150cfm would cut it then? I'm honestly not really sure what you mean by static pressure but I think I get it. Fan is definitely my priority now, I always underestimate things before I have them in my hand hah. Yeah I was planning on blowing air across the bulbs and directing it out. I actually have a tumble dryer 4in venting kit so a filter and fan is probably all I need right. Really appreciate your consistent input by the way, considering I've been a little lazy and rushing I wasn't sure about signing up here but I reckon it was probably the best bet, I'd end up with nothing at the end of my grow otherwise, at best. At worst probably burn my house down lool. Edit: Friend of mine suggested this: SilverStone Technology Co., Ltd.- AP181 would that cut it? He seems to understand the 2 diff types of fans (he just explained it to me), but everyone in the growing community so far has suggested a 4" inline fan. Friend just thinks an inline would be more reliable in the long term. Is this likely to cut it and if not why not? I see the effective airflow range is 3 meters, is that the main difference? My grow room is not 3 meters long or wide. Thanks! Another edit: Luckily... my pal is willing to lend me the money for an "affordable" fan if we can find an appropriate one. So if you know what sort of thing I should be looking for exactly that'd be great. I'm gonna assume that pc fan won't cut it for my entire room and also doesn't look easy to duct.
hmm I'm kinda high but I'll try to explain static pressure just means the fan has more power, and won't get bogged down when resistance is applied. A desk fan that's rated at 150 cfm is not equal to a 4" inline that's 150cfm. The desk fan you could probably safely stop with your finger...but an inline might take your finger off lol. When pushing through some ducting or a filter the fan needs to be strong enough to keep up the pressure and stay at that rated 150 cfm. A weaker fan will lose a ton of cfm when some ducting or a filter is added. hope that made sense I'm not sure about that fan you linked ..looks like a server fan I guess. I think an inline fan is the way to go, you should be able to find a deal on a fan/filter combo too, since you'll need a filter anyways. there's a lot of brands out there...maybe search amazon or w/e for 4" fan and carbon filter combo ..and check some reviews about noise and stuff. I don't know what your budget can fit, but if noise is a huge issue, panasonic whisper fans are dead silent..I've used a few and I prefer them for a grow your size. I do alot of diy stuff though...I usually put in the extra work and $ for higher quality equipment.
Noise isn't a HUGE issue, just the closet is near mine and my families bedrooms so I'm just thinking about sleepytimes. Also your explanation makes perfect sense. I'll take a look at those fans then. I was gonna diy my carbon filter though, not sure if the price is really worth DIYing or not because I haven't even looked at them, diying it seems like a pretty easy job. Staying out tonight, honestly this'll be the first time leaving my plant this amount of time so I'm looking forward to getting back and seeing how it does Just added one of these LEDs above my CFLs for now until I receive my bases. I'm pretty happy with the light from one bulb tho considering I was running off less than 50w cfls at nighttime before now.
Centrifugal is the most efficient type of fan as far as how many amps and noise it takes to move a given quantity of air. They also have the advantage over a standard bladed fan of decreasing amp draw under restriction. If you accidentally block the output of a standard fan it increases the amp draw and burns up the motor. If you block or restrict the airflow of a centrifugal it spins more freely. Centrifugal is a better design for ducted ventilation.
My DIY light is made from a few planks of wood with spaces between as its going as a kind of shelf halfway up the closet. So I've ordered some Airflow AVENTA 100mm inline fan, 2 speed. I'll probably run it on max because of the way I'm thinking of setting it up; put it on top of my shelf/light thing, make a sort of device to also go on top of the light that I can attach a duct pipe to, through the fan and a filter and out of a slightly smaller vent hole on the top of the door. Pics soonish, bulb bases arrive tomorrow and fan on tuesday. Just hoping it'll do enough to cool all of these bulbs placed so close together. Luckily I'll be removing air from directly where the bulbs are hottest (their backsides).
My only current plant itelf is looking pretty healthy right now, except a light ball hit it the other day... split the two highest stems right down the middle, I've tied them back up and the tops are still growing perfectly a few days later so I'm not too worried.
I was watching some seemingly knowledgable grower on youtube yesterday, says he uses nothing but floranova bloom and calmag+. Does this sound desirable? I was originally going to go for the GO box, fairly expensive compared to just floranova and calmag+ and if there's no point then I'd rather just buy the two. I'm growing in soil if that makes a huge difference. Input on if this would be acceptable or what you'd otherwise suggest if you have experience with this would be great, think nutes is what I'll be looking at next. (Also I might as well DIY my carbon filter now anyways since I accidentally ordered my fan without thinking bout a filter since I was a lil high, I'll be botching my venting almost 100% too since I only have a small piece of dryer venting and need to make a reducer and filter lol, should be fun. Even if it's ugly tho it just has to do the job
The key to growing anything worth putting your time and energy into is the lighting that it grows under. If you'll think about it, when growing outside, the sun is your light source. Man has created nothing that will even remotely come close to what the sun can do for your plants, so your lighting is pretty darn important and if you want to grow buds that are worth your time, effort and money you have already spent, get yourself a real light for flowering. You can veg with CFLs which are cheap, but if you don't have strong enough light for flower and good enough quality, you're just wasting your time and will harvest grams from a plant you should have harvested ounces from. Any time you grow in a small space, the light is going to create heat issues....LED or not. ALL lights make heat and the more you confine that heat, the more you'll see it affect the situation. If I were you, I would make sure I did plenty of reading up on the lighting portion of things...as well as how to tend your plant. Toss the autos. They're not worth your time. No genetically controlled plant can produce anything near what a normal strain seed will produce. Why grow grams when you can grow ounces? The autos are very stress reactive as well and tend to do weird things...like go into flower at 2 weeks, if the conditions of an indoor grow aren't perfect for them. So don't be surprised if you're not happy with the auto strains of seeds. You need to do a straight soil grow of normal strain genetics to get an education about the plant. Once you learn the plant, you can start to experiment with different ways of growing it. But if you can't keep the plant happy and alive and understand what's going on with it, you'll likely have issues with autos. Best of luck to you! TWW
damn TWW, so much auto and micro grow hate from someone that's never done either. kushe, I'm a big fan of just using micro, bloom and calmag. It's got everything plants need.
