The Happy Cola Company's Official Ground Up Medical Cannabis Grow Op

With the Happy Chiller cooling the flower room without breaking a sweat, today I feel it's proved itself and I can finally move on.
This week, we finally flip into flower! My partner, Happy Santa got busy getting the trellis set up on the four 30 foot tables, getting the ladies geared up for flowering duties.
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We needed to get the 4x8 flood tables set up. The clones are rooted well, and even though they are enjoying being barraged with 72 deg water , it's time to get then into some grow media. I have already built the tables, but we don't have a light solution for them.
Also, hanging lights from the ceiling kinda kills having rolling tables so a light solution affixed to the table was in order.
The 1x1 and 1x2 square tubing has become a favorite of mine, but for the center support Inwent with 1x2 11 gauge instead of the usual 14.
I welded some supports on the ends and added removable adjustable sides to raise or lower the lights. This veg table is powered by four Black Dog 400 watt led lighting fixtures.
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For the center support, I welded a few 8 inch 1x1 pieces for light supports
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Tomorrow, we should have it all set up with at least 150 or so clones going into Stage 1 veg. By the time we harvest, we will have a much more organized and unified transition from Stage ll veg into flower. Least that's the plan!
 
I finished up on the veg table light rail, then built some cheap light hangers
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And I've used 100's of these key chains rings, found cheap at your local Wallyworld
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Then it was just a matter of connecting the lights and hanging them.
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I went ahead and finished wiring up the whole room light controller so everything in the mother/clone room can be ran off one light controller, except for a few 115 volt cloners.
We'll take this room to 18 hrs on and 6 hrs off.
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My partner, Happy Santa got the trellis framing up in place.
Friday is a big day for us, as we are celebrating a few birthdays and the icing on the cake is we flip our first room into flower.
In about 8 weeks or so, we'll finally be into our first harvest.
It's been a very long road, full of more potholes than any of us imagined.
Happy Santa slaved the entire afternoon smoking us a brisket for tomorrow's celebration.
My fasting begins now...
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In about 8 weeks or so, we'll finally be into our first harvest.
It's been a very long road, full of more potholes than any of us imagined.
Happy Santa slaved the entire afternoon smoking us a brisket for tomorrow's celebration.
My fasting begins now...
Hey man, well done, I have really enjoyed reading thru your thread and getting up to date now. What you are doing is way over my head, but good on you for doing it, and thanks a lot for taking the time to post your efforts, it is really interesting, I wish you all the very best and looking forward to watching you get to harvest. Hopefully any problems you'll be able to overcome just as you have done so far. Great stuff, cheers to you guys from me in New Zealand! :thumb:
 
I didn't think I'd be back visiting this thread this quick, but the older I get the faster the world spins around me. We've encountered yet another issue, and it's a doozy.
Being an HVAC guy, I thought I pretty much had an edge when it came to conditioning an environment, as I have conditioned hundreds and hundreds of unique dwellings, however 128 females 2 weeks into flower releases far more water into the air than this country boy ever imagined, and I've grown my share indoors, just NEVER to this degree.
So what's a country boy supposed to do? More research and a little math. Follow along.

