My stealth closet (A work in progress still)

[The Silver Bullet Special]

Alrighty well after months of planning and getting loads of info from the members here I figure I'll post up some specs and a little above shot diagram I made that my grow room will be.

My grow area will be located inside a wall with two closets that are offset. The wall is 12'x3.5'. One closet, the flower closet, is 5.5'x2' and the veg room is 6'x2' that will be blocked off to 4'x2'. The flower closet is going to have the doorway drywalled up but the closet door will still be there and will be joined to the veg closet on the inside of the closet. The veg closet wont have anything done to it other than having the lights hanging and an oscillating fan placed in there to move the air around. The passive intake to the flower room will be a hole inbetween the veg room and flower room to draw new air into the veg room when the closet doors are closed(they're vented bi-fold doors) Both rooms will be on their own dedicated circuits each circuit is gonna be on a 20amp breaker with 12/3 wire. I'm going to be growing in soil, NV's super soil with 3 gallon smart pots.

My equip list:
Veg lights: HTG Supply 2 Foot 4 Lamp PL-55 Tek Lamp (Two of them for the 4ft veg area) for a total of 40k lumens in a area of 4'x2'

HPS light equip:

Sunlight Yield Master II 6 Supreme AC Reflector (plantlightinghydroponics.com offers an insulated cover to go over this to help with heat will be on there also)

Plusrite 2011 - LU600 - 600 Watt Bulb from 1000bulbs giving 90k lumens in an area of 5.5'x2'

Lumatek 600W 120/240V Dimmable Electronic Ballast

Ventilation: Vortex 6 inch 449 CFM High Power Inline Fan (on a speed controller)

6inch insulated ducting.

Carbon filter (Undecided not sure which brand to go with maybe phresh or can.)

I'm still tryin to figure out what the best thing to use to hang the lights with(chain or cable locks like pro grips) and if I need to put a piece of wood up in the attic that holds the lights instead of risking it fall through the drywall.

If anyone has any input feel free to add.. I haven't actually bought anything except the veg lights and I'm waiting on taking those out till I get my seeds and supersoil cooked.

I will also post up pics of the construstion as soon as I get things ordered and underway.

 

[Hushpuppy]

Sounds and looks like a solid plan to me. I know space is tight so you might want to give this filter a try from PLH, here's the page hXXp://www.plantlightinghydroponics.com/inch-triple-layer-singlepass-charcoal-fiber-filter-p-2365.html
I use these filters and they work really well. They attach very easily to the light flange with a rubber gasket that you tighten down on it to seal it. I set one on top of my drying cabinet over the exaust hole and it eliminated the smell coming out of the cabinet when it was completely full of bud and was reeking. The nice thing is that they can be cleaned perodically so that they are able to be used for a long time.

I really like the rope ratchets but I would hook them into a board if I had to cut a couple of boards to fit and go into the attic and set them in place and nail them to the existing boards.

 

[tastyness]

Looks really spiffy. I :heart: the diagram.
What do you have planned for walls and flooring? I know one of the things I like best about the tent is that spills clean up in a jiffy. On the floor of my veg area (wood particle board) not so much.

I just bought that same 600W bulb from them. Waiting for it to arrive.

Any chance of getting some sort of drainage in there? I know that is one thing I have planned for my next setup. So that I have some easy place to flush plants. And to make it easy to clean up after cloning and mixing nutes. But your using super soil, so just water right? Right now I use the shower, but notice every time I move them around there is always bound to be a little damage and stress. It would be cool to have a little station for that.

Also my veg room is up a set of loft stairs. Forgot when I was planning about having to carry water up there. Luckily the 10L jugs are pretty easy but will make sure I think of something better for my next setup.

 

[pcduck]

Great idea on doing the sketch and research prior to building.

Just a thought but you may want to decide how you will hang your reflector.

Hanging it for the best coverage in a 2' x 5.5' gives you only about 2" on each side, to run your duct work/elbows. Could cause problems.