Okay so bases arrived today, time to assemble everything. Prepare for pics of the worst botch job you've ever seen in a few hours I'm drilling lots of holes in the light I've made to allow better airflow and making a temporary ventilation hood that will sit on top of the light and effectively seal that bottom half of the closet if done right.... out of cardboard and duct tape. My carbon filter will be made from a plantpot or 2 and the duct will also be attached to the vent in my door with a plantpot. A+++ engineering right here. fun!
Oh dear lord, I think my fan might not be powerful enough, I must've been high when I ordered it thinking m3/hr meant cfm lmfao. https://www.airflow.com/AIR1/AIR1-SHOP2/pdf/Aventa/9041086_Aventa_100T.pdf is this going to be sufficient for my cooling do you guys think? Only thing I've got going for me is the tiny size of my grow space!
I think it might be ok...it's a mixed flow inline fan. I've seen alot of people use S&P brand mixed flow fans with great results. The design looks the same as an S&P. I'm not familiar with that m3/H rating (cubic meters per hour) ...cfm seems to be the standard rating with all the fans I've worked with. relax and smoke this bowl.. *hands you pipe* here's a link to a random site with one of those S&P fans I was talking about if you wanna compare specs.
Hahaha cheers man, it's all good. Yeah design looks pretty identical to me. I believe the cfm is pretty much 110 so I'm not too worried, see how it goes. Gonna finish assembling my light tomorrow too since it's taking me a little while. I want to drill lots of holes through it around the bases of the LED bulbs to encourage the airflow over them.
Some advice with wiring my fan up please. The instructions are bit shitty, I have a 4 way terminal block and they're labeled N L Lt and L1. How do I then wire it up to run at max speed with no timer? There's a key for pretty much every type of terminal block/fan they have except this one lmao https://www.airflow.com/AIR1/AIR1-SHOP2/pdf/Aventa/Aventa In-Line Mixed Flow OP.pdf and https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Technical/DataSheets/Aidelle/Aventa_Wiring.pdf Edit: Nevermind I got it, forgot to put a fuse in the plug ;o It's all a learning process lmfao
Okay so any suggestions for stopping light leaking from the closet? Just gonna find something to line the edge of the inside of the door, probably weed control fabric because I have some handy. But the vents.. top vent should be fine because I have the fan connected up to it but the bottom vent is going to have nothing covering it, though I need airflow through it. I was considering putting some weed fabric over that too but it seems to restrict airflow a fair bit so I was thinking just an angled pvc pipe to stop the light getting out, this shouldn't affect the negative pressure/airflow too much right? Also, providing my fan/filter combo works, how much will the smell drift once I'm say... mid flowering and I open the door and let the air flow out while I check/water the plants? Honestly I'm not too worried about a little whiff getting out the house but anything that's obviously overpowering wouldn't be too great. What if I were to just spray some air freshener outside the closet and get my watering done extra quickly. I will keep the fan on when I open the cupboard too but the way it's set up most of the air will just fly out when I open the door.
for the light leaks... an angle of pvc should do the trick, or a metal ducting angle piece. Painting black inside the angle helps alot. when I water I get a light smell in the room...the more I mess with them the more it smells. Trimming can stink up the place though lol , I usually do it late night burn an incense.
Great thinking with the nighttime incense thing I reckon I'll do the same. Whew, setting up took more effort than I expected, hopefully it'll be worth it. Oh also the bulbs I'm using... they do have a sort of cloudy plastic cover on which I'm assuming might block a fair bit of the light and maybe certain wavelengths. Unfortunately, even though the clips on the inside or marked with arrows on the outside.. it doesn't seem possible to remove those covers with damaging the casing of the bulbs immensely.
with the led bulbs I used I have to pry real hard to get em off...sometimes I even slam them on the side of my desk to get them off. (I don't recommend that! ) Some covers are glued to the bulbs...if you can't pry it off, try letting it run for a few hours and see if the glue loosens up from the heat. pic of the bulb? or a link?
http://www.ledlitesolutions.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/par38-side.jpg Here it is, I'll try running for a few hours then try again!
Okay I got the cover off one of them. Scary seeing it all exposed lmao. It has 16 LEDs that look like tiny COBs to me, making me wonder how it could be a 20 watt bulb... Shame I don't have any way to test it. Can get another pic in a mo when my phone is charged a little. The plastic cover thing has 16 little plastic optics built into it I guess as you can see in the pic I already linked- would it definitely still be optimal to run this without the covers even tho I sort of accounted for the beam angle when I first made it. ofc I won't be able to return them or resell them at all if I'm popping all the covers off with brute force. also looks like you're supposed to be able to twist the white plastic around the edge to get it to pop off then unscrew the clear plastic bit, in practice that's not so easy, it's like it's clicked in place and idunno how to really do it without damage