Ok so I’ve usually grow in my guest bedroom so temps have never been a real concern but I recently set up shop in my garage for convenience and less traffics with the holidays. That being said I’m in southern Cali and the temps are starting to drop. The room hasn’t dropped below 68f due to furnace being located in the garage. I know there are many different choices for heating and I don’t know from experience which would be my best choice. It’s a two car garage I have about half of it sectioned off for my babies.. any suggestions? Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Let me add its LED set up so I don’t produce a lot of heat from light and I run fans the same as lights as far as 6 off the rest on. My schedule is worked so the 6 hrs of dark at 12-6am so they get absolute darkness without worry of someone being nosy aka my nugget. Haha I have the fans off during dark to try to preserve any heat that is in the room so I don’t have any issue with them getting to cold and locking out. Humidity in the room is a good averaging mid to high 42-50% depending and I can adjust with humidifier to some extent. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
If you'e in veg and worried about heat keep the light on 24/0 and dial your exhaust down. Leds do put off heat, let it build up some . Give you time to figure it out before flower Where I live drops well below freezing and humidity less then 10%. Infrared heaters are very drying. I like the heaters that circulate oil. Your humidity is decent but go adding most infrared portable heaters and the humidity will drop
Thanks that’s what my thoughts were exactly, except the lights on 24hrs?? I’ve always had the best results when vegging giving them that 6 hr rest. So it’s kinda been one of the things I’ve always practiced. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
there is a whole thread on whether cannabis needs dark to grow well. You be the judge BUT with winter coming, you will have to figure out how to heat that garage with 12 hours of lights off. If the garage isn't insulated its gonna be very hard. I think a tent would do you well to help keep the heat in the area
All lights produce heat no matter if they are MH, HID or LED. The heat produced is equal to the wattage consumed by the lights. The misconception that LED's don't produce heat is misleading. LED's actually produce more photons per watt than MH or HID per watt, so you can bet more production for less wattage used and that is how LED's produce less heat. The heat produced by electricity is 3.413 BTUH's per hour, so a 100 watt light will produce 3,413 BTU's of heat per hour. However, this formula changes with LED's, MH and HID's [fluorescent lights too] because the drivers or ballasts generate heat on top of what the bulb produces. Therefore, the BTU value changes to 3.8 to 4.1 depending on the efficiency of the drivers. For simplicity, you can use 4.0 BTU's per watt versus the 3.413 value. These figures are used to determine the lighting heating and cooling loads of all structures and the data used by ASHRAE [American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers] , which is accepted as the standard pretty much world wide. With that being said...what is your heat source...gas, electric, oil, etc? Is it forced air or hydronic [hot water or steam]? Since the majority of HVAC systems are grossly oversized, you probably have enough capacity to make your garage into the Bahama's! It could be as easy as adding a thermostat and slave damper with little duct modification which could be done fairly cheap. Or you could add more grow lights and plants to increase your heating capacity! The damper option would be cheaper though...what size is the area used for your plants [L X W X H] Insulated? Are any walls attached to a conditioned space? So many questions to give an accurate answer...
The grow is in half finished garage ie: insulated sides but the top was never finished. Ruffly 6’x2.5 are no top. House ruffly 1400sqft with a 4K central heating and air with Gas furnace. Which I found a big advantage at night to add a little heat is run a load of laundry in the dryer which is also in garage. It brings up the heat a little and adds some moisture to the air. I did step up to a 400w HPS system for two of my bigger plants and left other two under 600w led (my own comparison) for the time being. Obviously I have some light run off on the 4 so not mad at it. That dramatically helped with heat issues. As far as winter. I’m in Southern California so it doesn’t get to bad and what I’ve been doing so far is running lights during night hrs and give them total darkness during top of the day when the temps are in the 70s outside. So far so good I did reverse fans so instead of flowing threw it’s more exhausting out. Keeping my fingers crossed for the time being and will add progress pics and updates later. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
And no vents near the wall however I did remove the service cover from PVC so it does have a little heat supplied from that as well Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
As a c3 plant, cannabis has no need for a dark cycle in veg. My scrog nets make for an easy comparison, they fill faster on 24/0 then any other light cycle