With so many bugs, molds, spores and other attackers waiting to hurt your marijuana plants, you dream of a fortress grow room that protects your cannabis plants while also giving them a perfect environment for faster growth and bigger buds with more THC.
More and more hydroponics marijuana growers are giving up on regular indoor grow rooms and building sealed grow rooms that feature Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA).
What do you get with CEA? Ideal growing conditions, and protection against spider mites and all other attackers.
A sealed hydroponics marijuana grow room is a room not open to outside air for intake or outflow.
Obviously this contrasts with a vented room that exhausts air to the outside and brings air in from the outside.
Sealed hydroponics marijuana rooms give you total control over the hydroponics environment.
Your marijuana plants grow faster and yield bigger when they are in the sweet spot of ideal temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, air movement, air cleanliness and other conditions that sealed rooms provide.
Sealed rooms eliminate almost every possibility that evil pests, molds, fungi and viruses can enter your grow room.
The only ways they can get in is if you source marijuana clones that are carrying problems when you get them, or if you visit a bad grow room that has problems and those problems attach themselves to your clothes and vector into your room that way.
Another sealed grow room benefit is you eliminate odor, light leaks, sound leaks and other security risks that let people outside a marijuana grow room know that you have something interesting going on inside a particular part of your home.
A sealed grow room is like a fortress, and that gives you a lot of peace of mind. More peace of mind than a room that vents marijuana smell to the outside world, that’s for sure!
Michael Straumietis, founder of hydroponics nutrients company Advanced Nutrients, is credited with introducing CEA hydroponics to North American growers.
“CEA involves a more substantial investment of cash for start-up than a traditional room because a sealed room must have an air conditioner, dehumidifier, chiller, air scrubbers, CO2 augmentation, monitors, electrical systems and other apparatus,” Straumietis says. “Some of this equipment is helpful—but not absolutely required—in a vented hydroponics grow room.”
CEA hydroponics cannabis grow rooms often suck down more electricity than vented rooms, and they need more equipment and space.
In many cases, you need to calculate ahead of time your total electricity draw, measure it against what your home can safely supply, and adjust your electrical system accordingly, Straumietis says.
For the sake of safety, you often need a security-conscious electrician to come in and rewire, install new circuit boxes and otherwise upgrade your electrical infrastructure when you do CEA hydroponics medical marijuana growing.
Building, outfitting and running CEA marijuana indoor gardening can cost you about 20-30% more per year than the same size vented indoor grow room would cost you.
“You have extra start-up costs, and extra running costs when you do CEA,” Straumietis notes, “but a CEA room ncreases your yields and potency, increases your marijuana plants’ health and security, and accelerate your harvest cycles more than enough to offset the extra costs of CEA hydroponics. CEA makes your life easier, and gives you way bigger harvests.”
Sealed grow chambers and tents are a near-identical variation on the CEA sealed grow room idea, Straumietis says. You can look at professional CEA set-ups here, and see for yourself how some manufacturers are creating “pharmaceutical-grade” controlled environments for cannabis growers.
And if you can’t do a totally sealed CEA cannabis grow room, remember that using hardware and techniques common to sealed rooms can benefit your vented marijuana grow op also.
