank you so much!

 

[Radogast]

Hey Rado! Good to see you again.

Wonderful to have you around!
All input humbly accepted.

I'm debating paint, panda, plastic,etc. vs old wood ceiling, rafters and block walls.
I'm mostly interested in sealing air leaks, so thinking spray foam and a paint sprayer might be sufficient.
I'm not too concerned about dust as I will be washing and hanging plants at harvest. I guess plants rubbing against dirty walls as they grow might be an issue.

The question is open to anyone.

I've done bare wall and painted wall veg, painted wall and panda plastic wall flower, and not noticed a difference.

 

[Radogast]

Hey Rad, gonna pull up a chair and join ya here if you don't mind! Good to see ya back around!

You are most welcome.

Lovely to see you have grown a list of awards by your name while I've been living the non-grower life.

 

[Magnus8]

Hey Radogast! How GREAT to see you again. I, too, took a longish hiatus from growing and being on 420mag but came back a few months ago. Nice to see both of us back. Your constant support in the Lotions thread was always appreciated.

Hey congrats on being able to set up such a grow space. Sounds like its gonna be amazing. Wish I could be there to help set it up. I'm sure I'd learn a ton.

Alas. Such is life.

So I'll certainly be subbing along but I doubt I'll have much to add. You will certainly have master growers helping you along the way (like Amy for example). But I'll chime in when I have something worthwhile to say...

But right now I do have something to say:

WELCOME HOME!

All my best,
~Magnus

 

[Ycfro]

I'll pull up a chair, if dats ok. Cant wait to see what you come up with. I'd love to grow that big, this will be a good one.

 

[PGA Caddie]

Good luck with your new adventure. I’d like to tag along....

 

[kelticBlue]

Nice to see you again KB
Does Maker's Mark go with popcorn?

popcorn with grade AA butter, goes with anything.


Your endeavor, This was the first thing/thread I thought of.....
a dead thread, but has some great info about doing a no compromise and I trust the source absolutely.
No compromise build

 

[The Phantom]

This sounds exciting!