PsyCLown

So with the slots I'd be concerned about the light leaking in. I think it may be best to have a fan at the top blowing air out of the enclosure - hot air rises and you want to get rid of that hot air. A fan to circulate air between the canopy sounds good. Sent from my Redmi Note 7 Pro using Tapatalk

I don't have a vacuum chamber unfortunately, so I use heat to try and purge the butane.Probably isn't 100% clean but I hope it at least removed majority of the butane. Rosin would be far better in this regard as its solvent-less, unfortunately majority of the pressed are not cheap and a press can directly affect the quality of rosin you get and the yields too. You can blast trim with butane, although I don't see it working as well if you were to try and press trim (fan leaves with some frost etc). Sent from my Redmi Note 7 Pro using Tapatalk

Perfect, sounds very good and promising. You have your ventilation sorted as well?

Look, it can be dangerous but I think for the most part you do not have to worry too much if you avoid doing stupid things. I blast the bud / trim outside, so there is naturally ventilation and a breeze blowing and no possible sources of heat / fire / sparks etc. I then leave it outside for a bit for most of the butane to evaporate before I go ahead and start purging the butane remaining in the dab.

Looks good, what you gonna use to cover it? You won't be able to lower the lights though? Sent from my Redmi Note 7 Pro using Tapatalk

@Ill_Evan knows a place who have or had samples.

If a Rosin press is too pricey, perhaps consider BHO then? You can get cans of butane from Checkers for around R30 and then purchase a blast tube and you're good to go! Here are some options: https://thehighco.co.za/product/herbal-extraction-tube/ https://vapestore.co.za/bho-glass-tube If you do more of a search, you will likely find even more options available.

Oh yeah, not with those shitty R99 irons.Preferably a reflow and soldering workstation. I also don't think it's likely a diode or two will die, but it's always possible. Sent from my Redmi Note 7 Pro using Tapatalk

So an LED build generally consists of the LED's (in this case, strips or quantum boards.... I vote quantum boards), heatsinks / cooling and a driver. Then wires to wire it all up and that's really it. When it comes to LED's, they're not all the same. The actual LED diode itself makes all the difference. In terms of costs if a diodes die, pretty cheap. You'll probably pay more on shipping. I haven't actually tried to source the individual diodes locally but I'm sure one could get then without too much fuss. In terms of replacing the actual diode, if you can solder and you're comfortable with SMD then it won't be difficult at all. Sent from my Redmi Note 7 Pro using Tapatalk

So an LED build generally consists of the LED's (in this case, strips or quantum boards.... I vote quantum boards), heatsinks / cooling and a driver. Then wires to wire it all up and that's really it. When it comes to LED's, they're not all the same. The actual LED diode itself makes all the difference. In terms of costs if a diodes die, pretty cheap. You'll probably pay more on shipping. I haven't actually tried to source the individual diodes locally but I'm sure one could get then without too much fuss. In terms of replacing the actual diode, if you can solder and you're comfortable with SMD then it won't be difficult at all. Sent from my Redmi Note 7 Pro using Tapatalk

I agree with what @greenkush has said. Another thing to keep in mind, if you want to compare LED lights between one another is whether the manufacturer provides the average efficiency or just the peak efficiency. Majority provide the peak figures, I feel the average is more accurate as majority of people do not grow a single plant directly under the light and often have multiple lights to cover a certian area. Having the individual QB288 boards will provide you with more flexibility in terms of controlling your spread, you can move the lights around as needed to try and maintain an even PPFD throughout your grow area. It also provides you with the flexibility to increase the height on an individual board if you have a part (or few) which are growing much taller than the rest. Heatsinks are often an issue due to their weight, makes the shipping crazy expensive but you can get creative and find DIY ways to cool them cheaply without issues. In fact cool them better than the original heatsinks the manufacturers provide (active though, but still... can always add some redundancy if you'd like).

The HLG 550 is a nice light, although for a 1.5 x 1.5 I'd want more than 4x QB288's I don't feel it's worth buying the original HLG either. I'd consider importing. Sent from my Redmi Note 7 Pro using Tapatalk

So a PH pen is vital, especially if you are going the coco or hydro route. Do not get a cheap meter, I recommend at least getting an HM Digital PH pen and they are around R700 + An EC pen is cheaper and I find the cheap chinese ones are accurate enough. If you want to go the coco route, well, coco is cheaper if purchased in large bricks and then I don't recommend you use BioBizz nutes. I'd recommend non-organic, salt based nutes... of which there are lots of. Hortimix, Haifa, GHE, Greenhouse Powder Feeds and many more. An alternative to the Freedom Pots are the Plant Matter pots - I prefer them over the Freedom pots. The way they are sewn and the quality of the material just seems better and easier to work with. If you can't get Plant Matter pots then Freedom pots are still great!

So instead of those 2 plants which just went into flower getting veg nutes for another 2 weeks they got flowering nutes straight away and the bud wasn't as great?

@CreX I have never actually gone heavy on P and K during the flip / stretch. I must give it a try next time and see what results I get. After the stretch, then it slows down until harvest?

