Hey guys, it's Sneaky Pete here and I'm tired of paying for weed. Luckily, I do live in Canada, and we can grow four plants at home legally, so I've decided to bite the bullet and I bought myself a grow tent. What I’ve decided on is essentially a pre-made grow tent kit. It has your light, fan, filter and pretty much everything you need, except for plants and soil. Generally, this is what a kit of this fashion includes.
I also want to expose you to the comedy that is me assembling something like this. Detailed construction isn’t really my cup of tea and we're going to see how long this is going to take me, and I'm going to start my stopwatch and at the end we'll see how long it took me. I am going to have a couple of tokes along the way, so we're also going to find out also if cannabis is a performance enhancing substance (I think Michael Phelps got a bad deal).
This time around, I’ll be using these Gorilla Cookies autoflowering seeds. Essentially, the seeds will autoflower after a certain number of days from when you put them in the ground. They’ll break the soil after a fixed number of days and then these are going to grow completion. I've never tried to grow seeds like this before, but I'm excited to try it out.
I don't know quite what to expect here, hopefully it's reasonably easy to put together because I'm not good at this kind of stuff. Shockingly, not finished five minutes in but in all fairness, I did just do a massive toke. We’re literally starting from the word go, so let's go ahead and see what's in the big box. Welp, we’re looking at boxes in boxes, so I’m just going to grab one and get started.
Right from the start, I can tell this is going to be a lot of work but at least when it’s done, it’s done. Sneaky Zu just asked me if I know how to do this and if I plan on reading the instructions and I had to laugh. I only plan on using the instructions if something goes really wrong. I would really like to think something like this you can just kind of figure it out right but and also this shouldn't be too terribly complex. Again though, I'm not super good at this kind of thing so it's kind of a battle of those two aspects.
These look to be some sort of corner joints. Oh shit, it looks it's going to be like putting together a tent or something. I've definitely set up a tent or two in my day and I think this is going to be doable. This next part is going to be the hard part, I know Sneaky Zu will be helping me with that. Whenever you buy something like this it’s a little overwhelming at first because you just have so many things. Best advice? Just take it one step at a time. You’re usually just repeating the same thing over and over. This seems to be some sort of a mid-piece; this piece here is probably going to go something over here; this is just kind of how you figure things out.
Ideally, I know what it's supposed to look like at the end of the day, so I probably shouldn't put that one on first. Well, we're going to figure it out here. Sometimes, that’s the nice thing about figuring things out, sometimes you do it wrong, sometimes you have to do it twice to get it right, but at least you actually learned something. A structure is starting to form, it looks like we’re about halfway done!
The tent comes in two different sizes, one that has a footprint of 24 inches by 24 inches and this one I chose is 27 inches by 27 inches, so they are decently similar, but I decided to go with a slightly bigger one because it was also taller and then it had the bigger size light. This light has the equivalent of a thousand watt - it can’t obviously be a thousand watt - light and it's significantly larger than the other one that’s rated at 600. While assembling this monster, I noticed that letters here on the pieces like an H for example or E right here. Uh oh. Wait. These have an E as well so now I'm just going to take a closer look. Well, apparently all of these have a D on them, and at this point I'm trying to figure out why because it's going to be taller than what I have in front of me, obviously. I don't think you assemble two of them on top of each other, but that’s also what we have, so there's got to be some way to connect them. Here we go, these are a different size so one might have to put something together again to get it right. I hear that’s part of the fun lol. These pieces seem to be taller. So, that is taller but it's not much taller. It’s like watching a monkey try to drive a stick shift, hand to god. A bit more fiddling and I think we’re making progress.
Let’s put that piece there and put this one here and there we go. Boom! Super Genius! Tents in no time! I was really hoping step one is “put together the frame” but you know if not, I guess we're going to find that out. Now, all we have to do is assemble this structure at the top again. Everything seems to be about as big as I envisioned, and I am glad I went with the larger size because I can tell that the smaller size wood be substantially smaller. In the grand scheme of things, I think it would feel too crowded in the smaller tent, so having that extra few inches vertically is especially going to give you more room. The nice thing about this kit as well is that it has a dimmable that is going to give you a lot more flexibility when you're going to start with seedlings as compared to flowering plants. All you’ll need to do is adjust the dimmer till you’re at the appropriate exposure.
No lie, I did have to consult the manual. I have these two pieces left over and I kind of figured they went like so, but you put the tent on the structure, followed by placing these pieces on top. Next, we’ll start putting the tent on this frame. At this time, we're at 26 minutes elapsed, bitcoin's at 23.8 which isn't bad for the current context. Hopefully, it's really low because it'll be much higher in the future. This piece goes on its side and now we open this covering material. Finally, a part that’s easy enough. Oh sweet, it looks like a floor covering drop cloth with a little structure that helps keep things clean if you do have a little leak or a spill which is somewhat inevitable. This is totally going to help protect your floor, so it's nice to see them include it. We’re not working with a huge space here, hopefully you got a little more space you're working with than I do because it does sometimes make things a little more challenging but for some, it’s definitely part of the experience.
