Grow Room Setup For Weed

Sometimes when demand exceeds supply it’s time to step up your game and increase production and so I needed to set up a new grow closet. I call it my super closet, partly because it’s bigger than my other grow closet and partly because I am hoping for super harvests.

I learned how to grow weed in a closet by trial and error. I will tell you about my grow room set up, what gear I chose and why. By sharing some of what I have learned it will hopefully help take the learning curve out of how to grow weed in your closet.

Grow Room Ventilation

If there is just one thing that I would pass on, it is that proper ventilation is the most important thing for a closet grow. It is more important than your lighting or your grow system or anything else.

Temperature and humidity control is important for successfully growing marijuana in any grow room set up but it is absolutely critical if you are growing in a closet. With such a small area things can quickly get out of control.

You must have a way to get fresh air in and hot, humid air out. Fresh air can be passive like under a door but you need to have an active exhaust. Whether that means cutting a hole in a wall or ceiling or venting into the adjoining room or some other way you have to have it.

My Super Closet Grow Room

My grow closet measures 8 x 2 feet and has sliding doors across the front. My other grow closet produces well but keeping the heat down is hard especially during the summer. Because of the doors on this closet there is room for lots of air to enter. In addition the room it is in has 2 large windows.

I have set my new grow room up to run days and the other runs at night. I did this to limit electrical load but it also means I will always have plants to play with any time of day. This closet is in a bed room that stays dark at night but as an added security measure my doors are baffled with overlapping panda film to prevent any light leaks.

Adequate Ventilation

I wanted to have adequate cooling and I needed a quiet fan too. I think it is better to buy a larger fan than you think you need and throttle it down with a speed controller to make it quieter and control temperatures. So I chose a 8 inch Soler & Palau TD-200S from their silent series. It moves about 530 cfm on high or 409 cfm on low with no static pressure so its actual numbers will be a bit less.

This picture of my Soler&Pilau in line fan. I have reduced it to 6 inch ducting. It is a monster with the reducers it comes in at 36″ long and about 17 pounds

It isn’t silent but compared to other fans it is very quiet. I think once I insulate the ducting and add a carbon scrubber it will be really quiet and if not I can run it on low or get a fan speed controller for it. So far I am loving it. It pulls in so much air that the leaves are dancing even without an oscillating fan.

Odor Control

Odor control is important and although I love the smell of weed I don’t want anyone else getting a whiff. I am all about stealth growing. Even though I am 100% legal I don’t want anyone to know what I am doing unless I choose to tell them. I decided to go with a 6×24 inch Phresh filter rated at 550 cfm. I am tempted to go with the 8″ x 24″ rated at 750 cfm because the price really isn’t that much more but they are heavier and my ceiling is just sheet rock. The scrubber will be going in within the next few weeks so I have a bit of time to make a final decision.

You can run a larger filter on a smaller fan and it will just last longer. But if you run a large fan on an undersized filter the air will pass through too fast to be effectively deodorized. The reason I chose Phresh filters is because they use superior activated carbon, weigh less and last longer. No, it’s not sales hype, it is true that Australian activated carbon is superior to other types and can last 2 years or more.

Grow Closet Lighting

I know people grow with CFLs and LEDs but if you want the best bud you need to grow with high pressure sodium bulbs. I am using 1000w Eye Hortilux bulbs in my grow room because they give the best growth and have superior light spectrum and PAR. Don’t be fooled by lumen ratings. Lumens are what the human eye can see but PAR is what plants can use.

I chose a medium Adjust A Wing Avenger for a reflector. I would have liked to get the large one but it wouldn’t fit in my closet. No matter, with wings set full width and a 1000w bulb the coverage and light uniformity is excellent. I have air cooled Blockbusters in my other grow closet and they work great but the glass can be a PITA to clean and it does cut your light by about 10% even if spotless.

