 Atmosphere
Growing indoors can be quite challenging but if the grow room is designed properly things go much easier. There are countless ways to set up a grow room but we will focus on converting a Bedroom or Garage into a safe and permanent grow area. Control of the Atmosphere is crucial so we will go into detail. Venting the lights, maintaining proper temperature and humidity must be done properly or problems will occur. According to the part of the world you live in and the size of your set up, you may need some or all of the following equipment to run a medical garden:
Window Air Conditioner/ Portable Air Conditioner/ Mini Spit Air Conditioner & Heater
Portable Safe Electric Heaters
Dehumidifiers
In line Fans
Fan Speed Controller
Blowers
Oscillating Fans
Large Carbon Air Scrubber
HPS Ballast
MH Ballast
Vented Hoods
CO2 Tank
CO2 Solenoid and Flow Control w/Timer
Digital Thermometers
Air Pumps
Water Pumps
Why are you going to need all or at least most of this equipment?
Indoors your God of all you see and you have to have total control.
If your room gets to cold during the winter yields will suffer and worse problems like mildew or mold could completely kill your crop.
If your room gets to hot in the Summer yields will suffer and pest like mites are much easier to control in a cooler grow room.
If your humidity is to high ductwork and hoods can form moisture and reduce the life of bulbs or even burst a bulb when a water drop hits a hot lamp.
Even a legal grower doesn’t want to advertise the fact he has the dankage inside so the carbon filter is a must as well.
People that haven’t been trained simply don’t understand Air and Cooling so I am going to attempt to help out.
First some things I see commonly done wrong by growers.
A window unit goes into a window.
It is not designed to be ducted with cardboard or vented into a garage. These things work marginally at high temps and without proper air flow all they do is use energy. I was at a grow this weekend that’s improperly vented and the power bill is 600 where it should be 300. That’s 3600 a year wasted that could go to making it work properly there fore saving money every year.
That will pay for a mini split that uses ½ the electricity as a window unit.
Think Green in your grow room!
Moving Air is a lot cheaper than chilling it so if your hoods are hot then your venting system sucks. You should be able to hold your hands on your hoods and glass and not have to move them. If they are generating heat then your now paying to Chill the room and that cost a lot more.
A 1200 CFM vortex uses like 1 amp a 10,000 btu ac uses like 8
Air is a Fluid! Think of it as water. Everyone go look at there venting flex if water was running through it would it cavitate and restrict and all those bends without elbo’s? So does air you just cant see it. Air has friction and just like any fluid just less but its still a huge factor in venting.
Lets look at the proper way to vent a closed system.
Moving Air is a lot cheaper than chilling it so if your hoods are hot then your venting system sucks. You should be able to hold your hands on your hoods and glass and not have to move them. If they are generating heat then your now paying to chill the room and that cost a lot more. A 1200 CFM vortex uses like 1 amp a 10,000 btu A/C uses like 8 amps which do you want running 24/7?
Air is a Fluid! Think of it as water. Everyone should go look at there venting flex. If water was running through it would it cavitate and restrict and all those bends without elbow’s? So does air you just cant see it. Air has friction and just like any fluid just less but its still a huge factor in venting. Its more costly to do properly but straight hard pipe has much less friction than flex duct. Along the same lines each hard bend you make in the flex can add as much as 15 linear feet to the duct design and enough of these mistakes and your not moving enough air to stay cool.A very common mistake is using the fan or blower to push air through the hoods and this is incorrect. This causes a positive pressure on the hoods and your temps wont drop like they will if you Pull the air through the hoods using the fan. This is accomplished by mounting the fan near the ceiling of the room and connecting a large trunk line that all the exhaust lines coming from each hood tie into using short even lengths of Flex duct.
Technology Note**
The new 8” cool hoods work really well and even though 8” flex is expensive it has much less restriction than 4” flange fitted hoods and less restriction than a 6” vented hood. You can get away running much more flex duct with these hoods but the steel ducts will last basically as long as you will. In our design build we will be using hoods with 6” flanges.
WE want to install a hard pipe system as our main trunk line this will prevent friction flex is used only as short connecting tubes.
This may seem like over kill but you have to master your environment when growing indoors!
Ok first I cut a 8" Dryer Vent in and tore off the flapper and cover.
We then attach a 8" elbow and a 7 foot section of pipe to go from down low to up high.
At the top of the ceiling below the plate we come through with the 8" duct using an elbow 8"
As this duct passes through MzJill's hydro room we chop in a 6" hole to provide fresh air for her hood. Being close to the intake it will get lots of good clean fresh air and stay cool even with the smaller duct.
We now enter the main bud room with the 8" pipe all joints are sealed and taped as were using co2.
Using a factory 8x6x6 Wye fitting I terminate the fresh air intake feeding each hood with a very short piece of 6" flex but I use elbows at the fittings to reduce friction and turbulence.
A properly vented movable hood using 6" flex and an elbo and a long sweep. No short hard turns to restrict air flow.
The new hood straight through these hoods are cool to the touch.
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