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Grow Diaries The freedom fridge

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Active Grow Diary Bling
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Terpinolene
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It's been a year since I started this build, so this wil be a kind of retrospektiv diary.

It's really silly of me to try to grow since I don't consume more than one or two times a month, but since this is prohibition land I can not get good safe products. And it's something I did way back in the days and really enjoyed doing.

The only place I can grow is in the basement and it gets quite cold in the winter. Down to 10°c removed link So I figured I needed a insulated "tent". I also wanted it to look stealthy, and except for the extraction fan on top it still looks like a fridge. The metal casing helps to suppress noise and the magnetic door is air/smell proof.

DSC 7295~2
I got a old fridge that is almost 2 meters tall. Ripped out the compressor and the inner tubes and stuff.
 Cut away parts of the plastic top frame on the outside, but kept the outer edges of it.
Made 2 4" passive self closing air intakes in the bottom. With filter cloth on the outside to keep dust and stuff out.
Made a 4" hole in the top for extraction.

DSC 7298

 

 
Since I did a little research before I started, i found out that other people with fridge growboxes seem to be struggling with heat build up. I decided to cut away some of the insulation in the fridge. I started with removing the plastic liner and the styrefoam like insulation from approximately 1/3 of the fridge but kept the sides with slots for the shelves.
Quite a messy job but once I found the right tool and technique it was manageable. Oscillating saw is the keyword.
Once I had it down to bare metall i painted it with white paint for outdoor use. 
Initially the interior area was something like 2.2sqr feet, so removing insulation also gave me more room in the box.
I bought the largest diameter 4" carbon filter I could fit. 
A Mars Hydro ts1000 150w was the largest/cheapest light that would fit in the limited space. And it had a removable ballast. Remember heat build up in this smal box. 
The bottle shelf that came with the fridge was a perfect fit to hold the carbon filter in place.
Metal grate from a old commercial beverage fridge cut to fit in shelf slots and place pot/container on..
DSC 7301
As I started to figure out how to control extraction fans for temperature and humidity I came across AC infinity and their controllers. 
And when I realised what a game changer this is there was no reason to look any further.
I bought a 4" extraction fan, T3 humidifier, controller 69 with Bluetooth, adapter for attaching the light to it, and a controll plug for attaching other devices.
 
In the nighttime temperature would fall to much and I first tried to use various seedling heating mats in the bottom. With the AC infinity controll plug. A 40 watt matt was just a bit to large size and just a little weak in power. So i looked into terrarium heaters and discovered this little gem: a reptile radiator. This one is 80 watts. I had room to go one size up but 120watt would be way more than I need. There are several companies that make these and some are known to have startet fires. So do your homework if you want to use these. The ac infinity heater came out after i had bought this, but that could have been a option.
Can't write more right now but I will post more soon.
Strain Name
Grow Space

60x52x115cm

Lighting

Mars Hydro ts1000

Grow Medium
Soil
Breeder/ Seedbank
Seed Type
Seed / Cutting Planted on:
2023-11-21
Nutrients

Love

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coops98
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Geraniol
Joined: 8 months ago

Thats badass mate i need a weed fridge in my kitchen now 🤣 😎 

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Active Grow Diary Bling
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Terpinolene
Joined: 4 months ago
 

DSC 7318

Here it is up and running with a tomatoes plant.

The two black squares up by the carbon filter is equipment cooling fans from AC infinity. Really neat little fans powered by a usb kabel and comes with a 3speed controller.
The little black dot half way up the back wall is the pipe from the humidifier.
On the right side I have a smal Tower fan hanging from straps. Space is a issue with everything and this fan is far from ideal but i am working on upgrading this.
The pot is 1 square fot. This is the biggest square container could find that would fit. 
It had a double shell, but i only used the inner part in case of any run off. It sits on a old baking tray from a kitchen stove.
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JDog
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 JDog
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Ocimene
Joined: 4 years ago

Awesome build mate 

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Active Grow Diary Bling
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Terpinolene
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I put 4 holes in the rim of the pot for stakes and attached a metal screen with 1.5inch squares to them for scroging. That way i could slide the screen a little up and down while tucking and I could take the whole assembly out and work on all sides.

