When it comes to growing cannabis, creating your own indoor grow room is often one of the best choices available. This is especially the case if you don’t have a grow tent, or don’t want to buy a grow tent. After all, for any indoor grow, a grow tent can only get you so far.
A grow tent qualifies as a very small space, and they usually only have enough room for a few plants. Therefore, when growing cannabis, making your own grow room might be the next best option.
When making your own DIY grow room there are many different factors to take into account, with how much space you will need be in one of them.
You’ll also need to account for things like how to get the power supply to the entire room, how to create a light tight environment, how to maximize light usage, and much more, all to grow cannabis as quickly and efficiently as possible.
There are quite a few things that you’ll need to make your own DIY grow room for growing plants indoors.
This is what we are here to cover today, a detailed overview of what your grow room setup should look like. It all starts with finding enough space, and then we’ll go from there. Now that you have your cannabis seeds, let’s start growing some marijuana.
1. Choosing the Right Space for Building a Grow Room
The first thing you’ll need to do when creating your grow space is to consider how much space you will need in the first place. Remember that when you are designing your grow room, you need to account for the amount of cannabis plants you’ll have present. How many plants you have will directly dictate the overall design of the grow room.
As a rule of thumb, if you are growing full-sized plants, you’ll need around 4 by 4 feet of space for each plant, and you may need up to 8 feet of vertical clearance. Remember that these plants can grow quite tall. Plant growth can differ from one strain to another, but the bottom line is that you do need a significant amount of space.
If you have a very large space available, such as a full spare room, then you’re on the right track. Furthermore, this room should be an enclosed space, so you can maintain an ideal environment for cannabis growth.
You don’t want to choose a room that is very open or has no doors. It’s better to have a small space that is enclosed and that you can easily control, rather than a large room where you can’t control the environment.
Space is not the only thing you’ll need to consider either when growing cannabis. You also need to consider the power supply.
You need to be able to supply power to all of your lights, the ventilation system, and any other electrical devices that you may be using. The bottom line here is that a grow room setup requires a good deal of space to make sure that everything can fit easily.
2. Make a Light Tight Environment
What you then need to do is to create a light tight environment. This means that if there are any significant gaps, such as under doors, by windows, or anything else of the sort, these need to be sealed. You need to cover up any and all openings, no matter how small, so that no light leaks out.
You could use some form of weather stripping to seal gaps under and above doorways, and a solid and opaque material to block out windows. As you’ll see in the next step, we’ll also talk about using reflective materials to increase light efficiency.
It’s extremely important that you make efficient use of your lights, because this will allow for maximum cannabis growth and yields. Light control is perhaps one of the most important things here, which is why the two next steps also focus on this.
3. Creating a Reflective Layer in Your Grow Space
As mentioned above, making efficient use of your light is very important. Therefore, when working in an enclosed space, to maximize light efficiency, you need materials that can reflect light.
This really comes down to something known as mylar, which is like extremely thin and flexible in foil. This is something that you can easily attach to the ceiling, walls, and floors using nothing more than some tape.
There is also very special adhesive mylar that adheres to surfaces all on its own without the need for extra fasteners.
This will allow you to create a completely light tight environment that maximizes light efficiency by reflecting lightweights back from the walls and ceilings. This is a very effective method for increasing cannabis growing efficiency, because it can increase the brightness in a grow room by at least 50%.
Furthermore, if you place mylar or other reflective materials on the walls, ceilings, and floors, it will also reflect light back to the cannabis plants from directions where they would otherwise not receive any light.
This allows for what is essentially supplemental lighting, by directing light at the sides of the cannabis plant and at the bottom. The more light your cannabis plant gets, the more buds it will grow. It’s all about efficient light usage.
4. Choosing Grow Lights & Mounting
The next step here is to choose your grow lights. However, before you do that, remember that grow lights should be anywhere between 18 and 24 inches from your plants, or else issues will arise.
Now, the next choice you’ll need to make is what kinds of grow lights you’ll be using, and yes, there are many of them.
There are fluorescent lights, high pressure sodium lights, high intensity discharge lights, LED grow lights, metal halide lights, and more. Each type of grow light has its specific advantages and disadvantages, so we very strongly recommend doing some research into all of them.
