Reflective material a must?

rimelame

rimelame

Active Member
Hello all!

I am going to ditch my 4*4 tent and instead build a larger area for growing. I now have a license to legally grow 25 plants, so I'd like to utilize more space.

Do I really need to wrap my walls and ceiling with a reflective material? If so, could I get away with using the foil bubble wrap material that's used for insulating hot water tanks? I've looking online for a thicker reflective material, similar to the material used to make the grow tents, but can't find it. All I can find is thin Mylar, which I don't want.

Thoughts?

If it matters, I am growing with Timber COB led lights.

Thanks for your opinions.
 
rimelame

rimelame

Active Member
Interesting. Wouldn't high Gloss be more reflective?

My walls are spray foamed though, so although paint is a good idea I'd rather just staple/glue a material onto the walls... If it is even needed.

I'm really not certain that the reflected light is really even adding much energy that the plants can use. Perhaps the light coming straight from the COBs is enough without even needing any reflected light at all.


Herb & Suds said:
I painted my rooms with flat white latex
Best reflective quality without additional heat
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Herb & Suds

Herb & Suds

Well-Known Member
rimelame said:
Interesting. Wouldn't high Gloss be more reflective?

My walls are spray foamed though, so although paint is a good idea I'd rather just staple/glue a material onto the walls... If it is even needed.

I'm really not certain that the reflected light is really even adding much energy that the plants can use. Perhaps the light coming straight from the COBs is enough without even needing any reflected light at all.
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Not from what i have read , I thought that too
I agree I probably didn't need to paint but then i have 4- 600 watt in there
 
R

RStone77

Active Member
rimelame said:
Hello all!

I am going to ditch my 4*4 tent and instead build a larger area for growing. I now have a license to legally grow 25 plants, so I'd like to utilize more space.

Do I really need to wrap my walls and ceiling with a reflective material? If so, could I get away with using the foil bubble wrap material that's used for insulating hot water tanks? I've looking online for a thicker reflective material, similar to the material used to make the grow tents, but can't find it. All I can find is thin Mylar, which I don't want.

Thoughts?

If it matters, I am growing with Timber COB led lights.

Thanks for your opinions.
Click to expand...
Not a requirement. Does it help a little? Depends on your setup really. Helps more for people who don't LST. But the amount of help isn't really that big of a deal IMO.
 
itsjasonovak

itsjasonovak

Active Member
TBH I wouldn't grow without reflective material anymore...when I switched out of my grow tent into an open room (no reflection at all) my plants did not fill out nearly as well, especially on the sides.

Brought plants back in the grow tent, and voila - more nodes popped up where light wasn't reaching before. I paid a lot for my lights, and pay a decent chunk to run them, I wanna get the most out of them!
 
rimelame

rimelame

Active Member
Even on a surface that isn't flat? I could paint my spray foam, but it's not a flat wall. Do you think flat white paint over spray foam is better than using the reflective material that I linked to?

Renfro said:
Flat white paint. Thats the best way to go.
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TacoMac

TacoMac

Well-Known Member
rimelame said:
Do I really need to wrap my walls and ceiling with a reflective material?
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No, but every little bit helps.

rimelame said:
Wouldn't high Gloss be more reflective?
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No.

Gloss paint isn't pure white. A good bit of it is clear urethane. What happens is the urethane actually disperses a great deal of the light before it's reflected by the white pigment within it. Flat paint has no clear urethane in it. It's literally pure white, so it reflects more.

The best thing on earth though is space blankets. You can get a 10 pack of them for 10 bucks on Amazon and wallpaper the area with it. It reflects 99% of all light. You'll need glasses to walk into the room, I shit you not.

And it's actually cheaper than the paint which will run you 30 to 35 dollars per gallon for good stuff with high pigmentation.
 
hillbill

hillbill

Well-Known Member
Absolutely makes a difference to have highly reflective walls and has been demonstrated more than once on RIU. Choice of materials is much less important than the decision to actually have reflective walls as most popular reflective surfaces are within a few percentage points in measured reflectivity.
 
rimelame

rimelame

Active Member
Thanks everyone for your help!

I ended up buying the reflective material for my walls, and I'm going to use plywood for the ceiling that's painted matte white.

I can't wait to increase from 6 plants to 15!!
 
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TintEastwood

TintEastwood

Well-Known Member
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hillbill

hillbill

Well-Known Member
Gorilla Tape is also light proof and as my tents are getting toward 7 years, that’s a big plus.
 
rimelame

rimelame

Active Member
It's taken about 12 hours so far to remove my old tent and put Up these walls. Lol! Probably could have finished it ages ago but I too have issues. If it had a wave or something I know it would drive me crazy!! So far I'm happy. Still gotta finish the ceiling and will probably just paint the floor white...unsure though. Got a better idea for flooring? Once the plants are flowering there won't be much light reaching the floor anyways so I'm not overly concerned.

TintEastwood said:
Looking great. No easy task getting it installed.

I did my best on mine and still ended up with some wonky waves here and there. My OCD no like. Lol
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