? About FLIR

[dhhbomb]

yea no its in the back in a locked shed not difficult to get into but will be completely steath no light or smell leaks and only 1 neighbor that could see the shed let alone smell

 

[Picasso345]

Jonus & dvsdsm,

First of all it's nice having some logic on the whole imaging issue, so much nonsense out there...just like LEO wants I'm sure. Thanks for some science and rational thought.

If and when I go a little bigger, my thought was to build a little grow tent out of Panda film and 2"x2"s in a room and then vent that tent out into the rest of my house. A room within a room as it were. Maybe four 600Ws in there. One wall of that room does face the street, I'm in a northern climate, but no idea on my R values - the house is only 5 years old though. That room is about 12'x12' and my tent would be 8'x8' so plenty of space from the tent to the wall and the hot air would be vented back towards the center of the house to dissipate - no hot spots venting.

From what I'm reading, you guys are saying I shouldn't have any worries and no need to buy any anti-IR material?

Thanks again.

 

[Jonus]

Youre biggest prob would be trying to keep your room at 77 degree.
4 x 600w in cool tubes maybe, with an inline fan for two like this pic using 2 x 1000w and one fan.

Venting into your house is ok during winter, but in summer that air will heat your house up something bigtime (4 x 600w). Pushing the heat from the cooltubes under the floor would be the best, if there is a cavity under there. Or into the roof if you have to.

If you do vent into your house I would suggest you also have an extractor fan at the other end of your house pulling used air out. Doesnt have to be a big fan like what you would need in a grow room, youre not dealing with smell, just keeping that air in your house moving.

The air gap between your grow room and the walls will dissipate any potential hot spots on the outside walls if you are concerned about FLIR.

Just remember, FLIR sees the infrared heat signature of the outside wall of your house.

You could also put a temperature gauge in the room outside the panda box grow area too, and watch them, you would want to keep them down to a reason level, and you should be fine. Heat buildup outside your grow box will make it harder for you to keep temps in your grow room down during hot summer days.

Im sure you also know how to vent out, just thoughts running through my head about your plans.

Anyways good luck on your venture.

 

[Picasso345]

Youre biggest prob would be trying to keep your room at 77 degree.
4 x 600w in cool tubes maybe, with an inline fan for two like this pic using 2 x 1000w and one fan.


Venting into your house is ok during winter, but in summer that air will heat your house up something bigtime (4 x 600w). Pushing the heat from the cooltubes under the floor would be the best, if there is a cavity under there. Or into the roof if you have to.

If you do vent into your house I would suggest you also have an extractor fan at the other end of your house pulling used air out. Doesnt have to be a big fan like what you would need in a grow room, youre not dealing with smell, just keeping that air in your house moving.

The air gap between your grow room and the walls will dissipate any potential hot spots on the outside walls if you are concerned about FLIR.

Just remember, FLIR sees the infrared heat signature of the outside wall of your house.

You could also put a temperature gauge in the room outside the panda box grow area too, and watch them, you would want to keep them down to a reason level, and you should be fine. Heat buildup outside your grow box will make it harder for you to keep temps in your grow room down during hot summer days.

Im sure you also know how to vent out, just thoughts running through my head about your plans.

Anyways good luck on your venture.

Thanks Jonus, I do have a crawl space underneath that I've been eyeing that could be accessed easy enough. My worries were that a) bringing air in from there, even through a HEPA, while nice and cool might introduce cooties, and b) as an exit I loose control of that air and warm air could be all seeping out from under my house in a noticeable way and what if my carbon filter goes bad? Won't skunky air be being blown outside without my knowledge? Admittedly, the air should go down there and die, but I don't know what exit it might find.

I might be stuck in my thinking because I'm so use to having complete control with my wardrobe and maybe I need to expand my thinking a bit....

 

[Jonus]

Expelling under the house would be the best option assuming you have a carbon filter. Filtered air will be fine going under there and will quickly cool and not show on any FLIR if thats what ur worried about.

As for carbon filters doing bad. Pays to check them every now and then. They dont just go bad over night. You will start to smell more and more weed smell coming out of them. The standard filters will last a year at least in most conditions if not longer before being refilled. Mine has been going for 16 months and is still ticking along nicely.

