Grow Room Setup Step by Step

Marijuana Horticulture

by Jorge Cervantes

Set up the grow room before introducing plants. Construction requires space and planning. A grow room under construction offers a terrible environment for plants. Once the grow room is setup and totally operational, it will be ready for plants.

Step 1

Choose an out of the way space with little or no traffic. A corner of the basement or a spare bedroom are perfect. A 1000-watt HID, properly setup, will efficiently illuminated up to a 6×6 foot room. The ceiling should be at least five feet high. Keep in mind that plants in containers are setup at least one foot off the ground, and a lamp needs about a foot of space to hang from the ceiling. This leaves only three feet of space for plants to grow. If forced to grow in an attic or basement with a low fur-foot ceiling, much can be done to compensate for the loss of height, including cloning, bending, pruning, and using smaller wattage lamps.

Step 2

Enclose the room, if not already enclosed. Remove everything that does not pertain to the garden. Furniture, drapes, and curtains may harbor fungi. An enclosed room allows easy, precise control of everything and everyone that enters or exits, as well as who and what goes on inside. For most growers enclosing a grow room is simply a matter of tacking up some plywood or fabricating plastic walls in the basement or attic and planting the room flat white. Make sure no light is visible from the outside. If covering a window, do so discreetly – it should not look boarded up. Insulate windows and walls so a telltale heat signature does not escape. Basement windows often are painted to look like the foundation. Place some stuff – books, personal effects, household goods, etc. – in front of the window, and build a box around the things so a natural scene is visible from the outside. At night, bright light leaking through a crack in an uncovered window is like a beacon to curious neighbors and bandits.

Step 3

Cover walls, ceiling, floor – everything – with a highly reflective material like flat white paint or Mylar. The more reflection, the more light energy available to plants. Good reflective light will allow effective coverage of an HID lamp to increase from 10 t 20 percent, just by putting a few dollars worth of paint on the walls. Reflective white Visqueen plastic is inexpensive and protects walls and floors.

Step 4

Constant air circulation and a supply of fresh air are essential but often inadequate. They should be at least one fresh air vent in every grow room. Vents can be an pen door, window, or duct vented outside. An exhaust ran vented outdoors or puling new air through an open door usually creates an adequate flow of air. An oscillating fan works well t circulate the air. When installing such a fan, make sure it is not set in a fixed position and blowing too hard on the tender plants. It could cause windburn and dry out plants, especially seedlings and clones. If the room contains a heat vent, it may be opened to supply extra heat or air circulation.

Step 5

The larger your garden becomes, the more water it will need. A 10 x 10 foot garden could use more than 50 gallons per week. Carrying water is hard, regular work. One gallon of water weighs eight pounds; 50 x 8 = 400 pounds of water a week! It is much easier to run in a hose with an on / off valve or install a hose bib in the room than to schlep water. A three foot watering wand attached to the hose on / off valve makes watering easier and saves branches from being broken when watering in dense foliage. Hook up the hose to a hot and cold water source s the temperature is easy to regulate.

Step 6

Ideally, the floor should be concrete or a smooth surface that can be swept and washed down. A floor drain is very handy. In grow rooms with carpet or wood floors, a large, white painter’s drop cloth r thick, white Visqueen plastic, will protect floors from moisture. Trays placed beneath each contained add protection and convenience.

Step 7

Mount a hook strong enough to support 30 pounds for each lamp. Attach an adjustable chain or cord and pulley between the ceiling hook and the lamp fixture. The adjustable connection makes it easy to keep the lamp at the proper distance from plants and up out of the way during maintenance.

Step 8

There are some tools an indoor gardener must have and a few extra tools that make indoor horticulture much more precise and cost effective. The extra tools help make the garden so efficient that they pay for themselves in a few weeks. Procure all the tools before bringing plants into the grow room. If the tools are there when needed, chances are they will be put to use. A hygrometer is a good example. If plants show signs of slow, sickly growth due to high humidity, most growers will not identify the exact cause right away. They will wait and guess, wait and guess, and maybe figure it out before fungus attacks and the plant dies. When a hygrometer is installed before plants are brought into the grow room, the horticulturist will know from the start when the humidity is too high and causing sickly growth.

Step 9

Read and complete: “Setting Up the HID amp” at the end of Chapter 9.

Step 10

Move seedlings and rooted clones into the room. Huddle them closely together under the lamp. Make sure the HID is not so close to small plants that it burns their leaves. Position 400-watt lamps 18 inches above seedlings and clones Place a 600-watt lamp 24 inches away and 1000-watt lamp 30 inches away. Check the distance daily. hang a precut string from the hood to measure distance.