SmokeyMcFly's - Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry - Highbrix - LED - Grow

re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

neikodog said:
Subbed. Just getting caught up the plants look fantastic. I currently have blue dream and super lemon haze in amended soil (high brix is cooking) and they are at the same stage of flower as your blue dream so I will be following closely. I do HVAC (heating ventilation and air conditioning for those that don't know) for a living so I can assist with those types of questions if anyone needs help. As far as mini-split (ductless systems) goes there are a ton of manufacturers out there with varying price ranges and efficiencies. One thing I would make sure of is whether the indoor unit (the wall mount) needs a separate electrical circuit. Ideally you want to power that wall mount from the condenser (outdoor unit). This will save big time on electrical installation (if you have to hire it done). You will need an HVAC person to do the start up and refrigerant charge adjustment if you want a proper running system. The other thing to consider is whether the unit will heat as well (heat pump version). This feature will not add much money to the cost of the unit and is well worth it. These types of units are usually much more efficient than your house system and can maintain your grow room at or near ideal conditions (except for raising the humidity). Hope that helps and I look forward to following along.
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Awesome, welcome! I have lots of questions for you, but don't worry I will space them out over time :) The big thing I cant figure out is how the power will work. I will have it professionally installed so no worries there just trying to get a basic understanding of what will need done to hook it all up. I was worried most about the inner unit power. Avoiding the need to run extra elec into my spare bedroom is a big part of why I want the mini split in the first place so thanks for the heads up on that. My electric panel is outside about 10' from my big AC and pretty much directly below the wall I want to mount the inner unit on in my grow room, my grow room is on the second floor. There would be room to put the outside unit anywhere along the wall that makes sense so that shouldn't be a problem but how do they hook it up to the elec? Just run a couple wires up into the main CB for the house or does something else need to happen? Seems like the elec and the concrete pad for it would be the two most expensive parts of the install, do you have any idea what a typical install goes for, nothing specific just a ball park guess would be awesome.

NematodeNate said:
Thanks for the info doc....I will definitely check my water out....actually I had it tested a year ago I'll see if I can find the results....I know they had to drill just under 100ft.....
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Thats awesome you have nice well water the ROs are slow and kind of a PITA at least the little one I have is and it wastes a lot of water but we do what we gotta do :)

NematodeNate said:
Ouch....I just picked up two mars 900.... One for back up.....hope they last. Sounds like they got pretty good customer service though.....
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Im sure you will be very happy with a mars900 that light will rock a 3x3 space and its awesome that you have a backup. Its no fun having some nice plants half way through flowering and needing to pull most of or all of your light off of them.

I got a shipping notification from PlatinumLED already today, can't ask for any faster than that :thumb:
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

Ok so Gov made me nervous that one p300 wouldn't be enough to cover my blue dream so I now have a second one on the way :) I don't want to short either of these two plants and I know I will want at least 2 of the p300s anyway so I decided not to wait for the second one. Gov, I just found your journal tonight and still have a long way to go to get current but looks great so far! Cant wait to see how they turn out, BID's journals were some of the first I read on here and after reading about his blue dreams I had to give them a grow :)
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

"Awesome, welcome! I have lots of questions for you, but don't worry I will space them out over time The big thing I cant figure out is how the power will work. I will have it professionally installed so no worries there just trying to get a basic understanding of what will need done to hook it all up. I was worried most about the inner unit power. Avoiding the need to run extra elec into my spare bedroom is a big part of why I want the mini split in the first place so thanks for the heads up on that. My electric panel is outside about 10' from my big AC and pretty much directly below the wall I want to mount the inner unit on in my grow room, my grow room is on the second floor. There would be room to put the outside unit anywhere along the wall that makes sense so that shouldn't be a problem but how do they hook it up to the elec? Just run a couple wires up into the main CB for the house or does something else need to happen? Seems like the elec and the concrete pad for it would be the two most expensive parts of the install, do you have any idea what a typical install goes for, nothing specific just a ball park guess would be awesome."

