Turbo Bucket's Take On RADDWC: Grow Room Build-Up

Temps, RH, lights and nutes will all have to be dialed in before CO2 is economical. Most pros only use CO2 in late flower. If it were my money I'd go with lights and controlling environment.
 
Right. There's where I'm stuck. I can really only afford AC or lights at this point. Winter time more light is no problem. But coming up to hot season it could potentially present issues.

One cheater thought I had was to add more light and if temps get into the 80's I could run a couple co2 bags to get through the heat and back into cooler weather. It's not a permanent solution but I was thinking it could help make the summer growable.

I'm just not sure how much they will raise ambient concentrations with a fully air cooled setup. Like you said, probably just a waste of money, but I only need it to help through two harvests before temps get tolerable again. Is there a chance it would raise ambient co2 levels enough to get them through the heat? Probably not.

I feel like I'm stuck right now until I can do more lights and active cooling or wait until this fall for more lights
 
Well I’ll be ... this is quite the impressive journal my friend . It has been amazing to sit and read the last 3 hrs I am very impressed with your results. Can’t wait to see more, and learn more then what I already have

:passitleft:
 
You could build a poor mans AC if you only need it for a month or so.
Take a cheap styrofoam cooler. Cut a hole on both sides. Stick 1 or 2 frozen gallon jugs of water in it. A fan blowing air through one side and out the other. Change jugs 1 or 2 times a day, I’d guess...
 
Hi @DeanWest89 :ciao: thanks for stopping by. Any questions please feel free to ask.


@BobbyZ
Not a bad thought but my humidity is usually already 50-60% I'd hate to add more water in the air which is how evaporative coolers like that work.

I have a couple old windowshakers but it's a bit of a trick to fit a return and supply plenum on the front of one to use it as a ducted air handler like I wanted to do with the portable AC.

What I can do though is switch it over to a water cooled condenser and just build a shelf on the wall for it. This would allow me to keep the room the tents are in nice and cool and allows me to easily deal with the waste heat.
 
Brutha what you need is bucket chiller, cool the roots, wasting money chasing room temps. Stable root temps in dwc is where its at.
I knew a group of dwc legends a few years back smashing 2g-watt out.
Secret is root temp.
They must of tried everything you can imagine. Thats what the pros do.

Look in nature, a massive cannabis plant in 45C heat will be fine outside, as long as root temps remain stable and wet...

Chillers arent cheap, but then you dont need aircon, as long as its not stupid hot.
 
I was thinking about getting 1 bubble ponics set up ( self contained) because I do soil grows I didn’t. Want to jump into a full grow of it , I want to dial the one in and see how I like it and if I do I’d make the switch but my only issue is how much I work and I am so tired throughout the week , with my soil grow I just ph6.5-6.8 and that’s it water and forget. How much time do you spend on prepping and maintaining your system ?
 
My setup is drain to waste, feeding 4 times a day, rez water stays under 70°f for the most part.
Air temps in tents are at 75°f 60%rh lights on. Leaf temp 77°f. Room temp 68-72°f.

When summer hits the temp in the house will be 72-75°f putting tent temps up into the low 80s and leaf temps into the upper 80's.

I need to figure out a solution to seal the tents and maintain the environment, I would like to run co2 enrichment once my lighting levels are high enough.

I thought about dwc but I don't want to run anymore pumps than I have to. We're prone to power outages here and I would hate to lose a crop because they all drown. Yes I could run a generator or a battery backup for the air pumps but it's all extra money that's not vital to plant growth.

Or I can grow them in a soilless medium like Coco or pro mix with a watering system and they'll survive a couple days without water if they have to. DTW uses more water and nutrients than a recirculating system does but everytime you water you replace all the nutrient solution surrounding the roots with fresh new solution as opposed to sitting in the soup and trying to pull out only what it wants from that. I love DTW I'm honestly convinced it's the best way for me to grow.


My setup right now takes about half an hour everyday to mix nutrients and fill the rez with 20-30 gallons of water. If I wasn't carrying buckets it would be 15-20 mins to add the nutrient mix to a rez with a water supply. I run dynagrow, so it's a pretty simple mix, every Friday I run a rez of compost tea and orca which is the water soluble form of great white mychorrizae.
Peak my head in the tent, check leaf temps, real quick bug check and on with my day.

Trimming and defol is a whole different story that part takes hours which is why I skipped it for these two runs. I'll be doing a pre flip and a 3week defol for the next two runs, bud size was bigger and harvest trimming was faster, all this popcorn sucks without a good way to make concentrate from it. I thought I was getting a rosin press by now but life gets in the way.

Anyways here's the girls this morning
IMG_20190519_090545733.jpg

IMG_20190519_090545733.jpg

 
Big time pain in the back haha. My plan this time is to strip the plants UP to the same height and drop the net down to that point when I put them into the tent then spread them out till it's full and trim a couple weeks later at the 3-4 week point. Should help bud size without being a huge pain
 
Finally got everything all trimmed and jarred. It definitely took longer than the last two harvests which had been defoliated more before and during flower. Both the dry and the trimming process took almost twice as long.
The bud size was way down which wasn't a surprise but the yield was the same, another 21 jars. Short of the pound and a half mark, but consistent with three harvests in a row now at 21 jars.
Silver lining; definitely the most kief left in the bottom of the tray out of all three harvests. Yield stayed the same but looks like the frostiness may have actually increased with the terpinator. Or there's more kief because there were more nugs to trim so more trichs got knocked off. Either way, :ganjamon::blunt:
 
Hey I’d like to see your water set up outside the tent , looks stellar, I’ve always wanted to sog but would be way too much to water by hand , with what little time extra I do have any looks awesome man
 
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