Doobie Noobie's Downunder Dumpster Dive DIY

Discussion in 'Indoor Grow Journals' started by Doobie Noobie, Jan 16, 2021.

  1. Lol, good on ya mate :hello:
     
  2. Happy Monday!
    When you're wondering how to handle cable entry, and you swing by the scrap bin and find this...
    :jump:
     

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  3. Bit more tinkering for a Saturday morning.
    I was going to run a single power lead to each of those drivers, but then had the brilliant idea that I can splice two to one and have less congestion at the multibox. Earth for safety, and DC plug for convenience
     

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  4. I got them drivers mounted. Always a worry working on my cabinet, having Mrs Noobie lurking. She's got a habit of just rocking up to my shed unannounced, so I have to be a bit cautious, wait for her to fall asleep in the sun or jump in the shower. It's a fun game.
    So tonight my day job kept me out to 2am, and I've just popped into the shed before bed for a quiet whiskey and thought there's no real reason why I can't fire that thing up. I still haven't finished me earth connection, so just didn't touch anything.
    Boom! Bright enuf I reckon. That was kinda satisfying :smiley-rolling-joint:
     

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  5. Just landed! 2 keys of the good stuff!
    So my activated carbon arrived for my filter today. That filters turning out to be quite an investment. Time I've spent on that thing...dang. Carbon $30, felt to try dampen the noise $9, glue...
    But the sun is shining and the birds are singing and it's an awesome day to be alive
     

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  6. Yesterday was a good day. Mrs Noobie was out at work, and I had free time to work on my quiet corner cabinet. Of course my carbon arrived too, so that's cool.
    I had a dry fit of the lid with the cable entry thingie installed as well as the filter assembly. I'm running some close tolerances there to utilize the space as best as possible, and was pretty pleased it fitted.
    I figured I'd have enough clearance between the filter and the flower light heatsink if I moved that up another inch, so did that. There's another inch of grow space. The filter inlets will be directly above where my cobs will be mounted, so I guess that will help with cooling. With the way the fins of the heatsink are, it should suck air from the front and back of the cabinet, and then out through all that marvelous carbon.
    I wondered how I was going to mount my power multi boxes, and suddenly thought I could just velcro them in place. One down each side, at the back, so 4 power points.
    I'd had one of the side panels off to mount the cheap AF Chinese drivers, so I bolted that back on. Easier said than done.
    Earthed! Finally connected all the earth wires and buzz bar up to the earth rod I'd put in some weeks ago, so I was happy to run the light for a while. I set the timer for 18/6 and let it go. After a couple of hours the heatsink was at about 38 degrees C, which got me thinking I should be running that through our cold winter nights and have it off during the day. Could be quite cozy inside there at night with that running. Thinking 4pm till 10am should be convenient. I wonder if I didn't have cheap ass COBs whether it would run much cooler. Definitely going to get Crees for my flower. That heatsink is prolly 40% bigger than my veg, but with more efficient cobs that aren't running at 100% it might be comparable.
    Weekend project is to get that filter finished. I filled all the carbon chambers yesterday, fired up the fan. Happy to report that it does seem to suck through all that carbon without straining the fan so much. My math was a bit fucked up though. Turns out I didn't quite need 2kg of carbon, so I've got some spare. Better that way than not enough.
    Need to figure out now how to mount one of those power supplies for some 12VDC for fans and whatever, as well as a meanwell for my flower light
    Pics for your viewing pleasure.
     

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  7. Holy fuck that was a marathon!
    Finally got that whole fan assembly sorted. The theory was to route the exhaust side of the fan through a bit of a buffering chamber in an attempt to dampen down the noise from the fan as much as possible. I'd like to think ive achieved that. I was going to do a few tests, before and after, but found I just couldn't be fucked with it. In the end I think it worked.
    So I made the chamber out of a couple of the routers I'd found, so they ended up with that same 1RU (techy talk for about 40mm; rack unit) profile. Used a whole lot of screws I'd recovered through the disassembly of those heatsink units, tapped for ease of assembly. Haven't ever done a whole lot of drilling/tapping before, and I think I like it.
    I felted just about every surface I could, and cut an exit hole in the side of the cabinet and covered it with a grille from one of the routers. When I dropped the whole assembly in from the top, it mated up nicely with a cavity in the very top of the cabinet and a couple of foam plugs sealed the whole thing so it exhausts out the side quite nicely. I shudder to think how many hours I've put into that thing, actually, as well as thinking about it. Glad it's all done, um except for the power supply, but that's no biggie.
    I think I need a break for a while
    :hookah:
     

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  8. Seemed like a good idea at the time
     

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  9. So this is me sitting down about 2 meters away from the cabinet. It's 9.30pm on a Monday night and there's a bit of traffic noise in the background. First one averages 20.8dB without the fan running, and with it 21.1dB. There's a faint whine in the background. If I leave a radio playing softly in the shed in the background, you'll never know it's there. I'm OK with that. I'll light up some incense in the cabinet next couple of days once that Ados has gone, see if the carbon passes the test :)
     

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  10. Lol...and this is 3am this morning, when I was working on it. Mrs Noobie was fast asleep. That OCD got the better of me! :blush:
     