I’m betting that that's going to be the top and bottom and there's the zipper. I’m betting we have to undo the zipper and kind of put the frame in there. That is quite the zipper it goes the whole way across the entire tent. Yaa, we're going to have to hit a vape again here soon because this is… there we go. Man, oh man, thank you for your patience, that was scary. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to find that to be totally honest. I don't think you have to take the whole zipper off, but I'm going to just kind of take it off because this next step, we're going to cover in time lapse because this is going to be a little bit tough, but we have a great angle for time lapse so let's go back in time a la Huey Lewis.
It really wasn't that bad to put the tent on the frame, the key is we didn't open up this top zipper all the way at first, and that made it way harder. As soon as we did open it up, though, it was fairly easy. I found what really helped was to grab the corner in your hand and then bring the tent to the metal piece right. Size is deceptive, I’m interested to see measure this and see how tall it actually is. I'm six foot eight for reference so it is a reasonably tall thing, and now that it's together, you can see its size accurately. I’d say it measures in at roughly human size and will definitely house all of our equipment.
The last two things to assemble are these support arms. They are going to go at the top as that’s where the weight is going to be distributed and then place that drip tray in the bottom. After a few more minutes of examination, I’d estimate it measures in about six feet at least six foot one. These support bars are going to bolster your load at the top so make sure they are centered. Now that they are centered, I am going to double check the instructions that it’s done properly because as this is an integral structural component you want to ensure that you don’t take safety for granted.
I think we have reached the stage where we are ready to start putting in the lights and fans, you know, the good stuff. But right before we get into that, the last step is going to be install the drip tray. It happens to have that same reflective material on the side of it. The tray has these little Velcro clips if you prefer to use them and I'm sure you can put them on the black side (as opposed to the reflective) as well. I decided to go directly in there and forgo the connectors, so there's no Velcro this connects to. Instead, you can do just wrap the straps around the corner poles and they actually have both sides of the Velcro connection so you can just lock it in on the poles. Now that the liner is installed, I can't believe how warm it is for just being in here for a minute or two. The warmth shows you the importance of having good ventilation as this thing definitely reflects the internal heat. Fifty minutes in time to partake in some more partakeables.
As you can imagine, this box has the fan and what not, so I'm just going to open it up and unbox the fan, the filter, and the light then just kind of see if I can install them without the instructions. I believe I'm going to install the light first as I know how much it matters, but let’s get everything out and see what we have. It’s definitely got some weight to it; it's not necessarily heavy but it definitely has a presence to it. It’s such a nice thing to buy a kit like this as you get everything you need in one fell swoop. The fan's got an on and off and then a dimmer switch which is good so you can control the actual speed of it. That should be plenty of juice for a light like. The included carbon filter is going to help mitigate the smell, and there will be a smell. Honestly, this is one of those things that you will want to change out once in a while; you don't want to use the same carbon filter for three years, it just has a fixed shelf life.
Now, what we don’t know is how much smell reduction the filter will be able to provide, but this is a good sized one, so I imagine this is going to be strong. The filter has some weight to it for sure and we're going to put this inside the tent. The filter is full of activated carbon and the air is going to be pulled through the filter and that mitigates the smell.
Finally, as far as assembly goes, is the LED light. The last time I grew weed, I didn't use LED lights but with the technological advancements, the new LEDs are a complete game changer. LEDs are light and both low energy and low heat which are both integral components for a fruitful grow. The advancement in LEDs have been just an excellent thing for the growing world. The light is probably lighter than either the filter or the fan which is kind of remarkable. I believe there is 326 LEDs on the housing, but don't quote me on that.
Additionally, to the lights themselves, there is a dimming switch as well that functions similar to the fan, and a timer that is nice because it is a more powerful light, so you have the option of turning the light down so that you don’t hurt those seedlings. There are situations where you don't want to put out 100 % unless you can get the light really far from the plants. During the build, I noticed that a piece is a little bit bent, and you know it’s just one of those things you don't love but I don't think it's worthwhile to complain about.
Next, we need to try to figure out how to hook this gear up to the top of the tent and go figure, it's a little bit harder than I figured so we're just going to have to figure that process out. We’re now at about an hour and two minutes in and I need to reiterate we're not running a race here.
