Help setting up my first grow

**Captain Christmas** · 24-04-16, 03:56 PM

Afternoon all, if you don't want to read the epic intro story questions are in bold about 3/4 of the way down, cheers.

So I've spent about 12 hours this week reading up on here, and on Monday read erburts advice on germing in soil with bottle tops (ta for the guide btw) which has worked on 2 of 3 seeds so far, they broke through the soil on Friday. There's a little windowed pvc and glass porch entrance to my flat which has been getting nice and hot with the sun this week so the seeds are germinating in there under natural light (pic attached fwiw), but it's far from discrete and once I get a few leaves I need to move these somewhere more appropriate or neighbours might clock the grow. There is a room height cupboard I'm clearing, but I often have family round who don't even know I like a smoke so although I could put a small tent in I worry that if anyone did open the cupboard it's obvious shit's going down, so that's not an option. It's a weird kinda quarter of a house flat, so I have access to a loft but supporting beams prevent setting up a tent up there.

What I'm thinking is a small box grow (drawing attached) based on some of the pc case builds on here, which would fit neatly in a pc case box I kept hold of from a recent build, so if I see a car pull up or get a knock I can unplug and drop the box on top to conceal the lot. Maybe I'll get some ona gel if it get's a bit fragrant, we'll see.

I have some leftover contiboard which I think would make a nice case, fixed together with angle brackets and then silicone the fuck out of any small gaps. I've come up with the idea of a two-part grow box, the bottom contains the plants, fan (or fans, not sure on that yet) lined with reflective mylar, then the top section has a CFL bulb, looking at a 200w, possibly separated by a pvc window to keep the box from getting too much of the heat, and allowing passive ventilation of the bulb area with a few drilled holes without the escaping smell that would accompany this when I (hopefully!) get to flowering, again not sure on this. I think I'll vent to the loft through the roof of the cupboard.

So far I'm looking at the following gear:

100mm bathroom vent fan to extract (already got this)
100mm ducting (got about 5m of this spare too)
Silver White Mylar Lightite reflective sheeting
Powerplant heavy duty timer (plan on running both lamp and fan on the same timer so when light is off so is the fan)
Rhino 4inch carbon filter
TFA 30.5026.01 Moxx Digital Thermo-Hygrometer
Giant Dual 200w 6u CFL Grow Light
Seeds are Barney's Critical Rapido Auto's planted in Miracle-Gro Expand 'n Gro Concentrated Enriched Compost

So my biggest question marks are will I need an intake fan, will the clear pvc window affect growth, will the bathroom fan be OK for such a small box and will the filter be OK at the loft end of the duct? For the intake fan I'm thinking even with negative pressure in the box smell will dictate the need for a fan eventually? As it is all this kit's gonna cost about £100 which for some nice smoke is worth it, but I might fuck it all up and get nowt so I don't want to spend/commit too much! Even if this works out it may well be a one-time deal so although I'm aware a few of these parts are at the Skoda Favorit end of the spectrum there's no way I'm going much above the current spend. If I can get some general thoughts and others' experiences of similar grows that would be good too. I've not ordered everything yet (just the mylar) but unless I'm persuaded otherwise I expect I will sometime this week. I also have no idea about nutrients yet, not had time to read that part of the forum!

Anyway sorry for the long post, and massive thanks to all the pro's posting guides on here, you're the best!