Live Stoner Chat Please allow myself to introduce..........myself

[stashmouth]

... love that movie.
I'm a 30 yr. blower, first time grower. Sadly, I found this site after I had ordered all my gear and beans.

I'm really impressed with the sense of community here. Even the most senior members and breeders seem genuinely interested in every newbie's first grow. I AM ONE OF THOSE NEWBIES!
My girls are germed and buried now. When they get their heads up, I'll start a journal. I expect to have a lot of issues along the way and really appreciate everybody's willingness to help.

1st question: How to lower the temp in the grow tent, guerilla style?
My tent is in a bedroom closet(unventilated). Ambient in the bedroom runs at 77 degrees, with the thermostat set at 75. Ambient in the closet runs a couple of degrees higher. I have a 200cfm fan(running at 60%), exhausted to the outside, operating full time. I can't seem to get the temp in the tent to go lower than 84 in the am and 88 in the afternoon. There is no room in the closet for a portable AC or evaporative cooler.
Any suggestions??

 

[BigBuddha]

Hey stashmouth. Welcome to AFN.


The principal way to reduce temps is to increase airflow / air exchange with cooler air. If your tent is inside a closet, the air from the tent goes outside into the closet and then right back into the tent again very quickly, so the heat has no chance to escape, also the air won't be refreshed very often and this presents two key considerations:

1 - You see high temps and humidity because it can't escape.
2 - There isn't enough CO2 exchange for decent plant growth.

Both of those issues directly equate to a very diffcult (potentially impossible) time growing weed.

There needs to be fresh air coming in quite often and heat expelled. So, practically speaking, either the tent has to come out of that closet, or an extraction vent has to be directed out of the closet into another space somewhere (for example an inline fan wth ducting expelling warm air into another room through the wall).

I can't think of any other way to address the physics of thermodynamics, and the stealth requirement makes it that much more difficult to resolve

 

[KUDO]

:howdy: and welcome to AFN brv, yes as bigbuddha say,i had to move one of my tents in to the room as it was killing my girls off down to not getting fresh air in there ,but now thery are all looking much better now , forward to see you grows Kudo

 

[stashmouth]

Thanks BB-
I am exhausting the air to the attic. Hopefully, creating negative pressure inside the tent. I'm running a 200cfm fan/filter combo at 60%, thinking that will exchange the air about 4x per min. in my 36x20x60 (25 cf) grow space. Running 2x 200w cfl 6500k bulbs now, with 2 250 w 2700k bulbs on order. Will probably want to keep one of the 6500's as a side light. That will probably push temps into the mid 90's if I don't figure out a guerilla solution. Thinking about freezing a couple of 1 gal jugs and letting the fan blow over it.

 

[BigBuddha]

I see.. so let me get this right (I'm wakin n bakin as usual ).. and I'm gonna think out loud a bit here..

There's a tent.. and in that tent is a carbon filter with a 200cfm fan. That exhausts into the attic with ducting? If the attic is taking the heat from INSIDE the tent, then the remaining heat must be from the tent heating up the air in the closet.

So IF I'm picturing this right.. where is the tent getting most of its intake air from.. it must be the closet, correct? Therefore it must be recirculating its own warm air. There's ya problem to address.

Right.. when you say guerilla I'm thinking you mean stealth.. so if I've got that wrong and stealth isn't the issue, could you have a length of ducting from the tent's intake vent to the door and leave that open so that it sucks cool air from outside the closet?

If that's possible your temps will drop straight away. If not.. we still have an issue to resolve, but I cannot see how unless we get cool air from somewhere and get rid of it into the attic. Since the attic side of it is sorted out.. it's the cool intake air that's needed.


Hope that's making some sense to you fella.




Ps.. turning up the fan to 100% will make a difference, but only a small one as we're still recirculating warm air.

 

[stashmouth]

xactly, brother. Leaving the closet door open is hit and miss at best. Probably can do it for a few hours a day, but would have to set reminders to close it to remain stealthy. Might be able to run an intake duct to just under the closet door, maybe. Thinking about having the girls sleep during the hot part of the afternoon. Thinking about the frozen jugs scenario.
May have to sack up and put in an AC vent. Wish I would have thought of that before installing the gear. May have to research DIY AC ducting.
Stupid little details!!!

 

[stashmouth]

fyi - the bedroom ambient is 77, closet ambient is 79. So, not a huge difference there. Lowering the thermostat will help now, while outside temps get no higher than 85, but in a month or so, we'll be hitting 100 outside and it will be impossible to keep the bedroom any cooler than about 77. I could set the thermostat at 70 and it wouldn't cool down any more.

 

[BigBuddha]

Right ok.. in which case let's get down to business..

SO, we have to get cool air in (that's our goal now).. but we can't leave the door open all the time, stealth is a priority and temps are too high with it closed.


Therefore I'm pretty sure logic dictates that the only viable opions are (with tent venting directly into the attic & negative pressure in the tent + closet):

1- Reduce temps in the tent by reducing light wattage (2nd least desirable because more light = better)
2- Push/pull cool air into the closet via ducting from another space (probably the simplest choice)
3- Push air-condiioned air into the closet from another space (my favourtie if you can get it done)
4- Expel air from the closet into another space (least desirable because of the tent and closet extactiion fighting for air, reducing the effectiveness of both))

Unless my brain is lying to me, there aren't really any other choices because of the laws of physics getting in the way.


How does that sound to you fella? You'll have a far better idea because you know the space with all its nooks and crannies.

 

[stashmouth]

seems to me that the only viable options are to install an AC duct in the closet, or install a duct booster fan as an intake and duct it to just under the door. Either way, I'm only going to get 77 degree air intake. Maybe better with an AC duct in a confined space.
The closet backs up to another unventilated closet and an outside wall, so trying to get intake from a space other than the attached bedroom would be difficult.
Time to study up on DIY hvac ducting!
Thanks for listening to me vent

 

[BigBuddha]

Aye it's a tricky probem to overcome isn't it. Sometimes there's only so much we can do with a grow and when the laws of nature get in our way, we're no longer the dictators of how it's all going to be.

You may have to accept that you can't have as much light. It's quite realistic to consider that less heat might equate to more bud compared to more light and more heat. It could be that in the end, that might be the best option within the confines you have to work with.