Insulated grow room for an attic

rocky450

New member
Hello everybody,

I'm new and this is my first post in this forum, hope to insert it in the correct place... :)

I would like to build an indoor insulated grow room by myself and the desired dimensions would approximately be 0,8 m x 0,8 m x 1,20 m height (my wish would be to start with a little box for 2 or 3 lowryder plants).
Unfortunately the weather conditions force me to evaluate only insulated materials so I tried to find a material such as rigid polyiso panels internally covered by aluminium tape or mylar.

I have a lot of questions but for now I start with only 3: :D

1) How could I build a room to be easily opened and closed?
2) What about the thickness of the insulated panels?
3) How could the panels resist the weight of the other materials such as light, fans, filter and so on?

thank you very much in advance!!

PEACE.
 
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Hey mate.
Good luck with your plans.
We use a commercial cool room for vegetable and fruit storage.
Walls are 13/5" or 40 mm thick.
I have seen a ninja grow in a fridge.
Not sure if you could get an old body and use that.
Consider ventilation and heat build up carefully though, also humidity control.
Is the .8-.8 footprint external measurement?
You could also make a box from wood, and insulate with domestic roof insulation bats.
Not sure if any of these suggestions are helpful, as they are a bit kooky.
Great thread though.
Please keep us informed.
 
Will you use flouresant, LED , or CFL as your primary light?
T'5 (60cm tubes would fit well) LED tape or mini CFL would be beneficial for side mounting .
Not much room for a filter either.
 
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Hello Vlad,

thank you for the reply.

0.8 mt would be the external but I could consider a maximum of 1 mt x 1mt external.

I was considering HPS lamp to increase the temperature, as the attic is not heated so I have another problem to face.
I think LED not to be useful in this situation, am I wrong?

So no way to consider Polyiso rigid panels?
Maybe a wood skeleton + MDF + insulation batts would be better?

And then, you say "not much room for a filter" and now I'm more worried than before :D
I have to minimize the smell of course...heeelp!! :):)

Thanks again.
 
I think it is possible, but to what degree.
If you can get a heater on a thermostat, you can use whichever light you would care to
Say you go with a 250 watt HPS+ some form of ancillary light.
But you will have to fine tune your extraction system.
If your exhaust fan went down, even for a short time, your gro might cook.
Also you need to consider your head room lost by that light mounting.
When I was 16 Yer old I used to grow in boxes in my parents shed.
They didn't know, so I used fluero, so I didn't have heat issue.
One way would be to use as many t5's as you can afford.
Use a germination mat for heat.
This would allow you to maintain the most space to grow in.
Also consider using computer style 12cm fans. They are flat and push about 100cfm.
If you mounted the smallest possible charcoal filter fan to the roof, and got a voltage dampener, you could take care of odour, and hopefully not remove too much heat.
Pick your strain very carefully.
Make sure it can handle low temp.
There are some smart cookies on this forum.
Hopefully some others will drop by, and give some further advice.
Good luck.
 
Also think about mounting lights from above, below, and all 4 sides.
It is not impossible, by any means.
But if this is your first gro, you have to understand the learning curve to get things right.
Don't be disappointed if you have poor results. Just keep learning.
What is your experience, by the way?
 
Thank you Vlad.

You're right, as this is my first grow after years smoking shit, so I know that probably my first try won't be perfect in terms of yeld and whatsoever.

I'm not a master also for those about to the correct terminology such as t5 so I will need time to searching for some info you kindly gave me! :)

so do you think the heater would be better instead of exploit the HPS lamp to increase the temperature?
As considering the little space available I thought that would be better not to insert other instruments like a heater and use the space for the filter and the fans only.

Thank you for your advices!!!
 
T5 is a standard of fluro.
If you could make a wider footprint, say 1.2×.8, you may be able to use a short rail, and maybe reduce your hot spot under the HPS.
Also if you could get a remote ballast for a 150watt, you could use that. But you would have very low light density, so still need a suplamentary light source.
I just can't see you being able to grow with a HPS in 1 cubic meter.
A germination mat is flat. Like an electric blanket, so doesn't take up much space.
Or you could just use an electric blanket outright.
If I was a kid again, on the down low, I would use fluero.
If I had the cash, I would use LED.
Real cool experiment, but losing your gro, or burning your folks house down would be a pretty shit outcome.
 
Got your point!
I will have a look about fluero to learn more about it!
Think will evaluate to build wooden panels and to insert insulation after that, as it would be difficult to build a door to be easily opened using polyiso panels.

Thanks again for your precious help!
 
Hello everybody,

I'm new and this is my first post in this forum, hope to insert it in the correct place... :)

I would like to build an indoor insulated grow room by myself and the desired dimensions would approximately be 0,8 m x 0,8 m x 1,20 m height (my wish would be to start with a little box for 2 or 3 lowryder plants).
Unfortunately the weather conditions force me to evaluate only insulated materials so I tried to find a material such as rigid polyiso panels internally covered by aluminium tape or mylar.

I have a lot of questions but for now I start with only 3: :D

1) How could I build a room to be easily opened and closed?
2) What about the thickness of the insulated panels?
3) How could the panels resist the weight of the other materials such as light, fans, filter and so on?

thank you very much in advance!!

PEACE.

