Setting Up the Grow Room - Step-by-Step Before any plants are introduced, the grow room should be set up. Construction requires space and planning. There are just a few things that need to be accomplished before the room is ready for plants.
Step One: Choose an out-of-the-way space with little or no traffic. A dark corner in the basement would be perfect. Make sure the room is the right size. A 1,000 watt HID, properly set up, will efficiently illuminate up to a 10' x l0' room if a light balancer is used. The ceiling should be at least 5' high. Remember, plants are set up about one foot off the ground in containers and the lamp needs about a foot of space to hang from the ceiling. This leaves only three feet of space for plants to grow. However, if forced to grow in an attic or basement with a low 4' ceiling, much can be done to compensate for the loss of height, including cloning, bending and pruning.
Step Two: Enclose the room, if not already enclosed. Remove everything not having to do with the garden. Furniture and especially drapes or curtains may harbor fungi. A totally enclosed room will permit easy, precise control of everything and everyone that enters, exits and who and what goes on inside. For most growers, enclosing the grow room is simply a matter of tacking up some sheet rock in the basement or attic and painting it flat white. Make sure no light is visible from outside. At night, bright light leaking from a crack in an uncovered window is like a beacon to curious neighbors or bandits.
Step Three: Cover walls, ceiling, floor, everything with a highly reflective ,` material like flat white paint or whitewash. The more reflection, the more light energy that is available to plants. Good reflective light will allow effective coverage of a 1,000 watt HID lamp to increase from 36 square feet, with no reflective material, to a maximum of 100 square feet just by putting $10-$20 worth of paint on the walls.
Step Four: See: "Setting Up the Vent Fan" page: 165. Constant circulation and a supply of fresh air are essential. There should be at least one fresh air vent in a 10' x l0' room, preferably two. Vents may be an open door, window or heat vent. Most growers have found that a small exhaust fan, vented outdoors, pulling new fresh air through an open door will create an ideal air flow. A small oscillating fan works well for circulation. When installing such a fan, make sure it is not set in a fixed position and blows too hard on tender plants. It could cause wind burn, or in the case of young seedlings and clones, dry them out. If the room contains a heat vent, it may be opened to supply extra heat or air circulation.
Step Five: The larger your garden gets, the more water it will need. A 10'x10' garden may need as much as 30 gallons a week. You may carry water in, container at a time (1 gallon of water weighs 8 pounds). It is much easier to run in a hose with an on/off valve or install a hose bib in the room. A 3-4' watering wand may be attached to the hose on/off valve. The wand will save many broken branches, when watering in dense foliage. It is best to hook the hose up to a hot and cold water source, so the water temperature may be easily regulated.
Step Six: Ideally, the floor should be concrete or a smooth surface that can be swept and/or washed down. A floor drain is very handy. In grow rooms with carpet or wood floors, a large, white, painter's dropcloth or thick, white, visqueen plastic, will save floors from moisture. Trays may also be placed beneath each container for added protection and convenience.
Step Seven: Mount a hook, strong enough to support 30 pounds, the center of the growing area to be serviced by the lamp. Attach an adjustable chain or cord and pulley between the ceiling hook and the lamp fixture. This will make it easy to keep the lamp at the proper distance from the growing plants and up out of the way when maintaining them.
Caution: A hot HID may explode if touched by a single drop of cold water. Be very careful and make sure to move the HID out of the way when servicing the garden.
Step Eight: There are some tools an indoor gardener must have and a few extra tools that make indoor horticulture much more precise and cost effective. The extra tools help the horticulturist play Mother Nature and make the garden so efficient they pay for themselves within a few weeks. It is best to purchase or find around the house, all tools needed before the plants are brought into the room. If the tools are there when needed, chances are they will be put to use. A good example is a hygrometer. If plants show signs of slow, sickly growth, due to high humidity, most growers will not notice the exact cause right away. They will wait and guess, wait and guess, and maybe figure it out before a fungus attacks and the plant dies. When a hygrometer is installed before plants are in the grow room, the horticulturist will know, from the start, when the humidity is too high and causing sickly growth. See: tool closet and list of tools.
Step Nine: Read and complete: "Setting Up the HID Lamp" page 80.
Step Ten: Move the seedlings or rooted clones into room. Huddle them closely together under the lamp. Make sure the HID is not so close to small plants that it burns their leaves. Usually seedlings require the lamp to be at least 24" away.
