Fyi: What Should I Consider When Setting Up A Grow Room?

[llamabox]

What should I consider when setting up a grow room?

 

By Jorge Cervantes

The best location for a grow room is in an obscure corner of a basement, where the temperature is easy to keep constant year round. Basements are well insulated by concrete walls and soil. A basement room can be enclosed and camouflaged with junk, a double wall, work bench or shelving.

 

Added security is afforded by installing a false door in a closet. The grow room is located behind the secret door. Another good secret location, except for the possible heat build-up, is the attic. Few people venture to an attic that is difficult to access. Some growers locate their gardens below a trap door covered with a rug.

 

Law enforcement cannot use the electricity bill as sole grounds for a search warrant. But they can use it along with other "evidence" such as remnants of indoor growing visible outdoors, thermal image heat signatures, snitch testimony, etc. to secure a search warrant. As long as the marijuana grown is not sold or shown to a snitch, there should be no reason for any suspicion. Thermal image technology is easy to outwit. Just keep the lights on during daylight hours to confuse the technology. Or cool exhaust air and expel it under the well-insulated grow house so it does not leave a heat trail.

 

Out buildings garages and barns not attached to homes are some of the worst places to grow. Often thieves and law enforcement do not look at entering a barn or garage as a crime, when they would not consider entering a home. Security is much better when the garden is within the home.

 

Although less common, there are even grow rooms on wheels! Some innovative growers have remodeled trailer houses and busses into grow rooms. One of my favorite grow rooms was in a tricked-out trailer. Another was in a 60-foot sailing yacht!

 

The size of grow room determines the size and the number of lamps. HID lamps that work well to grow marijuana are available in 150, 175, 250, 400, 600, 1000 and 1100 wattages. Smaller wattages from 150 – 400, work well in closets or spaces with 9 – 21 square feet of floor space. Use 600-watt and larger bulbs for larger areas.

 

In a simple Sea of Green layout there are 10 plants in each tray (80 total plants) illuminated by a single 1000-watt HID. Each week one tray of 10 plants is harvested and 10 new plants are started.

 

Two flowering rooms are supplied with clones grown in two small clone/vegetative rooms.

 

Separate the closet into a lower and upper grow room.

 

Two light movers (circular and linear) supporting 4, 1000-watt HIDs in this room provide as much light as 5 or 6 lamps.

 

These grow rooms are in progress. The one on the left is the vegetative, mother, clone room; it’s about a third the size of the flowering room on the right.

 

The drawings show several grow room floor plans. As the floor plans demonstrate, there are several basic approaches to grow room design and production. Most growers start out with a crop grown in a single room. After they harvest the crop they introduce a new batch of clones. The photo-period is switched back to 18 hours and the cycle continues.

 

The most productive setups utilize two rooms. The first room is for vegetative growth, mother plants and rooting clones. This room should be about one quarter the size of the flowering room. When the flowering room is harvested, the plants from the vegetative room are moved into flowering room.

 

Super productivity is achieved with a perpetual crop. Several clones are taken every day or every week. Every day a few plants are harvested. For every plant harvested a new cutting takes it’s place.