I am growing in two separate rooms. One is a shed that is approximately 17x17 and one is a room in a mobile home that is approximately 8x8. I would appreciate a list of what others are using to control the climate in their grow rooms. I am looking for an all in one unit that I can just program with the perfect temp, humidity, fresh air, so on and so forth. Links to online suppliers would be nice. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
Well that all depends on how much you are willing to spend... but sounds like you are interested In an outside air handler with an economizer that you can adjust to pull in a certain percentage of fresh air per air movement
Thanks for the feed back. I just looked at the air handlers and they are a bit outside my range at the moment. I may be able to get this set up next year or so. However, I just found this control unit that you can plug your current appliances into and it apparently controls them for you. Have you (or anyone who reads this thread is welcome to reply to this question too) used or heard anything about these units?? > http://www.planetnatural.com/product-category/growing-indoors/grow-rooms/climate-control/ Could this get me by until I can upgrade?
There are several different systems available to plug in your existing gear. I've used Sentinel CHHC-4 and it works very well. http://www.amazon.com/Sentinel-CHHC-4-Total-Enviromental-Controller/dp/B00598BDW2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1414199819&sr=8-3&keywords=grow+environment+controller Autopilot, which I believe was recently bought by hydrofarm, makes the Greenhouse Master controller. http://www.amazon.com/AutoPilot-APCECOTH-Autopilot-Greenhouse-Controller/dp/B008NNOGXS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414200031&sr=8-1&keywords=autopilot+greenhouse+controller Titan also makes an environment controller. A couple problems with these controllers: 1. You can only take readings and control one room with each controller. 2. They can only handle 15 amps which isn't enough to handle an A/C plus everything else. ( I had a window unit A/C which had a thermostat on it, so I didn't have to plug it into the Sentinel). The good thing about these controllers: 1. Obviously it automatically controls your grow room. 2. You can get data from these units, high/low temp each day, high/low CO2 each day, high/low humidity each day. 3. They have fuzzy logic CO2 settings, which saves you money on CO2 throughout each cycle. igrow 800 is another controller. I don't know much about it, but it may be worth looking at. I think it can control 2 rooms, but don't quote me on that.
Igrow 800 sucks. Its glitchy. Has limited parameterization and reboots everytime you try to read the charts. You'd be better off with a PLC. Also the advice they give in tech support will likely cause you to burn up exhaust fans.
What you need as far as support equipment is going to depend on what type lighting you use. The less heat the lighting puts out, the less problems you'll have with a room that size...in both cases. We run 4, 1000 watt hps fixtures per flower room...approx. 8 x 12, 2 435 cfm can fans, ducting, ballasts, and had to install an air conditioner. The humidity gets funky sometimes in the winter months, but we figured out how to take care of that too. But don't go blowing a bunch of money on something you don't even know you need. Before I put a penny into a piece of equipment, I would get a SOLID plan together of what my setup was going to look like. And if you have no grow experience or any experience with a setup, etc., you desperately need somebody who has done this before to help you put together something that will work correctly and not spend your money on a bunch of stuff you don't need. I don't know how much shopping you've done, but there isn't much involved with this hobby that is cheap. Your lighting is THE most important equipment that you will invest in and it's going to take some serious money to light up both spaces if you plan to use both to flower plants. In order to get the most out of each plant you grow, you have to have enough wattage in lighting to force the plants to grow their best. If you don't have adequate lighting and space for each plant, you don't get all what the plant can give. Crowding a bunch in under a single light just shades out your growth below the canopy and leaves you with a bunch of underdeveloped buds. So...I would see how many good lights I could afford to start out with. If you're going to grow a plant, you're better of to grow the largest and finest plant you can and then flower that plant with the absolute best light you can....because that's how you get the type harvest that I think you have in mind here. The first thing you need to do is put a setup together and learn how to grow these suckers. That's an education in itself and if you go out and spend 15K on equipment but can't keep a plant alive, you're not going to make your money back too fast. But before you spend any money on anything, you seriously need to get your ducks in a row because with spaces that large, it's going to be a serious investment to set up and get going and make it good enough that you get what you're after. In our rooms, right now we're averaging about 8 plants flowering at once. But from those 8 plants, I get a killer good yield because they are vegged to 3.5 to 4 ft. and topped several times during veg, so by the time they finish flowering, they're averaging 5.5 ft. tall and I have good buds from bottom to top. Granted, what comes off the very bottom of the plant isn't as large as what I harvest from the tops, but the buds are just as solid and as potent as the tops are and I'm averaging several oz. per plant after harvest and cure. But it took me several years to get good enough at it that I could produce plants like that...and we put our room together one piece at a time too because we didn't have thousands lying around. I will say that once I got up and running and got the process figured out, it didn't take me very long at all to make my investment back, but the last time I did a run through to get an idea of what we had spent on that room, the total was around 12K. I dropped 6K at one fell swoop back in the very beginning and we've added to that steadily since then. I've been wanting some LEDs too go in for the extra spectrum colors and I think we're just going to build our own.. I'm not paying the money that they're charging for the things right now. The prices are ridiculous. But I did a rough add up on what it would cost to buy the stuff to build 2 or 4 and I can have my husband or my son build me 2 for around $300 or 4 for around $600. Now that's a rough estimate and since we've not done it yet, I don't know for sure that those numbers will cover them completely, but we were just looking for a rough estimate. You'll find after you get going that a lot of this stuff is unnecessary and way overpriced and there are common sense ways to get around spending money many times, but you've got to have some basic understanding of what you're doing to be able to do that. I wasted a lot of money that if I could go back and re-do the whole thing, I could've saved because of what I've learned over the years. But hey, it is what it is. But good luck with yours. TWW