Took this laying on my back. You can see it just fits. You can also see part of my fan just above it. Also decided to leave the closet rod in because it could come in handy for tying up taller strains.

I chose a SolisTek Matrix 1000w digital ballast to run my lights. They are heavy duty and have a built in timer. They also have an excellent track record for being reliable. Very pleased and highly recommend these. I have 2 Phantom 600w in my other grow and they are also great units but I am glad I bought a 1000 w ballast.

I was thinking about running 2 600 watt ballasts and hoods in my new super closet because it is 8 feet long but decided to go 1000w because I could dim them to 600 anyway and the 1000s don’t cost much more than the 600 w ballasts. As it turns out I will only need the one hood and light for complete coverage. Because my closet is narrow and lined with panda film there is plenty of light being reflected everywhere.

 My Coco Grow System

I am growing in a coco/perlite mix maybe about 25 -35% perlite. I am growing in beds. I used 2′ x 3′ mixing tubs from Home Depot for containers. They are cheap at about $12 and durable. For this grow they are set on the floor and I will hand water. But in the future I will set them up to drain into a reservoir and run a recirculating drip system.

Here are some addition pictures. The plants are Cinderella 99 clones and this is their first day of 12/12 lighting. The larger plants in my RainForest are 2 C99 and a Sugar Punch mother plants that I have renewed but I decided might as well flower them too.

So there you have it a rundown of my new grow closet set up. I will be growing Cinderella 99 for its maiden voyage and will be documenting the grow. Hope you found this useful and if you did please share.

This is an honest Hydrofarm Active Air 6 inch Inline Fan Review.

I just purchased this fan from Amazon and will give you the lowdown on this duct fan.

This 6 inch Hydrofarm inline fan is rated at 400 CFM(cubic feet per minute).

I have seen some sellers rate it at around 440 cfm and this may be true but the box says 400 so that is what I would expect to get out of it.

The packaging is quite simple with the fan wrapped in bubble wrap and mounting brackets underneath the fan on the bottom of the box.

I have to say this is a very solid and sturdy little fan. The housing is powder coated steel and it feels like if you drop this fan it will do more damage to the floor than to itself.

It also has a nice heavy duty cord and comes completely assembled so once you mount it the fan is ready to go. So I plugged it in and I will tell you this little fan really can move some air. The manufacturer promises quiet operation but we all have different ideas of what quiet is.

How Loud Is The Active Air 6 inch Inline Fan?

I found a video that compares Active Air, Vortex and Ecoplus 6 inch inline fans. The Active Air in line fan was trhe quietest of these 3 popular brands. However this fan is not quiet by any means as you will see in the video.

Most of the fan noise is actually caused by moving air so all fans will be quieter once the duct work is in place. You will also notice in the video that these fans are mounted on a wood table. Hanging your inline fan by bungee cords will help eliminate vibrations and make your fan quieter.

Other options to quiet an inline fan are placing it in a wooden box with soundproof foam and using a duct muffler. Here is a short thread on soundproofing a fan.

Another option is to run your fan with a fan speed controller and this will definitely make it quieter. It is fairly common practice to buy a fan larger than you need for your grow room and then run it at lower speed.

This fan should have enough power to cool 2 6 inch hoods easily but I bought mine to run a homemade swamp cooler I built. It is upside down in this picture but you can see it fits quite nicely on a bucket lid.

Unfortunately this fan was just too loud for my apartment and the way I was using it didn’t really allow me to do any sound proofing. It is a great little fan but I will probably sell it and get something quieter and a whole lot more expensive.

Should You Buy The Active Air 6 inch Inline Fan?

If you are looking for an inexpensive little powerhouse this is a great fan providing you are not running a stealth grow. If you are willing to spend some time and money quieting it down you may even be able to make it work for that.

I was willing to take a chance on it because of the price and I think this fan is a great value. But I am running my cooler with a Soler and Palau TD 100x which puts out much less air but is very nearly silent.

