how should i go about doing that? my intake is the small black pvc in the bottom right corner in the back, and all the hot air is exhausted into the utility compartment, an ideas on what i should do?
3 easy ways to go about it: 1) make bigger holes and attach another fan / s right by the ones you already have. 2) those look like 5V fans, not sure thou. If so, you can hook them to go @ 12 V. It will make them run faster but louder. Also it will shorten their life span. 3) Get some fans that have higher CMF ratings so they can push more air for the same size. I notice that your utility room is confined in the same space as the grow room. Maybe you wanna add an extra fan to really blow the hot air out of the cabinet. Im not sure about how it relates to ganja growing but for CPUs its better to first get a fan to exhaust hot air, then getting an intake fan for fresh air. My 2 cents. Hope some one can provide more input. PS. you may want to get a cheap aluminum reflector to put a top of yar bulbs. And paint the back wall white.
thanks for the bit of input man. 1) what do you mean by make bigger holes, intake holes? and another fan for exhaust in the same spot as the others? 2) yes they are 5v but i think im just gonna keep em at 5v because i cant find any chargers higher than 5v and dont reallly wanna spend money on a charger. 3) i cant really find any other fans that have a cfm rating in stores, and cant get anything off the internet atm. but what i think im going to do is buy another laptop cooling pad (where i got the 3 exhaust fans from) and use 2 of the 3 fans to replace the passive intake, and use the last fan as an exhaust from the utility room to outside the cab so the buildup of hot air in the utility section can be vented to the outside of the box to answer your P.S. what could i use as a reflector? and for painting the back wall white i think im just going to get some mylar insulation, the bubble type stuff instead, thats why i didnt bother to paint it right away. and i guess this is the right time to ask if this stuff would work - http://www.homedepot.ca/webapp/wcs/...artial&Ntx=mode+matchall&N=0&Ntk=P_PartNumber it says it reflects 97% of radiant energy, does that mean its just going to insulate my box and keep all the heat in, or is it going to reflect light?
1) Yes, make more holes and put fans in those new holes. 2) good; maybe a cell phone charger. An old one or a spare one. 3) then try to go bigger, those seem 55 mm fans. maybe getting 90 or 120 mm... A broken pc might have some working fans. try 3Bay for some knock off. As for the laptop cooling, maybe youd be better off ordering some fans and savin some money. Mylar is the shit. Its also expensive. That duct shiny tape is designed IMO to isolate thermally; the coating, shiny as it is, is going to reflect some of the light. Its a similar material as the windshiels sunreflectors that repell both light and heat. I have one of those and it does reflects some light, you can see that as you dangle it infront of the bulbs. What i dont know for sure is how much of the light it bounces back is actually usable. i believe some of it may shift from the desired wavelenghts in the bouncing process. The same is gonna happen with the ducticn you suggest, still ill try it to see what happens... As a reflector you can try aluminum. One big ass beer mini barrel or maxi can split by half could come in handy. There is a post about using some air duct somewhere around. The thing is you use a home depot obtainable material to use as reflector. I got some baking molds made out of "thick" tin foil. You can cut and bend those in ordert to fit the bulbs in em or at least to rack them around the pot in order to focus the spreadin light right back to the centre of the grow space. Good ol fashion tin foil is far easier to use and to come by. Some say its better to paint white. I wont say otherwise cuz im not sure. Right now i just white painted the inside of a bucket to keep the light in a tighter space, so im soon gonna be past the tin foil reflectors era. Cheers mate.
laptop cooling pad was only 15$ and its already all wired to a usb so all i have to do is plug the usb into my phone charger. and i have no way of buying anything off the internet atm so i may be stuck with just buying another cooling pad. if i had access to buying stuff online, then for sure would i get some good 120 mm fans off there. so im guessing that pipe wrap stuff would just be a waste of money? otherwise thanks for all the help man!
so changed a few things on my box which greatly increased airflow and brought down temps a bit. what i did was remove the black pvc corner, and cardboard surrounding it for passive intake so there is now a bigger hole which is where 2 small pc fans will go for intake if and when i buy them. the other change is that i put a black pvc corner from my utility section that leads outside where another small fan will be placed if and when i buy it, to help with exhausting the hot air exhausted from the grow section out of the box. even without the fans the airflow is much better.
You dont have to buy your things online. Best buy carries pc fans in solo packages. They have a bunch of different sizes. I can't remember the price of them but they are the same as online without the cost of shipping. Or any electronic store such as radio shack or comp usa or anything like that would carry pc fans.
