1st grow in 25 years - CKS autoflowers!

SATURDAY: Today I mixed up 5g of nutes for my bloomers and douched them. I'll let them dry completely for 2-3 days, then flush them a bit with a little boomerang and calmag. I ordered a Gorilla lite-Line High CFM kit last week and received it today...fits my tent poles perfectly. This really works to keep the tent walls from collapsing in too far, and I was able to use one pole to rig a shelf to put the fan. That freed up a good bit more floor space. Yesterday, I ordered a 4 x 4 Vivosun tent and inline fan, and a 1500w (5 x 300w COBs)..this tent will be for vegging autos to put into the flowering tent as others are harvested, as well as a place to veg photos that I encounter before they are moved outdoors. I'll probably end up ordering another of the same lights, but for now I have a few supplemental lights I can use...blues and daylights. I'll drop a few WW's or CC's as soon as that stuff arrives so they are big enough to occupy flowering tent space in a few weeks. SUNDAY: I spun everybody around and misted with spring water a couple times throughout the day and formulated my plan for ventilation of the new tent which should be here Tuesday. I plan to hook the exhaust from my 4' x 5' tent as fresh air intake in the top of my 4' x 4'. By doing so, all that good CO2 that is exhausted from the flowering tent will rain down over the veg tent inhabitants before being exhausted from the bottom of the tent. I don't think heat will be a problem in the new tent with so much less light, so I'm optimistic that it will work just fine. I may even route the exhausted veg tent air back into the bottom of the flower tent, giving the girls another shot at the CO2 enriched air....we'll see... MONDAY: Got the room ready for the new tent which will arrive tomorrow, misted, rearranged, and whispered sweet nothings to all the girls. Tried out my new macro lens...need practice.. TUESDAY: Mixed up 7.5 gallons of nutes for the bloomers...ceased open sesame and began beastie bloomz. Assembled my new 4' x 4' Vivosun tent and set up its ventilation and lights. I implemented my idea of exhausting the semi-cool/CO2-rich air from my flowering tent into the top of the veg tent. Only needed 5' of flex duct, so it's got great airflow..no need for another intake fan...yay! Tomorrow I'll get the 6" x 6" x 6" 'Y' duct and connect my 6" booster fan to it. The booster fan will still be sticking into the flower tent, drawing 70 degree a/c air into the tent via direct flex duct connection, but will now be mixed with the exhausted air from the veg tent. I'm probably gonna keep the ventilation in both tents running once I've got a fully closed-loop system. The only reason I was shutting down the ventilation was so that CO2 would build up for 4 hours, but even if it gets exhausted from the flower tent, whatever the veg tent inhabitants don't consume will find it's way back to the flower tent in under a minute...and so on, and so on.. I spent a while putting together a lighting schedule that will allow me to decrease temperatures while still keeping optimal color spectrums and maintaining good light intensity. Had to empty the tent so I could get to everything...what a pain! --------------------------------------------------- FLOWERING TENT Timer #1 --- exhaust, intake (digital timer) on - 6:15am off - 2:15am Timer #2 -- primary blurple light (manual timer) on - 6:30am off - 10:30am on - 11:30am off - 3:30pm on - 4:30pm off - 6:00pm on - 6:30pm off - 8:30pm on - 9:30pm off - 2:00am Timer #3 -- all 4 daylight cobs (manual timer + power strip) on - 6:00am off - 12:00pm on - 12:30pm off - 6:00pm on - 6:30pm off - 2:00am Timer #4 -- all 4 overhead reds, sub-canopy tubes, side strip lights (manual timer + power strip) on - 1:00am off - 6:30am on - 10:30am off - 11:30am on - 3:30pm off - 4:30pm on - 8:30pm off - 9:30pm Timer #5 -- all 4 miracle LED (flowering) in corners, corner, daylight supplemental (manual timer + power strip) on - 6:00am off - 10:30am on - 11:30am off - 3:30pm on - 4:30pm off - 8:30pm on - 9:30pm off - 2:00am ---------------------------------------------- VEGETATIVE TENT Timer #1 --- primary light and exhaust (manual timer + 3-way splitter) on - 6:00am off - 2:00am Timer #2 --- blue supplementals (manual timer + power strip) on - 2:00am off - 6:00am on - 10:00am off - 2:00pm on - 4:00pm off - 8:00pm Watching temps closely.... ------------------------------------------ WEDNESDAY: My new lighting schedule seems to be working..high was 87 today, and it dropped into the upper 70's last night...schweet! I'm pretty confident that when I get my