Electrician rates are going to vary depending on what part of the country you live. In Southern Michigan they run around $100-$120.00 an hour. For the mini split you will need a 20 amp 240 volt breaker (same brand as your main breaker panel) #10 3 conductor wire, a 30 amp disconnect with a 4 or 6' wire whip and 20 amp fuses (these go in the disconnect). The disconnect mounts on the house (look by your house central air conditioner you will see a box mounted on the wall, this is the disconnect) the pre-made whip connects to the condensing unit. Shut your main power breaker off in the main house panel, pull the breaker panel cover off and snap in your new breaker (hopefully you have room) use the #10 wire to go from the new breaker to the disconnect. Then use the suggested gage wire (from the installation instructions) to go from the condensing unit to the wall mount inside (this powers the wall mount directly from the condensing unit. This may be more than you want to do yourself but if you are handy it can be done quite easily and will save you hundreds. If you hire it done I would expect to pay around $600-$750.00 and they will provide the wiring material.By the way you don't need a concrete pad, you can buy a pre-made pad for about $18 or a wall mount bracket for about $80.00. If you think you will use it for heating you will want the wall bracket or you will need to elevate the condensing unit at least 6". This accounts for the ice build up that occurs when a heat pump goes into defrost. My company would charge you about $3,500-$4,000 (depending on capacity needed) for complete installation (including the electrical). You will also need to core a 3" hole in your wall to connect the refrigerant lines, electrical to the wall mount and condensate drain (to the outside).
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

WoW thanks for all that great info! When you say 3,500 - 4k depending on size I am assuming that is including the unit. I am not handy at all and I have all kinds of spinal issues so I am going to just bite the bullet and pay to have it installed if I get one. I guess the first thing to do is take a look at my panel and make sure it has room for it. Its a new construction this year so it should have enough overhead to handle it but I am just guessing at this point. Any brands you recommend I look at or stay away from?

Thanks again!
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

SmokeyMcFly said:
WoW thanks for all that great info! When you say 3,500 - 4k depending on size I am assuming that is including the unit. I am not handy at all and I have all kinds of spinal issues so I am going to just bite the bullet and pay to have it installed if I get one. I guess the first thing to do is take a look at my panel and make sure it has room for it. Its a new construction this year so it should have enough overhead to handle it but I am just guessing at this point. Any brands you recommend I look at or stay away from?

Thanks again!
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Glad to help anyway I can since I can't contribute to the high brix knowledge base just yet, maybe I can help others get their environment right.
The $3,500-4K would include the unit and complete installation/start-up. If you hire it done you will get a complete price (including adding a piggyback electrical panel if you are out of room in yours). FYI Heating and cooling companies give free estimates and I would recommend getting at least 3. Also check Angie's List for local contractors, it's a good way to eliminate the bad companies. As far as brand, there are a ton of them. If you want a quality unit, the main players in my area are Daikin and Mitsubishi. I prefer the Daikin because of the lower wiring costs. The Mitsubishi requires a dedicated circuit to power the indoor unit where the Daikin is powered from the condensing unit. Just get some estimates and collect their information. I will help you with the final decision if you decide to go that route.
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

Its much appreciated and I will be more than happy to return the favor once you get your highbrix rockin. :thumb:

I started looking at the Daikin and don't understand how the de-humidify settings work at all. It looks like there is an auto mode that will switch between heat and cool and then there is a dehumidify mode that is separate. can you make them dehumidify along with heating or cooling somehow? I also was reading about Daikin Quaternity since it has some special dehumidify option that you can set and it will try and not dehumidify more than that even if its in cooling mode or something, I dunno I don't really understand it and I read people say its not all they make it sound to be. Right now I have to pump 2-3 gallons of water per day into the room to keep the RH up since I live in the desert but I assume that will change to needing to dehumidify once I close the room off so I want it to have the ability to control RH as good as possible along with the temp and don't want to use the elec in the room to run a stand alone dehumidifier.

I am only trying to condition a 10x10'x8' room but its right above the garage and it gets as hot as 120 here sometimes in the summer. In the winter it doesn't get cold much at all but the heatpump will probably come in handy once the room is sealed off for a couple months per year. I will only ever have around 1100 watts of lights total (this is more than I run now and leaving headroom incase I go all out crazy with panels someday) between veg and flower areas and I run them at night to help with the heat during the summer. That was a long way to say any idea how many BTU I should go for. I will deff hit up some contractors to get diff options and prices but I don't want a bunch of people knowing what treasures live inside that room either :)

My first Platinum should show up on Monday so they will be a full week with sup par lighting, get it sub par... Sorry I know HB joints make me think the corniest things are funny I swear :rofl:

I'm really bummed this happened right when I gave them the first Cat drench, Its only been two days but im not seeing the magic yet :straightface: I hope not having enough light doesn't make the CD not as effective. I really wish I would of waited another week to do it now, I noticed the lights being out while in the middle of giving it to them. I have been looking around and it looks like the blue dream might take around 12 weeks to finish so I might give her a second one later maybe around week 8?
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

