Ventilation help

[Guest]

Hello all I am just finishing up my new room and decided to ask for some advice from my friends here at ICMAG. Fisrt a little background info on the room.

The closet is split into 2 sections
Veg Section
All walls covered in black/white poly film
Dimensions - 2ft. wide, 4.5 ft. long, 7.5 ft. high
Shelf about 3 ft. from ceiling with a 2 ft. T5 fluoro fixture for clones/mothers
250w MH lamp hooked to shelf for veg
honeywell fan

Flower Section
All walls covered in black/white poly (including widow)
Dimensions - 3ft. wide, 4.5 ft. long, 7.5 ft. high
600w HPS lamp with digi ballast and silverstar air cooled hood
Oscillating fan
Ecoplus Blower 265 cfm

The doorway to the closet is covered in black/white poly with a zipper door. As I said the window is covered by the poly film. I should also point out that I cannot damage any walls, floors etc. My problem is finding a way to get fresh air into the sealed environment. With the window being sealed over to lighproof I am puzzled as to what I can use for intake, as the poly film does not support much weight. I also need to think about an option that will continue to work during the summer. I have an air conditioner in the adjoining room, which leads me to believe that my best option is to pull air from the room as opposed to outside. Any help, suggestions, and critisizm would be appreciated.

 

[marx2k]

Hello all I am just finishing up my new room and decided to ask for some advice from my friends here at ICMAG. Fisrt a little background info on the room.

The closet is split into 2 sections
Veg Section
All walls covered in black/white poly film
Dimensions - 2ft. wide, 4.5 ft. long, 7.5 ft. high
Shelf about 3 ft. from ceiling with a 2 ft. T5 fluoro fixture for clones/mothers
250w MH lamp hooked to shelf for veg
honeywell fan

Flower Section
All walls covered in black/white poly (including widow)
Dimensions - 3ft. wide, 4.5 ft. long, 7.5 ft. high
600w HPS lamp with digi ballast and silverstar air cooled hood
Oscillating fan
Ecoplus Blower 265 cfm

The doorway to the closet is covered in black/white poly with a zipper door. As I said the window is covered by the poly film. I should also point out that I cannot damage any walls, floors etc. My problem is finding a way to get fresh air into the sealed environment. With the window being sealed over to lighproof I am puzzled as to what I can use for intake, as the poly film does not support much weight. I also need to think about an option that will continue to work during the summer. I have an air conditioner in the adjoining room, which leads me to believe that my best option is to pull air from the room as opposed to outside. Any help, suggestions, and critisizm would be appreciated.

This might be easy or difficult depending on how much work you want to do.

Let's make 6" diameter your standard. Take a wooden board about the width of your window and cut 2 6" holes in it. fit it into your window, close the window on top of this board (You can figure out how to make it tight) Now just run ducting for input/output airflow and tape the polyfilm around the board. Voila. Still light-tight, your window just has a board in it which makes it sort of look like the window has a boxfan in it (sort of) and you've got ventilation from the outside/to the outside!

 

[Guest]

Thank you very much for thr reply. That sounds like just what Im looking for. It would also be easy to pipe some a/c cooled air from the room during the summer, while still having the air come in from outside. Thank you very much for the help, I knew there was a simple solution, but I just couldnt think of it Take care and stay safe

guerilla

 

[Guest]

You've got almost the same dimensions of closet space I have and I struggled with what to do also. I know from what I did to solve the ventilation problem that one intake and one exhaust is not going to solve your problem. You're going to need one of each for your light and the heat from the growspace. Have a meeting in a few minutes and don't have time to discuss it now, but will later this evening. That is only if you're interested in hearing it.

Later

 

[Guest]

Why dont you use a small 6000BTU window AC instead of just blacking out the window.Thats what I do and have the window blacked out around the AC.My AC is on the wall opposite my veg closet about 10 ft away,so I hung an air exchanger(big fan) from a chain in the ceiling right in front of the cold air grills and with the fan on low,it basically pushes the cold air into my closet.Gives me an extra 10 degrees of coolness in the summer.

 

[Lofty]

i had a bedroom window and needed to get air in without obvious ducting, i replaced the glass with frosted glass and put i a bathroom fan vent so it just looked like a bathroom.

good luck

 

[Guest]

mojo: Thank youfor the help my friend, I would love to hear more when you have a chance, thanks.

ballastman: The reason that I did not put my AC unit in the closet window is because it would look rather suspicious considering its about 2 degrees out here lol. That may be my best bet come summer though, shouldnt be too hard to take down the back wall and resael it around the AC. I just have one question, if I use the AC would I have to get a CO2 generator in there as well? I dont really have the cash or room to buy a CO2 generator which is why Im rtrying to figure out another way to go about it. If it can be done without the generator though, I think thats gonna be my plan for summer. Thanks for the help

Lofty: Replacing the glass or doing any other obvious work on the house is not an option for me unfortunately. The property owner already knows that the window goes to the closet as well. Thank you for your suggestion.

Thank you all for responding, I sincerely appreciate the help, and Im looking forward to any other ideas anyone may have. Take care

guerilla

 

[Guest]

Hello all I am just finishing up my new room and decided to ask for some advice from my friends here at ICMAG. Fisrt a little background info on the room.

