Thinking of new garage grow room - idea's?

[TGT]

I am in the process of cleaning out my garage so that I can build a 16 foot by 12 foot room. The garage is very large and it will still fit the car in the front part located before the soon be be built room. The room will be in the back quarter of it so that when the garage door is opened you will just see a wall at the back just past the parked car. It should be impossible for people to see that there is a room at the back when looking from the street even with the garage door opened. The enterance is in through the side and cannot be seen from the street.

My main concern is noise. I have neibours very close to the one side, but not on the other. We live on a corner lot so I only have to worry about the people to my right. I was thinking of insulating the crap out of the room and ceiling so that I can make it as quiet as possible. I seen some sound proof insulation at Home Depot and thought that would be a good product to try. The only noise that will be hard to conceil will be the carbon scrubber exaust. I will use a Can-100 with an Elicent 250B in-line fan so it will be quite large.

Any suggestions of ways to sound proof a garage and if anyone has any pictures of a garage in use now that would be great. Really I have a good idea of what I am doing but the more idea's and input the better. I plan to just do a small grow here, like 2 - 1000 watt HPS - nothing crazy. Just for personal smoke so that I have enough for the entire year. I plan on just growing during the winter months also. Well, thats the details - any advice or input would be great - thanks in advance!

TGT

 

[PharmaCan]

It seems like you're talking about a lot of insulation just to quiet the fan/air noise. Wouldn't it be less expensive to just muffle the fan and air? Here's a thread that might help.

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=94257

Good luck with your project!

PC

 

[FreezerBoy]

I plan to just do a small grow here, like 2 - 1000 watt HPS - nothing crazy. Just for personal smoke so that I have enough for the entire year.

Dude, how much are you smoking? I can't outsmoke my 250 watt freezer grow.

I found the key to killing fan noise is to put the exhaust behind closed doors. Run the duct into the attic and no one in or out of the house will hear.

 

[007grow]

Recently I was dealing with the same noise issue from my scrubber (8" eco plus) and lights cooling fan (8" eco plus) I was using the 8" ducting from home depot that comes with the thick insulation I found that this reduced the sound quite a bit but it wasn't enough for me still you could hear that most of the noise escaped the first 2-4ft of duct like if you put your ear close to the duct you could hear the noise coming through it anyways someone recommended that I stuff the 8"ducting w/insulation inside 10"ducting with insulation and holy shit balls this was such an enormous improvement the double insulated ducting made all the difference I went ahead and did it to everything that was anywhere close to a fan and now my room is very quiet the loudest thing is the ac units running no more suspicious jet plane sounds from the growroom lol

 

[yamaha_1fan]

Thats a big room for some personal smoke.

I am sitting on top of 3 6" vortexes and a 24K BTU AC, plus water pumps. I cant hear anything. I insulated with normal pink fiberglass insulation everywhere I could (exterior walls are concrete slab). You dont hear anything outside.

If remote mounting ballasts, keep them out of view.

Also plan for heat. This summer was tough on the garage. Make sure you have a way to vent the garage because an AC and aircooling the lights into the garage will heat it up.

 

[TGT]

Yes it is a lot of space and light for personal, but I want to do one crop a year out of this room. I figure it will produce about 4 pounds and that is perfect for a year of smoke. I smoke a lot now and also have a lot of friends so I take this into consideration also. I would rather have too much than too little. But your right, it does seem rediculous.

Thanks 007 for the idea. I will have to try that out.

Yamaha, it is great to know just regular pink insulation will kill sound very well. I don't think it will be that much of a problem as I though earlier. I still want overkill so I will use the sound dampening insulation and also a muffler for my exhaust.

Also, I will be growing in the winter but will still plan for heat because who knows, may be this room will be used more than once a year. I was thinking if I do the summer thing to use air cooled lights along with a 12,000 BTU air conditioner exausting into the other half of the garage. Does this sound like an okay idea to you?

Thanks all for the response. It is great getting some added input to help me along.

TGT

 

[maryj315]

i have that exact setup in a 14 by 12 i run my lights at night. my 12000 btu ac will cycle on 70. good info on fan noise, i had to put my 747 vortex up for a 250 cfm because it was to noisy will have to try the 10 inch ducting.keep us posted

 

[maryj315]

i just read another one of your posts if this is going to be a 2000 watt vert. please make sure you share it with us i love verts. i think it is the most efficient way to utilize all of your light, but you also have to very diligent in maintaining all those plants much respect have a good day.

 

[deathtosoapbar]

TGT, sounds a good idea using that back quarter of the garage, i was thinking about something similar myself with a brick wall blockin it off, btw how many plants are you thinkin of puttin in that space? and is it from seeds or cuttings? people here may criticize this but - to solve the loud carbon scrubber how about growin something real low odor but decent like serious chronic or mandala s white satin rather than havin somethin that may stink but the noise givin u away just a thought man. if u can get away without usin a scrubber may be more stealth noise wise

 

[PharmaCan]

I've got a 12' x garage depth room in my garage. Inside the room is kinda noisy, but outside you can't hear anything. I'm in the process of taking everything apart and putting it back together and I'm going to try the double insulated duct thing. That fan noise is annoying.

I want to move sometime in the next year or so, and the next time I set things up I'm going to cool the lights independent of the grow room and have some ducting made so that I can divert all that hot air into my heating ducts during the winter. It just seems like a foolish waste of natural resources to throw all that heat away. It costs about $250/month to heat this place during the winter. Sheet-metal work isn't all that expensive and the cost would be offset very quickly. All it would really take is some ducting and a couple of dampers on a thermostatically controlled flip-flop type of device.

PC

 

[teddynugent]

Hey man,

What I've done in the past is actually build small sealed-type boxes to enclose fans, pumps, exhaust vents etc.

For example, I used to have this cheapo vent fan. It buzzed, rattled & made all sorts of noise in general.
I used plywood to make the box, lined the inside with some insulation board & then covered it with some more, thinner plywood (so the enclosure was designed basically like a wall - wood on the outside & inside with a layer of insulation in-between).
I also built an enclosure around my home-made carbon filter/scrubber. It works perfectly.... I made the laundry basket(hamper) style carbon filter. Then built a plywood enclosure with slots cut in the bottom of the enclosure for air to escape. I loosely stuffed cotton around where the air vents from the box & that muffled the sound of the air escaping.

Another great way to sound-proof is to go to a car-audio store (even Circuit City) and buy Dynamat. It's a sounddeadoning/proofing material used to stop any/all rattling on your car caused by those super loud subwoofers/audio systems. It also keeps much of the bass inside the car, instead of all that bass escaping from the trunk.
It's great for making a sound-proof box/enclosure for anything. Or, if you have a blower/vent fan or any other metal rattling, all you need to do is cut a small piece of dynamat and just peel & stick it on whatever is rattling.

YOu'd probably only need a couple of half-dollar sized pieces of the stuff stuck to 1 or maybe a couple areas of metal on the fan & that should totally deaden the rattle - worked for me on a real noisy fan I had.

BTW - they do sell ventilation duct silencing products....