ducting in on Friday and have the closed-loop ventilation for the two tents completed, that it will drop the temp even further and I'll not be wasting so much precious CO2...and then I can ADD MORE LIGHTS and begin with renewed heat mitigation efforts!!! I'm really wanting to pump up the deep reds and maybe far reds during their 4-hour "nighttime" ...maybe more low-wattage sub-canopy tube lights, too. I guess that the girls really loved the Beastie Bloomz...much fattening happening... It was so nice being able to move Kushpialidocious into the new veg tent...more space, better canopy penetration. THURSDAY: Spun everybody around and misted with spring water..soil still moist. Temps held pretty much...86-87 all day..i changed the overhead light timer a bit so it kicks on a half hour earlier and as a result temp climbed to 89-90 for about 15 minutes, but quickly dropped to 85 when the 4 COBs turned off... when the big blurple and 4 miracle leds in the corners ( + the extra 40w daylight supplemental in my darkest corner) turned off 15 minutes later, it quickly dropped to 79.....15 minutes later...74...15 minutes later...72!!! "By Jove, I think he's got it!" I might actually be able to harvest these fuckers with all terpenes intact.👍 On second thought.😎..I'm gonna dial back the reds a half hour again (and maybe the 4 COBs), because I'm going to try switching out the 40w Sansi bulb for my extra 100w Bridgelux/Epistar 3500k COB light. (MORE POWER!) I really don't think it gets very much, if any, hotter than the Sansi 40w. I'm really hoping to keep it below 90 at all times and as close to 70 as possible at night (red zone).. new temperature test will be tomorrow. It will also be the first run with the closed-loop ventilation system in place...all ventilation will remain on at all times in both tents, and based on my rudimentary calculations, my 2 x 6" inline fans and the 6" duct booster can move enough air to circulate through both tents about 240 times per hour. I figured that like this: The 3 fans move 1,010 cfm. The two grow spaces total 252 cu ft (4 x 5 and 4 x 4) There is just over 12 feet of ducting involved in the loop, which is about 6 additional cubic feet. Correct me if I'm wrong...I'm not an HVAC guy.. The A/C kicks on, on average, every 12 minutes, so there will be a regular supply of cool fresh air injected into the mix as well. My hopes are high! (and so am I) One other interesting thing is that the addition of the 4-5 gallons of frozen water in jugs makes the substrate temp stay in the lower 70's all day long..I'm hoping the roots at least get the signal that "Winter is coming." FRIDAY: Well, shit. My closed-loop ventilation system didn't work quite right...evidently, I should have studied up on calculus. Rather than the negative pressure in both tents that I expected, both tents swole up like they were snakebit..(positive pressure?)..and temperatures in both tents started to rise...no pinche bueno. I'm sure it's my math that's off..., for example, I didn't account for the fact that the flowering tent has a carbon filter which decreases the cfm's considerably, and the intermittent flow of central air is a variable that I am also uncertain how to factor. So....I scrapped the idea until I can achieve truly equivalent intake and exhaust in both tents. HOWEVER...I did discover a trick that I will dub a "heat siphon," which is a definite improvement, but only in the veg tent. When I disconnected the flex duct from the 6" inline fan(exhaust) in the veg tent, I had intended to stub it off for now. I noticed that there was considerable "back-flow" caused by the duct booster intake fan in the flowering tent. So, the duct booster draws air from the a/c register, AND from duct which I've placed in the veg tent immediately above the light. I moved the 6" inline fan in the veg tent to to top of the tent and connected a 3' piece of duct to it that is also placed immediately above the one side of the light, so heat from the veg light is ejected into the room and partially drawn into the flower tent where it is mixed with cool a/c air, carbon scrubbed, and sent to the veg tent raining the unused CO2 down over them at about 85 degrees, which is considerably cooler than the normal tent temp. It's still not perfect.. Because the flowering tent is absorbing some of the heat drawn of the veg tent light, I'm up 3-4 degrees on average in the flowering tent, which is not what I was hoping for at all...it's now hitting 92 degrees in the flowering tent at some points during the day, and hovering at 79-80 at night, so I'm gonna have to revise the lighting schedule again..