SmokeyMcFly said:
Its much appreciated and I will be more than happy to return the favor once you get your highbrix rockin. :thumb:

I started looking at the Daikin and don't understand how the de-humidify settings work at all. It looks like there is an auto mode that will switch between heat and cool and then there is a dehumidify mode that is separate. can you make them dehumidify along with heating or cooling somehow? I also was reading about Daikin Quaternity since it has some special dehumidify option that you can set and it will try and not dehumidify more than that even if its in cooling mode or something, I dunno I don't really understand it and I read people say its not all they make it sound to be. Right now I have to pump 2-3 gallons of water per day into the room to keep the RH up since I live in the desert but I assume that will change to needing to dehumidify once I close the room off so I want it to have the ability to control RH as good as possible along with the temp and don't want to use the elec in the room to run a stand alone dehumidifier.

I am only trying to condition a 10x10'x8' room but its right above the garage and it gets as hot as 120 here sometimes in the summer. In the winter it doesn't get cold much at all but the heatpump will probably come in handy once the room is sealed off for a couple months per year. I will only ever have around 1100 watts of lights total (this is more than I run now and leaving headroom incase I go all out crazy with panels someday) between veg and flower areas and I run them at night to help with the heat during the summer. That was a long way to say any idea how many BTU I should go for. I will deff hit up some contractors to get diff options and prices but I don't want a bunch of people knowing what treasures live inside that room either :)
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Smokey,
As far as sizing goes, it really depends on how much lighting you plan on having in there not just what is in there now. Here are some quick numbers for sizing:
1 Watt = 3.412 BTU. You want to use the actual draw of the light for this. 1100 watts would be 3,753 BTU/hr.
1 Ton of air conditioning = 12,000 BTU
For comfort cooling in Michigan we figure about 700-750 sqft of floor space per ton of cooling. AZ is not as humid as MI but the temps are hotter. Either way your room is only 100 sqft so the smallest unit would handle the temps. The lighting is the deciding factor for the size.
Typical air conditioning will use about 70% of its capacity to lower temps and 30% to remove moisture. This is why you do not want too big of an air conditioner. The more capacity you have the faster the air conditioner will satisfy the temp. demand and not be able to run long enough to handle the humidity load. So you will maintain temps fine but the humidity will continue to rise. Run time is everything. The nice thing about a mini split is they have inverter compressors that will vary their capacity. They control temp and humidity very well in most cases. If you have a situation where you need greater moisture removal you have a couple options (in your case I don't think you need extra moisture removal). The Quaternity uses a kind of reheat system. This means the unit continues to run until the humidity set point is reached and the unit heats the air coming out of the unit to room temperature. This prevents the room from over cooling when running for dehumidification. The other option would be a separate dehumidifier running along with an air conditioner. A dehumidifier is an air conditioner that rejects the heat back into the room, they will actually heat a room because the heat of compression adds about 25% more heat to the room. Example: a 10,000 BTU dehumidifier will add 2500 BTU heat to a room. So if you go that route you will want to figure your lighting BTU + 25% of the dehumidifier BTU. I hope that makes sense.
The Daikin KE series is in grow rooms all over here and does fine. The Quaternity is super efficient but twice the money. The largest Quaternity is 15000 BTU but it removes 5.92 pints of water per hour. Daikin doesn't list the moisture removal for their other series but I figure it would do fine. Keep the questions coming!
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

Good deal thanks. I actually cant find the programming mode in the quaternity like it has in the cheaper models where you can program day night settings for the week but I can't imagine it wouldn't have it and the cheaper ones do. At first I was like no biggie I can run it on my Saturn5 but thinking more about it I realized I cant actually plug it into the controller so I need something that has all the programming built in.

I think the quaternity would be over kill for me too so thanks for validating that. I want to get a good quality unit that does everything I need if i'm paying that much for the install but I don't want to waste money to get features I don't need either. Being able to program different day night temps and humidity would be ideal. I will have to put some more time into studying the manuals.

I want to stay away from a stand alone dehumidifier if at all possible. My two spare bedrooms are on one circuit and with my lights and fans I don't want to add anything else that is a big power draw to the room. Luckily the other spare room is never really used and isn't sucking any of the shared power up :thumb:

So if I understand right the normal units will just dehumidify at the end of each heat or cool cycle if the desired humidity has been reached yet? Will it ever kick on just because the humidity is to high compared to how its set or would it only happen during and at the end of a heat or cooling cycle?

Thanks so much these things are like a mystery and trying to figure out whats what in the marketing material is not easy :)
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

Just to clarify, the unit doesn't dehumidifier in heating mode only cooling. I'm not sure what site you are looking at and hopefully this doesn't get edited but go to daikinac.com. As an option you can get a wired thermostat as opposed to the wireless controller that comes with the unit. The wired Stat is programmable and sounds like what you are looking for. You aren't going to have a dehumidify setting on the cheaper units. That is a high end feature. Again I doubt you need it in AZ. Just running the AC will get your humidity to about 50% or lower in the summer.
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

I see what's wrong I was looking at two different versions of the quaternity manuals I think. That thermostat looks awesome. I'm just worried that in the winter the RH might get to high. Its actually more humid in the winter here than summer so not having any dehumidifier during lights off seems like a bad idea. I will test it tomorrow with the door closed and see what happens.

Thanks for the clarification:thumb:
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

I guess if I only need to dehumidfy during lights off I could run a stand alone one. It will depend on the price difference most likely I would prefer to not waste the floor space it's already tight in that room.
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

If you set the temp to say 75 the humidity won't fluctuate. It just spikes when them temps drop because the cooler the air the less water vapor it can hold. By adding the mini split you can keep a constant temperature therefore a constant humidity.
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

True but you want about a 10degree temp drop for lights out. :)
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

10-12 is the Max you want but it is important for them to be cooler at lights off it has to do with what they absorb or something I'm not going to pretend to understand :)

Edit GT is correct 10-12 is what I have been trying to target with my current setup not the max you can go :)
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

If I might pipe up ...

I looked into this several months ago and the max is more like 20 degrees. During daytime, more heat will produce more growth until you reach about 85 degrees, then you need to supplement CO2 and humidity or they'll suffer. Much past an 18 degree swing and you'll stress them, causing hermies, etc.

So, "ideal" is 85 daytime, 67 night. You'll also get better coloration with night temps under 70. :cheesygrinsmiley:

:Namaste:

[Edit] But it's also pheno dependent. Tropical landraces won't know what to do with big temp swings. :straightface: Mountainous strains will need it.
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

GT you can pipe in anytime in my thread good sir :). Since my temp control is so inconsistent currently I try to keep a nice buffer on each side and try to stay between 70 and 82. Once I get a mini split I trust maybe I can push them some.


I just want what ever I get to be able to maintain the parameters I ask it to. I don't want to spend all this money to still have to make compromises other than raising the RH which I still might need a humidifier for here even with it sealed not sure :)
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

Currently testing and with no temp swing (that happened hours ago) it has risen 5% (50 to 55) in an hour and a half with the door shut. Since its winter and the lights are off there wouldnt be any AC running. I'm thinking I'm going to want the built in dehumidifier :)
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

Merry Christmas everyone, enjoy :)
 
re: SmokeyMcFly's Hurkle - Blue Dream & Plushberry Highbrix LED Grow

Hmm after reading some more I stumbled upon multiple people having issues with the quaternity not dehumidifying below 50 degrees outdoor temps. This would not work year around for me if so. I would need a standard dehumid and I could get a less expensive mini split. From what I have been finding its probably the better solution anyway even when the outside temps are in the working range.

I really appreciate you guys helping me talk through this. Research is my favorite part of a purchase and I have lots to learn on the subject and maybe it will help others too :)

Here is an example quote of what I am talking about.

"After many back and forth conversations with my local installer, the operating range for drying mode was found on page 9 of the operating manual, on the page about setting the clock. Note that this is the only place that there is an operating range for the drying mode, of 50 F to 108 F. This range is not noted in the product brochure provided on the website and to customers (heating and cooling temperature ranges are listed), nor is it listed in the Engineering Manual, though there are 9 pages dedicated to heating and cooling specifications. There is also a graph, with indoor and outdoor temperatures, showing the continuous operation and cool down range, but only for heating and cooling. It really seemed like this would have been a great place to put the limitations of drying mode which is much less or a range than either heating or cooling. Now that its summer (day temps 70, night temps 50), the unit will run in dry mode 24/7 and keep the humidity at 50%.

My installer is a trained Daikin installer, and it was not made clear to them about this specific operating range. I believe that this is a great unit in a year-round warm climate, or a climate that only has humidity problems in the summer. In the Pac NW, we have humidity issues all year, but especially in the mild winters, where 40 and raining is common, and ventilation doesn't work."
 
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