Second grow but first time real setup... Need all the help i can get

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chris25264

Member
Long time listener first time poster!

So I'm starting my first real indoors grow although I don't know how much of an inside grow it actually is because it's in my garage that is separate from my house and not temperature controlled. Anyways what I'm planning is a 4x5 with 6ft of height of space INSIDE my garage made out of PVC, wrapped the hell out of with seran wrap and then lining the inside with reflective insulation. The reason being for building a room inside another room is for the purpose of not letting any little critters into the grow room and to make the garage itself the grow room would be a headache for me at the moment. Anyways I have went ahead and purchased my light and ballast 400watt that i will be installing inside my room. Of course i would be needing ventilation and winter is sort of around the corner and im gonna need a few ideas for keeping the rooms temperature controlled. Btw I live in Texas so the weather is almost entirely unpredictable here so i might need heating and cooling installed somehow so my plants dont suffer with temperatures changing too much. any ideas on inexpensive ways to keep such a small room temperature controlled? and another question i wanted to throw in is would a window unit ac be strong enough to push air into the room then venting out the warm air out of a carbon filter? do carbon filters require alot of air strength (lol) to push through them to be able to filter properly? and if you want to go ahead and criticize my grow room that's okay as long as you have better more cost efficient ideas to contribute I'm all ears. I need as much help as i can get here so any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
 
bertaluchi

bertaluchi

Well-Known Member
I'm a big fan of tents for growing. I dont have any experience with home made but the ones at the hydro store kick ass. Also you need a good quality extraction fan to run a carbon filter. For a room your size I would not go any smaller than a 6inch. I dont know how your going to deal with the heat in the summer. With outside temps running in the high 90s to low 100s in texas that may give you some problems. I live in the deep south and I have to deal with it too but it is inside a home so we have central air. In a garage, your going to have to get a kick ass AC or grow only in he winter. Remember lights cause a lot of heat. Mixed with high temps outdoors, that can raise your grow room temp very high. Good luck dude
 
tekdc911

tekdc911

Well-Known Member
bertaluchi said:
I'm a big fan of tents for growing. I dont have any experience with home made but the ones at the hydro store kick ass. Also you need a good quality extraction fan to run a carbon filter. For a room your size I would not go any smaller than a 6inch. I dont know how your going to deal with the heat in the summer. With outside temps running in the high 90s to low 100s in texas that may give you some problems. I live in the deep south and I have to deal with it too but it is inside a home so we have central air. In a garage, your going to have to get a kick ass AC or grow only in he winter. Remember lights cause a lot of heat. Mixed with high temps outdoors, that can raise your grow room temp very high. Good luck dude
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couldnt he run CO2 to compensate for the higher temps ? i thought that it helped with heat tolerance
 
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chris25264

Member
Well like i said i do have an ac widow unit i could work into the room and then with the reflective insulation i suppose would kep the room temperature steady i could also always buy or get some insulation from work as i work roofing lol and insulation can be easy to come by. And i could use it up intil the colder months where i could use an electric heater if need be as you might already now we have short winters here. And id think itd be easier to heat up rather than cooling up a room. Bte im trying to start with ak47 strain which hopefully treats me nice :bigjoint:
 
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0james0

Active Member
If your room is more or less air tight (other than an air entry hole) then the negative air pressure from running your carbon filter will suck air into the box easy enough. The sheeting on the side of mine bows inwards when the filter is on. Make sure your frame is really sturdy, I know it sounds obvious, but mine collapsed once from the inwards suck and I thought that was tight.

Also, mine is made from a single sheet, no need for a room in a room, just make sure its sealed well, I've used glue and duck tape around any overlapped bits of sheet.
 
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chris25264

Member
tekdc911 said:
couldnt he run CO2 to compensate for the higher temps ? i thought that it helped with heat tolerance
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What do you mean when you say run CO2 to compensate for higher temps. Please excuse my newbie questions... i am a newbie and trying to make sure my second grow goes along better than before.
 
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chris25264

Member
Also this is my first real forum ive ever posted on... forums in general. and ive read enough forums for a small library! So even though im not new to the interenet by ANY means... i am new to forums... anyone wanna throw me a welcome to internet forums party?:hump:
 
tekdc911

tekdc911

Well-Known Member
you just pump CO2 into the grow room i think max temp is like 95 you can run i dunno its off the top of my head but i have one of those memories :D
might be worth checking into
 
tekdc911

tekdc911

Well-Known Member
and if you run your duct straight into the tent , fan/cooltube and out of the room then your light would cool better then it would with the filter piped in the same run , only down fall is you need 2 fans and extra duct but will help a bit with temps
if its too cold turn the fan on the tube down or off , too hot turn it up and it wouldnt effect your odor control while doing so
 
GrowinDad

GrowinDad

Well-Known Member
My tent is made out of reflectix and PVC. I don't know what you need the saran wrap for. I just used plastic ties to make my reflectix connections to the PVC.

