Anyone with good / bad experiences in 8ftx8ft tents?

Title,

I'm considering investing in 1 or more roughly 8x8 grow tents, most of the current spaces I have are either 4x4 or 8x4 currently, so an 8x8 would allow most of my gear inside, plus allow me to sit work fully within the tents as opposed to "leaning in" on a 4x4. (I only plan on filling these tents around 75% full with vegetation.)

Anyone got an 8x8 grow tent that they liked and care to share?

Alternatively anyone get an 8x8 grow tent that was a total POS and maybe I should avoid that brand or model?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

 

Thats in progress atm, but based on my available time (I've got the $$$ and tools to do it) it could take the rest of this year before that space is built all the way out. (Plus the room is buried into a slope behind the house and outside the main foundation but only accessed through the basement of the home via a 10 foot bootlegging tunnel for lack of better description)

I was thinking in the short term, I've got the lights, I've got power to the room, and I've got a ghetto ass hvac system in there to keep the temps moderate (doesn't take a lot of heating and cooling being fully below grade)

My wild thought was, "Shit, for a couple hundred bucks I could throw a tent in there for this year, or just to have somewhere to put growing plants while my lazy ass builds out the rest of the permenant grow room.

I guess what I'm saying is I know its not the best option long term, but for seeds that need space to grow soon (which I'm rapidly running out of) it might be a good stopgap measure, so curious if anyone has tried one and what their experience is.

The building I'm doing this in is set up kind of like so (not the actual house)


Just imagine that room as being built into a upward slope of a hill, and fully encased in concreate (barring penetrations for venting, elec etc) Thats what I've got to work with roughly.

I'm not too concerned about that, I've worked in an constructed temporary poly "clean rooms" for many of the industrial hygiene projeccts I work on.

Depending on tent quality and how air tight it is, an 8x8x8 space is 512cuft. so as long as I can exhaust enough to keep the tent under neg pressure without sucking the mylar off the walls I don't think it will be an issue.

The 8x4s I have now (some of which are so old you can see light through the fabric in some spots not just at the zippers) have proven pretty resiliant to pressue, I've put them under Four (200cfm each) in line fans before and while it wouldn't be good for plants, the tent stayed up (pressure difference as measured by a manometer to be just below 1 inch of neg pressure on the water column.)

I guess I'm just thinking, I got veg plants that either need to be culled (hate to do that to an otherwise healthy plant), or find a new place to grow as I'm about out of space and its still too early in my zone for outdoor planting.

I'm too lazy to finish off the room in a timely enough manner before these plants need flowering space (and larger flowering lights). Perhaps a few hundred bucks on a tent down there for a few months is better than losing crops.

Also, every anchor point in that room for anything will have to be hammer drilled and secured straight to the slab walls, another reason why I'm procrastinating and just thinking "fuck it, throw a tent down there for the rest of this cycle (and maybe even the remainder of 2023) just to keep the good time rolling.

So anyway, just trying to see if anyone has had any luck with big ass tents like that (8x8 or larger)

Would be a shame if these girls and some of their sisters ended up homeless, out in the cold February snow. But as you can kinda see on the bottom, I still have more than a few in 1 liter pots that are going to be needing more space in the near future as they go to 5-7-10 gallon final homes.

 

Here is the issue with that mate. Its literally a blank 20x20x7.5 (roughly) space fully below grade, no windows. All walls, floors ceilings are solid slabs of concrete or in some cases supporting CMU units.

There is one 14x14 intake. There are inline fans ducted straight off the geothermal trunk line for the house (before it hits the house heat pump) so I have a basically infinite supply of 65-68F air I can put in there.

I've already installed 6 receptacle boxes in the room (metal conduit run down the slabs and bolted to it) 2 I've installed in the ceiling, and 1 one each wall, each receptacle contains 4 outlets for standard 120 volt. I've dedicated three 15-amp circuits (2 boxes per, I may add more later) to just the room.

So just to get lights down there, I'm gonna have to at a minimum, hammer drill out holes in the ceiling slab to put eye hooks to hang lights from. Quite a few eye hooks. I'd prefer to wait until I have the time to properly install track rails for the lights, which I won't have until possibly summer.

Same deal with the floor, I could throw the pots on the bare slab (or put em on a rack or milk crates), but (and this is just a compulsive quirk of mine) but its filthy as hell, if I'm gonna put plants in there I'd want to at least to a nice epoxy coating of the floor, which is a bit tricky and slow to do in a poorly ventilated area.