Very nice! I assume your balcony gets a lot of direct sunlight? Cannabis will love the direct sunlight, the more direct sunlight it can give the better she will respond. Also I would not recommend the soil you are using for cannabis, lots of bark in there and many tend to have issues with similar soils which contain a high amount of bark. I would recommend that you get some soil which has been tried and tested when you finally get around to growing an auto. Freedom Farms and Organics Matter are both decent soils to use for cannabis. Nitrisol should suffice for veg, as well as Seagro. When it comes to flowering (so around week 4 roughly), then you would want to get a nutrient specifically for flowering. BioBizz Bloom is a decent one, easy to use too and you will then be using the bloom / flowering nutrients until you flush your plant. I'd also recommend a 20L pot, even for an autoflower. So just a few things to start looking for and keep in the back of your mind.

I wouldn't want to use sulfer on flowering plants, read that it can leave a residue and taste on the bud. You could try do a bud wash I guess, maybe he can give us more feedback once he has harvested and tried it?

Nice man! Looking good, what about some fruit plants or veggies? Do you have a garden to grow in or are you limited to pots?

These boosters / ripeners all seem to just increase P and K which the plants do require more of when flowering... Although your bloom nutes generally do this anyways. I too have wondered about how much of a difference it makes, the plants can only take up so many nutes - giving too much would possibly stunt growth and lead to lockouts... With that being said, based on my experience it seems a bit difficult to do if feeding just MPK at reasonable EC levels. So I think if someone were to say use BioBizz Grow only ,which is generally a veg nute, throughout the plants life cycle then using a booster of some sorts would possibly help increase yield due to the extra P and K. If using some decent nutes and the plant is getting enough P and K during flower... Adding more I doubt will do anything. Hydro is an easy way to get an idea of what the plant is doing with the nutes as you are able to check the EC / PPM of the water easily. You can't tell which nutes are being used but can get an idea of how much nutes the plant is consuming. I know that @CreX has done this a few times and in veg the plants barely use any nutes. Not sure about flower, perhaps he can shed more light but the plants use a lot less nutes than we may think. The amount of nutes which get wasted is significant. Although in a coco or soil mediums, it differs a bit with regards to how much is available to the plants as they dry out.

There are many ways to automate temp management. Simply using an AC and having it set to the desired temp will work. There are those temp controllers too which work well and are relatively cheap. Chilling water in DWC is a bit tricker, although if you have an AC going it shouldn't be an issue. As for exhausting air, why not have the AC cool the room and then the tents exhaust into the room. The AC will exhaust air from inside the room, to the outside. Perpetual grows often go south at some point as flowering times tend to be longer than veg times. Probably something you will need to think about and see how you would like to run it. Running the exhaust from the top of the tent to the lower part of the wall isn't ideal. I'd prefer to run it straight or have it go through the wall at the top - although not a train smash.

If you buy coco bricks there should not be any trich in there, it is meant to be inert so no food source for the trich anyways. If this is what I think it is for, then rather avoid the coco and go for grains. Trich colonizes very quickly and can spread like wildfire. If you have ever used trich before, you're going to struggle to get rid of it. Products like Explogrow contain trich as well.

Nice! Now wait until they show sex so you can cull the ones you don't want?

R70/g for that? WTF. That is complete madness. I doubt you will get a refund unfortunately, however probably best you try and avoid going back there and try find a different source if you are unable to grow yourself. I wonder how much the seeds weigh, what you are paying for those seeds.

No, I don't. I'm running normal QB288's though - was wondering what sort of coverage the light was providing you with and curious to see the results. Your grow is looking good though. As for a pesticide for outdoor use, well, Pyrol and/or Neem are quite popular and work well. Both will affect other insects and bees too though and it would be best to spray at sunset. Sent from my Redmi Note 7 Pro using Tapatalk

Ahh, I think I misunderstood. So keeping everything inside the tent and using the light to charge the battery once load shedding has come to an end? For air circulation, a UPS would probably work pretty well. Although it may be recommended to get one with a pure sine wave if your fan runs off AC mains and not DC. Not sure one would be able to add an airpump to it, would depend on the output voltage. I assume the solar panel or light has a battery, most likely the light. It may be easier to simply get a UPS and have a cheap LED bulb inside the tent (or two or 3 if you have a large tent) and have them setup to your timers. You can connect the airpump and extraction fans to the UPS as well. This way the cheap LED lights can run during lights on (9w isn't going to make a big difference in your grow - otherwise one could get the light sensing bulbs with a day/night switch) and if it's lights on time and the power goes off, the UPS kicks in and keeps the lights going as per your regular cycle (be it 12/12, 18/6 or whatever). Your extraction fans will keep running too and your airpump as they're all connected to the UPS. The extraction fans probably use the most power, my AC Infinity 6" fans are pretty efficient at around 40W at max power and I run them on setting 6 out of 10 currently. LED light can be 9W and airpump is like 5 or 6W for a dual outlet pump. So if I am not running my extraction fan on full, let's say it'll use roughly 25W, then with the LED and airpump comes to 40W in total per hour. So you'd need a 7ah battery to run everything for an hour, if you have a UPS which has 2x 7ah batteries in parallel that'll work for 2 hours roughly. Or simply purchase a larger battery if need be or multiple 7ah batteries and connect them in parallel. The UPS can always be re-purposed later on if need be.