Yeah man, like I said personal opinion on that one…
For co2 we use 50lb tanks… go through about 1 tank every ten days mid flower…they don’t take up much space at all… Just a corner…
We just didn’t install the fresh air damper on the AC unit so our room is sealed except for an exhaust with a back draft damper.
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When sizing the dehumidifiers remember that ~98% of the water that the plants use will end up back in the atmosphere…
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I think I may have a misconception about sealed rooms. To me sealed means there aren’t any holes. But if you’re exhausting the air, don’t you have to be bring some in as well, and if you are, how is the room sealed?
The HVAC is another area I’m not real confident about. I know what I want it to do I think. I don’t want any dirty air coming into that building at all, so I want filters, and UV-C on all the intakes. I may put filters on the room intakes too. That might be overkill, but I hate bugs, and mold, and mildew and shit, and Oklahoma is the Home of the Dust Bowl.
What I don’t know is how big it needs to be, or how to set it up for a sealed room, whatever that may mean. 
I appreciate the suggestions’ everyone. 
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You’ll want some way to evacuate co2 at night or you will get really oversized plants,. Yeah I know they say plants don’t use co2 at night, but when my room was 100% sealed we had this issue…
The back draft dampers keep things 99% sealed…
On HVAC
To get you real close use this formula:
40 btu for every SQ ft of floor space
And 4 btu for every watt of electricity you will use… add those two numbers for total btu…
Divide total btu by 12000 for ac tonage…
Example
100 sqft room with 1000w hps
40 x 100 = 4000
4 x 1000 = 4000
4000 + 4000 = 8000
8000/12000 = .667 or 2/3 of a ton of ac…
It’s better to be slightly under on tonage than it is to be over…
For dehumidifier,
You have to try to guess how much water you will be giving the plants and what interval…
So say you’ve got 10 plants, you give them 1 gal of water each every 5 days
10/5= 2
So your atmosphere should have an extra 2 gallons of water a day you’ll need to remove…
8 pints = 1 gallon
So 8 x 2 = 16
You’ll need to remove 8 pints per day at least…
On the dehumidifier it’s better to be over than under sized… As most dehumidifiers work best at 80° and 60% RH, if the room is cooler it won’t pull as much water out…
For air movement in the room I’d suggest looking into horizontal air flow…a room that size should only take 2 fans…
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I have a question about watering. IN an environment like this, is it better to water a small amount every day, or wait until they dry out some like usual? It seems it would be easier to calculate the water loss if they got the same amount every day.
Also, what are your thoughts on an automated watering system, like a drip feed? Actually, what are your thoughts on automation in general? I don’t want employees, and I don’t want to work my ass off every day. But automation isn’t cheap in any industry, and there’s a budgetary hard stop to consider.
I have one other question. How much of this information, besides the stuff that has to go into the slab, is required before I call the guy and tell him get started? All the utilities will come into the mech room, and branch from there.
Am I ready to pull the trigger?
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Watering will be dependent on a lot of things… environmental factor, strain etc… It’s a hard one to figure out…
I have raised beds, 189 plants in flower and water in approximately 200 gallons every 3-4 days…
I have 440 PPD worth of dehumidifiers and can dial in my RH pretty well…
Automation is a great labor saver, but it’s also more moving parts…
I’ll be adding a Blu mat system to my grow soon…
Your automation will depend on how you grow, blumats aren’t recommend in under 7 gal containers… problem with regular drip system is all plants are treated the same wether they need it or not, so if your environment isn’t stable you could have a few pots getting too much water and some not getting enough… Automation will be a personal choice but do some research on what it takes to setup… Esp look at length of run vs flow rate…on most drips after a certain length the pressure drops significantly…
As far as building the building, the metal shell, I think your good to go…
Just remember to plan ahead and think everything out… and remember Murphy’s law…
I literally used cardboard boxes as models… Had boxes hanging from ceilings and everywhere something was going to go making sure I had all my electrical where it needed to be…
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Also, once you have how you want to grow figured out, and if you want a blumat system you can have a blumat system professionally designed…
I believe Kisorganics Or the Sustainable village website both have a form you can fill out…
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Well, it’s sure not gonna kill me to hand water. I can get a 55 gallon barrel to mix nutes, or whatever in, and a submersible pump with a hose attachment on it.
I want to grow in soil, I’m certain of that. What I’m not certain about is what to put that soil in. Grow bags was my first thought, then I read Soma’s book, and I kinda like the way he does it. He builds wheeled beds that he fills with his soil mix, and he plants right in the bed. I cut out that chapter of the book.
Soma’s Organic Beds.pdf (2.4 MB)
I’d like to do living soil at some point and I think the beds would be great for that, and since they have wheels, moving from veg to flower would be a snap. It’s more money up-front, but it seems like the operating costs and labor would be reduced.