The closet is split into 2 sections
Veg Section
All walls covered in black/white poly film
Dimensions - 2ft. wide, 4.5 ft. long, 7.5 ft. high
Shelf about 3 ft. from ceiling with a 2 ft. T5 fluoro fixture for clones/mothers
250w MH lamp hooked to shelf for veg
honeywell fan

Flower Section
All walls covered in black/white poly (including widow)
Dimensions - 3ft. wide, 4.5 ft. long, 7.5 ft. high
600w HPS lamp with digi ballast and silverstar air cooled hood
Oscillating fan
Ecoplus Blower 265 cfm

The doorway to the closet is covered in black/white poly with a zipper door. As I said the window is covered by the poly film. I should also point out that I cannot damage any walls, floors etc. My problem is finding a way to get fresh air into the sealed environment. With the window being sealed over to lighproof I am puzzled as to what I can use for intake, as the poly film does not support much weight. I also need to think about an option that will continue to work during the summer. I have an air conditioner in the adjoining room, which leads me to believe that my best option is to pull air from the room as opposed to outside. Any help, suggestions, and critisizm would be appreciated.

Ok, well here goes. My grow space is a closet also and its dimensions are 29 inches deep, 7.5 feet wide (or long, however you choose to look at it)and 8 feet tall. The door was 4 feet wide and 78 inches tall. It had a bi-fold door on it which I removed and replaced with 3/4 inch plywood. My lights are a 400W HPS/MH switchable and a 600W HPS/MH switchable. Both light hoods are air cooled w/glass lenses and are connected by 6" ducting. The ducting for the lights has an air intake and an air exhaust. Doing that only, and nothing else I'm sure you know will leave a heat problem to be dealt with. I solved my heat problem by putting two passive intakes about a foot off the floor and a closet exhaust blower on a wire shelf in the top of the closet. My closet exhaust fan is exactly the model you have (265cfm) and the blower for the lights moves 440cfm.

The picture below shows one of the closet intakes on the bottom, the exhaust for the light ducting just below the light switch and the beige exhaust vent cover for exhaust from the closet is on top. There are another of each of the passive intake and the intake for the lights on the other side of the door in exactly the spots as the other two black vents pictured. This closet is in my home office and the door is closed from my office to the rest of the house.

I bought a Sears 11,000btu A/C to cool the office and I turned off the vent in the ceiling that brings in air from the central air system. I didn't want to pull air in from the rest of the house and make the home A/C to have to cool air from my closet. The A/C has an energy saving cycle on it that causes the fan to come on low and sample air from my office and until it senses that the air in the room is above the setting on the A/C the compressor remains off. The fan on the A/C has a low, medium and high setting and the cool air from the air conditioner shoots across the floor and hits my two lower intakes for the closet.

Right now I'm two weeks into veg and am only using the 400W. By setting the A/C to keep the temperature at 70 in my office, the closet remains at about 78F. If I kick on the 600W and use it along side the 400W also, which I'm about to have to do, I can still keep the closet at 78F - the A/C just runs more because of the extra heat the 600 generates. And believe me, the 600 generates a lot more heat than the 400. Anyway, do whatever you like, but if you're going to exhaust heat from your lights, that has to be a closed system so air from the lights is pulled in from outside the grow room and is exhausted

My 265cfm blower can always be swapped with the 440cfm if I need it to be, but Can filter company says the carbon filter needs the 265 for optimum filtration and the blower is made by Can also.

This may sound like a lot of work and it is. But once I got it all set up, it's worry free.

closet










Hope this info helps and you don't have to do it like I did. I spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about it, and this is the only way I could guarantee I could control the heat in my closet.

 

[Guest]

Thank you very much for the detailed reply mojo. That sounds like a perfect solution to my problem. Our rooms are very similiar and I can see that it is working well for you. Im gonna strat working on this now. Thank you everyone for all of your help

guerilla

 

[Guest]

Thank you very much for the detailed reply mojo. That sounds like a perfect solution to my problem. Our rooms are very similiar and I can see that it is working well for you. Im gonna strat working on this now. Thank you everyone for all of your help

guerilla

Glad I could help. You're almost there, dude. Just a little more money.... and then a little more... and more, hehe. I still keep finding things I want. BTW, if and when you decide to go to CO2, which I'm toying with the idea now myself, you just close the vent lever on the A/C and it won't then exhaust your room air (and your CO2) to the outside. Till you do that, leave this vent on the A/C open so it will exchange the air in your room. Helps keep fresh air coming in (CO2 from outside the home also) and gets rid of the air in your room that the plants have depleted of CO2.

Good Luck on your future grow. It'll be nice to be able to go to sleep at night and know that you set your system up right and temps will be stable. Go to Home Depot and buy yourself a digital thermometer that also has a himidity sensor on it. It comes with one remote sensor/sender and you can hang that one in your closet. It'll send info to the base unit (have mine hanging on the wall right behind me) and that way you can keep a close eye on your closet enviro. You'll check it every 15 seconds or so right after you fire everything up, hehehehe, but soon you'll relax and start to trust things more.

Be sure when you put screws into your wall to hang the remote on, that you do it at different levels, i.e. one foot increments going up your wall. Do this because your plants are going to grow and you'll want the remote at the same level as the tops of your plants. In the beginning, right after you put your seedlings into the pots and put em under the HPS, you can lay the remote on the edges of the pots so it'll give you an accurate indication of what the plants are feeling from the light. Adjust the temp at plant level by moving the light closer to or away from the tops of your plants, I use Hydrofarm's sunrise hangers to do it, they're a lot easier to use than chains. After you find the heat level your plants are feeling - my comfort zone is about 78-81 degrees Fahrenheit, any warmer than that and I think they might get a little burn - when you find that temp zone, measure the distance between the glass on the bottom of the light reflector and the top of your plants and you'll know the distance you need to maintain that temp at plant top height throughout your grow. Once they start taking off, go ahead and hang the remote on the wall and move it up as the plants grow. That'll be a rough check for you that will alert you to any blower failures, blocked vents, etc. and let you take corrective actions. But really you shouldn't worry about it once you begin to trust that you've done it all right.

Have fun, I am.




And here's one of the sensor on a quart jar to keep it at plant top level.