The PCB X NWHP is really sensitive to overwatering. Tip curl like an mf. Or I am awesome at overwatering. Maybe somewhere in the middle. She’s hungry too. But since I transplanted I’ve only fed her a couple times, so not a big surprise. Gave her a 1/4 feed today.
It finally happened. I paid money for something grow related that I could have and up til now have hacked.
My rationale for using a spare room to grow in is,”How much would we actually use this room if I wasn’t growing in it?” I mean, we could turn it into another bedroom for the people who stay over (three times a year) or I could use this room for something every single day. If we turned the grow room into a bedroom, it’d just be sitting there gathering dust. On the rare occasions when people crash at our place, the couch will suffice.
So just tell your wife that haha!
Haha awesome! I did something similar recently, but I bought the tent while my girl was away and set it all up before she got home. If she’s noticed it yet, she just hasn’t said anything, or she’s just assuming it one of the one’s I already had. Good luck with the wife! Glad I found your journal, gonna tag along if that’s cool.
I don’t think it will be too hard to convince her. I actually had various super shitty hack grow boxes/tents in there before. Problem being it was the bedroom at the time, and light leaks and fungus gnats and top dressing with various dried organic nutes that smell like dead animals made it way less than bedroom friendly haha. So I moved to the basement and got comfortable. Then the bedroom moved, and this became the “spare” room. Her sewing table, our bureaus etc. Coincidently has also become the only cat free room upstairs, which it wasn’t when it was the bedroom. Also I think her succulents are gonna end up in there this winter, so it’s place as a plant room is basically assured, at least in my mind haha. But yeah, I mentioned it (moving the grow upstairs) and got some side eye, so there will be some convincing needed. Get her a nice rack for her plants or something. Couple fancy succulents before it’s too cold to ship them, idk. I think once I set it up and show her it isn’t a shameful derelict setup she’ll be down, even without bribery. Some of my past setups looked like Dr Seuss burned one and diyed a tent lol. But I like to get her things anyway so this will be a fine excuse haha.
But yeah, she’s a big supporter of me growing. She’s doesn’t smoke often anymore, but she’s had dispo shit and had mine, and knows which she would rather smoke lol. Funny story, when we bought the house she told me to insulate the 10x10 room in the basement ( this is the room I grow in now) and use the whole thing to grow. I foolishly said “that’s too ambitious, I’m gonna make a ghetto ass panda film and reflectix tent like I always have before”. Dumbass I am. And now she has claimed half the basement room, and I mean really claimed it, so here I am trying to sneak back upstairs under cover of night lol.
@iamyou_youareme, come on in, there’s almost always some plant snuff porn on display haha
Wait. So why can’t you just set up the tent in the basement? Or are you planning on continuing to use the basement AND adding the spare room? That’s what I’d do haha.
So I could set the tent up in the basement, but it starts getting mighty cold down there come January. To the point that during lights out time I’m dropping down into the 50s even with some electric heat added. Last winter I was using almost as much energy for heat as for light! And we are getting hit with like a 40% increase in electricity rates now too, so that’s extra incentive to try to put as much electricity into photons as possible. I would likely keep my sils in the reflectix tent in the basement and try to run autos and or veg, I think with the shorter lights off time I can avoid it getting too cold. And ideally I would have some photos flowering upstairs in the spare room, in the new tent.
The flip side of that is the spare room is hot af in the summer, and during that time the basement is just about perfect.
Just got the tent in. Built it in the spare room, and you know what, I decided it is way too fucking big to be in there haha. My wife was like “Yeah, it’s pretty big, but I know it’s cold down there” and I stopped her and was like “Nah, that looks fucking assy”. So to the basement we go.
Two walls of the basement room are the foundation, one is to the basement, and one is to a room that has a garage door and no insulation. So I’ll probably just grab some foam boards and do the wall to the room with garage door, that’s where the cold really come in from. I do really hate foam, but such is life haha.
Also, I feel like a big dumb idiot, but it only just occurred to me that I will be able to run alternating light schedules and not worry about, because this is an actual tent, not a POS, and it will actually be light tight. So that’s one more thing on my side, I’ll always be able to have some lights on for heat.
Second Chocolate Blitz, 10 weeks flower.
Beautifully done!
@potpotpot I grow in the crawlspace and the winter temps can go down to 50°F. The plants may grow a little slower, but not noticeably.
Air infiltration is the biggest culprit for cold spaces (I used to do this stuff for a job). I love foam board! 3 of my grow spaces are made of it.
If it’s just the one wall, and you can afford it after getting that high dollah tent, you could do two layers of 1/2 foam with the joints staggered. Spray can expanding foam any gaps at the ceiling, floor, intersecting walls, any where there’s a gap.
Add more layers if needed.
Our air handler is in the crawl, so I disconnected one vent line to the floor above, and that helps keep the crawl semi-conditioned.
I also have foam board under all the grow chambers, and raise up the pots if I can.
I am such a clumsy slob, I would trash a bedroom… the crawl doesn’t care 
I agree, that plant looks mighty tasty, potpotpot. Pretty sure I’m gonna have to plant some of those
seeds next run haha.
@minitiger and @Moka, thanks guys, I just try to kill them slowly and hope the genes reward me with the sticky icky haha.
My wife said the one I chopped yesterday smells like a litter box. I’m ok with that haha.
You know, now that you mention it I remember seeing your foam grow boxes in you log and saying to myself “damn, that’s a good idea” haha.
Couple questions from an insulation rookie. So the wall I want to insulate is a stud wall with drywall on both sides, no insulation in the cavity in the wall. I’m not gonna cause myself condensation problems if the “garage” side of the wall is 20* and the grow room side is (optimistically haha) 65*? I can just put the foam right against the drywall on the grow room side of the wall? Don’t need any air gaps or anything? Not second guessing you, just no clue what I’m doing in this regard and know that you do know what you’re doing haha.
I have old fashioned single pipe steam heat, so no chance to sneak some heat down to the basement unfortunately. One thing that whacked me last winter was I switched to an electric hot water heater, so the big ass oil burner runs like 1/2 as often. And that thing bumps off a lot more heat to the basement than the electric. Good for my oil bill, bad for my plants haha.
The only 1/2” I see at the big stores is unfaced, I do see 1” foil faced, but that’d be big bucks. I’ll call the local guys and see if they have the 1/2 faced. Gotta be faced for me, I hate working with all things crumbly and dusty haha.
As far as the “high dollah”, you know I bought the cheap one haha. And it was on sale! And still I had to the pry the money from my claw lol.
And your dead right about the mess factor of working upstairs too. Watering plants in a room with a hardwood floor feels like defusing a ticking bomb haha. And when I did it before I was “organic” so no runoff to deal with either.
There’s different foams. The messy one is the EPS polystyrene (Expanded PS)… the stuff of cheap foam coolers. Makes little balls of impossible to clean up crap when you cut it.
XPS is extruded, and a more rigid, no balls. doesn’t need to be faced. It’s the pink stuff at HD. There’s also polyiso, which is rigid, and usually faced. Neither are crumbly or dusty, lol!
The reason for 2x layers is to stop as much air infiltration as cheaply as possible. One layer would do, but all the seams need to be sealed.
Obviously, to do a wall like that, you’d strip the rock, air seal the gaps with spray foam, and put rockwool between the the studs, then re-rock. But, that’s a lot of messy work, unless you want the basement for future living space.
Instead, you could strap the inside wall with 1x2. More airspace, better insulative value. But I don’t think you’d need to, nor would you get condensation inside the wall. I think I’d just tack the foam board to the sheetrock, and seal all the edges. You could always add more.
I’m imagining you have a concrete slab floor, and it’s probably cold. That’s why the insulation board under the tent (s), and the raising the plants off the floor a bit.
I had a little oil-filled radiator style electric heater that would take the chill off, but my space is large and would be a bitch to section off, and I’m cheap, so I just let the plants ride it out through the winter… which isn’t too bad in NC. The plants don’t seem to mind either.
Hope that didn’t muddy the waters even further
Not at all, that was an excellent answer, thank you! I wouldn’t have even looked at the un-faced, so knowing that it isn’t all pilly(unless it’s the eps) is valuable.
And yeah, concrete floor (a dust cap really I think, wavy as heck and patchy, seems like a homeowner doing wheelbarrows full at a whack), so a hunk of foam under the plants seems like a good idea.
So throughout the course of this log I have mentioned that my room is not light tight. What I mean is that while I have the windows blocked off in the room the plants are in, the other windows in the basement are not blocked. So every morning they get the residual light from the other basement windows kind of glowing in. The grow lights come on at 11 am right now, so they get around 5 hours of this before their “day” starts.
So when I discuss plants throwing male parts and mention “not light tight”, I really mean it haha.
Happy I ran down there to take these pics, cause I really though the windows in there were well blacked out, guess I was wrong!
That’s not too bad, though. I mean, it’s difficult to tell where the plants are in those pics haha, but I’m assuming they also have, like, another “layer of protection” or something? Like some Panda Film or something?
The south-facing “wall” in my grow room is literally nothing but floor-to-ceiling windows that I covered up with Panda Film and then then those blackout curtain things. I still get a little bit of diffuse light in there, but I figure between all the shit I hung in front of the wall of windows haha and the tents themselves, that’s probably enough. It’s kinda crazy, though, because when I go outside and look at the grow room, certain areas of the Panda Film look all shredded, like I took a fork and dragged it across it or something. I’m assuming that’s because of years of exposure to the sun, but it’s still kinda bizarre.
I probably oughta replace it haha…
For a long time, I figured I had all my light holes blocked, until I went in the space at dark time, and sat for 20 minutes…I found a lot of leaks!
I kinda go with the thought if you can’t read a newspaper, it’s dark enough… good luck finding a paper
Yeah, I do the same thing in my flowering tent before I move the vegging plants in there to, uh, flower haha. I guess because of the vent fan sucking the tent in, it kinda “loosens” everything up over the course of a grow. My girl zips me up inside, I have to bring my phone in there with me so I can call her and be like,”Okay! Lemme out, lemme out!” haha. It’s a whole thing…
