Grow tent DIY for a fraction of the cost

Air tight- sealed and has zipper door. 4x8x8 $60… please stop spending money on garbage pre made grow tents, save money and build your own in under 2 hrs…

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I’ve been saying the same about leds for a couple years now haha!

Did you use lumber frame and wrap in panda film?

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I set decon chambers/ negative air chambers / containment’s for cdc for a living. This is a walk-in closet that I just lined with 6mil Polly but frame can be made out of pvc or timber. Double sided sticky tap, two rolls of prez tape, can of spray glue and a zipper…

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![image|375x500] [quote=“DIYMan, post:1, topic:17940, full:true”]
Air tight- sealed and has zipper door. 4x8x8 $60… please stop spending money on garbage pre made grow tents, save money and build your own in under 2 hrs…


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I built mine out of 1" rigid Styrofoam. Structural and rigid and insulated. 4’ X 6’ and 3 plants with diy lights per @dbrn32

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You definitely have a very nice diy setup!

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In large part thanks to your input and guidance lol.

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Thanks, willing to help with anything I can.

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You think you could educate me on a DIY light system?

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Sure. Lots of different types of leds you can use. For a 4x8, I would probably recommend doing a couple of different fixtures for ease of use.

How many and what lights are you using now?

I have 1 1000 w metal halide but am told I need a hps for flower

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The most popular thing going right now is quantum boards. If you scroll around here you can find a few members using them. They’re more of an assemble yourself light available in kits with everything you need. You can source the parts individually though and usually save a couple bucks.

Prior to that, cobs were the big rage. While they’re still very popular, they usually require a little more work. If you go to YouTube and search for growmau5 he’s like the first name in diy leds. He has a ton of videos that will be much more informative than anything I have the time to type out.

Led strips from bridgelux and samsung are good way to get into diy lights too. They’re relatively inexpensive, and you can pretty much start as big or small as you’d like. These are pretty simple to build too, with the majority of work being in putting together a frame for them. There’s not as much info available online, but you can find a couple of strip builds here too.

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Gotcha. Hps will definitely have better bud development than mh. But I don’t know if it’s accurate to say you need it. I would say you’ll do a lot better with hps for flowering. Also, 1000 watt of either probably a little weak from one side to the other.

To light a space that size properly for flowering with leds will be expensive regardless of which way you go. Going diy route will get you the most performance per watt. Most seeing pretty solid results around 30 watts per square foot. If you go with led panels from amazon, everyone seems to feel 50 Watts per square foot is the number you want.

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I will look into them, watching some YouTube on them right now. I know that 1000 w is only good for a 4x4 area . I have another 1000 w to hook up but don’t want to pay to run 2000 w at the moment lol…

I hear that! The right leds can bring that down quite a bit. Unfortunately, initial investment quite a bit higher.

I’m not really sure what kind of budget you’d have, but it may be a good idea to start with one and eventually build more later.

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Once my last diy fixture is in place I will be running 720 watts to replace 1,300 watts of led’s. I don’t have a grow behind me with them yet but the numbers look good and the plants so far are happy. I love going out to look and there’s no sound of cooling fans running haha! The fixture is keeping the grow box toasty too during this cold weather.

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For this grow though would it be best to switch to hps? I’m going to follow this LED kit and build mine but fear keeping metal halide running will keep these lady’s from reaching optimal level. Or should I just leave metal halide… this is a pic from just now. They just woke up

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Yeah I would like to not run cooling equipment