Need advice on my 1st grow room before I go shopping.

[gr8fulDAD]

I want to start by giving a big thanks to Zandor for all the priceless advice he gives us every week. I have been downloading all the reports and listening to them in reverse order. Thanks Bro.
I am a new Medical MJ patient. We do not have any dispenseries here yet, so aquiring clones is not an option. I will be starting from seed. Our current law states that I can posess 6 plants, only 3 can be in bloom.
I am currently building my grow closet. The dimensions will be approx. 7' x 4'. I want to grow organtic with soil. My thoughts were to grow 3 females in the main area and and build 2 grow boxes into the corner of the room. One approx. 2' x 2' to hold a veging mother, and a another box mounted above that on the wall to start clones. I thought I could just use flo tubes for the clones and CFLS for the mom.
In the main area of the room I would keep the 3 flowering females. I plan on purchasing a 400w switchable MH/HPS kit with a Sun System 2 air cooled hood. The grow room will be on the 2nd floor, with air vented into an attic. I do still plan on adding a carbon scrubber to be safe. I can draw fresh air from outdoors via a vent hose w/ a 45 degree angle, but an I better off just using the room air to avoid possible pest issues?

Now here come the questions:
-Is this the proper way to go about a LEGAL medical grow?
-Ventilation. What size fan do I need, and is the fan attached to the hood going to give my plants enough fresh air? I thought that I would get a 4" Eco plus inline fan and run that into the scrubber. Do I need an intake AND an exhaust fan or can I just get away with the exhaust.
-Can the carbon scrubber be put on the other side of the grow room if the temps average 20 in the winter and 80 in the summer. I dont believe humidity we be as bad there as in the grow room itself.
- For my first grow I wanted to start with either Barney's Northern Lights, Nirvanas Blue Mystic, or Nirvanas Hindu Kush. Any better suggestions?
-I know alot of people aren't big on Organtics, and I was going to go Man Made untill I read the warning labels on the GH bottles. I thought organtic with nutes from FoxFarm would be a wise choice.

I can use all the help I can get here. I am VERY open to any and all suggestions. I am sorry this one was so long, but my brain is trying to put together all this info I have heard and read over the past couple months.
Thanks in advance.
DAD

[gr8fulDAD]

Anyone? Can i assume all this is good and I am ready to start? :confused:

[LendogPDX]

It's hard to tell, but a generic answer would be:
Keep a close eye on your temps, too low or too high can cause problems, especially when the lights are off, things tend to get cold.

Find yourself a stable female and keep your mother going for your future clones.

Get yourself a few good books for resources, online is good info, but there is way too much info out here, get a book or two that you can flip through while watching TV, laying in bed, on the crapper, etc. You'll be suprised what you'll learn.

The biggest thing, don't over complicate things, as you will feel overwhelmed since you are just getting started. You'll get the hang of it.

Like I said, watch those cold temps, they can be a killer.

Also, the fun part while you are finding a strong female, is coming up with new ideas that fit the area for what you need, it's an ever changing thing. Think of the room as a web site, you always do a little tweaking here and tweaking there to keep improving whole thing. You'll find out how creative you really are, and you'll also know where everything is located Home De'Pot in no time.

[Stond_Face]

Hey Dad - what's shakin

I'm not to foremost expert, but my plants aint dying.

I agree with Lendog START SIMPLE Organic dirt is a great way to go if you have other things in your life. I've left my garden alone with a make-shift auto irrigation system for up to 10 days so far. Also, stay away from any high end nute supplements untill you can grow near perfect without them.

I would go with a 6" Eco ( or canfan or vortex). These things are pretty quite. And, in the unlikly event that you need to dial it down you can get a $40 fan controller ( choose the fan control with care, you will need the correct type)

I don't really understand your question about the scrubber location.

I assume that your closet will be 7 or 8 feet tall. If so, that's a good size closet to supply the needs of a few people. In the near future, you may find that you wish for a seperate veg/flower areas. I did.

Don't get a switchable (magnetic style) ballast. Get a digital that will fire either a HPS or MH bulb. It will consume less energy (~40W less). Also, get a digiballast designed for growing. I can't prove it, but they say the grow lamps are designed more for light intensity and less for economy. That does make sense to me and I work in a professional technical profession.

