Yeah so I can hear the compressor kick in and than it goes back to exhausting warm air. And it’s one of the basement or floor units that you run a exhaust vent out to either the outside or some other room.
They’ll hit anywhere from 78-81F depending on the temp of the day. We’re in the fall here so it’s getting cooler out but in the basement they tend to stick around 75-80 until the nights start to get under 40 consistently. And the spikes occur both lights on and off.
So that was my first thought was to try and cool my basement temp and use the intake and exhaust fans to help cool the tent but with the type of unit I have I can’t run the exhaust out anywhere because there’s no place for me to run it out to. So I have it in the tent exhausting out into the basement
So as of now I have a 6” intake fan and 4” exhaust with a few oscillating fans, both intake and exhaust run constantly on full power. On top of those I have the ac and a dehumidifier in the tent. And even when I run the dehumidifier the spikes lifespan is like 2-3 minutes than the humidity goes back down to around my target percentage. It doesn’t last long enough for the dehumidifier to even pick up on the spike. I’ve tried using a humidifier to get the humidity up at a constant level and supplement the dehumidifier to bring it down to target humidity consistently but even doing that it’ll spike at a higher percentage for a minute or two, then sink back to target.
I think you need to focus on getting the overall basement climate right, rather than treating the tent as an isolated space. I would start by asking what the typical temp and RH is in your basement (or whatever room the tent is in)?
The temps and humidity vary depending on season but late spring into summer it gets hot and humid down here 80F and 70RH, the colder seasons tend to be dryer so I can usually expect from late September into early November the temps and humidity to be around 70 and 30-40RH, and the winter it’ll get downwards of 55F and if we have snow or sleet/rain the RH will hit 60 but without that it stays around 30-40 also. My biggest problem is finding a space to exhaust the ac hot air. It’s not a window unit. It’s one of those big floor units that you need to run an exhaust pipe out to a separate room or outside, and unfortunately I don’t have the availability of doing so. My basement only has 3 small windows that only open at a 45 degree angle so I can’t fit the exhaust vent properly.
You can def use the dehumidifier to bring the RH of the room down (it'll work better and be easier to drain when it's outside the tent anyway) but not sure what the best way is to get the temps down in that case.
Yeah it’s an unfinished basement, the odd thing is that the ac worked fine in the heat of the summer I think the ambient humidity in the basement is so high that the spike the ac gives off is similar in percentage so the dehumidifier can actually take out the humidity. Also another variable is that I have young clones in it now and they don’t give off and perspire as much as the adult flowering plants I had during the summer. I first ran into it 2 weeks ago when I went to dry my outdoor harvest and I thought hmm that’s strange I didn’t encounter this issue during the summer. I was aiming to use it to help my dry environment get near 60-60. As well as help control the climate better in the tent year round. But I guess if I can’t figure this out it’s back to the drawing board…
Huh...it might help to at least get the dehumidifier out of the tent and into the room. AC units also remove water from the air, and the dehumidifier exhausts hot air which you might want to spread out across the whole basement rather than having it concentrated inside the tent... Good luck!