However, what is important to note is that when growing in your own grow room, heat will be a big issue. Depending on the type of light you have in your grow rooms, they might generate a lot of heat that must then be dissipated. Therefore, we recommend investing in high quality LED grow lights that have a good heat dissipation system.
This will allow you to provide your cannabis plants with more than enough lights, all without heating up the room too much. What it really comes down to is having the right light system for your needs. Also consider that you need a certain amount of watts per square foot. You can easily have up to 100 watts of light per square foot. High intensity lights tend to produce much bigger yields.
Remember that you’ll also need a way to mount your lights in your indoor grow room. This can be done through a variety of means, and most high-quality grow lights should come with their own mounting mechanisms included.
Furthermore, if you think that light from the top is not enough, even combined with your reflective material, buying a supplemental grow light can be an option.
There are special LED grow lights that come in little rows, which you can attach horizontally to the sides of your grow room. This can help supplement natural light, to provide your cannabis plants with even more fuel to grow big and strong.
5. Creating an Air Exchange System
The next step in your grow room setup is creating an efficient air exchange system. Now, not all people will create a full scale ventilation system with air vents, and air intake, and exhaust fan, and more.
However, if you expect both vegetative growth and flowering growth to be as successful as possible, air movement is very important, specifically for climate control.
First, you don’t want your plants growing in stale air, because a steady supply of new air will help cut down on temperature and humidity buildups, and will provide your plants with more carbon dioxide as well, which they need to grow.
The best way to ensure efficient cannabis growth so you can get larger plants every time is to have a fully functional ventilation system. Installing both an intake fan to take in fresh air, as well as an exhaust fan to expel old air is essential. This will allow fresh air to permeate the entire grow room, so your cannabis plants have a constant supply of it.
Having a good ventilation system is not only important for humidity and temperature control, and for supplying plants with fresh air, but also for pest control. The more air movement there is in your indoor grow room, the less likely it is that pests will take hold. Flying pests don’t really like windy conditions.
Also consider that a bit of air movement coming from an intake fan is beneficial for cannabis plants in terms of their structural integrity. The more wind a cannabis plant has to deal with, the stronger the stem will get. This is not unlike you going to the gym to strengthen your muscles. The more the stem of the cannabis plant is trained, the stronger it becomes as plants grow.
6. Accounting for Temperature Control and Relative Humidity
You then need to make sure that both the temperature and the humidity can be controlled as needed. Yes, an air exchange system is great for this, but to control the temperature, you may also need either a heater or an air conditioner.
Consider the type of environment you are in before making a choice. If you live in a tropical climate, you may need an air conditioner, but if you live in an environment that is often cold, you’ll need a heater. Cannabis plants do not like growing in colder climates, so this has to be accounted for. You then also need to account for relative humidity.
Cannabis plants like the environment to be relatively humid, but not too humid. While good air flow and air ventilation are ideal for humidity control, you may also need a humidifier to keep humidity levels from rising to high.
Both high and low humidity levels, as well as high and low temperatures, can have detrimental effects when growing cannabis, something that most growers unfortunately find out the hard way.
7. A Carbon Filter to Minimize Cannabis Plants Odors
If you don’t want the entire room and surrounding area smelling like cannabis, you might want to get a carbon filter. When growing indoors, the smell of cannabis can build up very quickly. Although an extractor fan is ideal for removing old air, it won’t take away the smell.
Therefore, installing your carbon filter in your extractor fan will allow for a smell free environment. Any air that is taken out of your grow room will no longer smell and alert the whole neighborhood that you are growing cannabis.
8. Engage in Some Pest Control
Although it may not be completely necessary, especially if you are diligent right from the beginning, you may still want to engage in some pest control for your grow room.
Plant growth can be severely hindered by an invasion of various pests, your best bet is to ensure that they don’t invade your space to begin with.
There are plenty of great pest control methods, such as fly strips, noisemakers, and even some infrared units that keep insects at Bay.
Creating Your Own Indoor Cannabis Grow Space – Final Thoughts
The bottom line here is that creating your own DIY grow room at home is not actually all that difficult.
Although there are plenty of things that you will need, including various pieces of electrical equipment, some good LED lights, an air exchange system, and more, it is more than doable.
Also, remember that once you have your grow room set up, you can engage in unlimited cycles of cannabis plant growth. You only need to set up this space once, and you can then use it endlessly.