If stealth is your goal I would recommend Soler and Palau fans wholeheartedly. I have 2 of them and they are very quiet and have been running them for years with no trouble.

This 6 inch fan is extremely quiet and puts out H:333 cfm, L: 239 cfm. aLL S&P fans can be wired to run on high or low speed.

This is an 8 inch Soler&Pilau in line fan that puts out H: 530 cfm, L: 409 cfm. If you want a 400 cfm fan this is a great choice and you wont need a speed controller for it. You can buy 8 to 6 inch reducers for under $10 each if you run a 6 inch system

Buy The Hydrofarm Active Air 6 Inch Inline Fan On Amazon

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If your grow room is getting too hot or the humidity is too low a homemade swamp cooler may be just what you need to help control your growing environment.

Air conditioners are expensive to buy and run and they can be noisy too. I needed to do something about the temperatures in my grow room but an air conditioner just wasn’t practical for my situation. Also when the lights are on my humidity is very low at about 20-25% and an A/C would just make this even worse and require adding a humidifier and I don’t have room for both.

Thankfully a diy swamp cooler not only takes care of both these problems, but can be silent, is cheaper to run and very easy to build. I already had a spare fan and a bucket so all I needed was to buy an evaporative cooler pad which cost me about 15 bucks.

Here are a few pics of my homemade air cooler:

The first pic uses a 4 inch Soler and Palau TD 100x that moves 100 cfm and is whisper quiet. Read my review of the soler and palau tdx 100

This picture uses a Hydrofarm Active Air 6 inch In-Line Fan rated at 400 CFM. BTW the fan is upside down in this picture but you can see it fits very nicely on top of the bucket.

How did my diy air cooler work? Well in a room that was 79 degrees it was putting out 68 degree air at 77% humidity. Inside my grow room the temps don’t get above 82 and the humidity stays in the mid 30s with lights on and mid to upper 40s with lights off.

My temps have been too high. I run 2 600 w blockbuster hoods and a 300 cfm fan. I run at night when it is cooler but even still in the summer when it is hot outside temps can get into the high 90s.

The plants can handle it just fine but my buds are not as dense as they should be for my summer grows. Also plants cant breathe right when humidity is too low. This makes them have to drink more and work harder and affects yields.

These numbers are for the small tdx 100 fan. The active air fan is a beast and I am sure it would do better but it is too loud for a stealth grow in an apartment. I have a tdx 150 its really quiet and am using it for an exhaust fan and moves 300 cfm. I will use to update this cooler. But before I do I will be replacing it with a td 200 that moves 538 cfm. I expect this will give me another 10 degrees of cooling.

Here is my swamp cooler keeping some young Biker OG Kush cool:

Swamp Cooler DIY – How To Build A Swamp Cooler

I looked online and found several homemade swamp cooler bucket videos and designs. My first diy evaporative cooler followed these plans but proved to be inadequate for a grow room. For one thing the bucket didn’t hold enough water to get through a 12 hour cycle and pulling the lid off to refill it was a royal pain in the ass too.

After thinking about how to build a swamp cooler that would work for my grow room I came up with the idea to place a bucket inside an 18 gallon Rubbermaid tote. This gave me plenty of water. Originally the pump was inside the bucket and I couldn’t accurately tell how much water was in the bucket either. So I placed the pump inside the tote where I could see it and make sure it wouldn’t run dry. I am using an Eco Plus pump rated at 300 gph. I am thinking I may want to replace it with the 400 gph model.

To build your own homemade swamp cooler you will need:

• 5 gallon bucket
• 5 feet 1/2″ tubing
• 300 – 400 gph eco plus pump
• 1/2″ tee fitting
• 18 gallon Rubbermaid tote
• 100 CFM or better fan
• filter pad
• zip ties
• ducting – optional but can be used to direct air flow

I will post links to Amazon below these pictures so you can buy this stuff. You may already have everything you need but the evaporative cooler pad is hard to find.