Hi rocky450,
1.Probably best to build a wooden frame, then cut 6 insulated panels to the same size as the 4 sides, roof and floor. Fix the panels from the outside, onto 3 sides and the top/roof. The floor panel will help root temperatures stay more stable. You will also need to make a rectangular frame, the same size as one side, and fix an insulated panel to this. This is your door.
You can use the inner wooden frame to attach fans and hang the light etc.
2.The thickness really depends on how cold the attic gets, and also how hot in summer.
Will you be running your light in the daytime or night? I assume its cold most of the time, so it may be best to run it at night as the light will keep the temps where they should be.
3.I wouldnt advise hanging anything off the insulated panels. When your making the wooden frame, just ad a couple of extra pieces of wood on the roof so they can be used to hold fans,filters, light a securely

Are you limited to 1.2m in height? If you could stretch to 170-180cm you could run a 400w hps or even a 600w hps in a 1m x 1m and your results would be a lot better than running t5s and a 250w
 
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Thank you Ghost!

During these two days I tried to analyze pros and cons and I think I will probably reduce the room space to grow only two plants at a time (I'm alone and I won't absolutely sell any gram of my bud at all).

Your advice is brilliant but maybe with bigger dimensions and bigger wattages.
I'm evaluating a normal 0.6 x 0.6 x 1.4 mt grow tent that has all the settings to insert fans, lights and filters.

Considering attic heating problems, how a tent like this would keep a 250 w HPS bulb with no insulation inside (To reply to your previous question, I think that would be better to light during nights as suggested to you) ?

As if I will try with a standard tent, I have automatically not to consider CFL anymore due to the lack of heat of the fluo bulbs.

By the way, with such a little area a 250 w HPS risks to be to too much hot for my babies so I'm facing another dilemma: is a 150 w HPS a solution to keep the warm (but not too much) inside?

Tomorrow I will go to a good shop and see what is available in terms of lighting and so on and hope the store assistant will help me too.

Thanks again, and if you have some other suggestion don't hesitate to share it to me!! :D:D
 
Another thing to consider is, the smaller the area you grow, the more delicate your environment.
So a larger area is a buffer.
The smaller area you have, the more precise your heating and cooling systems will need to be, as fluctuations will be more extreme.
I am surprised you would consider hps as your primary heating option.
By all means use it as a light but consider that, as it is passive heat, Ie no ability to thermostatically control it, you are in effect adding a constant heat source.
So by adding say 750btu approx for a 150 watt HPS, you need to control inflow and outflow to maintain an adequate environment.
As you decrease the space available, the calculation of your inflow and out flow not only become more delicate, but also your humidity control becomes more important( mould attack).
With hps lighting you water your plants more, and as they transpire, they will increase humidity.
If you evacuate the humidity through the exhaust, then you also evacuate your heat.
I think controlling your heat by thermostat( Ie a propagation mat) and using less dehydrating light (Ie led) may make it easier on you to maintain your environment.
This is my input only, hoping you will gain some insight, so you feel confident to make your choice.
I would steer clear of the professionals at the hydro store until you are decided too.
As if you don't know them very well, their advice may just coincide with selling you what they want to sell, and not what would provide you with the most efficient outcome.
After all, any thing is possible, it is just a matter of efficiency and praticality, with cost to benefit thrown in too.
Cheers.
Good luck
 
Also with a 150-250 watt HID light, be it either hps or mh, just make sure it is definitely a horticultural light.
It would be easy to sell an industrial light at that wattage, as their is not a large amount of demand for these globes for gardening.
Powerplant (UK) make a 250 watt MH, also eye hortilux make an excellent if not ridicously expensive blue globe@250w.
GE makes 150 watt hps, although I am not sure of the quality or target of their spectrum.
 
Hi Vlad,

your considerations are correct and in fact if I had the right amount of cash to be spent on this project I would surely have considered a Led system.
I tried to find some integrated circuit to built a personal LED light but I have fond nothing so I started consider cheaper solutions.

You said that "250 watt for a 4 square feet tent is perfect" and my tent (0.6 mt x 0.6 mt) is more or less 4 square feet wide. So with a good fan system (in-fan + exhaust fan) I could have been able to manage both temperature and humidity right?

I had an entire day of research on the net and I saw a guy using a 150 HPS light with 12/12 from the seed to the harvest in a tent with the same dimensions (2 x 2 feet). Of course this is not the correct way for a high yeld
system but in my conditions this would be perfect as:

1) Low set costs
2) Less heat produced by te lamp compared to a 250 w or this dimensions
3) Less using of electricity.

I would like to try this way with 2 autoflowering seeds (Northern Lights auto) just for a first try and see what it happens, but this problem of the light is driving me crazy :D:D.

Thanks again Vlad!!
 
150 watt should do two stems. Also you may have a problem of the temp being on the lower side.
Beats cooking your stash.
You could then add heat, which is cheaper by far, than removing it.
Will you run the auto at 16/8?
Hypothetical aside, all you can do is pop the seeds, and pay attention.
Temp/humidity stations are cheap as, even remote wireless ones with 24 hour high/low cost $15.
So you can keep an eye on your environment from another room, without disturbing your garden.
Also, weed beeng a weed, you would have to plant it on the moon for it not to grow.
So if it doesn't look the best, there is leeway for you to fix it, before it actually dies.
All the fun of learning how to grow.
Keep us informed when you buy your gear.
GL
 
You are growing bio?
If you are learning to grow weed, learning how to use lights, learning environment control( by the trial and hopefully not too many errors method), and also learning hydroponics at the same time, then you are on a learning curve the size of Mount Everest.
At least soil will buffer pH, and make feeding easier.
Not knocking hydro, but that is a whole different kettle of fish.
 
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