DSC 7319

I already had co2 equipment so I set it up with a ink bird controller and ran approximately 1000ppm.

Here are some more details:

Reptile radiator sits off the floor on DIY feet.

DSC 7306

 

 

The backside of the fridge with rubber grommet for routing wires through.

DSC 7311

 Inside it is sealed with play doh.

DSC 7302

 

I had some issues with the AC infinity controller running the lights and bought a vivosun growhub for this instead. Here is the left side of the fridge with all the tech stuff.

DSC 7313

 Still not finished describing all the technical stuff yet. This growbox turned out so incredibly well, and the environment was just about perfect. I'll write some on the actual growing later.

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Active Grow Diary Bling
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Terpinolene
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Initially i removed to much insulation and had to put some back on. For this i used 6mm styrofoam for use under flooring. I glued it on piece by piece and tested how the temperature was regulating. This fine tuning was key to environment control. 

When the fridge ran as it should the extraction would kick in every 2-4 minutes for perhaps 30 seconds at level 4. And only be triggered by high humidity. If triggered by temperature the fan would run for longer and environmental parameters swing more. It was so stable that i could have less than 1 degree farenheit and about 6% humidity swing over 8 HOURS on a normal day (as long as I didn't open the door). When everything was humming along you could se these repeating undulating patterns in the graphs in the app showing humidity swings. Repeating approximately every 20minutes (this varied a little). It was like seeing the breathing pattern of the plants

Screenshot 20231226 141532

 

Screenshot 20231226 141547

.

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Active Grow Diary Bling
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Terpinolene
Joined: 4 months ago
For watering I ran two blumat carrots with a 1 gallon reservoir and I think I maybe had them set a little dry. Additional hand watering.
 
I bought fem auto seeds from a breeder based in Spain that focuses on autos. But the seeds was so poor quality. There was visibly cracked and obviously not viable seeds in the package and only 5 of 13 seeds germinated. I don't want to bash their name online, but I regret not complaining to them directly. This was just shit . After trying again and again I got one of the freebie seeds to germ and another also. 
So I started out with one girlscout cookie and one from a "high yielding" variant.
 
I wanted to try to mix a living soil. I went out and gathered local soil. Used my own compost and amended with various things. This was my first attempt at this and it didn't turn out. 
The soil ended up being unbalanced in nutrition with way to much easy nitrogen and gave the plants a light tip burn, dark green colour and nasty taste. Only mild tendencies to clawing.
Now the actual GROW.
 
The gsc stunted right away because of the "hot" soil and went into premature flowering. Looking like shit. 6" tall, various spots and burned leaves, but so incredibly stinky. OMG this tiny one stank up the whole house if I opened the door.
The high yielding strain handled the unbalanced soil much better and vegged good for a couple of weeks before I scrogged it into the screen. I now had two plants in the same 1 cubic foot pot under the same screen, but one flowering way to early. When the gsc was finished I had no other place to hang it than the bottom of the fridge. It was way too hot and I jarred it after only 4-5 days.
Before flowering I had them on 18-6 lights cycle and when I wanted to start flowering the last plant i started dialing the lights back 15 minutes every day. After 12 days I could see obvious growth changes and stopped shortening the daylight. It finished under 15-9. Despite removing everything under the screen the buds did not get chunky. Unbalanced soil, rookie gardener and not correcting nutrients.
I never weighted the harvest. It was just depressing. None of the plants filled out ther buds and it ended up being loose, airy but oh so resinous buds. It was like cutting stale candy with scissors. It got me so incredibly stoned, but tasted horrible. And the high was not that pleasant.
I deleted al the pictures from this grow. Only memories remain.
I learned a lot. And still had some seeds. So for a summer grow this year i decided to go guerilla. Outside, in pots, new soil recipe and a fresh new start. 
This will be in another diary. This next grow is already finished and photographed and will be presented soon.
Thanks for your support and for reading through this.
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Active Grow Diary Bling
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Terpinolene
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It been over a month since I planted this tomato plant into this larger pot and it has not been feed any other nitrogen than what is in my bokashi run-off. I've kept it going just to keep learning to dial in the 9" blumat. 

New, bigger pot gave it a good growth spurt, but now it's looking like the season is ending

DSC 7351

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