First you will need to cut a length of tubing and connect it together with the tee fitting. Make it a bit smaller, maybe 1/2 to 1 inch smaller than the inside diameter of the bucket. The actual size is not critical.

I drilled 3/16″ holes every half inch around the bottom and also around the side of the tubing that faces in. You can play with is spacing or the hole size if you want. The important thing is to get an even flow of water dripping down the pad.

Here is a picture of the pad. You can see the tube going down into the bottom bucket and out through the holes in the very bottom of the bucket. The pad I bought was large enough to do 2 buckets. It was hard to cut with a razor so I used a pair of scissors instead.

The pad is folded over the loop of tubing and secured with zip ties.

Pump on bottom of pad. This pic is from my first prototype. If you want the pump in the tote you will need a longer piece of tubing than this.

Here is a pic of the bucket. It’s not pretty because I used a cheap hole saw that tore as much as it cut. The hole size isn’t important but you want a lot of air to be able to pass through the pad.

There are 2 holes in the bottom of the bucket to let water in from the tote and you can see the tubing the pump will be attached to.

A look down the center. The pad kept sagging down so I eventually zip tied it to the sides of the bucket so it would stay all the way up. Here is a picture of the bucket and pump sitting inside the tote.

The lid is snapped on and you can see it fits up against the top of the cooling pad. I cut the 6 inch hole for the fan with a razor. This lid had rings in the center so all I had to do was follow them and I got a really good cut out for the fan.

I love these Eco Plus pumps. They are cheap and run forever.

This pad is like a plastic foam and can make 2 swamp coolers. It’s cheap but hard to find and better than paper pads some coolers use.

I love Soler & Palau fans. They are extremely quiet and can be set to run on 2 speeds. This one is the Soler & Palau TD-100X it is 4″ puts out 135/100 cfm

The 6 inch TD 150 puts out 293/218 cfm

This is a 6 inch Soler & Palau TD-150S. The S stands for silent and it has special baffling that makes it a super stealth version from the Soler & Palau Silent Series that puts out 333/239 cfm. It cost more but if stealth is your goal this is the quietest fan you will ever find.

It moves a lot of air very quietly. It is a great grow room fan too and I actually use the 8 inch version in my newest grow closet. It really is super quiet and keeps my temperatures way down so in my larger closet I don’t even need a swamp cooler.

Enjoy Building Your DIY Swamp Cooler

Building a homemade swamp cooler is a great project. It is simple to do and relatively inexpensive. You can tweek this design to fit your grow room. You can change fan sizes to fit your room. My room is small, 3 x 6 but even with a small 100 cfm fan I am getting 10 degrees of cooling.

Please remember that these are evaporative coolers and not air conditioners. They work best in low humidity situations. The lower the humidity in your grow room the better they will work.

Here is a quick video tutorial I made on building a swamp cooler:

So now you know how to make a homemade swamp cooler for your grow room. Go forth and chill!

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I will be growing in coco with a recirculating drip system. Most coco grows are drain to waste, which seems like a waste of nutes to me. I know recirculating coco is possible there are a few growers who do it. But there is very little information on how to do it.

The argument is that if it is dialed in drain to waste coco will use less nutrients than a recirculating system. I am just not buying that. So although drip systems are fairly common in coco coir grows, most systems do not recirculate nutrients.

But I believe it can be done. The key is to carefully monitor the nutrient levels in the reservoir. The other key is to treat coco like what it really is – a hydroponic medium. Most growers treat coco like it was soil, which it definitely is not.

Growers often wait for it to dry out before watering again but in reality coco will perform best if nutrients are continually flowing through it.

To that end I think a 50/50 coco perlite mix would be ideal for a recirculating coco drip system. When nutrients don’t continually flow through coco salt build up occurs. There are many forum posts that say Drip Clean at 1 ml a gallon will stop salt build up in coco. But I am not sure that will be necessary.