Alright, after some test fitting and some figuring out, I think we know what we're doing, and I have to cut two pieces of ducting. Essentially, you want to have a piece of ducting going from the filter to the fan and even though it fits, they say don't connect the filter to the fan directly because the vibrations from the fan can cause all the carbon the filter to kind of settle in one spot and it won't be effectively filtering it. So, you’re going to want to use some ducting and I'm going to cut two pieces here just to do it properly and have ducting going from the filter to the fan and then from the fan out of the tent. I decided not to cut long pieces there because what you don't want to do is create air restriction as that causes the fan to work poorly. Apparently, the ducting is tougher than my scissors, so I grabbed a Leatherman. After learning from mistake, we’re going to cut that wire tight to and then I'm going to cut one more piece of ducting about this length. I'm going to make this one a little bit longer because this it’s going to lead out of the tent, so I want to leave it a little bit longer. I could just vent it longer, but I'm thinking maybe I could vent it in a particular direction if I wanted. That might just make it a little easier, depending on where it's sitting in the room. There are a couple different options for venting it; you can vent it out the left side, you can vent it out the right side, or you can even vent it out the top if you want. Now, because of where this is going to be sitting in my room, I'm going to be venting out of the side here, so I'm going to put the carbon filter in this spot and then put the fan on this side and now it's going to vent in that direction. Alright, so we've got the port on the left side closed off, and the carbon filter mounted with numerous zip ties, and I am probably going to add even more, but this is a viable way for now. Originally, I was going to go with bungee cords, but I figured that zip ties can't go wrong as long as you make sure you use enough. Now that the ducting is secured, I'm going to mount the fan and then make sure we're running the ducting between filter and the fan and then the fan out through the mounted carbon filter. With the ducting on the filter itself installed, we can run a strip of tape, I’m using gaffing tape, to carefully make sure this is very carefully taped and also that it is not going to be restricting airflow which is major key. An hour and forty-five minutes here, we're getting somewhere now and we're making progress.
My intention is to mount the fan in the same way as the filter. The set up indicates the direction for the air path, so just make sure that before you mount it, you actually put the fan in the right way. Next, make sure the cords come down and hanging like so which results in no stress on the cords while it sits there. Now that we’ve got the fan installed here using the same zip tie strategy, run one more when it's all kind of in there as you see the ducting runs from the fan to the filter. With that in place, tape as needed and then we're going to put the ducting on the outside of the fan. Ensure there is ducting exiting the tent and then go ahead and mount the light.
After the light is in, that is going to be about it. Take the time to always go in double check the seam, you know it is a little ugly, and make sure it is airtight. We had decided to have this one sit on the outside and I think it's just going to work better having this vent on the outside. You can always add to this later, but I think everything looks good. Ideally, you want to get the most vertical space created as possible because that provides flexibility with the relative distance between the potentially hot light and fragile vegetation, just take incremental steps with your setup. Our minor adjustments gave us a number of additional inches of vertical space and now we're going to mount the light.
The light has these stainless-steel clips, and they connect to the light clip and facilitate your ability to move them up and down very easily as the plants grow or if you're starting new plants. The light clips onto these sockets and that's just going to connect to this frame and then mount the fixture in the tent using these clips and they are going to allow you to change the light’s position. So, I tried to mount it in the tent using the clips and you can't actually connect that here so I'm going to double up some zip ties just to give me extra support for hanging the light. I'm going to hang each of these light mounts on a doubled-up zip tie here, for cheap insurance, rather than higher up and zip tie the other side too.
Finally, we're going to hang the lights on these clips right here. Be extra careful here, this is the part where you want to make sure you don't drop it. At this point, it is safe to say we have a very rudimentary grow tent setup here. It will need some fine tuning, but at this point this is a very basically set up grow tent, a minimally viable product if you will. We still have some stuff to do we like mounting the electrical and the dimmer on the fan, so we're going to have to do a couple of last steps before we call it a mission accomplished, George Bush style sort of thing.
I am pretty excited to have this here and very roughly set up. Now it’s time it to mount the light dimmer and again, we're going to go with zip ties. For now, it's going to be a little bit rough but it's just a very straightforward way to do it. Here, I have the power cable connections that are going to plug to the light and then that's going to plug into the fan. As you can see, at the back it has this little built-in port, and you will want to use these kinds of ports to run your electrical cables through because these ones come from the top. I'm using this port but as you can see at the bottom there's another port there too. Take advantage of these kind of things and set up like this but over time I'm going to tweak it and just have it perfectly set up everything's going to be perfectly buried nothing's going to be touchy and I'll optimize the placement exactly because that kind of stuff is really going to impact your overall yield and we have to have a proof of concept shot. Let's turn everything on and make sure it works and away we go. Plugging in the first one in, ooh looks like something happened. When I plug the second one in okay, now wow so we have light. Nice, the light turns off and on, that dimmer switch works and then the fan. Everything seems to take a minute to get going, but she’s pulling through so there we go. Damn so it took two hours twenty-five minutes, we're going to stop the timer. Pretty good, all things considered. Got to enjoy number of tokes, very little swearing you know what I mean; win win.
Overall, I think this went really good I'm super excited to get growing in here; I hope you guys are excited to follow along. There are some experienced people I'm going to need a little help you know but overall, I think it's going to be a great learning experience. This went really well so thanks for watching along, guys and get ready for some new grow videos. Keep it green keep it sneaky we'll see you next time.
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