Two weeks into flower and the girls are sucking up over 40 gallons of water and nutes every 24 hours. This means 97% of that 40 gallons is ending up in the air and causing more humidity than we can deal with, and I still haven't kicked the lights up. We need more dehumidification, and those home units simply don't cut the mustard.
Our Ideal commercial unit extracts about 70 pints a day. the two home unit we have, maybe realistically 35 pints a piece, meaning we are extracting 150 pints a day or less, yet the plants are transpiring more than that.
We need more dehumidification, and they aren't cheap. I went digging around and found a listing for a large commercial dehumidifier, with one caviot. Well, maybe two. First up, it comes on but didn't dehumidify. 2nd, it's used for drying out wet environements, no so much grow rooms and it has two settings. Off and on. However, it was dirt cheap (about 3600 bucks new). A road trip and 200 bucks and we owned it.
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Now, on first look one would think this unit would pull out a good 200 pints a day, right? Yes and no. It will remove 200 pints a day, under a 90 deg ambient and 90% rh, something NO grow room will ever see. Kind of misleading and they ALL do it. Almost anyway. When we wind it down to more realistic figures, this unit will extract right at 135 pint every 24 hours with an 80 deg ambient and 60% rh, much more real-world for us.
After opening her up and performing a little diagnostic work, I found an integrated relay on the control board that powers the compressor and wasn't working. The board cost as much as I paid for the unit, so I developed a work around and fired her up.
This added an easy 135 pints of removal to the equation, and on the cheap! I'll add humidity control using one of these digital humidistat. It's based on the same platform as the temp control I used for the Happy Chiller, and it was only 25 bucks.
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That's the good news.
Now for the bad.
It still isn't enough to get me to my comfort zone between 40% and 50% rh, and it's only going to get worse when I crank the lights up. We now have the ability to remove around 270-280 pints per 24 hrs. That should do it.
But it didn't. I need to be able to remove close to 400 pints a day. Talk about hindsight. There are two ways to figure your needs in the grow room. Here they are for your amusement:
1st. Figure how much water your feeding every 24 hrs. Bingo! There's your answer, because most of that water, (97% of it) ends up back in the air in the form of humidity that needs removed.
2nd. Figure each light to 10-12 pints a day times however many lights you have. Either way you calculate it, the answer is pretty close. We are in a bit of a pickle. :eek:
I spent the last few nights researching a fix, and there isn't an easy or cheap one available. The best I've came up with, and the unit I'd invest in would be a Quest, hands down. Quest not only represents their products removal ability using a real world grow room formula, but they also break it down into how many pints of removal per KW hour. They ARE the most energy efficient units that I am aware of, and they aren't cheap.
Our room, for a final fix needs two Quest 225 units, something I NEVER would have imagined a 40x22 room could ever require, but the numbers don't lie. Talk about hindsight.:oops:
Our plan is to try and scrape up enough moola for one Quest 225. This, with what we have already should get us through this grow, then we need to purchase another one for a final fix. One on the north end and one on the south end, both ceiling mounted.
When the stars align for a solution, I'll chime in. Until then, the show must go on, and our mother/veg room has over 150 clones ready for Stage ll veg, and those tables, while basically built aren't painted and don't have the hydroponic plumbing ran, so while Happy Santa was busy spreading the girls legs in the flower room (that sounds kinda bad, huh?) I got to painting.
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We increased to size of all the returns on the hydroponic tables to 2 inches. The 1.5" we ran in the flower room is really too small to carry a 30 foot row of plants. Lessons learned. Even though these tables are only carrying 12 plants each in 5 gallon buckets and 2 inch is kind of overkill, it will make transfers from Stage ll veg to flower pretty seamless.

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Another great and technical update. Im impressed with How you paint everything, less maintenance and looks clean. Im all in now to watch how the water removal efforts and first grow progress. Back a few updates I think I saw you swapped out the pump in your chiller box.
Your sure paying attention. I did swap the pumps out but didn't mention it. Just went from red to black huh?
The red pump was a leftover, but it was leaking a tad around the head when I fired it up, and we were up against the clock. I hit Craigslist and a guy had a brand new deep well (mine was a shallow) pump for about 25 cents on the dollar, so I bought it and swapped it out without saying a word other than the photos speaking... until you just busted me...
 
After beating my head against the wall on this dehumidifier thing, and researching what's available, and after digging into the two contenders, namely Quest and Anden, I landed on Anden Grow Room Dehumidifiers website and began digging in.
I went with Anden, for two reasons. First Quest offers nothing in the 300 pint a day meaning it would take two Quests to do the job of one Anden unless I jumped all the way up to their 506 model, something I don't need and can't afford. Not that the Anden is cheap by any stretch.
We went with their 320 ppd unit. We built a temporary stand on wheels to get it fired up. The unit is right at 180 lbs, so it's gonna take a little time and manpower to mount it overhead.
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After air sampling, the new Anden was reading 73% rh. Thank God for plastic credit. Even though this is a pricey setback, it's nowhere near as pricey as the thought of losing an entire crop.
I always look for a silver lining. Here is mine. Before bringing the new Anden online, I took the liberty of finding out the exact size compressor, dimensions of both the evaporator and condenser coil and method they used to control those components.
What exactly does this mean?
Simple. It means I have two more flower rooms to setup.
I'll build the next two dehumidifiers, and might even bump up the capacity a tad while I'm at it
 
Time for an update. The 320 pint per day dehumidifier has been running for two days now, and here are the results.
In a 22x40 sealed grow running pure hydroponics in a constant recirculation system of 128 plants, Co2 injection and 80 degrees, the room exceeds the 320 pint a day Arden dehumidifiers capacity. We left the Ideal 60 pint a day unit and the one I fixed that was for drying out wet environments in the room. It removes a legit 135 pints a day by itself, so it takes all three units to maintain the lower 50's rh, meaning we are having to remove over 500 pints a day in room humidity in GR-1 alone. When we can afford it, GR-1 needs one more Anden 320.
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Time for an update. As previously mentioned, we have been having some real issues involving excessive buildup of humidity in GR-1. The most bewildering part of this is both my partner and I have been growing for over 40 years, and we are both confused by all the humidity issues present, and we're USED to humidity! Hell, an Oklahoma summer spells humidity but this is crazy.
In fairness, neither of us have ever taken on a grow this size. It's been a real education for us, but we'll be far more prepared on the next two flower rooms dubbed GR-2 and GR-3.
It's been said knowledge from the school of hard knocks trumps nomenclature any day, and this is no exception. What I have learned is this:
An 820 sq ft. sealed room with 128 plants in bloom running on a temperature controlled constant recirculating system with a 67 deg root zone maintaining a specific 80 deg ambient environment has the ability to transpire nearly 500 pints of water into the room in a 24 hr period. That's a LOT of water. :eek:

That's more than I ever calculated. But it gets better, and really offered up some really cool insight.
We began defoliating row 4 in GR-1. Keep in mind, we didn't rape the plant of water leaves...yet, just a good removal of water leaves, and only on one of the four rows. Further, this is the row that has those monstrous Fast Jack's at the back and ALWAYS drank more water than any of the other three rows ever did.