Foxfarm is good stuff. Can't go too wrong there.

I don't have experience with CFLs or floros

Good luck man. There is plenty of help to be found.

Cheers,
S_F

[Stond_Face]

Oh, yeah..... Know the PH of everything you give to your plants.

But, I think EVERYONE learns that the hard way.

[gr8fulDAD]

Thanks stondface! My closet is 7.5 feet tall. I am going to look into the 6" eco fans you suggested. My carbon scrubbber question is this:
Do I run ducting from the lamp hood to the scrubber THEN to the fan, or from the lamp hood to the fan THEN the scrubber last? If the scrubber should be placed AFTER the fan, can I position the scrubber in the attic where the temps are a lot cooler to allow more headroom in my gro area? Is the one exaust fan big enough to handle the closet or do I need an intake fan also? I do understand that I need to replace with fresh air and I plan on venting in from outdoors, I was just hoping that the vacumm created by the exaust fan would be enough.
Also is this a decent ballast and lamp set up?
http://www.specialty-lights.com/901435.html
If not, any suggestions?

[sttony]

gr8fulDAD - Was that Jerry Garcia on your first avitar? lol

First off, with such limited space you might want to rethink and only do one strain at a time.

A 400w light will cover approximately a 3' x 4' area. So why don't you build a temporary light proof wall dividing the space into 2 areas. (This could be made out of heavy black plastic.) One for Veg (4 x 4) and one for flower (3 x 4), or vise a versa. If you did this you wouldn't need the swichable light.

In the veg area you could keep you mother along with the clone box mounted above on the wall (One 20w flo is all you'll need for the clone box) and this would give you a little bit of room to have some replacement plants vegging while the buds are riping in the flowering room.

I'm not big fan of cfl and would prefer to use the T5s. (I use this model (960200) NEW WAVE T5, 4FT, 4 LAMP. I'm very happy with them. The plants love em' too. (http://nationalgardenwholesale.com/ngw/lighting.aspx?request=NEW_WAVE_T5&title=Fluorescent%20Lighting&type=product)) You don't need to get the 4 bulb, 2 bulbs will work just fine for your needs. The T5s also comes in a strip light models (2' and 4') (http://nationalgardenwholesale.com/ngw/lighting.aspx?request=SUN_BLAZE_STRIP_LIGHT&title=Fluorescent%20Lighting&type=product)that can be mounted to the walls. The start up cost may be more but you'll be more satisfied about it in the end.

You don't need an intake fan. The vacumm created by the exaust fan will be enough. The fresh air can come from the house and doesn't need to be drawn in from outside the house in most cases.

Lamp hood to the fan (in the attic) then to the scrubber. The fan in the attic would make it quietier for the rest of the house. If you use a bunge cord to hang exaust fan there will be less vibration noise. You could put the 400w ballast in the attic too.

[gr8fulDAD]

thanks sttony. I did think about dividing the room, but since state law states that I can only have 6 plants total, with 3 flowering I thought that building a clone box and one large box for the mother might be a better use of the space. If I was able to legally grow 7 at a time, I could keep the mom in a cab, then keep 3 in veg and 3 in bloom at all times. I think I am going to consider putting up some type of wall.I am going to take your advice and do more research into using flo tubes instead of cfls for the mother box/area.

[sttony]

With that kinda law I would do it this way.



Grow 3 seeds into veg.

Take a clone from each, to figure out which of the plants are female.

After you know which plants are female select the best one to be the mother (Ohh...this hurts to say) and trash the rest.
Better yet, If you have any friends that grow, you could give away the other plants.

Veg the mother until you can get 5 good clones from her.

Grow the 5 clones into the biggest plants your space will allow.


That way you don't go over the 6 plant total and 5 "big" girls will give you lots of "bigger" buds. (Slower turn around but larger yields.)

Then after harvest, take 5 more clones and start again. (It is "the cycle of life" after all. lol)

Edit.

I forgot you can only have 3 in flower at a time. Well I guess those 3 will have more room to get even bigger than.