You need a grow room to grow marijuana in private. However, you might be wondering how you can make or get a grow room because you don’t have any additional rooms at home. One solution to your problem is to make your current closet into an indoor grow room. This will help you raise marijuana in private until it’s time to harvest.
Here are the steps you need to follow so you’ll know how to build a grow room:
- Measure Your Closet Space
To transform your closet into a grow room for raising marijuana, you’ll need to take measurements of the height and width of the closet. Some commercial grow cabinets are made to accommodate the growth of four marijuana plants, so you need to estimate how many marijuana plants you want to raise in the closet.
Bear in mind that you’ll have to fit in grow lights, ventilation fans, and possibly a hydroponics system there, too, so you really need sufficient space.
- Access To Electricity
For you to connect your grow lights, the closet needs its own electricity source. If the closet dimensions reach 5 feet in maximum width. You’ll need a grow light with a minimum of 600 watts of power. If you want to add more grow lights, you should factor in adding another extractor fan (or at least increase the power of the existing extractor fan).
To avoid burning down your house, you need to ensure that the closet’s electrical system is secure and won’t cause sparks. Make sure also that the wiring doesn’t come into contact with your water supply. You should also prevent companion animals, like dogs or cats, from getting near your wiring since they might chew on it, which is equally dangerous.
If you want to conserve electricity, other marijuana growers like to use natural light in the daytime, allowing the grow lights inside their grow rooms to be shut down. However, if you don’t like that idea, it’s okay to keep using grow lights even in the daytime.
- Ventilation System
The closet you picked should have a ventilation system so that hot air will be expelled back into your room. There should be an input fan at the bottom of the closet, so it’ll suck in cooler air into the closet. Then, there should be an exhaust fan at the top of the closet, which will suck the hot air out.
Bear in mind that hot air rises to the top so the hottest part of the closet will naturally be at the top of the closet, above the plants. That’s where the ventilation window should be so that it’s easy for the hot air to be expelled out. The ventilation window is also where excess humidity will escape.
However, you should also remember that marijuana plants naturally release an odor during the flowering stage. So, people passing by your room or venturing into your room may get curious and accidentally discover your secret grow room because of the smell.
To avoid giving away your big secret, you should invest in a carbon filter system. One part of the carbon filter system would be located at the intake fan so that the air coming in will be filtered. The other carbon filter system part should be at the exhaust fan so that the smell will mostly be filtered out of the air that’s being blown out of the grow room closet.
You can also make an exhaust air duct so that the air from the grow room closet will be sucked out through a window. If you’re really super concerned about the smell drawing attention, you can choose to raise marijuana plants that are bred to have a very weak odor. This will help minimize the risk that your stash will be discovered by unwanted noses.
The point of having this kind of complicated ventilation system is to give the plants enough carbon dioxide to enter for the plants to breathe in. That’s paramount for the survival of the plants. But you also need to remove the humidity-rich and oxygen-rich air so that there’s room for more carbon-dioxide-heavy air to enter. After all, no two things can occupy the same space at the same time.
Lastly, the flow of air into and out of the grow room closet will balance the temperature-induced by the grow lights so the interior of the closet doesn’t overheat.
- Flooring
It’s advisable to avoid putting carpets on the floor where your grow room closet is. Carpeting will absorb water from your plants, especially when you water them. This will just encourage mold and bacteria to grow, which may infect your plants. You don’t want that, so it’ll be less of a problem to have a plain cement floor in your closet. After all, it’s easier to clean up water from a cement floor than from a carpeted floor.
If you like, you can put mylar on the floor (as well as on the walls of the closet) as insulation, which will help during clean up while reflecting the lighting from grow lights. The mylar will help since a cement floor tends to be porous and absorbs chemicals. If you can’t afford a mylar, vinyl is your next best option.
- Water Supply
Though your marijuana plants will definitely need frequent watering, your grow room might not accommodate a water supply line and drainage system. If it can accommodate that, great. If not, you definitely need to be creative about watering your plants.
If your room has a bathroom, one simple way is to simply haul water by the bucket to the grow room to do the watering by hand, which is a bit tedious and tiring. Your other alternative is to attach a hose to the faucet in the bathroom with a sprinkler head attached to the hose. This makes watering less tedious and you just need to store the hose in the bathroom after each watering. Have a dry mop handy in the bathroom in case there are spills on the closet floor to wipe up.
Watering is necessary but you have to be careful about handling the humidity within the grow room closet. Too much humidity means risking your marijuana plants developing a fungal infection on its leaves and buds. If the humidity is too low, the plants tend to try to get more water through their roots but this means risking intake of too many salts. So, it’s a careful balance that needs to be monitored constantly.
- Temperature
Another problem you have to be watchful about is balancing the temperature within the grow room. Much of the problem can be caused by the climate you’re living in. Some locations are colder than others, which is one reason you may need to grow lights for your plants. Other locations may be warmer, so you need fans to blow out the hot air from the grow room, preventing the plants to experience an increase in temperature.
This is also why your plants will need to be watered throughout the day. You should be careful about balancing the temperature too if the outdoor environment tends to have fluctuating weather throughout the day.
- Security Concerns
If you go online to check out commercial grow room cabinets, you might notice that the ads say the cabinets have locks. It doesn’t have to be a fancy lock, you just need a decent door lock since children and pets might gain entry to your grow room and wreak havoc there.
A door lock on the grow room closet doors is also important in case you have to leave the building for a while. Be sure that your equipment in or near the grow room is not noisy nor emit flashing lights since this may catch unwarranted attention from other people.
Your biggest risk is the electrical system since it may start a fire. So, be sure to keep wires and cables dry and avoid leaving the floor of the closet damp for a long time.
Final Takeaway
Although not everyone may understand why you would want to grow marijuana plants on your own, this hobby can actually be very interesting. This is true especially for those who can afford the various equipment and grow room requirements.
Fortunately, if you already have a closet at home in your room, you can easily convert this into your very own grow room. This will allow you to watch with delight as your green babies start to sprout, grow, and flourish within the protective confines of your grow room closet.
Don’t forget to attach a secure lock on the doors of the closet so that children and pets will not be able to accidentally stumble upon your stash of marijuana plants and wreck the setup. You should also be careful about the smell of the marijuana plants since this can catch the attention of people who live with you and possibly in the neighborhood you live in as well.