 

[uptosumpn]

Ok, so I get it..Currently I'll be using a 600watter on interior wall of garage,(oppisite the garage door) with SP in-line fan, (293cfm) windtunnel 6 exhaust fan, (409cfm) with a can-66 filter for odor....but here's a senario..what if i use,(for a future grow set-up) 2 1000w on an interior wall,(using same fan as mentioned above for lights) venting into an attic above the garage, via a long duct run, (25-50') with a in-line booster fan, (265cfm) to cool off the air by the time it escapes in the attic. Will that help dissapate all that heat sig the FLIR's would be looking for while also using R-30? BTW what is R-30 and where can i get it? Thanks in advance....Oh, forgot to mention, will also be using a 7000btu portable A/C unit.....http://www.globalindustrial.com/gcs/prod/30128181/i/1/productInfo.web#navPanel

Definitive answer on Flir: Anything under 1000w not on an exterior wall or open window view, no worries. Anything near an exterior wall greater than 1000W with less than R-30 between, and not vented under the dwelling, or distributed evenly throughout the dwelling to achieve overall equal ambient temps, bad. I know what my place looks like on Flir, I know what iraqi's look like on Flir as well. you can see the heat sig on my Hvac, the corner of the house with my water heater,my cat in a random window, dryer exhaust vent and the exhaust vent and chimney on the roof. No grow room visable. Nothing done to "anti-Flir" it. Just constructed on interior wall away from exterior walls.

So me being in my 10' x 25' garage with a 5.8' x 5.8' x 6.7' grow cabinet will be fine?

The air gap between your grow room and the walls will dissipate any potential hot spots on the outside walls if you are concerned about FLIR.

Just remember, FLIR sees the infrared heat signature of the outside wall of your house.


what wattage light would you suggest to use out side to cover heat sig. if using a 600watter or 1000watter? thanks

....[/b]

Hence the little practical tip to vent out right under an outside light to cover the heat signature.

WELL WHAT ABOUT THIS ONE.....http://www.hydrowholesale.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=hydro&Category_Code=TS
Scroll down and see the tests...kindy what you said..so whatta ya think?

The Block-IR infrared Barrier is a bit of a play on words. The images there are what that open tent would look like under flir. Had the flaps been closed the signature would have looked like two blotches where the lights are in the cool tubes.

What the thermal imager would see would just the IR signature of a warm wall as the heat would have been difused by both the black liner and the air gap between the liner and the wall.

Which brings me to the most obvious misinformation. A picture paints a 1000 words. The images of the tent are cleverly portrayed in a way that without saying it isnt, it looks like the thermal imager is seeing through the tent flaps and giving the Predator/Blue Thunder/Navy Seals Hollywood portrayal of a thermal image seeing through walls.

This is false. The flaps on that tent are drawn. That is exactly what a thermal signature would look like of a flap drawn tent.

 

[HowardWCampbell]

Definitive answer on Flir: Anything under 1000w not on an exterior wall or open window view, no worries.

Just curious, but what do you base the 1000w number on? I've seen that number used a lot, I'm just curious where it came from. I have about 400w of mostly fluoro lighting, and my grow box in my uninsulated shed is about 20 degrees warmer than everything around it. Surely that would be noticeable with FLIR?

I live out in the country. Most busts around here are outdoor grows. AFAIK they aren't doing any flir searches around here.

Does anyone know of any case where a shed type grow was busted through the use of flir? It seems most busts I read about involved a police helicopter chasing a fleeing suspect. Since that scenario is extremely unlikely around here, should I be worried?

 

[dhhbomb]

some have happeened but usually the gov doesnt waste their time on anything under a 1000 watter if since its so small not worth the resourses and floresents arent as hot a a hps or metal halilgen

 

[HowardWCampbell]

Come to think of it, my local PD doesn't even have a helicopter. I live between 2 military bases, so army helicopters are not unusual. But they usually fly high, fast, and in groups.

I've seen one low flying plane, and one low flying helo in the few years I have lived here. Both were during the day, and concentrating out in the woods. Maybe that was the state police?

