Burnham Wood specialty cabinetmakers |
Coming Soon! Assembly Instructions for most units Watch this space for A-Zed of Cabinet Gardening. How to ... - select and purchase the cab that's right for you - assemble and use the unit once you get it - nuts and bolts of maintaining a hydro-scrog Selecting a cabinet : Several factors must be taken into account prior to purchase. Where you can place your unit, accessories you set up with it, and what you expect both in terms of our product and your own, will affect your choice of cabinet. There's more to it than simply what you can afford. Installation location The doors will usually only be opened when the lights are on, so you need a bit of privacy or your neighbours will think they're making a movie at your house when they see the house lit up. Will you tell them you were watching "Close Encounters" ?? You need to feed it lots of fresh air, and its best if you regulate the inlet temperature so garages and attics aren't so good. You have to access the unit regularly, so out-of-the-way spots like an attic or crawlspace are poor choices as well. Look at a location where getting access, power, water, and a way to exhaust the humid air outside won't be a problem. Carbon filters are steadily gaining popularity, and though I've never used one I have reservations about it. The best way to go is to vent outside. Not only is there a considerable volume of smelly air to be disposed of, you need to remove a significant quanitity of moisture as well, or it will build up and condense on your walls and windows. Heat build-up can be another issue; if the exhausted air is warms the room enough, then cabinet temps will rise to the point where Oxygen no longer dissloves easily in water and your plants will suffer for it. At even higher temps, floral development is distorted and the tops gets leafy instead of buddish. Getting the air outside gets rid of smell, heat, and moisture. Feeding the cabinet with cool air from outside is even better. Each unit is exhausted via a 3" or 4" hose. About 8' is included for your convenience. You will need to find a way to run this hose outside, either with a disguise of some sort in a window - like a fake air conditioner or a flower box with fake plants and louvres in the bottom - or installing a vent like you might use with a stove or dryer. I use a variety of "cover" techniques to further disguise the odour. My carpets are always full of that smelly powder, I have Wizard cones in every room, and burn incense on a regular basis. If you need more effective techniques than that I'd suggest you buy a Negative Ion Generator; they're very effective at removing odours and the output - unlike Ozone - is actually good for you. Realistic yield expectations If there was some magical way to achieve the yields quoted by most of our competitors, that's what we'd be doing. No "specially developed spectral output" or "scientifically derived protein formulae" or whatever hocus-pocus they're selling these days is worth a pinch of coon shit. Truth. I seriously had to bite my lip to keep silent while a friend of mine sold a big coil to some guy to go in his res that was supposed to generate some subtle field that would do amazing things. Good gardening will generate amazing things, ask any Blue Ribbon holder at a County Fair. Yield is a combination of lighting and gardening abilities, and that's the way of it. So your first crop might be as little as 2-3 oz. Boo-hoo, eh? Probably more than most of you have ever seen anyway. Your skills will improve with time, but all the books and know-how in the world doesn't beat experience, and without a cab to get that experience you'll spin your wheels. Your actual yield over time will depend more on your ability to plan ahead and keep your flowering space productive, rather than tiny tweaks in the shape of the reflector or spectrum of the lamp. A lot of people ask me about CO2; not a good idea for cabinets. It doesn't enhance either yield or quality, simply speeds things up and allows you to work with higher temps. Once you see how fast everything grows under this kind of light with an effective hydro system you won't see the need for speed. Besides, cab growing is all about airflow, and CO2 demands you halt the airflow to let the gas do its work. The users ability to assemble it Many of our clients are either Med Users or suffer some disability. A few of our larger units have a level of difficulty in assembling them that may require an able-bodied person to assist them. Gemini's lamp assembly is extremely heavy and requires some strength to install and stand upright. Phoenix is assembled in a standing position, but getting the bloom hood up into place is hard with one person. Hell, its not that easy with two, but you get the idea! OTOH, we built a Quadra last year for a kid in a wheelchair and he assembled it himself with no problems. On that note, to pursue this rewarding hobby, you must be able to work with your hands a bit, carry and measure liquids accurately including a precise determination of colour, and be able to reach to the back of the unit for gardening. A rudimentary knowledge of Physics helps, so you'll understand the electrical basics and some thermodynamic principles, and enough chemistry to comprehend some fundamentals of hydroponics. Its really not very complicated, and we assume that you're a somewhat motivated student in this area or you probably would never have found us in the first place! You'll need a few screwdriver tips (a #1 Robertson and a #2 Phillips) and a power driver certainly helps. Don't use a drill, they're