1st CFL Grow Rubbermaid --WHITE WIDOW--

Hey everyone, with the help of a few previous Rubbermaid experts, I've decided to try my hand at a grow of my own Here's what I have so far:

Two 35 gallon Rubbermaids
8 45-watt 6500k CFL bulbs on Y-sockets
Mylar all around the inside, and weather stripping on the middle
4" passive intake and 6" exhaust with 120mm fan

Here's the problem so far. My temps have been getting pretty high during the day, anywhere from 90-98 during the day. I'm worried my seedlings will start to die out or have stunted growth if I can't fix it soon, as the jiffy pots are drying out very quickly. After a week the second nodes are starting to grow but the cotyledons are drooping and yellowing a bit already, and it seems to be going slow compared to other grows i'e watched
My 120mm fan says it's 65 CFM, shouldn't that be enough for such a small case? I've been looking at this Amazon.com: Sunleaves Wind Tunnel 6" In-line Exhaust Fan: Kitchen & Dining
but it costs more than the whole rest of the project combined... The box is in a closet with an ambient temperature of about 75-80 during the hot part of the day. Oh, and I've been running the lights 24/0 since the start.

Anyone? Is my intake large enough? I'm considering a portable AC or window unit instead of the huge fan for such a small grow. Any other suggestions are very welcome!

Funny enough I have a very similar setup. Two 30 gallon Rubbermaid setup sitting on top of each other. 4 26-watt CFLs (probably soon upgrading to 8 seeing how I have more room to put 2 power strips in). I have 2 PC case fans running, one as an intake the other as exhaust. The intake is a silent 80mm with 23 CFM, which does the job for moving air in. The exhaust fan is going to be the key for getting heat out of those tubs. I'm running a 120mm rated at 85 CFM (honestly it needs to be at least over 100 but I found this at Frys for the time being.) On the bottom tub I have the fan placed at level with my gallon pot so that the plant will get direct airflow. On the top tub, on the opposite side from where the intake fan is placed, I have the exhaust fan pulling air and heat out. It is also level with where the CFLs are to aid in pulling heat out. This setup mimics a PC case as in a full ATX case you will have a fan on the bottom in front to pull in cool air to move over the hard drives. Which is pulled up, mixed with the GPU and CPU fans and out by the top case fan in back of the case. In my setup, with fans going, 4in from the CFLs my temps hover around 78.6 F. With the fans off, the temps hover around 85.4 F. In your scenario you have nearly double my wattage and double my lights, so your heat is going to be considerably higher. I would suggest getting either a larger fan like a 140mm with a higher CFM or double your fans on intake and exhaust.

what if you took the lights down to 18-6.You can make the 6 hours offtime during the hottest part of day.

I had this issue in a clone chamber I was running. I went to 18/6 and it was not an issue anymore. If you must stick with 24/0 try hooking it up so say 2-4 light are on a different timer and hve them go off so you drop temp like that.

Well, what are your ambient temps, Sevren? I live in the south and my room gets pretty hot so I think I might need some kind of AC unit in here. I went ahead and added a second 4" elbow intake today, and took warfey's suggestion and moved to an 18/6 cycle. Seems to have dropped the temps 5 degrees or so!

Any of you guys try a duct booster fan? They seem to be a lot cheaper than centrifugals and the unboosted cfm is still higher than cpu fans.

I'm in the south as well. Room temp is anywhere between 68-72 F. Also if you keep your setup in a confined space such as a closet, it will raise the temp by 2 or so degrees after it has been running for a bit.

Yeah, I can tell the closet isn't helping matters. Here's the kicker: with the lights off and fans on it's all the way down to 77F. Guess I really do need a much stronger fan!

where the hell you find 45 watt 65k lights? kinda an odd watt #

your gonna use 8 45watt? lemme tell you it gets pretty hot with just 4 (42watts), about 6" below the bulbs, even with the fans and exhausts i got. you gotta pay close attention to distance from the lights EVERYDAY esp if they growin fast! I got light burn a couple times, 1st couple weeks as close to the lights as possible ofcourse, but after that, you can give some distance, its OK if they stretch a little, I started from bagseed, so thats why I'm still veggin cuz I'm waiting to get my clone station set up.

I'm using 4 (42watt) 65k for veg, 27k for flower, in each chamber.

do you have an air circulation fan, the small desk clip on fans are awesome, but pretty hard to find, because they're "seasonal".

you also might wanna consider only vegging a month - to a month and a half. assuming you got guaranteed females clones, or you could clone for sex as soon as possible, seriously, the fast grow can turn into a problem. I only got 2 plants n my veg chamber 2, 37 gal stacked on top, and they taking up all the space, I actually have some vertical space, I can lower them some, but horizontally, they're cramped.

http://www.amazon.com/ALZO-Digital-Full-Spectrum-Light/dp/B00198U6U6

8 of these, but I do have a small clip on fan lying around I could use for circulation. I keep my lights 1-2in from my plants, from what I read on here I thought that was the norm. Do you use pc fans or duct fans for your mains? I know I'm gonna need some serious CFM for the carbon filter down the road so I might as well get this out of the way early on.

As far as space goes I intend to have 3 fems in there, and using SCROG I hope to make them fit!

Thanks for all the suggestions and help so far, really appreciate the friendly advice. Here they are after a week:

oh I guess they do make 45 watt, never seen them before.

no your doing the right thing. Right now when the plants are young keep them as close as possible. but at around 10" or so when they get really bushy, its gets to be a pain to keep them so close, so i keep them a little further away than optimal. you don't need 8 lights for veg, 4 can do just fine, but during flowering you want as much light as possible. I plan to add 3 more to my bigger chamber when I flower my other 2.

I got 6" muffin / pc fans from radio shack, I don't remember the exact cfm, and i threw away the box a long time ago, they arn't the small pc fans they're the bigger ones, that where like 20$ they seem to be doing a good job, temps in the box are 76-78. you might run into to problems if your temps are in the 90s, thats why I would use less light.

I'm flowering 2 right now, about 17 days in, and I can just barely smell anything. I'm sure those WW you got will reek like hell though lol. I would really hold off on that sunleaves wind tunnel, that looks like way too much for a rubbermaid grow. if your gonna spend that much spend it on nutes or more light.

SCROG should be interesting, and you got 3 females are they clone or your hoping to get females from seed?

I hope they're fems man, good luck with your grow

hmm seem to have been bumped to the 2 page.

btw what nutes do you plan on using, what soil?

what type of water are you using?

Your passive intake is the temp problem. i prefer 2 intake fans to one outtake fan. cfl heat dissipates very well, and doesn't really rise as much as hid lights tend too. So its more important to make sure you have constant moving air. THE LEAVES SHOULD MOVE. past that if its still hot make your cfls into removable ballasts cfl. i did it for a pc box kinda a pain in the ass but it did the trick.

I'm using Fox Farm Organic soil with perlite mixed in 15%, no nutes for the first 3-4 weeks. Water is just plain old filtered tap water left to sit for a day. The exhaust fan I'm using is the AC one from Radio Shack actually, but I only have 1.

I picked up some aluminum flex ducting the other day, so I maybe I should try a duct booster for exhaust and moving the pc fan to the intake.

By the way, do the plants look ok for 7-8 days?