Advice most welcome!

[Found the plot]

Hiya guys & gals

New to the site and growing,infact its going to be my first time ever growing anything so please be gentle

Ive been reading various canna sites for around 6 months now whilst saving for my first attempt at home grown,today I decided to make icmag my home as the site looks huge with lots of different people world wide growing some stunning plants.

Heres where Im at with my research so far,any pointers would be very much appreciated along the way.

My grow tent will be a dr120 (4x4x7)

My light will be a 1000watt parabolic shade.

For intake Im still researching but at the moment Im set on a tdsilent 6" fan and drawing fresh air in from outside via a bedroom window.

For Extraction,Im still undecided at this point,Ive got my eye on a 8" tdsilent fan but Im not sure if this will be overkill for the size of tent? (advice welcome on this) Would a 6" tdsilent be suffient here? The thinkinking behind the 8" was I could run a 1000watt light all year round.

My filter will match the extraction I decide on and will be a rhino filter,from what I can gather they are good filters...

Both intake and extraction fans will run on a fan controller,again Im undecided on what controller tho,looked at a primair and a sms hybrid and both seem up to the job.The primair being the cheaper option.

My medium at first will be compost along with the plant magic range of grow and bloom and some granules to boot.

I will be starting from seed and understand the potting up process,Im looking at growing some dutch passion mazar and maybe some blues (cash permited)

Also looking at a smaller tent,probally a dr60 along with a 250watt enviro light with a small 4" fan to extract,this tent will be used to bring on the seedlings and to give them a little start in life before moving them under the 1000watt light. I will use a passive intake on this tent.

So yeah thats about where Im at with my knowledge at the moment,so please guys,if theres anything you would suggest I do different please pip up and I will do my upmost to reply asap.

Sorry for the long winded post,but I guess we all at some point had first grow nerves,looking forward to getting my nails dirty tho in the very near future.

Found the plot.

x

 

[hush]

Welcome to icmag, ftp. You chose the best forums out there, imo. There are actually helpful people here, as unpopular as that is nowadays.

My advice is to forget about an intake fan. There is a reason why most people don't use them. What we are looking for in a good grow tent setup is to attain negative pressure in the environment, so that all the air that passes through must only exit through the designated exhaust port, which is being treated by a carbon filter. This is the number one most effective way to eliminate smells, which are traditionally the number one way that people get busted for growing the herb.

So instead of using an active intake, make it passive. The DR120 has 6 inch ports all over the place to make this easy. Just use 1 six inch fan to exhaust through one of the top ports, and then use 2 of the lower ports as your passive intakes. You can even insert ducting and make it light tight.

I run a 1000 watter in a 4x4 tent, so feel free to check my journal out for any ideas. Just make sure you provide your plants with a good environment, and they will grow just fine for you.

 

[Found the plot]

Hiya Hush

Thanks very much for your quick responce! From what Ive been reading my plants will need fresh air and thats why I decided on an active intake,the tent will be in a small box room and I will extract into the attic,what about when lights are off? Im looking for total darkness and would need the tents flaps closed..surely? And with a active intake the plants will still be getting fresh air pumped in,pluss where I live it can get hot in the summer and I can only imagine what temps will be when its in the 80,s outside pluss the 1000 watt of light,Ive noted down your suggestion tho,see what others think and suggest. Again thanks for your input.Will look thro your journal this evening when the kids are asleep.

x

x

 

[hush]

Where I live it gets hot in the winter, so trust me I know firsthand what it takes to make a grow tent work. First off, having an active intake is highly recommended against. If you look around, you will surely see that for yourself in no time, so definitely just click around and look at other people's setups. You will see that negative pressure is what you want in your tent, and in order to do so, you want passive intakes.

This has no bearing on fresh air supply. When you have an active exhaust, that air that is being exhausted has to be replaced, unless you are in a vacuum. So when you are blowing air out of the tent, up at the top, the intake holes have air rushing through them. Fans are not required here, and in actuality, they can have negative impact on your exhaust fan's performance.

So what you want, I assure you, is a 6-inch inline centrifugal fan and 2 passive intakes. When the lights are off, the fan still runs. It always runs. This setup I'm talking about has no problem being light-proof and allowing total darkness during the night time period. Your DR120 has large drawstring ports on the sides of the tent, down toward the bottom. What you want to do with those ports is run short lengths of 6" ducting through them, and what you need to do is run them in such a way that the ducting takes 90-degree turns. There are a million and one ways to achieve this. The concept is that light does not travel around corners, but airflow does. When you do this properly, your tent will be in complete darkness even when it is bright outside of the tent. Forget about those flaps. Use ducting with the ports.

It's gonna get hot in your tent. You mentioned that it gets "in the 80s" where you are, but I'm assuming that means outside temps, and you have central air conditioning inside? If so, it's more important to mention the ambient temperature of the room where the tent will be located, and not the outside temps. But if you are saying that the temp in the room gets up into the 80s, then I gotta tell you... a 1000 watter won't work for you. It will be too impossibly hot. You would need to invest in a window air-conditioner, or a portable one for that matter.

You also might consider using an air-cooled hood, instead of the parabolic one you mentioned. That might require using an extra fan, so you can run the air-cooled light exhaust on its own closed-loop, but you are already willing to use an extra fan in the form of an active intake, so that's another option for you.

Good luck to you, no matter what you end up doing.

 

[Twist1]

Lots and lots of great info from Hush there ^^^ I agree.

Another thing you could consider is a vert cooltube, or even just barebulb vert with a good fan underneath, pointing up at the bulb. With this method you get a column of air that pushes all the heat to the top where it instantly extracted by the exhaust... and you don't lose any photons to the cooltube glass. I do this on a smaller scale, but I learned it here (actually in the vert section) from guys running bigger lamps like you.

Good luck