The next morning when I arrived at work the humidity levels had dropped to 53%! That's a solid 8 to 10 deg drop in total room humidity! Those water leaves perspire a lot more H2o than I ever thought they could. When you remove them, the formula changes. This was further proven by only having to add maybe 1 to 1.5 gallons to the reservoir on that row. It usually required a solid 4 to 6 gallons every day.
The good news in all this? It's been an education for one, no doubt, however the girls are really loving the environment, from the snow white roots under their skirts to their beautiful unblemished topside.

All is well in the land of The Happy Cola....

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Next up: Finishing the 14 Veg ll tables. These tables will each hold 12 plants in 5 gallon buckets and be a constant recirculating top fed hydroponic system, each with their own 17 gallon reservoir. This will allow super easy transitions into flower with little or no shock to the plants.
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We upgraded from 1.5" drain to 2" inch drains. Not that these tables need the 2 inch with only 12 buckets, but we can place drain spouts in the same area on the 5 gallon buckets as the flower room. (which really needs the 2 inch upgrade). We have to carefully dial the water feeds in to prevent overflow. Anyway, from here on out every table gets 2 inches of drain.
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Yes. Nutty as it seems those are 1000 watt HPS lamps powered by Cali digital ballasts. These ballasts allow us to reduce the output to 50%, which is PLENTY for our Veg ll area. Overkill is underrated.
Do we need this kind of lighting over a veg table?
Nope. Not by a longshot and costs a lot more to run than I want or need to pay, but drastic times call for drastic measures, and these are our only option for now. When we can afford it, we'll equip all 14 tables with their own LED lighting built on an adjustable light hanger allowing the lights and tables to be moved around with ease. All we are shooting for with these tables is a canopy PAR of around 400, so LED it will be. :ganjamon: .

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I gotta ask, what has your electric bill looked like? I can't wrap my head around the electric expense at all...
Funny you ask. Thus far we've averaged around 800 per month, but that was before the 2 ton Anden dehumidifier and I'm thinking the 4 ton Happy Chiller isn't firmly into the mix.
We figured around 1000 bucks per flower room so really, we might actually be ahead of the curve a tad..
 
Today was spent building out the Veg ll tables. I finished several and decided to fire one up for pump sizing specs.
Here's what I found. A 185 gph pump is all that's needed to drive 12 buckets, provided the bucket feeds all have restrictors on them. Also, 17 gallons will be enough to run the system.
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My daddy always used to tell me, and I quote:
"If you can't find time to...
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...the first time, where you ever gonna find the time to do it again?"
Hopefully, we've done it right!
 
The last few days have been consumed with finishing up the Veg ll tables. Drilling drains, supply fittings, returns, and installing 3/4" rubber grommets and return 90's in more 5 gallon buckets than I care to repeat. Around 168 of them.
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It looks like a sea of buckets in here. These buckets will power the next flower room rollover, and the transition will be SO much smoother than our first run.
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Each table has it's own power block that will control the hydroponic section while the lighting on all tables being controlled by the DIY Happy Room Light Controller.
For now, we are using what we have. My goal for these tables is to have a light for each table, mounted TO each table.
I spoke with Mike at Atreum Lighting about our needs in the veg room for the Veg ll tables. After giving him the table dimensions and PAR requirements (400 ppm) Mike had an idea and went to work.
Apparently, Atreum has a new board design that doesnt require a fan or a heatsink, and is based upon the tried and true Samsung LM301'S, butninstead of the 3k spectrum input flower room, a more suited 4k spectrum for veg duties. Three of these boards driven by a 185 driver will provide a 400 par canopy over twelve 5 gallon buckets. Least that's the plan. I'll highlight the build and post PAR results of the project. If solid, this will provide plenty of light and for less than half of what our current config costs to operate.
After seeing the LM301'S in action, LED is the only way to go for The Happy Cola, no doubt!
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In the meantime Sir Dank was finishing up on the beautiful tile flooring in the office. Heck. I wish I had this at home!
 
One of the neatest threads on the internet. Neat as in tidy, and neat in so fricken cool, lol!

I was a custom builder, so I love this stuff, and wish I'd had HVAC guys who were 1/2 as clever as you are!.

Used to share a space with ServePro, and they would lend us dehueys when we fucked up, lifesavers!

Santa Fe is what we'd put in crawlspaces, probably too pricey, but they are tough.
 
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