Constructing a Grow Box

What is cheaper, buy a hydroponic grow box or build your own hydroponic grow box?

If you've spent any time on forums lately, you'll notice that quite a few people recommend that beginners build their own hydroponic grow box machine for their first grow. However, what does the beginner or hobbyist really know about building a hydroponic grow box? When you are about to embark on the effort to build your own grow box, there are many safety concerns that you really need to think about. Really think about how much you really know about electricity and how to connect it correctly. You will have to deal with very high wattages and a dangerous amount of electricity in close proximity to water. Do you know how to work safely with electricity and high voltages around water? Do you have experience in wiring for hydroponic applications? Do you know the difference between live wires and ground wires? Essentially, at some point, you will need a certified electrician to supervise your work to make sure it is safe to run. Failure to do so can have disastrous consequences that have occurred for many poor producers.

Besides being a qualified electrician, you really need to know what you need about ventilation to keep your hydroponic grow box running smoothly. You will use very powerful lighting systems to illuminate your hydroponic grow machine. You can use 600 watt or even 1000 watt lamps to light up your grow machine. These types of lamps are known to generate an immense amount of heat. Many people speaking on the forums will recommend that you build your hydroponic grow box out of some kind of chipboard or cheap painted wood. It's a very bad idea! Danger! Danger!

I've seen many posts where users will advise beginners to build their hydroponic grow box with inexpensive cabinets made for wooden clothing and furniture found at hardware stores like Home Depot, for example. Can you imagine how dangerous it is to put 1000 W high power lamps inside a wooden closet that was intended for clothes and is nothing more than a particle board? It is not a good material to build a grow box. Unless you really know what you are doing. Wood is one of the worst possible materials to use when building your own hydroponic grow box. I would really recommend using metal. However, it is much more difficult to work with metal. Another reason to buy it from the professionals. A good grow box should be constructed of metal for safety and durability. Metal is very difficult to work with and difficult to make on your own.

There is no way you can get into bigger trouble than having your hydroponic grow box on fire, it can be a problem when building with a wooden cabinet from a hardware store. Fire is a common hobbyist mistake that occurs more often than you might think when talking about mixing large amounts of electricity and water in a very small space or in a confined space such as a wooden cabinet. Oftentimes, to try to save money, beginners and those on a budget will not use proper fans to keep their grow box system running well. Very powerful fans are meant to keep your grow box running cool because the heat will damage your plants. Those fans also need to be set to a very specific setting for them to work properly. For a very successful yield, you really need to know quite a bit about ventilation to get the best plant growth in a to grow box and avoid starting a fire in one that you build on your own.

Forum members who suggest building your own hydroponic grow box often forget to mention many things that it takes to build a successful grow box machine from scratch. Sometimes you'll see user forum posts claiming that you can build a grow box for much cheaper than what commercial grow box manufacturers sell their products. Is that really true? Do we believe everything we read in a forum? How do we know the ratings of those who post the messages? People like to speak what is being said but can hardly walk on forums. Obviously, some know what they are talking about, but you must be an expert yourself to know the difference between the skilled and the unskilled to give suggestions on how to build your own grow box. There is a lot of misleading and incorrect information floating around your forums like wildfire. This kind of feedback about building your own hydroponics box at such cheap prices is completely ridiculous when a hydroponics manufacturer buys parts for their inventory or buys directly from the manufacturers, in most cases in case of quantity and get lower wholesale prices you are not getting! When you buy one-off pieces from a hardware store, you are paying a full markup at a very high rate. You are not getting any kind of disruption to any of the equipment you buy when you buy from a hardware store one at a time in small quantities. You are paying a huge markup for everything you buy, in addition to paying taxes and wasting gas.

Plus, there are hundreds of little pieces that you've just forgotten that you will actually need to build your own grow box, like junction boxes, lighting and reflector systems, ballasts, and pumps, just to name a few. You will pay a lot of money for all these necessary parts. But the expenses don't really end there. On top of that, I'm sure there are a lot of tools that you really need to use to build your own hydroponic grow box that you probably don't own yet. You will need a variety of types of drills, saws, cutters, and all kinds of lighting and electronics like timers in order to build the right hydroponic grow box from parts from the hardware store.

Oh, and not to mention, in addition to the tools, you'll need all the accessories that come with these tools, which can be very expensive when you buy them at Home Depot or Lowes. Maybe, if you're lucky, you own some of these tools, but certainly not all, and certainly not the right accessories in the right sizes. So now, instead of buying small parts, you are buying all the tools for all accessories at full retail prices. Will you have a use for all these tools you used to build your hydroponic grow box at a later date? I certainly hope so because they cost you a lot of money!

Now you have an entire garage full of parts and you will need to figure out how to put them together from scratch based on schematic drawings found online. Also consider how much your time is worth. This type of project can take a long time to build. Sometimes the simple design can take days, two weeks or months or more complicated. Do you really know that your design works? Have you built one of these grow boxes before? How rated are the people on the forums recommending certain box setups they build? Why is there an area of ​​expertise? How many grow boxes have they built and what qualifies them to give advice on how to build a grow box? Am I not following the guidance of someone with limited or questionable experience who has posted anonymously on a forum? It's really hard to know what someone's actual qualifications are when you don't really know anything about them. So you have to be careful what you read on the forums.

Now let's consider buying your own hydroponic grow box from a reputable manufacturer who has been building grow box machines for many years and is very experienced. Keep in mind, this is a business for the business that makes hydroponic grow boxes every day. Everything they do throughout the day revolves around building the best grow boxes they can.

They have done a lot in research and development to come up with the current designs that they use in their products. If you are a professional grow box manufacturer, you will get a lot of feedback from the customers who bought the machines, and they can make suggestions to improve your grow box designs in the future. Not to mention, professional grow box manufacturers have been making a product for a while and know their products inside and out. Naturally, you can see how much a grow box can be improved when you have feedback from hundreds of users of a particular manufactured product. So naturally, when you buy from a reputable hydroponic grow box manufacturer, you get a well-built product from an expert in your industry.

When you take the time to build your own hydroponic grow box, there is no guarantee that you will get it right the first time. But when you buy from a reputable hydroponic grow box manufacturer, the grow box you are going to use will likely perform quite well just based on the company it came from. You know that it will be safe to handle the amount of light that is used in the grow box because manufacturers know what types of fans to use to maintain the plants.

You know that the wiring in that professionally built grow box will work safely because the electrical wiring was done by a qualified electrician. When you buy a grow box instead of building your own grow box, there will be no problems. Typical grow box manufacturers will ship your units fully assembled and ready to grow the day you get them. So when you buy a professionally built hydroponic grow box, it's most likely a little cheaper than building your own when you consider all the money you save on those little tools and all the little parts plus the time, all combined for grow. Buying a box will cost much less money than building your own, and it is guaranteed to work.

In my opinion, building your own hydroponic grow box has little to no advantage unless you are an electrical, metalworking, woodworking expert and you know the science of hydroponics inside and out. Those types of people who already use tools and have qualifying types could probably build a really nice grow box on their own. For the rest of us who have little to no experience in the various fields required, I definitely recommend playing it safe and going with the pre-built hydroponic grow box that is sure to work and be safe to use.

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