Anyone know if they use flir to bust meth labs? Around here they are much more common than indoor mj grows. Smell, sound, and light leaks are not an issue for me. Besides a thief stumbling upon my grow, the only other risk I see is a helicopter noticing that my shed is significantly warmer than the surrounding area.

Am I worrying about nothing?

 

[born2killspam]

Here's a thought, get a crappy old BBQ, and sit it on the porch by the exhaust.. From a glancing fly-by, it might look like you just finished cooking a few minutes ago..

Edit: But I do agree, 400W in a shed is not really a suspicious amount of heat.. (And for the record, 400W of fluoro will create more actual heat than 400W HID, it just won't be as spot localized inside the shed..)
SpecialKayme made some good legal points regarding curtilage and whatnot.. I'm from Canada, so I'm not too knowledgeable about US laws on this, but my understanding is that since its a matter of constitutional privacy they would be the same in all states.. On that matter, I think Jonas is wrong, although his technical points seem pretty accurate.. This was posted in a thread a couple pages back.. http://www.alea.org/public/airbeat/back_issues/may_jun_2008/Seven Years Since Kyllo.pdf It does seem that projection imaging techniques are considered intrusive..

 

[LittleBrother]

I am an outdoor grower, and I have been trying to keep my niblets from being detected from the air. I have heard from some folks that MJ, in an open outdoor area, gives off an infrared signature. I can't seem to find anything that tells me if this is correct or not. To the naked eye, my stash if very well concealed, but I need to be certain about the eye-in-the-sky.

Any "CONCRETE" info will be much appreciated.

 

[bryant228]

I am an outdoor grower, and I have been trying to keep my niblets from being detected from the air. I have heard from some folks that MJ, in an open outdoor area, gives off an infrared signature. I can't seem to find anything that tells me if this is correct or not. To the naked eye, my stash if very well concealed, but I need to be certain about the eye-in-the-sky.

Any "CONCRETE" info will be much appreciated.

LOL, there are numerous threads on this. And I can't belive some people still question it.

No. Marijuana does not give off a differnt heat signature. But it can be easy to see from the air because of it's green color. If a plant gets pretty big, towards the end of the harvest year while everything else around it is dying, yeah it would be pretty easy to pick out from the air.

 

[Skeksis]

All living thing including plants give off some sort of heat signature. This heat signature can be detected as a certain spectrum. It just so happens that marijuana outdoors gives off a very distinguishable spectrum, because it absorbs heat so well. In fact, insurgents in Afghanistan have hidden in marijuana fields because it absorbs so much heat that it insulates their body heat signature from the military FLIR cameras. It is more likely though that a narcotics officer will spot them during the day time from a helicopter, because they are trained very well to spot even a couple of plants growing.

To any naysayer I PROMISE you that different plants have different heat absorbing properties, and that certain plants DO give off distinguishable heat signatures and specific color spectrums. I have even read of programs being developed that will use satellites to scan for patches that display this specific spectrum and flag the location for further investigation. Which sounds more likely, that you know EVERYTHING about every bit of technology that law enforcement has to utilize in detecting marijuana, or that you just might be wrong? After all, scientists can tell the composition of a planet and it's atmosphere using color spectrum.

 

[born2killspam]

Resolution still wouldn't be good enough to distinguish any reasonably sized plot, but it might help them spot large crops from much further away than without it..
And one thing that contributes in a big way to that heat absorbancy is the density plots are typically planted.. Nature doesn't often pack foliage that thickly at ground level..

 

[bryant228]

All living thing including plants give off some sort of heat signature. This heat signature can be detected as a certain spectrum. It just so happens that marijuana outdoors gives off a very distinguishable spectrum, because it absorbs heat so well. In fact, insurgents in Afghanistan have hidden in marijuana fields because it absorbs so much heat that it insulates their body heat signature from the military FLIR cameras. It is more likely though that a narcotics officer will spot them during the day time from a helicopter, because they are trained very well to spot even a couple of plants growing.

To any naysayer I PROMISE you that different plants have different heat absorbing properties, and that certain plants DO give off distinguishable heat signatures and specific color spectrums. I have even read of programs being developed that will use satellites to scan for patches that display this specific spectrum and flag the location for further investigation. Which sounds more likely, that you know EVERYTHING about every bit of technology that law enforcement has to utilize in detecting marijuana, or that you just might be wrong? After all, scientists can tell the composition of a planet and it's atmosphere using color spectrum.

