Indoor question about cooling grow space

[Surfer Joe]

My tent 1x1x2m with a 600w dual spectrum hid in an air cooled hood is getting worryingly warm at times now. The temps at the canopy with two fans blowing around is about 27-30 with the lights on but sometimes it goes up to 34 or 35C.
How much fan can I blow over the tops to keep them cool without stressing them from too much airflow?
Is moving the light up an option or will that reduce yield due to weaker light?
Can anyone recommend a small air conditioner that could be used in a tent to control the excess heat?
Just how much heat is too hot and does the air flow make a good difference or not?
Thanks for any advice.

 

[Fishman]

What kind of setup are you running in regards to intake/exhaust?

 

[Surfer Joe]

I have an extractor fan in the tent sucking in air though a carbon filter, passing it through the air-cooled light hood and out the top of the tent. The intakes are two passive vents on the lower and middle part of the tent.

 

[namvet25]

You won't be able to find an air conditioner small enough for that size tent.What are the temps outside of the tent?

 

[Surfer Joe]

The room the tent is in is an unheated garage shed that ranges around 14-20C. The tent exhaust vents into the room since there is no way to vent it to the outside of the garage.

 

[BayLee420]

Can you A/C the garage?

My Super Box only 6 square feet is in my den. The room A/C is on at 68F-70F, The temp in the grow box w/o the A/C on would be way too warm to grow w/o issues. The room temp with the A/C on the Super Box temp runs around 7-10 degrees higher than the den's temp. Good intake air into the tent and a good exhaust should bring the tent's temp in the range that should be in the proper range to grow. There are portable A/C's on the market that are not window units, but the heat of the unit is let out of a window or vent hole. The portable A/C can then be positioned near the intake vent to cool down the tent. In fact I plan on getting a portable A/C unit this summer to do just that. I can then place the A/C unit closer to the Super Box w/o turning the den into a refrigerator.

 

[Hapa]

aloha surfer joe~

I had this same problem bc I didn't want to cut a hole in the ceiling, now that I've done it, I wondered why I hadn't before bc just that small thing reduced the heat by 10 degrees F., and took me about 40 minutes. It's now vented in to the attic and out the attic vent.

Makes sense tho, right? we are moving the hot air away from our lights and it has to go somewhere. where I live it cannot be in to that room (if I wanna grow in the summers, that is) bc it gets really hot here for long periods of time so...

can u cut into the ceiling and vent into an attic?
hardware stores have those flange type things that make the job look pretty neat and tidy and make it easy to hook the exhaust hose to it.

In addition, I bought a portable a/c / heater (about $600.00 USD) that brings filtered-air from the outside in and my temps at lights on is, well, whatever I want it to be really; right now it's 77 degrees F.

if I didn't have that option, knowing what I do now in regards to the reduction of heat, I'd put a hole in the bottom of my garage door, if I had to.

Maybe the portable a/c will work well enough, if you can swing that. Heat sucks, and speaking from experience it can ruin a harvest. I cringe if it even gets close to going above 85 degrees F. Hope this helps a lil.

aloha & "surfs up... c'mon and get ya some!"

 

[greenjeans]

My cab is in my garage as well. I'm not using HID (I am using CFLs), but here is what I did:

I created an intake that pulls conditioned air into the cabinet from inside the house. I put a 6" semi-rigid duct through the wall right next to the cabinet, installed a nice filtered cover on the inside, then ran that duct into the cab and pointed it toward the floor. You don't say what kind of ventilation you have, but I have a 4" inline fan and carbon filter. As long as you keep negative pressure, smell shouldn't get into the house this way. It is working for me so far, no smell in the house, and temps were definitely much hotter before. It stays about 80f in there now, although temps haven't gotten horrible here yet, so how well it will work when the garage is 100 degrees remains to be seen.

Here is a link to the thread I created about my cabinet.

https://www.autoflower.org/f44/finally-finished-my-box-42228.html

Good luck!

 

[BayLee420]

The best way to get the temps down is to use negative pressure. Cool air needs to be intaked into the unit and the hot air exhausted out. Fans will only push the hot air around w/o any real temp drop. Fans on the plants mimics the breeze of being outside. The breeze helps the plants become stronger by waving the plant stem thinking it's outside.

Good Luck.

 

[Surfer Joe]

Thanks all.
My garage is not flexible so I can't make holes or vent to the outside. It is not very airtight anyway so there is some fresh air that seeps in through the cracks and around the doors. The floor is concrete and I have the tent set on some rugs to insulate from the cold ground in the winter. The best option for me will be to buy a small room airconditioner and cool the room down a bit so that the tent gets cooler air.
I did one thing that helped. The vent holes are higher up on the tent than ground level so I connected some ducting to each vent and let it hang to the floor. I noticed that the air right on the floor of cold concrete is cooler than the air higher up. This has managed to cut down about 2-3C on the tent temps by having the intake vents sucking in the colder air on the floor of the garage.