Transcription of Components for a cannabis grow tent tutorial video :
Today we’re going to make a slightly different video, a little bit special, I’ll tell you how the different elements are distributed in a grow tent, how they work and how they’re assembled. Lets have a look...
In this case we have 2 tents, meaning the grower can work both at the same time, one in veg, the other in bloom, and rotating between them, but everything I’ll tell you about this tent goes exactly the same for the other. They operate in exactly the same way, the only thing that will vary is the type of bulb and the photoperiod.
Let's see how the tent is arranged: First remove this piece of mesh, which serves to keep out any undesirable elements like bugs that we don’t want, and then we open the zipper to see how everything is set up inside our tent.
Let's see what are the elements that are in this grow tent, you’ll see that the first thing that stands out is, naturally, the reflector with the bulb. In this case it’s metal halide but we should use sodium if we are flowering.
This reflector is connected to a cable, this electrical cable goes to the ballast. But we also have another cable here, and this one doesn’t come from the ballast but straight from the mains supply, in case we change this reflector with the sodium bulb for some fluorescent lights, depending on which stage we’re at, especially when germinating, cloning or at the beginning of growth.
What else have we got? This is also important, the carbon filter that as you know serves to remove odours from the grow tent. The filter is connected to an extractor that sucks the air and takes it out the back. We could also fit an intake fan, but in case we don’t have one we have some vents like this one here or we can open this door up and passively take the air from outside, entering the tent here and exiting up there.
To help this work, we also have a couple of fans that move the air around, distribute the CO2 better and remove the stale air. Logically, this will also help us control the temperature…
Talking of temperature, in this case we can monitor it with this thermo-hygrometer. This tells us the temperature and humidity at all times. If it’s cold, then we have this heater here that will help us, so that when the lights are out and the temperature drops, the heater will raise the temperature and the plants won’t suffer too much.
What else? We’ve got the growing tray. In this case we’ve raised the tray so that if we have a problem when irrigating, this tub will help us to collect water and we won’t have the whole tray full of it. These are basically the elements that we have in the grow tent.
We’re here in between the 2 tents to see the electrical installation. Here we can see the different elements, starting at the bottom which is the main power strip, which supplies electricity to the whole circuit. This terminal is always working and here we see that there are different cables. Red is the one that goes to the timing box and these 2 targets go up to other strips, what they do is power the extractor.
In this setup the extraction is always running. What else? Here we have the timer box as I said, in this case it’s at 12/12 (12 hours on/12 hours off) and here we have red wires connected to the ballast. The ballast goes directly, as we have seen before, to the reflector and the bulb. And in this case we have 2 because we’ve got 2 tents and 2 ballasts.
The blue socket here, what it does is start up only when the red one is switched off. So when the ballast is working: the blue socket isn’t live. What’s plugged into the blue socket? We’ve got the heater plugged in. The heater will help us to raise the temperature when the lights aren’t working, okay? To control the temperature is very important. Now we will see from above how the strips are connected to the extractor…
We’ve climbed up to see the tents from above to check out the air extraction connections. We see here that we have the tent connected with this black tube (the Combiduct) that goes from the filter inside the tent to this wooden box (it's a soundproof box to cover fan noise) which holds the RVK extractor.
From there, the duct goes to this PVC "Y" (a normal drainage piece) and then it continues to the outside. If for example we have only one tent in use, it’s very easy to remove this piece and put on its PVC cap. In this way, the extractor from tent 1 passes through here and the air goes out.
Let's see, before it gets outside we’ve put (if you’ll follow me) an ozoniser. What it does is eliminate all the all the cannabis particles remaining in the air once filtered by the carbon filter. Then it can go directly to the exterior without the neighbours smelling anything at all.
And if we have limited space, we can use a smaller tent like this one. It basically works the same, but there are four peculiarities that this small tent has, like the extractor. You can see it’s much smaller, here it is, the air would come out here and on the other side is the passive intake. So the air enters here, passes among the crop and out through the extractor.
Another thing is the lighting. In this case it is different. We won’t have a ballast, no bulbs that dissipate a lot of heat, but instead daylight fluorescents at 6,400 Kelvins that are ideal for the growth period, or to root cuttings.
The tray, also logically of a smaller size for the space and underneath, a little trick: we’ve got this heatingmat, which will be perfect for rooting cuttings. You see, it’s smaller, but it’s the same system.
Well, now we’ve seen how to have a nice growing tent in good condition, we’ve seen all the equipment and how it’s used. I'm just going to stay with my girls for a while, I need to lift the reflector, it’s very low as they’ve grown a bit… I’ll be here watering the plants for a while.
Remember that we’ve got all this equipment at www.alchimiaweb.com
Till next time!
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Outtakes:
- I can’t remember the word, man!
- elements, elements…damn, I can’t remember, man!
- Or in the middle or one more time… eh?