Does anyone grow indoors in beds? What do you think?
Thanks.
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I do living soil in big beds,
I veg in 3/4 gallon pots in a different room, transplant, then give them a week to stretch out in the beds…
In veg I just use the poly grow bags, $0.10 a piece…
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You’ll fill a 55 gal barrel several times to water a room like that especially with beds… We got a 200 gal flexi tank, it’s for a hydro set up but it was the cheapest option for 200 gallons…
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How much was it?
Would these work?
https://tulsa.craigslist.org/grd/d/mounds-275g-ibc-totes-food-grade-one/7174162788.html
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How big are your beds, and do you make them yourself, or buy them? I’ve seen these big rectangular fabric beds, and I like the fabric pots a lot, so that could be a solution.
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Have 9 4x8 and 3 4 x 4. They are the ones grass Roots fabric pots makes…
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I’m sure they would work… We didn’t have the floor space for something like that… Pretty sure the flexi tank was 150 or 180…
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Hey everyone. It’s been awhile since I posted about the new building. We’ve started taking quotes for the construction, but I’m still finalizing some elements like the 4x4 living soil beds, and the HVAC system. Fortunately, I have all of you folks to help me out which is beyond awesome.
This first part is kinda directed at you soil bed growers like @Dewb, but as always, all input is welcome. I have enough space in the grow rooms for 3 - 4x12 beds in flower, and 2 in veg. My plan is to use the Grassroots 4x4 living soil beds, and set them on wheeled platforms. The idea being that once a plant is in a bed, it never moves. When it’s done with veg, I just roll it into the flower room. Same thing at harvest, I roll it into the processing room and chop the plants, then replant the bed, and roll it back into veg.
I think it’d be perfect for a rotating harvest system. You could easily modify your planting intervals based on the optimal veg/flower times for each strain.
I’m curious what you all think about that idea? What would you do differently?
I have a couple of practical questions. I usually run 9-12 plants in 2 gal bags in my 4x4x tent, but they’re gonna get quite a bit bigger growing in a bed, and I think that’s too many. How many plants do you typically run in your beds at a given time?
That leads into my next question, I’ve always watered individual plants, but I wouldn’t think that’d be the case here. I’d think you’d want to saturate your entire bed, but you wouldn’t do that every day, so the amount of water your giving is going to vary over the plant’s lifecycle.
Every dehumidifier I’ve looked at wants to know how much water you give your plants daily in order to determine which model you need. How did you calculate that number, or am I being too literal about it? That’s a thing I have. 
I had this fantasy about a single integrated HVAC system with filtration, and UVC integration, but they want a LOT of money for those, so its mini splits and dehumidifiers here in Guitarzanland. I found these cheesy looking adhesive backed LED UV strip lights designed to fit inside the wall unit, but I’ve seen those strip lights, and they weren’t great.
https://www.freshaireuv.com/residential/mini-uv-led/
Man, I really don’t want mold, and pollen, and bugs and shit in my new rooms. There’s also a decent sized outdoor farm about 3 miles from us, and I don’t want another mule kicking in my stall, so we’re going to have the entire interior of the metal shell, walls, and ceilings, sprayed with 2" of closed-cell foam. I know the dehumidifiers have MERV filters, and you can get them for the mini splits as well. Do you think this’ll do the trick?
Thanks everyone.
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The 4*4 is a lot of soil to be rolling around all the time, especially if it been watered… About a cubic yard 700-800lbs or more I’d guess…
Plus you’ll need large doors etc…
We run 9 plants with multiple tops per 4x4…
The dehumidifier you just want close and possibly over… Yes you water the whole bed but not every day,
After initially getting the beds wet and getting plants in, We start out watering 8-10 gallons per 4x4 once a week then about mid flower every 4 days… Then backing off toward finish… Judging by what I use and what you want to do I’d say you need between 200-300 ppd… Closer to 200…
For mold etc look at innovative solutions proguards… A little pricey but well worth it, they work well… we had a little PM issue when we first started, haven’t seen a spec of it since we got one of the proguards… Power went out and it got to 97% humidity and no mold
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Hey there, Guitarzan, I see you’ve pretty much figured out what/how you wanna do this setup. I’ve done raised beds a couple times over the years but they were stationary and I just changed out the lights. but that wouldn’t work with what you’re doing. I didn’t really care for that too much myself. That does seem like it would be a lot of weight to move and like Dewb said, seems you’d need some big ass doors also… maybe smaller beds? Up to you, bro.
Seems like you’re going to have a nice solid setup, be interested in how it goes.
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Not sure how I’ve missed this post but what’s up to the Oklahomies here on OG. I’m based south of T Town. Look forward to gettin to know yall better!
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Hey! Nice to see you man. We’re just south of Muskogee. 
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We got the lock down all around t town. Nice to meet you buddy.
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