too powerful and you'll damage the hardware. All the holes are pre-drilled, and your unit will have been completely assembled and operational at one point, so there's very little room for confusion. Most units are built on their sides and then tilted up for the finishing touches, so there's no need for any carpentry or heavy lifting. Purchasing a Cabinet Orders are shipped in the order payment is received. You must be prepared to pay in full by International Postal Money Order prior to us accepting your order. The current wait is from six to eight weeks from the time we receive payment. The time will pass regardless, but whether or not you have product then depends on what you do now, so get aboard if you're a serious player! The purchase price includes packaging, shipping, brokerage, and insurance, so there will be no surprises or extra billing. We take care of everything for you. There are a few things however that we won't do: - vary the footprint of any model; changes in height are acceptable though. - build to suit existing equipment, ie accommodate a lamp you already have. - discount offers for compassionate reasons, or extend credit of any kind. - ship contraband. What we do is ballsy enough as it is! Scrogging: I can sure help you out with the scrog concept. First of all there's no weirdness to it like a lot of people think. Its no different than how my girlfriend ties up the tomatoes so they all get sun. Have you ever seen the Omega garden? I think the spinning aspect is a bit gimmicky, but the cool part of the idea is all the tops are the same distance from the lamp. Kind of like your screen is dished. When the plants first start to get into the screen not much happens, it just grows through like grass through a fence, but if you use your screen properly you can do a number of things to optimize the crop. First of all you can easily get them all leaning over, so the tops and branches are above the base of its neighbour - like the front row at a concert - and arrange the bulk of the foliage so you have reasonable screen coverage. Branches and tops that come through can be laid down, either by weaving them into the mesh or with each other, or with twist ties. This will further improve coverage, justifying the removal of almost all the bottom growth. Finally, long branches that come from the bottom but are long enough to become part of the canopy (if they're not that long then off they go!) can be pulled back down and put in a space that needs a top. I'm going to attach some pics so you can see. See in the first pic how the branches are pushed over? Its kind of blurry but you can tell how the longer branches have been routed into the corners. Then I let them come up a bit at the back. I let some foliage come above the screen and tie or weave it down. Don't worry, it will push back like a dog tied to a porch! You can't see much of the scrog technique in the second one because the foliage is solid; the bottom is so dark nothing grows anyways. Its clear that its much farther along than the first pic. Probably not of the same crop, but I do the same thing almost every time. Those tops you see are on long stems but I've "wasted" their length running horizontally and they're buried in the canopy. Nice eh? |
Here's the basics on assembling Gemini: Sort out all your screws first, and try to guess where some of them might go, based on how many you have. For instance, you have twenty 1/2" #8 round-heads that require a #2 Robertson tip. Sixteen of these hold the casters in place. Get them all started in before you tighten them right down. The other four support the screen, so get them started in the side panels near the top of the pillars before you screw them to the base. Use the 3/4" #6 roundheads to fasten the Base to the Back. Make sure you also insert the baffle black side in so it covers the inlet hole on the back BEFORE attaching the second side panel. See the photos below: Here we see the base, back, baffle and left side panel assembled. The side panels use 3/4" countersunk screws and require a #1 (smaller) Robertson tip. Brass screws are used for oak models. Roll the box on its side to insert the hood. On most models, the power cord is on the right, so on Indigo for example, you'd roll it on its left so the power cord is on top, just like in the pic where the Gemini (power cord on left) is getting ready to receive the other side panel. The next pic we see the other side panel on, but the hood has not yet been secured. A phone book gets the end up off the ground enough to get a few spring-clamps on the corners. This keeps the pilllars under the hood during the transition phase. You DON'T want to drop it or collapse the cabinet, so keeping them in place is imperative. If you have a helper, one can hold the panels while the other rotates the hood. Otherwise, use clamps. Put your left hand inside the vent hole in the center thwart, and secure the right side panel with your hand while you rotate the unit to a standing position. Careful, its heavy. Support the unit the best yo can. Ensure the hood is ALL the way to the back and sits squarely on all four pillars prior to screwing in the eight black hood screws. The forward pillars should extend about 1/8" beyond the face of the hood; the door may rest there if you want. Build your lid upside-down on a table, then install the weather strip around the top of the hood. Install the exhaust hose, then use the remaining countersunk screws to fasten the lid. Hang your screen and install the hydro system. Never run the pump dry. If I forgot anything, give me holler. J |
