Ideal Setup For Indoor Grow

wouldnt it be a lot harder to get all the parameters correct though? You are saying maybe build 3 rooms inside the barn? I could pull that off. Just thought it would be easier and better with tents. I thought tents would be more expensive then building but really they are pretty cheap.

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Thanks, thats what I was thinking originally but then I saw another guy had 4 750w led in his 10x10. Its crazy cuz the more I read about this the more I see how everybody does what they want pretty much haha. If 2 is enough Ill go with 2 for the 10x10. I can always get more if the plants are struggling i guess

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It has is own breaker panel already so good to go there. With the tent kit, I was planning on getting the fan, ducts, and filter that you can buy with it. Looks pretty cool and comes with a controller that checks temperature and humidity. I plan on getting both a humidifier and a dehumidifier also. What do you mean with Co2? Something like this?

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Each of my lights are 300 watts and they’re turned down to 150 watts right now. I use DLI instead of PAR readings to set them according to the DLI chart for whatever stage of growth I’m in. Also these lights are the most efficient at around 50% output. I like the hydro because you can chop a month off the growth cycle and still have good yields. The plant in the picture should yield 8-12 oz cured weed @Luchotocado . I grew in soil when I started and I would tell most people to start there. Soil is very forgiving compared to hydro. You can screw up and recover in soil most of the time by just flushing with water. One big mistake in hydro and your grow can be toast. I would go with 6 plants at first. I did way too many when I started and the yields were crappy. You shouldnt need Co2 unless you’re planning on running high watts all the time. Others can comment on this. It’s nice to have it if you can afford it.

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Yes like that but it doesn’t work in a tent you need a sealed room

  • much easier to dial in a room, your also making something that will last. You can also setup everything inside that space to control the grow room

You’re creating the stable environment inside the grow room. For a tent your reliant on the air outside of it to fix your grow room

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Just wondering why everyone is advising how many watts his lights should be? We are talking led right?

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Are we trying to calc power consumption or how much actual light the plants need to grow?

I went to read your thread of the grow room and it’s awesome. Just wanted to ask how the tent and room are different? Tent seems to be dependent on outside air but wouldn’t it be the same in a room? For example every time you open the door and also if you have an exhaust and a fan bringing in air from the outside would it now be the same thing? I guess the door wouldn’t let as much in as opening up the zipper all the way since you really have to open it all up to get in there. Just want to make things as simple as I can since it’s my first time. Your setup looks awesome but also overwhelming for me. Seems like I would need someone to come out and help me set up something like that. Even tent feels a little overwhelming actually the more I read haha. Just want to get started asap to hopefully get some experience and start some nice grows

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Yes I am looking at the Scorpion Diablo LED lights. I was thinking 2 of those for a 10x10 tent. To grow 12 plants. @PharmerBob me ruined a few posts up. That way I could get 4 harvests per tent per year. So 8 harvests of 12 plants ideally. Probably won’t happen at first but seems like a good goal

There is so much to unpack here. I’m possibly moving back to NM to enter the legal commercial grow space. Not sure where you are but I’d love to help you build this out but you will probably get a long way before I am able to relocate. It’s almost as fun as growing. I like to tinker and it’s very rewarding to create this micro environment and be able to control it automatically. Tent vs room and what’s the difference?. In my case nothing really. I’m growing in a 10x10 very well build shed sitting on concrete. Epoxy floor coating etc. exhaust/carbon filter pulls are from an intake vent in the door of the shed directly from outside. That’s the tricky part for me. I have been growing all winter with the ave outdoor temps at 30 degrees. There was a week where it was below zero and at one point it was -20. My room was at 83 degrees and 70% Rh during veg even with those freezing temps. I set my controller to exhaust at 83. Set the heater which is on a controller so my room could get hot enough to trigger the exhaust. It works perfectly. The exhaust ran just enough to cycle the air in the room without causing wild swings in temp. I can’t believe it worked. Even in a tent you will see the equipment all works against itself and it’s a bit tricky to get everything working in tandem. Once it’s dialed in its bad ass. I can it in my room all day and watch everything turning on and off by itself based on my recipe. Smile from ear to ear. Even better when the tent or room is full of fat stinky frosty nugs. Anyway The smaller the environment the easier it is to control but too small and you can’t really do much. 10x10 is perfect!! Check out the ten by ten grow series on YouTube build a soil does. I think that will line up with what you want if you go the soil route. In a 10 x10 You can keep it warm when needed with a small heater. You can maintain rh with a humidifier but most that are avail out of the box are not powerful enough for a 10x10. I can show you how to build one for your tent for around 300 bucks. You will need that in NM. I grew there for 10 yrs and humidity is a Hugh limiting factor. I don’t run mine in the later part of flower because by then the plants are Huge and the transpiring they do pushes the humidity up so I have to make sure to set my exhaust to prioritize that humidity to keep it down but it’s not a problem because the air being pulled into my room is dry ass cold winter air and dries it out fast. Point is it’s easy to control in this set up in our climate. This would not apply in other climates. My humidity at day 65 of flower is about 58-62% without a humidifier running and your climate and mine are very similar so I’d expect you to see the same thing occur in a tent of that size. I never understood why ppl say to let them drop to 40 percent in flower. I’d have to look at the Vpd graph but that’s very low. You can run the rh that low but you better drop those temps. We worry about bud rot and mold on a living plant at 60 rh but we chop them down and put them a room at 60 rh like it’s no big deal. We can dive into Vpd later. But it’s very very important. You must trust me on this. Ignore anyone who says otherwise. I’m saying this to you because I get the impression you are a go big or go home kinda guy. I’m him too. You don’t want to invest big money and then struggle. If you follow the Vpd chart and can dial in the environment you be surprised how easy this is. Do it right or don’t do it at all. Nothing against those who are not as serious. I wasn’t always this way. I have grown with nothing but dirt and a pit a garden hose and the sun. Doing it’s on a more serious level is just what I want to do now and I’m blessed rn I can afford to do it. Like I said there is so much to unpack. I would recommend a tent to start. It’s way to hard to keep Vpd in-line in a large open barn. You can purposely build a room or 2 in the barn too but that’s a huge expense and these ac infinity tents are legit. Eventually I want a multiple purpose built rooms. You will pull air into that tent from your barn so as long as the air in the Barn as some level of temp control you will be doing good. You can bring air from outside too. Works good in winter if you need to cool things down. Not great pull hot air from outside in the summer. Your barn will be your lung room basically. How much temp control do you have inside your barn? Obviously because a tent has little insulation the room it’s in will play a big part in how how or cold it gets in your tent. The most important thing is not lights, it’s not the brand of tent or if it’s a purpose built room, if you do living soil, Dwc, hydro, coco. You have to be able to control the environment. Get your tent. Lights fans etc. set it up and let in run for a bit so you can get used to it and so you can get it dialed in before you throw plants in. With led lights Watts don’t matter to plants. Par/ppfd and how efficient the light is what matters. Do not buy a light that can put 1000 plus par on your plants and set it 12 inches from the plants at 100 percent power. If the lights you want are that powerful you will never need them at 100%. If you plan to use co2 then maybe. Hid and led are completely different. It’s not necessary to run these lights that high. Happy to dive into that in detail too. You will be shocked how many amps you will pull with lights heaters fans and a fogger running. I’m maxed atm with 40 amps to my room. Curious what your electrical setup is.