Oh and I really like the rope ratchets, so much easier then chains

 

[The Silver Bullet Special]

Looks really spiffy. I :heart: the diagram.
What do you have planned for walls and flooring? I know one of the things I like best about the tent is that spills clean up in a jiffy. On the floor of my veg area (wood particle board) not so much.

Thanks! I plan on getting a piece of that foam insulation cut to the size of the floor and put a 2-3inch lip and lining it with white vinyl to hold any water if it spills from the saucers.

The walls are already up because I'm using preexsisting closets I'm just sealing off the doorway to the one in the bottom of the diagram and making a hidden entryway in between the two rooms.

Any chance of getting some sort of drainage in there? I know that is one thing I have planned for my next setup. So that I have some easy place to flush plants. And to make it easy to clean up after cloning and mixing nutes. But your using super soil, so just water right? Right now I use the shower, but notice every time I move them around there is always bound to be a little damage and stress. It would be cool to have a little station for that.

Also my veg room is up a set of loft stairs. Forgot when I was planning about having to carry water up there. Luckily the 10L jugs are pretty easy but will make sure I think of something better for my next setup.

I wont need drainage for my set up and flushing isnt necessary Hemp Goddess and a few others here dont flush their plants and say they never notice a difference, only time you'd really need to flush is right before you go to flower and if you had a toxic salt build up in your plants.

Since I'm growing in organic super soil, theres no salt build up and flushing would be absolutely detrimental by rinsing all the nutes and killing microbes in the soil.

An idea you might consider if your wanting to fix the hassel of carrying water up into your loft area... if you have a closet or room under your stairwell where no one can see it have a tote with a pump and run PVC piping up through your floor to a bigger holding tank and you just pour your water you want pumped up to your holding tank for your clean water ready to be ph'd and add nutes. Make sure you get a strong enough pump to push up that high though.

If you dont mind holes in the side of your house you could make a sink type thing that runs out into your yard by making a stand out of pvc with a tub with a hole in the bottom for the drain hole and run it down and out the side of your home into the yard (much like your AC condenser drain pipe that runs condensed water from ur AC out side the house or down your drain.) You can make a thread and members can add to this.

 

[The Silver Bullet Special]

Great idea on doing the sketch and research prior to building.

Just a thought but you may want to decide how you will hang your reflector.

Hanging it for the best coverage in a 2' x 5.5' gives you only about 2" on each side, to run your duct work/elbows. Could cause problems.

Oh and I really like the rope ratchets, so much easier then chains

Cool I'll go with the ratchets then, The ducting is going to be the biggest pita If the filter that Hush told me about works as good as people say I would just have it hooked to the hood itself. I was kind of thinking running a 45 degree elbow right off the hood and ducting straight up to the fan that will be blowing exhaust up into the attic and vented out of this side vent I have in the attic. It's gonna be one of those thigns that will be worked out once I get all the stuff needed.

 

[The Silver Bullet Special]

The nice thing is that they can be cleaned perodically so that they are able to be used for a long time.

About how long of a life span do they have and how often would it need to be cleaned, and how would you clean it just wash it out with water?

 

[tastyness]

SilverBullet- great idea about the pump-however we're a rental and they won't even let us hand pictures on the wall! Luckily that hasn't slowed me down so far.
For the walls I was wondering if you were doing mylar or white paint or one of the insulation boards I've been reading about.
Flushing for me is simply when I've over done something to my plants- since I'm still a newbie there are times when I need to easily be able to undo something I might have done. I agree that flushing isn't something that needs to be done as part of normal procedures. I totally rely on experience of THG and others here in deciding what I should do next and that's made for some amazing looking plants so far.
Your new area is gonna rock!

 

[The Silver Bullet Special]

Those insulation boards, Ive read, dont reflect as much light as advertised and also mylar can be a real pain so I'm just going with a flat white paint. Yeah this will be my first ever grow I've attempted, just gotta wait for my seeds to come in and get the equip ordered.

I owe alot of thanks to the members here, they saved me from having to deal with my friend that was gonna coop with me but he wants to use LED's so I decided to go solo. I was going to try hydro but I think this super soil will be my best way to go with balancing a full time job untill I get in the groove of growing lol just add water and watch.

Thats crazy you cant even hang pictures! If you start up a thread on some ideas or questions on how to easily transport your water or even the setup of your room in this forum then I'm sure other will be able to help you I'll keep thinkin on another way myself. Good luck on gettin things figured out, stay safe!

 

[Hushpuppy]

I'm honestly not sure of the lifespan on them as I have only started using them this year. I wash my filters out with the waterhose after I have taken an air hose to blow out the dust. The key is to back-blow with both air and water so that you push the material out the way iit came in. I wash mine out after each run so that they only are used for 8-10 weeks before being cleaned out. Then you have to let them sit and dry for a few days. I am going to order a couple more so that I can swap them out and clean them when it is more time convenient

 

[The Silver Bullet Special]

Great if I can get one to last me till I get a little more bank roll saved up then I'll definitely buy another one or two, and actually you gave me an awesome idea for my drying area. I never thought of putting one on my drying box I had been bangin my head on that problem of smell for a while, I was just going to hang the buds in the flower room, but now I think I may make a cabnet right above the veg lights since those wont be anymore than 3-3.5ft above the floor and I can use that cablet to hang the lights on.

If you had a pic already of your drying cabnet with the filter on it still would you mind throwin it up on here if not what fan(type) did you use to pull air through it; whether its an inline fan or one of those computer fan type things that are on PLH that claim to push alot of air?

 

[Hushpuppy]

Hey, here's a pic of my drying cab. I made it out of a store-bought book-shelf type of cabinet. I just closed it in and cut a few holes in it so that I could put the fan in the little box on top and have an air drying compartment in the bottom. The fan is a large computer fan from radio shack that I wired up to a plug-in power supply(real simple, 2 wires). I don't have a pic with the filter on the cabinet but all I do is just set it up on top of the fan box which has a 4" hole cut in it. The filter is 6" so it just sits over the hole. The fan doesn't push hard because you don't want a lot of air blowing through the drying cabinet. You want just enough to remove the moisture as it comes out of the buds and replace the moist air with fresh air. I have mine on a timer which I adjust according to how much I have in the cabinet at one time. If it is only half full then I only run the fan periodically, but if the cab is full then I run the fan constantly for several days.

 

[The Silver Bullet Special]

Oh thats pretty cool, I thought drying them layin down didnt give you as dense buds (to me it doesnt really matter) so I was just gonna try and hang them but I think that cabnet is better for the space I have to work with.

So with the filter sitting on the top the air still passes through it somewhat decently? I thought with a weak air flow that the fan would just be restricted by filter and not move the air out.

 

[Hushpuppy]

I have not had any trouble with the air passing through the filter. I can hold my hands around the filter and feel the air passing through it. I think it may actually work better to control the air flow so that I am not creating a breeze within the cabinet. The fan is fairly strong for a computer fan.

I have never hung my buds as I like to de-stem them while trimming so that I don't have to handle them again later. I should probably try to hang them some and see if there is a real difference.

 

[The Silver Bullet Special]

Hmm sounds like a good experiment I may have kind of like a mix of both in the crying cabinet that I'm going to make. Hang the big colas and lay the smaller ones down. How often do you rotate if at all since it's screen.

 

[Hushpuppy]

For smaller buds, I don't rotate them. Bigger, thicker, or dense buds I rotate every other day until I see that they are getting dry enough that they aren't mashing down against the screen. If they look like they aren't mashing down against the screen then I don't bother to adjust them

 

[The Silver Bullet Special]

Okay cool thanks Hush!