I just found this forum a couple of days ago and it’s great to be here! There is a ton of info!
I have a 14’ 2” x 17’ room with 11’ ceilings to work with. At this time I can only legally grow 6 mature plants and 6 immature. If my wife gets her card we can double that.
My goal is to eventually became a commercial grower but I want to get a few good grows under my belt before I go all in.
The building the room is in is 40x50 so I have room for expansion.
I have so many ideas that I’m all over the place!
Before I turn this into small book let me ask a few basic questions:
How much space should I allot for flowering and vegging?
I think I can build some sort of partitions cheaper than tents. Is there an advantage to tents that would make them better?
The room has central ac and also has one window with a window unit. Should I lay it out so the window unit is in the flower room since I assume it will be the hottest?
Is it a bad idea to put some fans or ducts in that connect the two rooms so they could both benefit from the window unit if needed?
If growing photo period plants you will need areas of separate lighting as the flowering stage and the vegetation stage have different needs and you do not want light from the veg area to bleed into the flower area.
Im in Missouri and can also grow 6 & 6
Welcome to the community ! I would like to say you got a nice space to work with. Your biggest expense is going to be Buying quality lights. When you nail down exactly the size space for flowering an veg @dbrn32 can help you to choose the best lights for your space.
I would say avoid the tents, if possible. Growing in a tent kinda sucks, just the easiest way for most home growers.
I think if I were in your shoes, I would probably not try to run perpetual with 6 plants. So rather than setting up a flower room and a veg room right now, just setup one room and complete the whole grow there. If you start 6 plants now, would probably be a solid 2 months before you have to worry about firing up your next round of plants. And you could essentially start them with a light and not have a dedicated and official space set up for vegging, if need be.
How much are you wanting to harvest from your 6 flowering plants is probably determining factor moving forward. You could grow 6 small plants in a pretty small space, but they won’t yield a lot. Bigger plants will yield more, but also require more light and bigger environmental controls. A lot of times this is more of what you can afford to do, than it is what would be best to do.
@dbrn32 been watching for you to pop up today got a question how long is your carbon filter lasting before needing changed. I think you’re using the same kind. (Phresh) I am in a grow and half starting to smell some odor .
I would get a couple of flower runs out of them at worst. They are sensitive to humid environments though, or maybe you potentially have a leak at flange?
Humidity has been running a little high I kind of figured that contributed to the longevity of it. Getting odor on the outside where it exhausts. I guess it’s time to buy a new one. Thanks
If you checked flange I would say so. I have seen clamp tear duct at the flange and pull unfiltered air through before, just thought it would be worth checking.
I actually put a couple set screws in mind one on each side and then wrap with duct board tape like the heating an air our companies use. It has performed well I guess I have used it up. Thanks
I’ll probably do exactly what you suggested as far as starting off in one room. That will give me time for the veg room if I decide to build one.
I guess there’s always a balance between speed and yield. Which way do most commercial growers lean?
Would a 4’x8’ accommodate 12 decent size plants?
I can dedicate the whole room to growing if I want. Maybe I should do some sort of modular system that I can adjust as I go and then once I get it figured out build something more permanent if I need to.
I also have some questions on lighting. I started another thread. From what I’ve read you are one of the resident experts on lighting so I would appreciate your thoughts on it. Thanks!
Commercial growers grow for as much weed as possible as quickly as possible. The ones I have been involves with aren’t regulated by plant count though, they are licensed by square footage. So usually in their best interest not to spend a lot of time vegging plants.
Most will tell you a 4x8 isn’t big enough for 12 plants, but you could make it work. I think I would probably shoot for something a little bigger though. Do you have a drawing of how your room is configured?
That seems plenty good. If you figured it took roughly 4 months or so to replenish your stash, about how much would you say it would take to get through that period comfortably? Also wondering if there is a strict budget to get these first 6 plants going?
The 4x8 is plenty good?
I haven’t really set a budget but of course would like to keep it as low as possible. I could go up to 4K or so but it shouldn’t get close to that!
I just ordered my lights. I got 5 of the kingbrite 240w quantum boards.
I’m considering dwc, what are your thoughts on that?
Thanks again for your help!
Oh, and my goal is to become a commercial grower, so I’m not really concerned at this time with having enough for me. I’m a light user so whatever I get will be plenty. I just want to get some grows under my belt before I go all in.
I meant there is nothing odd that would obstruct building out your room. If you did a 4x8 in dwc I wouldn’t plan on more than 6-8 plants tops. If all goes as planned you should get really fast veg growth.
I think if your model is more of a commercial setup you would probably want to look at a recirculating system though. Catering to a bunch of different buckets would be time consuming. If you had a single res that connected to the entire system it’s one spot to tend to. The downside of that is you would probably have to run entire flowering crop on same schedule. Up to you though, just put some thought into where you hope to end up.
You could build out along one of the walls. As in make your flowering space 14’ or 17’ long and maybe something like 6’-7’ wide. I’m thinking 3’ wide for canopy and then another 3-4’ walkway spanning entire length to service your plants. Would be easy to setup recirculating system like that too, if you wanted to. You could even plumb your res outside of the flowering space to access during dark period. When starting off with the 6 plants figure something like a 3x3ish scrog per plant. If you move to 12 plants you could just flip them earlier, or potentially put additional buckets at the ends of your walkway. If you ended up building a veg room, could just use about half of the remainder of room and set it up to mimic flower room on smaller scale. Then have roughly 1/4 of the room left to house your reservoirs and supplies.
May be better options too, I’m not really accustomed to setting up dwc grows.
. Thanks!