I feel like my novels may be annoying to some? Hopefully not. It’s hard to stop as one thing leads to another and all is worth talking about. Lol let me know if I need to do something different with my replies. I was reading older posts and the topic of ppl writing Pulitzer winning novels was annoying.

Went back and read more. Want to get caught up a bit more on what your intentions are. I didn’t realize how far back the convo goes. Can you send pics of the barn?. 800 sq ft is not that large. You maybe be able to grow in that space entirely and maintain a proper environment depending on the structure. If you want a perpetual grow you will need multiple rooms or tents because of the different light schedules. I just go seed to harvest and repeat. Working on room 2 now.

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If it’s just to grow and enjoy go for a tent and have fun.

When your decide to start turning a few $ then build out some rooms

I only open the door once a day, make sure the girls are hanging in there then closed for the rest.

The room regulates itself - not dependent on outside environment

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Ac i finity tents are good i have a gorilla and a ac infinity tent 2 diablos will be fine in a 10x10 in my opinion i run my lights on 60 pwrcent right now i probably wont turn them up to 100 at all dont need that much light and theres not a huge difference exept using more power

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Im going to veg longer get them taller then put a few scrogs up

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You’d be surprised. if you put a par meter in there and checked the difference between 60 and 100% its pumping out way more photons at the higher setting. Check out Bruce bugabee on YouTube if you want to expand you knowledge on led lighting. Our eyes can’t detect the difference beyond a point so it seems like the light is just slightly brighter to our eyes but in reality it’s drastically brighter to the plant to put it simply. Some of these lights at their highest settings are producing the same amount of protons that the sun puts out at high noon in the summer. This amount of lighting is too intense to be hitting your plants all day long. Photone makes a phone app that uses you camera as a light meter. It’s not as accurate as the apogee meter but its gives you an idea of how much usable light is being thrown down on your canopy. If you I have somebody who has a handheld Parmeter you can calibrate it to the Photone app so you have a more accurate reading and I think the app is only like four or five bucks

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Dude you get it! The aquarium example is spot on! I use 20gal pots. That’s the min you want to go. 50 indoor is ok. You could probably put two plants in a 50. 30 is the idea size. Look into grass roots living soil beds. If you were in a 30 gallon container or in a raised bed you can easily leave for several days and not have to worry as long as they were watered well before you left. I wouldn’t have to water my plants for sometimes a week maybe a week and a half in veg. Even in the flower I could skip two or three days without an issue

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One thing to consider is headspace. In large containers these plants get massive depending on strain/genetics. I know gorilla tents have extensions for the top. You need 8 ft

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Hey man, thanks for the informative reply. I sometimes feel like having someone come down here and guide me through the build is exactly what I need haha. Theres just a lot of info and a lot of it is contradictory. Im just gonna have to pull the trigger and sort of adjust as I go. Im getting a lot of good info on this thread though so thanks a lot to all that have replied. About the long thread, on the contrary, I love it. keem em comin!

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Oh ok cool. That sounds doable though. Your build is great I enjoyed reading through it. Not done yet actually.

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