hi boys and girls 
, its been a while since i posted a grow diary, but i recently built another small LED cab and have just finished my first grow in it.
The cab is 18" square and 4' high, sited in an unheated garage, hidden in 'plain sight' - and this has presented a new set of requirements and problems.
you can see the size next to the 4 drawer filing cabinet, i keep a few sheets of stirling board/osb infront and some other stuff leaning on it and it kind of recedes into the general mess and clutter!
First off it needed to be as quiet as possible so as not to attract attention, which led to me needing a passively cooled LED light. The company i usually use doesn't make them so I searched around and found a unit made by a european company called 'leoLED' . they made a square unit that used mostly cree chips and looked ideal, rated at max 84watts but the grow and bloom spectrums could also be dialled up and down.
Also i needed quiet extraction that was not too high in capacity because i was going to have to heat the air before it was pulled into the cab. if the air is being pulled in too fast then it is impossible to heat it up enough. also a 4" inline fan is way too loud - so i made my own carbon filter and extractor using a high capacity computer fan, this is separate from the cab and sits on top in an innocent looking cardboard box. Air going into the cab is heated up by a few 40W 'pipe' heaters, one inside the cab and 2 in an open fronted box attached to the outside of the cab over the intake. with the air travelling through the cab fairly slowly this has been enough to warm the cab through winter where temps in the garage can drop to almost freezing. you can see these bottom right in the cab photo
filter, seems to work pretty well, i'll have to show you how it's made at some point, the grey plastic case is just to add stealth and deaden sound.
here is the cab open
, its been a while since i posted a grow diary, but i recently built another small LED cab and have just finished my first grow in it.The cab is 18" square and 4' high, sited in an unheated garage, hidden in 'plain sight' - and this has presented a new set of requirements and problems.
you can see the size next to the 4 drawer filing cabinet, i keep a few sheets of stirling board/osb infront and some other stuff leaning on it and it kind of recedes into the general mess and clutter!
First off it needed to be as quiet as possible so as not to attract attention, which led to me needing a passively cooled LED light. The company i usually use doesn't make them so I searched around and found a unit made by a european company called 'leoLED' . they made a square unit that used mostly cree chips and looked ideal, rated at max 84watts but the grow and bloom spectrums could also be dialled up and down.
Also i needed quiet extraction that was not too high in capacity because i was going to have to heat the air before it was pulled into the cab. if the air is being pulled in too fast then it is impossible to heat it up enough. also a 4" inline fan is way too loud - so i made my own carbon filter and extractor using a high capacity computer fan, this is separate from the cab and sits on top in an innocent looking cardboard box. Air going into the cab is heated up by a few 40W 'pipe' heaters, one inside the cab and 2 in an open fronted box attached to the outside of the cab over the intake. with the air travelling through the cab fairly slowly this has been enough to warm the cab through winter where temps in the garage can drop to almost freezing. you can see these bottom right in the cab photo
filter, seems to work pretty well, i'll have to show you how it's made at some point, the grey plastic case is just to add stealth and deaden sound.
here is the cab open
Last edited:
