Attic setup

I'm putting the final touches on my attic setup and I'm almost ready to germinate. The room is 36 square feet with a 4 foot ceiling at the high end. I got 2 54 watt t5 fluorescents and 2 40 watt cfls that I can move daily on a track I made from hooks & wire. So I will be keeping the lights stationary while lowering the soil which brings me to my first question; if im using a cooler thats approximately 5 cubic feet and 4 feet wide, would it be safe to plant 10 seeds in 2 rows of 5 or should i put in dividers to prevent the roots from getting tangled. basically what i want to know is if the plants are relatively close together in the same soil, are they at any kind of risk or would they adapt themselves accordingly by geotropism?

My main concern though is temperature and humidity control. I insulated the room as best as I could before I covered the interior with mylar. I have a 90 cfm fan in a vent hole near the peak of the roof for exhaust but it doesnt seem to do much in regards to temperature. I installed a 5200 btu ac unit and ghetto rigged it to a garbage bag to a pvc pipe to another garbage bag to a little card board box to reach the vent window outside the room to draw in air from outside. This cools a little bit but damnit its still about 90 up there on a 70 degree day. I have a 12" oscillating fan, but i know that doesnt do much to temperature and i should probably keep it on low setting when i have seedlings. I was thinking about putting bags of ice in the room daily would that work? Wont have to worry about heat soon though cause its startin to get colder so now I gotta start thinkin about heat. I dont want the temparature to ever drop below 60 and I need a heater that heats the air and not objects in front of it so my babies wont be torched. Anybody know of a good heater to buy? Other than I'm hyped to get this bitch goin even though im $350 in credit card debt and I don't have a job. I wish i had a camera so you could see all the hard work i've done and what a tight chill spot it is right now. And oh ya, the seeds i ordered are Azura from amsterdammarijuanaseeds.com. Anyone smoked that shit before? how is it?

Hey mate, I just was gonna log and seen the bit about your AC not cooling enough. Though I have not grow in a while and only getting ready to start a grow journal, I have worked with AC units alot. 5200 BTU should cool a 36 square foot room just fine providing the unit is up to snuff. However one of the principals of an AC unit is that it draws room air into the intake and treats the room air (Cools it) by removing and carrying away that warm room air that enters through the evaporator then transfers to the circulating coolant and then dumped off by the coolant into the Condenser and blown out side of the house as hot air.

By Using the AC unit to intake outside air then rely on the cool air it's treated to fill up your space all you are doing is trying to add some cool air into the hot atttic.

By having your AC unit work as it is designed to by having it intake the warm room air, treat that air, and remove the rooms hot air you would be more effictive by a long shot at getting the temps down. If that didnt make any sense I am sorry I am very out of it this fine morning. Basicaly the AC unit needs to intake the hot air from the room it's trying to cool treat it cool it down, and carry that heat away with the freon and expell it outside via it's condenser coil. Otherwise as I said before all your doing is really treating the outside air cooling it a bit and dumping cold air into the hot room. I know you mentioned having a vented exhaust fan in the roof but as you also note it isnt really cooling the room down is it?

I'd deffinatly suggest trying the Unit as it's designed to operate. Let it treat the grow room air, cool it, and carry away your grow room heat thats left over outside I think you'll find it'll work and cool much much better. Hope that makes some kind of sense...if not let me know and I'll try to clarify by not repeating myself on and on and on as I'm very very stoned right now

Cheers,

FC.

well i just figured having my garbage bag pvc tube contraption linking the ac to the window would be more efficient cause the air from outside is 20 degrees cooler but if I did what u said and removed the garbage bag i dont see how it would cool better with the temperature just outside the room being the same as inside but i suppose ill try it and see if your right. Even if it works better I still dont think it could possibly bring it down from 110 to 70, as this is the temp on an 80 degree day so i might put a bunch of bags of ice behind the ac and see if that helps. also my exhaust fan is half the size of the ceiling hole and i wanted to know if it would do me any good to somehow seal the clearance with some insulation of some kind.

Yeah you'll deffinatly have to try it and see which works better with your rig.

The main reason why it would tend to cool better is because your not only just blowing cool air into the room but taking the hot room air passing it accross the evaporater where the freon soaks up that heat and transports it to the condensor coil where it can pass it outside. In this way you are actually converting the hot room air into cold air by first removing the heat from the air, treating it and converting it to cold air. This is one of the Principals of why AC units can dehumidify the air (theres more to it that that but is one of the reasons) , where as when you bring in just a bunch of cold air all your doing is displacing the heat and not actually getting rid of it as it has to go somewhere. Now sometimes if you have massive brute force of cold air comming in then sure of course it wil cool the room just like leaving the house door open in - 30 deg c winter.

So thats why when you look at how the AC unit is designed and look into how they work a little deeper then you'll see why the front of the ac unit has it's air intake and air discharge on the front facing the room it's cooling, and the condensor or hot side outside the house or window discharging the heat. If this wasnt effective then AC units would then be setup to get thier intake air from the outside right?

also there can be other problems by using the outside air as intake such as the coil freezing up and causing major moisture and humidity problems as the AC unit can no longer efficently dehumidify aswell. There are many many factors behind thier operation. But deffinatly give this a try sometime and give it fair chance then see which way is working the best for you and run with it.

If you try this the only ducting you need is only for the hot side exhaust So just make sure that the hot side of your AC unit (the condensor side) is ducted outside of your grow room so your not heating the room. It just sounded like you are letting the hot air from the ac go into the room letting your celing fan to try to exhaust the atic plus 5000 BTU's worth of aditioal heat being dumped straight into the room from ur ac too which defeats the whole idea of the unit.

I'd be interested in seeing how this works for you, deffinatly let us know. I do this in my attic aswell and can make it feel like a walk in beer cooler in 30 deg centigrade sumers if I want to.

Cheers,

FC.

ya man at first i thought the back end pulled in the cold air but when I realized the garbage bag I had on it was inflated and getting hot i realized it gets rid of the hot air. thanks for saving me the frustration. I just got my seeds yesterday but I'm waiting to get a couple more things before I germinate those bad boys, i mean hopefully girls, haha I'm lookin to get some bad bitchez. word to the mutha fucka, im gonna post some hot pics of em when they develop some sexy buds. peace