Im currently germinating 12 seeds right now. 6 name brand, 6 bag seed. i was currious about a few last questions. 1. I plan on sealing my tent up besides the port that my exhaust will run out and a few small holes for power cords etc,,,. My fan will be pulling air through a carbon filter that will be placed high in my tent, through my hood, and out through the tent into attic. the exhaust is a 6 inch fan really good one. It will only run when a certain temp hits. Will this be good enough for exhaust? Do i need to pull fresh air into the tent somehow? 2. I have a 55 gal res, a smaller feeder res, and 8 buckets with hydroton. how often should i be flooding the buckets? Do i flood them the same when the lights are off?
As far as the vent question goes, it more or less depends on your light. You may be ok, I have a 400w light in a 4x4x8 room with an exhaust and an oscilating fan and my temps never exceed 83 but i may have more room. I do have a vent down low to draw cool air but no intake fan. You dont want to completely seal it off though, you need to be able to exchange the air or you will have a co2 issue. I'm a soil grower so I'm not going to be much help on the other question. good luck.
6 brand name plants are likely to get smelly. So maybe not a great idea to have the carbon filter in use ONLY when certain temps are reached. I would not do it that way. Ill use diferent systems, one for keeping the temps as needed and another to keep filtering the air to avoid smells. Lets say that the temps you set never are achieved, the extractor will never work. And if you set it too low, it will practically run as long as you have your lights on, thus defying the purpose of having it in auto mode. A fan in automode to keep things cool as a security policy sounds great, but the carbon filter on all day, until you can rely on the smell being under control and not needing that much filtering... Peace man. me use "dirty hydroponics". I use some rather small pots but feed nutrients all the way from the second leaf set. the ladies are fine. Peace.
thanks for the replies plus rep for both.... how do you vent the air into your tent? The smell isnt to big of a deal, dont really know why we even bought the carbon filter. Im more worried that my plants wont get enough recycled air or something.
ventilation can be pasive or active, that is, with or without fans. Most tents have built in spaces, or cut holes where you can place intake and-or outake fans. Hot air moves up, and if not properly chaneled, it builds up. So its the general physical rule to have some exhaust fans on the upper part of the tent. That alone creates some kind of air flow from bottom to top. Below, preferably in the opposite side of the tent from the exhaust fan, you can fix an intake fan. This one will pump fresh air in the lower part of the tent, pushing the hot air up, then its extracted by the fan. Depending on the amount of lights, space, heat, you can manage with pasive-pasive, pasive-active or active-active ventilation. On the tree options consider this order: intake-outake. Its important to make way for the heat to leave the grow space; that route has to make physical sense, and then you can use fans to make it more efficient. A fan inside the tent to blow air at the plants will be useful, making the plants stems sturdier and more able to carry big bud without bending or tiping over. once the air has been extracted from the tent you feed it to the carbon filter to eliminate the odor and then you liberate thru the roof, or chimney or whatever you have. Thats how a friend of mine has his rig and it rocks. Humidity and CO2 also to consider controlling to fully take advantage of your grow tent.
You don't need an intake fan, just a hole. The exhaust fan does the work of pulling the air. Is this a pre-fab tent or homemade? What are the dimensions and how many watts will you be running? The general rule is that your intake should be twice as big (in area) as the exhaust. This is not a hard and fast rule, though. It depends on the restrictions to airflow within the tent. When you set everything up, listen to the sound of the fan when you close the tent. If it sounds like it's straining, make the intake vent bigger or open another one. The more ventilation the better. More holes do make it harder to control light leakage, so that will be one of the challenges ahead. Looking forward to seeing your set-up. Good luck and have fun!
Ahhh i didnt even think about that. Thats a great point about the carbon filter inside pulling air .....Its a secret jardin 2 150w. 5x5x8.
2 x 150W lights, or 1 x 150W? You're going to want more than 150W or even 300W. I grow one plant in a 1.5 sq ft cab and I use 150W. I think the optimum area for 150W is about 2 x 2 for cannabis. I don't know the optimum wattage for your tent but I'm sure more experienced growers will have suggestions. You've got a rockin' tent and a good fan -- don't skimp on the lights! If you don't need odor control take off the carbon filter. You'll get more ventilation without it. (The carbon filter restricts air flow.) Seal the filter up in a plastic bag in case you want to use it in the future.
Yeah thats confusing. The model number of the jardin is like 150w II or something. IM using 1000 Watt MH for veg, 1000 watt hps for flower. Two 90w UFO lights on side for supplemental lighting through out the whole grow cycle.
Oh, that's funny. Well, 1000W is 100W/sq. ft. -- that's very good. So, you have an air-cooled hood and you're going to have the intake end of the hood open (or connected to the filter) inside the tent? If you have the intake ports near the floor, on the opposite side of the tent from the hood intake, that may be enough fresh air through your plants. You want as much fresh air travelling across the plants as possible. A lot of people ventilate the light separately from the plants, but I'm way out of my league on your size grow. I semi-separate the ventilation in my small cab. I have an exhaust fan on the hood that flows to another exhaust fan at the top of the cab, and two 4" intakes. Plus I have another fan blowing on the light (and the top of the plant). This little fan helps a lot. The only way to find out what you need to do is to set it up and try it out.