Do not think that it will maintain a temperature because it won't. Yes, it is insulating, but you are going to need to control odor. So you will need a filter to exhaust and thus intake. Once that is the case, nothing will insulate as the exterior air is constantly going into the tent.

Mine is in my office. I run LED so not much heat. My tent stays about 2-3 degrees warmer than the outer room during lights on. When I ran CFLs with more heat I'd say that was more like 7-10 degrees depending on where the thermometer was located.

Sorry to be a downer but I think you need someplace where you can control the larger rooms temp.
 
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chris25264

Member
Well It will be constantly moving air into the room but when it does it'd be through an ac or through a heater, so the temperature would stay constant. of course the temperature is gonna change due to temperatures outside but that's what the ac unit is for and if i were to get a carbon filter with air intake then i'd just have to make sure that the same amount of air being exhausted is being replaced by the air the ac unit is pumping in, or just run them at the same time EVERYTIME. which would also eliminate the problem that 0James0 proposed of the room or sheeting bowing inwards because it wont be exhausting more air than is being pumped in at once. of course if the temperatures outside are fairly good 60ish the the ac unit won't need to run much and if i were to pump co2 into the room then the air staying stationary for too long wuldn't pose such a threat to my plants. although i could also not just do the Co2 pumping at all lol. but that was an idea that i just learned about as well too so... it's just theory as far as now. And i too will be using reflectix that i saw at home depot and the saran wrap that i'm using is just to make the room as air tight as possible and since i already have this big roll of it i thought to myself what the hell? why not use it? and don't worry your not being a downer just giving advice and i appreciate that. also i don't fully understand why i would be needing to add the co2 with higher temps to compensate. if Tekdc911 could elaborate on that id appreciate it.

also i was thinking of placing the ac unit on the bottom and exhaust on top next to the light since my light doesnt have the exhaust connector. with carbon filter and intake right out the vent on the garage.
 
tekdc911

tekdc911

Well-Known Member
chris25264 said:
Well It will be constantly moving air into the room but when it does it'd be through an ac or through a heater, so the temperature would stay constant. of course the temperature is gonna change due to temperatures outside but that's what the ac unit is for and if i were to get a carbon filter with air intake then i'd just have to make sure that the same amount of air being exhausted is being replaced by the air the ac unit is pumping in, or just run them at the same time EVERYTIME. which would also eliminate the problem that 0James0 proposed of the room or sheeting bowing inwards because it wont be exhausting more air than is being pumped in at once. of course if the temperatures outside are fairly good 60ish the the ac unit won't need to run much and if i were to pump co2 into the room then the air staying stationary for too long wuldn't pose such a threat to my plants. although i could also not just do the Co2 pumping at all lol. but that was an idea that i just learned about as well too so... it's just theory as far as now. And i too will be using reflectix that i saw at home depot and the saran wrap that i'm using is just to make the room as air tight as possible and since i already have this big roll of it i thought to myself what the hell? why not use it? and don't worry your not being a downer just giving advice and i appreciate that. also i don't fully understand why i would be needing to add the co2 with higher temps to compensate. if Tekdc911 could elaborate on that id appreciate it.

also i was thinking of placing the ac unit on the bottom and exhaust on top next to the light since my light doesnt have the exhaust connector. with carbon filter and intake right out the vent on the garage.
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i thought you had a air cooled hood
IF you had a aircooled you could duct it so it sucks air from outside the tent and not inside and then run it straight back out that way it was unrestricted and would be more efficient / run cooler and when its cold you could just turn the fan down or off and use the light as a heater in a way
 
Skyjunkie

Skyjunkie

Member
Are you growing hydro or soil/soil-less mix in pots? (Sorry if you mentioned that already, but I didnt see it) Temp is a much bigger concern with hydro, to a certain extent of course.
 
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chris25264

Member
I was actually planning on starting my grow in good ole dirt then snipping some clones and then growing them along side in hydroponics.... waiting till the clones mature and are a decent size then flowering them all at the same time along with the one growing in dirt. I still have like 10 more beans i wanna try anyways so i think this grow would be good for now. If it fails i wont fall too hard and just take it as a learning experience.
 
Skyjunkie

Skyjunkie

Member
When you say that are you talking about growing a feminized seed in soil and pulling clones off of it for hydro?
 
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chris25264

Member
And yeah i could use the light as a heater in the cooler months but here in texas who know when that will be. I will keep yall updated ill be going up to local hardware stores soon and maybe i could get the materials for cheaper than at home depot. So thats always a plus. Maybe heyll have some different reflective materials i could use... really excited about this grow though as its my second and i want to do it slightly bigger than before but ALOT better.... haha now that im better established than i was before. Ive got a good feeling about this one:blsmoke:
 
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