CFLs are pretty nice, low heat is great. I just threw some mylar-type sunfilm on the top of mine for reflectors. Each one has 1 piece of scotch tape holding it to the ballast and they've been like this for months with no discoloration: You'll get the best ventilation with an all passive intake and as much CFM exhaust as possible. Stretch some pantyhose or similar very easy flowing filter over the intake to keep dust out (extends the life of the carbon filter on the exhaust). If you have an old computer powersupply lying around they can easily be modified to power more 12V PC fans as you'd need.
already looked around and source by circuit city (radioshack) doesnt carry any case fans. no best buy here, only other big electronics store would be futureshop but already did price comparisons vs cfm and loudness and im better off with getting the laptop cooling pad and gutting it. we have a bunch of other small electronic stores but no one seems to carry case fans. thats a nice setup you have their man, but unfortunately i dont have an old computer powersupply. at this point im hoping the family desktop craps out soon so i can salvage the fans and whatnot, and maybe use the case as a stealth grow. but today i finally got a new thermometer and with the 4 lights i was getting readings of 107 degrees fahrenheit. so for now im stuck with only running 2 lights untill i get my ventilation issue sorted out. but thanks for all the help with ventilation everyone.
make everything exhaust... your intake can be fully passive cuz the air will want to get into your box since it will have lower pressure... you want to have all your fans on exhaust and at the top of your box so that hot air goes out the to;p while cool air comes in the bottom... hopefully it helps cuz wow those temps are high and i dont want to see your ladies die
ill see what i can do about it tomorow but for now im running only 2 cfls, which is keeping my temps down to about 85.
Yo frosted your cab looks ready for some green. Me & your cabs r bout same size. Yours is taller. U need to make sure ur intake is 2x's the size of your exhaust. Bcuz i started w/just a few pencil sized holes for intake, and a hole big enough to fit 2 120mm comp.fans, For my intake. And my temps were 95-100 . Then i opened up my intake to 2x's size of exhaust and now temps stay between 75-85. And im just using regular box fan for exhaust right now, til i get me 2 120mm fans. Also when u do start seedlins keep eye on ph. Bcuz im using mg organic and the ph of that soil is 5.2. So u need to compensate for that. I had some ph probs that slowed down growth til i finally got it in chck. Come chck out my grow. U might get a few ideas that might help u get to harvest. Hope that helps. But ill b chckn in on your grow. Holla
thanks for the input man. ill try to getting around to cutting those holes bigger later, but wouldnt that get ride of negative pressure? and is it fine that i have all the hot air exhausted into the utility section and then out of the box through a 1.5 diameter hole? or is that too small? at the moment i dont have any ph testing equiptment but im using a regular potting soil with no time released ferts, and have no nutes at the moment, and only watering with water from a 5 gallon water cooler system, so hopefully my ph is right. all ready have checked out your grow man and it looks good! helped out a bit, thanks for following.
i wouldnt really see a reason to make the intake 2x the size of your exhaust but having an intake atleast the size of your exhaust... edit: Also if you can paint the back wall flat white or get some mylar for it so that you can make that big ass back wall reflective
right now my intake is 2/3 the size of my exhaust, can anyone backup why it should be 2x the size of my exhaust? I will probably be getting mylar this weekend, if not white paint will go up.
I dont have any fancy setup or anything on my box. On the end of my box going down the side i have 4 holes cut out to fit a heater vent cover and a box fan sitting on the outside of the box drawing air out thru the vents. On the opposite side in the front and on the top of the box i have 2 holes with covers acting like passive air intakes. And with the slats on the vents i can control how much each vent is letting air pass through. Also this way i can actually control the way the air is flowing through the box. I plan to do the same with the perm grow boxes but going to have case fans pulling air in on the intake vents and then going to have ones pushing air out of the exhaust. It helps To have an intake that allows enough air to get into the box at a constant speed to help keep the pressure just right to allow a flow of air to occur. If the intake is too small then it will just create a suction in the box with a very low rate of air exchange going on. And also you could run into the problem of having to much intake and not enough exhaust where as air is being pushed into the box faster then it is being taken out. Thus increasing the build up of hot air inside the box, with the exhaust system not being able to keep up with the demand. Each boxes venting is a different challenge because no two are exactly the same. So you just have to find out what works for you. Sit down and look at your box and think of different things that you could do to change the airflow. Then test each idea till you find which works best. Think of what combination of fans would work the best together to give that equal balance. Brain just started thinking and fingers couldn't stop typing because brain was high. Flu meds and a blunt and then bed. yay.
That intake might be big enough, it's probably not causing the heat issues as much as that 1.5" hole in the utility section is. Put your thermometer in that section for awhile and see if it's staying pretty warm in there too. Might need a second exhaust fan in there to draw the heat out.
The thing with exhaust intake is to be able to provide fresh air and remove the hot. Imagine you have a pennysize intake and a silver dollar size exhaust. You are gonna have an easir time clearing the hot air since the hole is bigger. Having a pennysize exhaust and a silver dollar size intake will result in incapability to remove the hot air. I believe its better to get the hot air out, so id go with the bigger exhaust.
i have to agree with ^ this statement 110%... i have a relatively small grow box, 2'x2'x18". im not sure the cm size of the fans that im using but i pulled a large pc fan from an old tower, pulled the smaller "intake" fan from the top of the processor. the intake fan is roughly 2"x2" and the larger one is about 4"x4". these 2 fans keep my 4 26w cfl's and the box temp at a crisp 75* w/ 53% relative humidity. its easier to pull then to push.. i use the larger fan to pull out the older hot air and to pull in fresh cold air.. it's been working well for me, i checked my plants this morning and out of 2 beans that i started i ended up w/ 1 lady, so im happy about that.
thanks for the replies everyone, i decided im keeping my intake the same, but i will be cutting holes for my exhaust fans on the back wall tmo, instead of having it all buildup in the utility section, so all the hot air is exhausted directly out of the box.