I would love for you to prove me wrong on this. I really would. This myth has been around for years. And who do you think started it? Who would want people to believe in it? law inforcement.

Your right, all living things give off a different heat signature. But I would think the technology would be to expensive for local law inforcement to obtain. Who is always behing local outdoor pot busts? 9 times out of time it's the local sherifs department because large out door grows are almost always in rural areas that don't have a city police department.

Tell you what, you seem to believe in this so much, why don't you back up with some proof. All your doing is keeping this myth alive. I've been hearing this ever since I was in high school. And when I say proof, I mean an acual outdoor pot bust that was done with infered technology. Good luck!

 

[Skeksis]

Tell you what, you seem to believe in this so much, why don't you back up with some proof. All your doing is keeping this myth alive. I've been hearing this ever since I was in high school. And when I say proof, I mean an acual outdoor pot bust that was done with infered technology. Good luck!

Hahah. You're almost as bad as Kent Hovind with his "$250,000 challenge to anyone who can prove evolution" offer. Because you know how little the chances are that I can come up with what you're asking for, especially since I don't have access to police records. And that is somewhat of a straw man argument.
Well, you're in luck. Here's what Google can do for you:

http://cannazine.co.uk/cannabis-news/canada/satellite-imagery-may-spot-pot.html

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/09/agroveillance-using.html

As far as FLIR being used to detect outdoor plants, it's not very likely. Maybe not even possible. It's mainly used to detect indoor grows. But if somone
is stupid enough not to cover their heat signature, well then...However, satellite imagery and other surveillance methods are very sensitive and it is VERY possible that it can be used along with color spectrum analysis to detect large grow fields, not smaller numbers of plants as born2killspam pointed out.

 

[Skeksis]

I would love for you to prove me wrong on this. I really would. This myth has been around for years. And who do you think started it? Who would want people to believe in it? law inforcement.

Really? I thought law enforcement was in the biz of busting people, not spreading myths to warn them to be more careful and avoid detection.

 

[born2killspam]

Honesty through paranoia dude.. The police are actually in the business of crime prevention..

 

[bryant228]

Hahah. You're almost as bad as Kent Hovind with his "$250,000 challenge to anyone who can prove evolution" offer. Because you know how little the chances are that I can come up with what you're asking for, especially since I don't have access to police records. And that is somewhat of a straw man argument.
Well, you're in luck. Here's what Google can do for you:

http://cannazine.co.uk/cannabis-news/canada/satellite-imagery-may-spot-pot.html

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/09/agroveillance-using.html

As far as FLIR being used to detect outdoor plants, it's not very likely. Maybe not even possible. It's mainly used to detect indoor grows. But if somone
is stupid enough not to cover their heat signature, well then...However, satellite imagery and other surveillance methods are very sensitive and it is VERY possible that it can be used along with color spectrum analysis to detect large grow fields, not smaller numbers of plants as born2killspam pointed out.

Your not showing me anything new here. I totaly agree with you about the plants having different heat signatures. I should have elaborated more. Police have been "trying" to use this for years. I guess thats how everyone starting thinking they were using it activly. What "Little Brother" asked was if there is any concrete evidence that cops are using this technology to spot outdoor operations. I've had friends rip up their outdoor operaton because they thought cops were actually doing this.

The only evidence that I have ever been able to find is that they tried to use it to see the water lines, and the batteries used to run the water pumps and timers for the watering system of large outside operations. There is no evidence that cops have used this technology to find pot fields. Trust me, if law inforcement ever used this to find a pot field they would broadcast it all over the place.

Belive it or not, the police do not want you to grow pot. I'm pretty sue they don't want to let you grow it so they can try and bust you with it later.

I'm not trying to start a fight here. But I'm tired to people thinking they can get busted this way. And that was the question asked. And sorry, the answer is you can't.

 

[Skeksis]

You both make good points. So I guess until there is hard evidence that law enforcement is using this to make busts
then it remains a myth. I concede.

See? not all disagreements have to turn into 20 page flame wars in multiple threads, hahah.

Peace