So I'm like shit, for a few hundred bucks a tent seems the easiest near term solution, in one day I can probably assemble it, hang the lights, plug in heaters and dehus and fill it with soon to be homeless plants.

Even if I only use it for one season, I'm down with spending a few hundred to keep growing while I take my time to properly finish the room to my exact specifications (been kind of a long term goal to do this space right....eventually)

Plus, and 8x8 in a 20x20 room leaves me time (when I have it) and the tent is not in use, to just throw a tarp over it, slide it to the side, and finish a wall, or a ceiling, or half the floor, etc. When the build out is done, I'll just disassemble the tent and repurpose the interior lights etc to the room itself.

So anyway, I decided to go ahead and buy and AC infinity cloudlab 899 tent (8x8)

As I have yet to hear from anyone who seems to have used one yet, maybe I'll post an unboxing pic and a setup pic or two one it arrives (should be friday)

Plus my wife's sister and her kids are coming for the weekend, give me an excuse to avoid all that noise while I set shit up.

So in summation, compulsive personal issues do not allow me to just throw plants in a (to me) unfinished space.

A tent would meet my minimum requirements for what I consider a place to grow plants

I've got a 20x20 space fully wired up otherwise just sitting around until I have time to "do it right"

So until I can get the area up my code I figured a few hundred was a fair price to make immediate use of the space (Theres at least 5 months till I'll have time to properly get back to renovating it, possibly finish the current cycle and maybe throw a batch of autos through there in that time)



Thanks all for the input so far (it is honestly appreciated since the room will be eventually converted fully, and I anticipate it to be a crown jewel of a 30+ year engineering career) Basically I refuse to use the "room" until I prove to myself I can get it exactly how I want, so that it might look something like this when I'm ready to use it in earnest.


I will probably make a post or two once the tent arrives this weekend and I hopefully get it assembled and running, just to let anyone else know who might be considering one what I liked and dislike about it.

 

Thats the problem with compulsions mate, they don't follow logic a lot of the time. I don't know how I reconcile extreme cleaning of an area just to put pots of dirt, bugs and micro-organisms inside it, but I do.

I guess when it comes to cannabis, everyone has "their way" even if it only involves tiny variations from the "established method"

I've always viewed my gardening spaces as "my world" and try to respect the spaces of others in kind, and to quote the late great Bob Ross


Will def post some pics of the tent when it arrives, just because there isn't crap for good interior and exterior shots on the 899 model even on the AC infinity website to accurately show vent and zipper layouts.

 

To be fair, thats one reason why I wanted to go bigger, I don't plan on filling the whole area with plants, and I've been stuffing the 8x4s to the point where there is almost no room for me with plants, heaters, dehu, etc.

I love going down the cellar (where my phone also conveniently gets no reception) and chilling in a nice warm, bright humid room in a cold ass winter is a real treat for me.

Not gonna lie, I'll probably only fill about half the space with plants, maybe another 25% with fans, dehu, etc. and I'm planning to leave a a big enough section where I can put in a zero gravity mesh recliner and just chill when my back is acting up and I need to literally take a load off my L4 and L5.


I also I got a little flex arm I can clamp to tent poles if I feel like watching TV on the phone in there (it can still pick up the WIFI down there).

Maybe its a bit fun, but in a world of instability, the control over conditions and plants within a grow space is a very peaceful place (for me) and I had some extra money, so why not make life a little better right?

 

Right on mate!, I have quite a bit of available space on the panel even with the recent runs to the room (All those new shiny orange romex wires exiting panel 2 on upper right). I have an 8-inch conduit through adjacent to the access thats a super easy fish to run more romex once I start placing fixtures, and looking at lights, and other equipment actual draw. (Got a spare 50-amp for a mini split in that area if I deem it necessary once I get real on the space.)

As you may have noticed from the romex color, I'm I'm running 10 gauge wire capable of handling 30 amps for 15 amp circuits, so whenever I calculate my final power needs, I can always upgrade those breakers, even if just to 20 amp on the panel and I've already got the combo 15-20amp receptacles capable of accepting both plugs that I can swap to on the boxes. (since I'll have to have the power company shut it off anyway at that point to install whatever additional circuits the room will need once I have properly estimated load)

Plus about 30-50% additional capacity beyond my expected (or calculated) load as you mentioned.

Getting high and posting about wiring, thats my bag baby! (but only for a little bit longer, wife is almost done putting the kids to sleep, then Valentines day matters will likely require my attention.