7's Workshop of Weed

7lpdwcaw · September 19, 2020, 8:29pm

Hello and welcome to my (not so) epic grow thread.

I was reading another thread the other day saying that this forum prefers bigger/singular threads rather than lots of the same thing, so rather than I post loads of different threads, ill just post here, my grow room is practically a living organism itself, it changes so often.

Updates

Me

My name is 7LPdWcaW, i’m from the UK, i’ve been growing since 2015. I’m terrible at coming up with usernames and I needed something anonymous so I just used a random password generator to generate me something so here we are.

Prologue

My grow room has evolved from behind my wall in a tiny ass cupboard, to a 6m x 2.5m self-built workshop with tents

My first couple grows didnt go too well in my bedroom cupboard as the roof is slanted giving me probably only like 4ft of growing height.

This grow, although I did yield buds, I harvested waaaaaay too early so those buds were terrible.

After that I decided to re-purpose my shed into a grow room. This shed came with the house when I bought it, and was, to be fair, pretty well built. Wasnt a pack shed, was built manually, but the one big problem I had with it, was it wasnt square as the boundary wall doesnt run parallel with the side of my house. That grow room had evolved massively as well. I started off with 2x 900w mars hydro blurples and ended with custom built cree cob lights (that I still use in my main tent today, after multiple rebuilds!)

I first prepped this shed my nailing board to the inside to try insulate it. I didnt use plywood, but this kind of cardboard kind of stuff, and then stapled reflector sheets to the inside. Actually worked really well! The door was a problem because it didnt create a good seal, but I solved that by adding a block of wood at the top and bottom with some storm guard, and created a “tent” like front door using thick polyethylene sheet, and velcro. The MASSIVE carbon filter and fan I bought for that space (i think they are 8inch) created such negative pressure the inner velcro door would always get sucked in tight

I grew some good shit in this shed I will probably post to this thread eventually

Found this random pano of the setup (old lights I changed for 2x rows of 5 Cree cxb3590 COB)

After that, I decided I wanted to build a new shed that utilised the entire width of my garden (before there was a shed and a summer house next to it that we were using as a shed whilst i was using the shed as a grow room!). I wanted a shed I could potentially use in the future as an entire grow space (not just tents - but thats for the future). My original plan was to build the shed with 2 rooms but I knew it would make things more complicated so I just built it and bought a tent to grow in.

The thing with me is, I like to make stuff. Im much better at making virtual stuff than physical stuff. I do my best and plan out as much as I can but things never go the way I imagine them. There’s so much to critique with the things I build that I just expect things to go wrong or not be right, but thats OK as long as they do their job and don’t cause me too much pain, its fine, although god damn if I knew what I know now, I would have just got that shed professional built and shelled out more money, but hey life is all about experience.

My original goal was to make a perpetual grow where I would veg in the square tent, then flower in another, wider tent using scrog in a veg - early flower - late flower rotation (it didnt work out go figure)

I did about 3 plants before I said fuck it and bought a 2m x 1.5m tent

Note: All information and imagery posted here by me is licensed for use under the DBAD License unless stated otherwise

Latest post

dequilo · February 9, 2020, 7:32pm

I Love Your White Dog ;):

Nice GSD

all the best

Dequilo

George · February 9, 2020, 7:41pm

Those purple lights should be forbidden , glad you found your little corner in OG, will follow from the very beguinning. Planning something already?

7lpdwcaw · February 9, 2020, 7:42pm

This is my set up as of today

The main tent

The current grow. My last grow in this tent was epic. Absolutely the best grow so far, so now i’m planning on running all same genetic in the main tent and do like 5-6 plants at a time, but try and find stable genetics.

But in the mean time im just using up some old seeds I had to fill my stock whilst I prep for that next genetic grow. Im on the hunt for a good Citrus-y strain

The EPIC 4.0 light build. Took the drivers out of the tent to help with temps. The potentiometer for one of the drivers didnt work for some reason. On my list of things to fix - but I dont dim them anyway so, its low down.

My workdesk. Its small, but is usually enough space to do what I need. I saw a thread on reddit of some guy using waterbottles and syringes for nute mixing and it has changed my life. I used to measure using a pyrex shot measuring glass, but its soo hard to get the numbers, and also not spill everything everywhere. Now with these syringes I can dip them into the bottle and pull out what I need, plus not having to use the same measuring cup for all the nutes. Currently running canna line with seasol replacing the cannaboost, and calmag, plus advance nutes Overdrive.

My other tents. One on the left will be a scrogged CBD strain, and the one on the right will be for growing some mushrooms

The left tent is currently vegging some of those random seeds while the main tent is flowering. I built a new light for this tent out of an old 900w mars. Will post that separately.

This is the right tent with some BRF jars innoculating

Treasure coast cubes with bout 1 more week to go, and Amazonian cubes with 2 weeks or so before I spawn to bulk coco substrate (in the tubs under them)

7lpdwcaw · February 9, 2020, 7:44pm

I was new and this was basically all there were for LEDs at the time. They were great at the time, I still yielded some great buds, but yeah, when I discovered COBs through reddit and Growmau5 on youtube, I shelled out the money for the parts and built one, and im extremely glad I did. All my Mars hydro blurples have burnt out chips

7lpdwcaw · February 9, 2020, 7:44pm

He’s such a baby with such a deep bark

George · February 9, 2020, 7:50pm

I am not surprised about that , there’s much literature on this forum about that subject …

7lpdwcaw · February 9, 2020, 7:55pm

So I have tried to avoid

7lpdwcaw · February 10, 2020, 6:51pm

The new grow light

On the topic of mars hydros, I really wanted to build a “quantum board” as chips these days are so much more efficient and better at light distribution than single cob chips (I cant remember reading, think it was a Growmau5 video where he said the people at Cree couldn’t understand why people were using them as grow lights because they were so terrible and a better way would be smaller cobs spread out - or could just be the Mandela effect), and I wanted to make use out of old parts so I took apart my 900w mars and got help from @anon58740919 to what chips I could use with the drivers I had and went for Bridgelux EB 2

So I designed a new light that would feature 20 of these strips, 4 drivers with 5 each attached in a series.