Growing In Coco Is Hydroponics

It is important to understand a few things about coco fiber because it has some unique properties. Most hydroponic medium like perlite or hydroton has no or extremely low CEC (cation exchange capacity) For more detailed info on CEC there is an article here.

Basically, CEC refers to a soil’s ability to hold onto essential nutrients and provide a buffer against soil acidification. The higher the CEC, the more nutrients it can hold so a clay or silt based soil can hold much more than a sandy soil for example.

This is important if you’re growing coco because it has a fairly high CEC for a hydroponic medium. So coco tends to build up high levels of potassium and it also will hold on to calcium and magnesium. That is why coco nutrients will have lower K values than regular nutrients and cal/mag supplementation is often necessary. A very good article on coco hydroponics can be found here.

The problem is figuring what is in your reservoir. You may test at 800 ppm but the question is 800 ppm of what. Well chances are there is significantly less calcium, magnesium and potassium than what was in the original mix. And that is why recirculating coco systems can be difficult to manage and are usually avoided. Still, I am going to give this a try.

First I should say I am using Canna Coco bricks. Some bricks are poor quality and high in salt too. But Canna bricks come out just like the stuff in the bag. They are low salt and precharged. I tested mine and they were at about 400 ppm and pH 6.2. I then flushed out all nutrients from the coco so I could start with a clean slate. I probably didn’t need to do this but again, 400 ppm of what?

My coco was mixed 50/50 with coarse perlite to improve drainage and prevent over watering. I think the large amount of perlite will limit the amount of nutrients that get stored and allow me to run a pretty much continuous drip without any drainage problems.

Building My Recirculating Coco Drip System

Since this is a test run for my next Biker Kush grow I did not want to reinvent the wheel. I wanted to test some Heavy 16 and Aptus products and that was not practical in my aeroponic system.

However I was easily able to convert my aeroponic totes over to a recirculating coco system. I simply removed the misting heads and lined the totes with mosquito netting to keep the coco medium in place.

You can see my previous Biker Kush grow hanging to dry. The lights were only on a short time while I set things up.

Here are my totes. I am using my complete aeroponic set up minus the misting heads. System is running. The water in bottom is because my res is filled higher than drain holes right now. Mosquito netting being put in. I used a 6 x 12 foot piece that cost $7 at a local fabric shop.I pulled it up and flattened it out by wrapping it around my fittings.Totes were filled with a 50/50 coco perlite mix. I used a coarse grade perlite with larger chunks. All settled in and filled. It is about 9 inches deep. Here are my Biker Kush clones waiting to be planted. These Biker girls are home and tucked into their new beds nicely.Here is the Biker Kush 3 days later and just about doubled in size. I guess they like their new home.

I am running a 1 minute on and 10 minute off cycle right now 24 hours a day. Everything is moist but not wet or soggy. These ladies are under 720 watts right now 24 hours a day. In about a week they will get topped and switched to 12/12 to start flowering.

My Aquatec 8800 is rated at 5 gallons per minute wide open, but I doubt it is putting out much more than half that because of the fittings. Still adjusting things, and when the plants get larger I may need to change the cycle but for now all is good.

My reservoir was filled with 5 gallons to keep it below the drain holes. The totes may hold a gallon in reserve because they never drain totally. I added a 900 ppm nutrient mix of CaliMagic and Heavy 16 flower and the next day it was down to 500 ppm which is pretty close to what I flushed out of the coco.

I have topped up the res with more full strength nutes and brought it up to 600 ppm. Then added Cal/Mag until I hit 900 again. It was down to 700 the next morning. I know that between the coco and the fact OG Kush is a cal/mag whore that I will be adding it back quite often. I plan on replacing the res about every 2 weeks like a regular hydro grow.

I now have full documentation for growing in coco with a recirculating drip system in my new Biker Kush grow since these plants were flipped.