I've been planning an indoor tent setup. My plan is to grow 6-12 medium sized plants. I've come up with two possibilities as for a tent setup.. advice would be awesome Plan 1: This 51.5 x 22.5 x 48.5 tent: http://www.htgsupply.com/Product-Grow-Tent---Mother-Keeper-51.5-x-22.5-x-48.5---Silver-Lined.asp I would use a 4x4 t5 array up top and supplement with two 2ft sticks vertically attached to the frame. For this one I would be able to go with a 4" vent inline fan at around 130 cfm http://www.amazon.com/Soler-Palau-TD-100X-In-line-Exhaust/dp/B0027E3Q62 with a homemade carbon filter because the flourescents dont emit as much heat. Plan 2: This 47 x 47 x 79: http://www.htgsupply.com/Product-Grow-Tent---Medium-(47x47x79)-Silver-Lined.asp This would give me room to use a 400w HID kit but would probably require more around 230 cfm http://www.amazon.com/Soler-Palau-TD-150S-In-line-Exhaust/dp/B007MRSL7I/ref=sr_1_1?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1370989643&sr=1-1&keywords=td-150s to keep things from catching fire inside. I read the Soler and Palau inlines are rather silent and that's a pretty big priority for me. What do you guys think? Plan 2 probably will give me higher yields but it's around $300 more expensive.
if you want a more silent tent and can do a bit of diy use 5 sheets of 2.4m x 1.2m kingspan (50m) and some timber one sheet for each side/back and door (hole sheet) and one cut in half for the top and floor make a frame out of some timber to screw the kingspant too and a frame round one sheet for the door foil tape should seal any gaps and give some support if you need it to look like a cabnet buy some hardboard cut to size and put on all the sides and door scewed and glued and paint the hardboard so it looks like a cabnet use a 6" fan and a 600w hps and you can pull a good yeild should pull over 4oz's and after a few crops should get to 8/9 oz's per 600w hps light
whats the temperature control gonna be like with a 600W HID. Will the 239CFM inline low speed be enough to keep things cool when hooked to a carbon filter, or should I get a duct fan to directly cool the HID through the hood to prevent too much heat transfer to my plants? I'm thinking the answer is no, but do the HID's need direct air cooling themselves to keep from burning out? Bill is looking closer and closer to $1100, that's commitment right there to doing it right the first time I'm probably going for the 4'x4'x6.5' 600w HPS setup, I just don't want to burn my plants in there. My ambient temps right now are around 72-73F controlled by a window AC and winter time will hover at around 64F(hope to be able to operate year round)
That's a good plan but I'd at least double your cfm's. Air-cooled hood or cooltube is something I wouldn't go without. If you run separate fans, one for your hood and one for your filter you'll be as close to ambient as possible (without active cooling) and that will allow you to run your fans on low settings when ambient temps drop. A single 400 cfm at the least, IMO. If you don't run an a/c hood with a 600w then I'd expect your temps to be more than 10f above ambient. That's a nice budget, $1100 will get you top-quality equipment... hortilux bulb, lumatek ballast, can/phresh filter, vortex fans, gorilla tent. I don't mind the cheap hoods, just use my fan to push through them instead of pulling, in case they're not air-tight. On that note, I don't mind cheap tents either since I grow in a pitch-black basement. My 4x8 tent is a $200 earth works, think my entire setup was less than $1200 but I can't be sure as a lot of it was acquired through trading with other growers. One thing I'll never do again is buy a cheap ballast, had 3 failures and that's a serious problem when you're halfway through a grow. One of them melted completely, lol PIC Lumatek ballasts comes with a 5 year warranty and haven't failed me yet.
Yeah I was thinking to just have one duct system though so my hookup would look something like this: Filter -> 6" booster -> Hood Intake -> Ducting -> Mixed flow inline -> exhaust I cannot handle the noise that the ultra-high cfm centrifugal blowers put out so I have to settle with this mixed flow(hell, it costs as much as two of those 480cfm inlines). 240cfm would be actual cfm on the low speed(330 on high), and even if I got a 400cfm centrifugal I'd have to bring it down to just about the same level to have the noise level that I'm looking for. No 747 in takeoff over in this personal grow op!
Yep, that's why I run 800 cfms turned way down with fan controllers, instead of a single fan running at full speed. Have you considered duct silencers? Anyway, best of luck to you!!
The silencer is already on the shopping list I'm really looking for a whisper-quiet setup here. It should at the VERY LEAST be more silent than my window AC. I'll have a sanity issue if it isn't(not to mention people would ask what the humming sound was XD)