no-budget air cooling?

[Guest]

I got a friend who built a cab that is 2d' x 3'w x 6'h.
The bottom foot will be for soil, giving 5 vertical feet left, he was gonna leave 4' for flower, and then mount some wood strips a foot below the top (the "roof") of the cab, he said he has a 400 w gavita reflector bulb, but he is worried that it will get too hot, so he thought maybe he could just put a sheet of glass or plexiglass on the wood mounts to seal off the top, then add a passive intake and exhaust the heat from the light with a 50cfm bathroom fan, and then just use a stanley blower to ventilate the flowering chamber and pull the air through a scrubber.

Does the glass/plexiglass roof idea sound okay?


I'm anxious to hear your responses cause I need y'all to help me help him as soon as possible. Thanks so much everybody.

-graythumb

 

[clowntown]

I didn't quite get all that, but in short having tempered glass is nice. I've seen people pull off DIY cooltubes and such with regular glass without problems, but there is always that risk of coming home to find glass shards all over your plants. Plexiglass might melt if there's too much radiant heat, and I'm not sure how much lumen loss you might face with that material. Probably not much, or much more than regular glass, but I don't know anything about that.

Either will likely reduce the amount of radiant heat from your plant tops, though.

 

[Guest]

I think you will want more than 50cfm cooling you light. I run my 400w light in a cooltube and a 210cfm inline.
I have a 125cfm 4 inch computer fan on my mini veg box its way more useful than the bathroom fan i used before, maybe you could set up a couple of those to cool the light.
Good luck
~neilspotshop

 

[Guest]

Maybe he could just run the exhaust from the stanley blower to the intake of the light chamber on top, and then use the 50 cfm bathroom fan on the other side to help push that out. That way there'd be more air pushing and pulling the heat out

What y'all think bout that idea?


Also would regular glass be okay, or does he REALLY need tempered glass? And how much more is that? Available at HD, Lowes, etc?


Thanks everybody

 

[Sauce]

Neil must have missed that you have a Stanley blower for output. Your fan situation sounds fine. I would either use an air cooled hood or cool tube. You could build one pretty cheap or buy a nice one.

I believe you mean to put the plexiglass in between the plants and light to section off the light for cooling. This would work provided you make some holes in it for airflow otherwise the lower cab will be isolated from the output fan.

 

[Guest]

Sauce, what I was saying was that the top foot of the cab would be completly closed off to the bottom, like a compartment with a glass floor.

The 50cfm bathroom fan would suck the hot air out on one side of the top compartment, and there'd be a passive intake on the opposite side of the lamp.

The stanley blower would be to pull the funky air in the main part of the cab through a scrubber for odor control and ventilation. Of course there'd be passive intakes on the bottom too

But the light sectiona nd the flowering section would be divided by a sheet of glass.

Cheapest and easiest way I could figure out how to cool the light.

It's one of those lights with a built in reflector so a hood would be pointless and I cant afford one anyway. The bulb is too big for a cool tube too.

 

[Sauce]

Oh gotcha. Yes that sounds like it would work well. Good idea

 

[Guest]

get a fan blow the air from under your bulb...cheap, and works well.you could bring the bulb as close as 20 cms this way

 

[Guest]

Yeah, I think it'll be fine. Was worried the glass might break due to heat, but calculated the 50cfm fan should exchange the air in the light compartment a good 8 times per minute.


Thanks for the help everybody

 

[Sauce]

As long as you have good airflow through the light space (which you will) the glass won't heat up enough to break, you'll be fine. My cool tube is made from a cheap candle glass shade that I could easily break in my hands however it barely even gets warm right next to my 250w bulb.

 

[Aoxomoxoa]

bath fans

bath fans

We use 2 Panasonic Whisper silent bath fans (50 & 175 CFM) I think they come in a 90 & 125 also. VERY quiet