This is the rough design I’d be building.

So I detached everything in the old light to only have the drivers and the top bit with the switches and the hangy bits

I’ll be using the screw holes in the lid portion of the light to fix 2 angled aluminium and then fix strips to the underside of them. They dont need cooling, but the fans will still work which isnt the end of the world, plus the wiring was very well done I didnt want to undo it all. Very well built lights (except for the diodes burning out).

Caution: I am bad at carpentry and building things so nothing ever goes the way I want it to. this could have been done much better but I dont need it to be perfect and I’ll probably end up rebuilding it for a new purpose anyway so I dont need to waste time matching up every single mm

Drilling holes for the mounting brackets

I had to replace the original screws with bolts to make them properly secure

I didnt take pictures of the drilling process but this was one done and the rough layout of where each light was going to go plus their mounting holes. Lots of drilling, took me a long time. I really should invest in a drilling machine that can do perfect holes because mine are always out

Now the hard part was one, I epoxied them to the bracket. Now you’re probably wondering “why didnt you just bolt them?” thats a great question. I, in my infinite wisdom, didnt think to line up the mounting holes of the strips to the bracket and drive a bolt through all 3 layers, I was only thinking of the mounting of the underside bar. OH WELL

They all setting.

Testing the wiring. At this point I decided, because I cant dim these lights, I’d use the flower switch for half and the veg switch for the other half. So 5 on one side, and 5 on the other.

The final light. My fingers hurt a LOT after pushing those wires into those terminals

Making sure to tape up those soldering terminals!

The tent before

About 429w (give or take 20w)

After (and yes, the light is too big for the tent. Stupid me thought the tent was 1500 not 1200mm. I’ll probably end up just replacing that tent anyway, its not very good quality and has tears in it.)

248w total for 4 drivers

I might invest in a light meter to see how much output it has but I know it’ll be more than the old diodes for sure, and with half the pull.

George · February 9, 2020, 8:46pm

Much better now , your plants will love them …

Shadey · February 11, 2020, 4:52pm

It would be very difficult to do perpetual with 1 big scrog net, I would say impossible to add and remove plants in that set up. You should try super cropping its the same effect as using scrog, but you can move your plants around.

The first one is usually where you find all the problems and the second one is better and the third is usually perfect and done in half the time

I used the metal stud drywall self tapping tech screws, they work well for holding.the strips to the frame. I have my drivers out side the tent, saves energy trying to keep the tent cool with the extraction fan. Looks good though, a definite improvement on the mars

TheShowMeHomie · February 11, 2020, 5:22pm

Good tip about the syringes for measuring chemicals

7lpdwcaw · February 13, 2020, 1:23pm

First group of BRF cakes spawned to bulk 2:1 coir:cake with a layer of coir on top. One cake had some (i hope) bruising on top (probably from when I shook them). Hopefully wont end up being a contam, but I’ve got contingency with another set of jars that I will spawn next week.

7lpdwcaw · February 14, 2020, 10:08pm

a bouquet of not-quite-so flowers

7lpdwcaw · February 15, 2020, 11:12am

Second set of jars spawned to bulk. Lost half of them because of suspect contam (failed Q-tip test).

7lpdwcaw · March 14, 2020, 9:30am

Gen 12 (late 2019/early 2020)

Current main tent. Bit of a mess as I was just going nuts popping odd left over seeds I have had for years so I can start with fresh genetics and maybe phenohunt.

So far i’ve either culled or they didnt germinate:

Afghan kush x Black domina
Jack Herrer
Vanilla kush x2
Liberty haze
Black widow CBD x2
Red Diesel
Grapefruit x2
White widow
Chronic haze
Purple bud
707 Truthband
Blue cheese

I now have growing:

CBD Medgom autoflower x2 (24f)
Jack Herer (22f)
Galet OG (22f)
Chronic haze (7f)
Berries and Cheese x2 (45v) - These will be scrogged in my second tent
Blue Cheese (35v)
Amesia x OG (28v)
Uknown/Afghan (those damn free seeds from seedsman) (28v)

I tried cloning the Chronic haze but didnt work. This is my 4th cloning attempt and i’m still at a 0% success rate. I’ve tried following all the tutorials and stuff but I just cant get them to root. These ones the stems swelled up but they just didnt root so im not sure, i’ll need to do more research and try again.

https://i.imgur.com/Ed6YnrN.jpg(image larger than 1200KB)

https://i.imgur.com/QlRdFw3.jpg(image larger than 1200KB)

https://i.imgur.com/YoM5Ahl.jpg(image larger than 1200KB)

https://i.imgur.com/vEJrtj8.jpg(image larger than 1200KB)

7lpdwcaw · February 24, 2020, 6:05pm

RIP

V4vendetta · February 24, 2020, 6:20pm

I stopped shaving the substems when i clone. I just cut a clone and stick it in water - (roots in 14 days.) Keep in mind there’s enough chlorine in the local water to kill goldfish in 2 hours flat here.

7lpdwcaw · February 24, 2020, 6:38pm

I was thinking about trying that, i’ve seen people succeed with it so fuck it. I was thinking it could do with my light being too powerful also so thats another factor i need to consider

7lpdwcaw · February 25, 2020, 8:24am

babbys first pins