OK, so after countless hours of researching numerous threads, pictures, and tutorials, along with some friendly advice on the forums, I built myself a grow box. It's all CFL (for now) as I am dealing with the heat. I live in an area where there are no basements and therefore no place that stays cool year round. So for the mean time I'm going all CFL. The box features 3 chambers, one for veg, cloning, and flowering. I have learned that what was going to be the clone chamber (top right) is probably going to always be way too hot to be functional due to the lights for the veg chamber being directly below it. It'll probably just end up being storage space. It's hard to see in the pics, but at the top is a chamber which houses 2 carbon filters and a 6" duct fan exhausting out the side of the box. The ballast I made from PVC and lamp holders. I used a piece of 8" duct that I bowed out and zip tied to the ballast as a reflector hood. I drilled some holes in it and put a couple computer fans on top of it hoping it would suck the heat away from the bulbs a little. So far it's not enough. Temps top out at about 92F. Obviously this is too hot for flower (or so I have read) but I'm hoping that by the time my seedlings (which just hatched) are ready the ambient temps will have dropped enough to get temps to a reasonable level. The ambient temps now are no cooler than 80F. It gets REALLY hot and humid here. Things will get cooler in Oct, but not until then. I figure that 5 or 6 weeks of veg puts me into October, so I should be good. I may just clone first which will probably delay things another couple weeks, which can only help temp wise. Any advice on how to lower temps or improve the setup? I'd be open to any tips. Thanks!
Very nice. Maybe a layer of insulation in the floor of the clone section could help the temp? I see it has holes in the floor actually are they essential for ventilation?
Yes I sort of designed it to be in halves. Half (technically around 2/3) is flowering and the other veg/clone. I didn't want any light or air being able to pass through from one half to the other, so I decided to put intake holes in the floor and the exhaust fan at the top so that air will move from the ground up. Since I have the clone chamber above the veg, it was necessary to put holes in between for the sake of air movement.
Cool, looks pretty similar to what I'm planning except different boxes for each part. I was thinking of designing a modular grow system with mother/clone boxes and flower boxes, with holes in each one which you can just stick a duct in and run off one big fan and carbon filter. Then you just add whatever combination you need. They would all stack for space efficiency as well. I'm wondering if this would cause similar heat issues to what you're having.