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  11. I was scrolling through a few threads on popping seeds; a bunch of info was absorbed, and so this is what I did tonight.
    Somewhere I read that 24C is good for germination, somewhere I read you should roll your seed around in a matchbox with some sandpaper to scuff the shell, and somewhere I read that you should soak them for 24hrs till they sink, then into dert at a quarter inch deep.
    So I've got a bunch of fish tank stuff that the kids have been through and lost interest in and among all that is a small tank heater. I figured I'd pop that into a small polystyrene cube with some water, set it to 24C and away we go. Nice warm environment for the little bean. Its coming into winter here. So the bean is in a glass balanced inside a plastic container sitting on top of the water in the cube. I wasn't sure what that heater gets up to, and didn't know how the polystyrene would react, so I tried to isolate the heater from direct contact with some scraps of aluminum.
    I figured I'd just do the one seed, like it was my last, before I screw up something that can't be unscrewed
    Wish me luck! :Love-Plant:
     

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  12. In other news...I while I was sifting through threads, was thinking about that one seed I got off 'my girl', maybe she didn't catch a stray pollen for the boys upwind. Maybe she was so stressed, she hermied?
    Also, I met up with my gro bro I haven't seen for a long time. Checked out his grow. He was having trouble with his clones not doing so good, so I lent him my bubble cloner to play with. In the meantime, I've built myself another cloner. The Vii way so much better.
    Turns out mate's been cloning his AK47 for 16 years :eek2:
     
  13. I haven't finished the Vii as yet, but it's a more compact unit and can hang out of the way quite nicely. I'll have it hanging so that any vibration from it is dampened down and so it'll be quieter. I've got a grommet to take the air hose out the side, so I won't have that coming through the top like the Vi has. I'm quite excited about that, but gotta prioritize a few other bits and pieces before I finish that off.
     

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  14. I had a sick day the other day, managed to get some work done while nursing a sore back.
    Big trouble with light leaks. I had a list of things to do and prioritized them. Fix light leaks was like number 6 on the list, but ramped up to number one. It's a work in progress, but I'm getting there. Air vent in was a problem to, to try and seal the light in and let air in. I had to make a series of baffles to block the light. Did a few other bits and pieces.
    I'm gonna be a Dad! Exciting times. I had the bean soaking for 18 hours when I tapped it and it sank, so thought it was good to go and planted it in some medium. The medium dried out a bit under the light and from the heat of the tank heater. Thought I'd killed the little gal, but no, she's (thinking positive thoughts) finally broken out!
     

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  15. Vent. Inside and out. I also put in a switch just inside the door to make it easier to turn carbon filter fan off. Or on.
     

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  16. So last night and today I was playing around with fans and power supplies. Turns out one of the ps I recovered from the dumpster was only putting out about 5 or 6 volts from its 12v outlet, and bumping all over the place. I binned that one, but the other was all good. 12v and 5. I bought some plugged things so it would be more convenient and I could either run the fans at either voltage. They're a lot quieter at 5v, and still move some air. I've got 6 slots for 12v, 4 for 5v. Still not sure how to mount the power supply, but I'll get there. Or the fans. Not sure how to mount or where to place. I guess some air movement over the heatsinks would be a start
    Gal's OK
     

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  17. Work in progress.
    My little gal looked like she might be going lankey, so I switched on my second veg COB. Hehe, looks like I'll be chasing more light leaks. I might have to get a bit more serious about that.
    But first, I've been figuring out how to mount that psu, and found some scrap metal and angles that eventually pop riveted up quite nicely to hang In a bit of space at the side of the cabinet. Fuck it's awesome having so many mounting options in there with holes all over the place! I did some math for my flower light too, and decided an HLG 320H C2100B should be my driver of choice for my planned 4x CXB3070's. Checked out the data sheet for that, and I should be able to mount that on the same plate. Also figured out that the Meanwell driver wasn't as expensive as I first anticipated, so I'm seriously thinking about replacing the China drivers and when I do, I'll mount on the exact same type plate. I made sure I grabbed that out of the dumpster in anticipation. Also on the spec sheet for the meanwell, it documents a center for the hot spot, so I'll mount some ting low profile heatsinks on the opposite side of the mounting plate. Gotta get some of that ceramic heatsink epoxy to glue them on.
    Good times!
    Gal's OK
     

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  18. There she is on her makeshift heat pad. He feet should be about 24C and ambient is 19C atm, but only an hour into the 18hr day. Looks like she's going to throw some roots through her little fibre pot so I'd better get something bigger for her to sit in
     

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  19. Fuck it. I thought I'd just better do that quickly now while Mrs Noobie was out, so that's what I did. Next step for her is a 10 litre water bottle I found on the side of the road. I'll put it on its side on a low profile, and she can just spread her feet out on there
     

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  20. I made sure when that meanwell driver gets here I can just bolt it in and go for it. The specs mentioned a centre of the hot spot generated by the driver, so I mounted a few small heatsinks (from routers and shit) behind that area. I used some recovered heat putty to help transfer heat.
    I Google that epoxy, and I was gonna be like $20, so I thought yeah, nah fuck that, and just tapped and screwed them for nothing.
    Gal's OK
     

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