Closet/stealth box growers, what do your temps run?

Just wondering cause it seems like it's very hard to get a grow in a small area to the "optimal" temp of 65-70. Especially in any kind of stealthy manner. If you have any tips or tricks to keep temps down in a small space I'd love to hear them.

My temps in my closet are between 76-82 depending on the ambient temps in the room connected. Usually about 3-5 degrees over ambient temps. I am in a 2x4x8 closet. I use vented hood, inline fan 4" 160 cfm, have intake fan rigged up. Two clip on fans one blowing at light level one at plant level. I Exhaust into attic..

75-80 is good temp. If your running hydro and need to keep res cool then lower temps help. What kind of space do you have? What type of setup?

I'm running CFLs in a closet. 9 x 26w 2700k and 3 x 42w 6500k mixed in on the sides. In a 2 x 6 x 6 closet with 6" inline fan for exhaust and a few fans blowing on the tops. Problem is the room my closet is in gets minimal AC and so temps are in the mid-upper 80s in the room, the closet gets like 93-95 at the canopy.

Yeah nothing you can do if ambient temps are that high in the other room. Light is going to equal heat. So it will always run hotter in the grow area. Those cfl can get hot I know everyone says they run cool but they add up fast. Only thing that may work for ya is getting a portable AC. You can try running lights at night. Go to 18/6 veg time, take hottest part of year off grow in fall,winter, spring.

Ok, so I have a 3x3x4 grow box, 1 250 watt cfl and 1 125 watt cfl, grow box is in attic, not optimal, but it's out of the way and no one else goes up there that cares, I have a vent hole in the roof that's inside the box, I have a little 50 cfm kitchen exhaust fan, and a normal size oscilating fan inside, the max temp I've had since I got my digital thermometer with sensor and switched lights to come on at night is 104, the attic is my hangout and I would like to cool it up there but cool my box as well, my idea was to get a portable ac to cool the attic a little bit and run some ducting with intake fan in front of the portable ac, my question is would that work, what size fan should I get for intake, and what size or kind of portable ac, or maybe evap air cooler, ambient room temp is around 100 in the day, I don't want to change the exhaust fan though, because the small cfm exhaust fan would allow cool air being pumped in to cool the air in the box before being expelled, I hope this made sense, it's kinda late and been a long day, but my girls are starting to show signs of heat stress, we've had a really hot past week or so, oh, and lows at night with the lights on are around 80-85 degrees, or if any one else has any better ideas, I'm all ears!

I run a 400 watt hps/mh and my lights on temps this grow have been between 78-83. During fall, winter and spring grows temps are lower, like 72-78.

Dsmwarrior said:

Ok, so I have a 3x3x4 grow box, 1 250 watt cfl and 1 125 watt cfl, grow box is in attic, not optimal, but it's out of the way and no one else goes up there that cares, I have a vent hole in the roof that's inside the box, I have a little 50 cfm kitchen exhaust fan, and a normal size oscilating fan inside, the max temp I've had since I got my digital thermometer with sensor and switched lights to come on at night is 104, the attic is my hangout and I would like to cool it up there but cool my box as well, my idea was to get a portable ac to cool the attic a little bit and run some ducting with intake fan in front of the portable ac, my question is would that work, what size fan should I get for intake, and what size or kind of portable ac, or maybe evap air cooler, ambient room temp is around 100 in the day, I don't want to change the exhaust fan though, because the small cfm exhaust fan would allow cool air being pumped in to cool the air in the box before being expelled, I hope this made sense, it's kinda late and been a long day, but my girls are starting to show signs of heat stress, we've had a really hot past week or so, oh, and lows at night with the lights on are around 80-85 degrees, or if any one else has any better ideas, I'm all ears!

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Woah man yeah that's too hot definitely. You should most definitely get the portable ac unit. I'd put the tent right in the path of the ac air.

GoLdD said:

I run a 400 watt hps/mh and my lights on temps this grow have been between 78-83. During fall, winter and spring grows temps are lower, like 72-78.

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what kind of space are you in? Running an air cooled hood?

My Box is 20 inches deep x 4 feet wide by 6 feet tall, total cubic footage of 43 feet. I run my filter/air exchange through one 4inch 180 cfm vortex fan, and I run my hood through another 4inch 180 cfm vortex, at half speed. The hood is an air cooled High Yield Super Nova, pulling in a/c air from the room through the fan and back out to the room on the other side. My plants get light burn before they get too hot from the light.

curious when you start to notice light burn. I know some plants do better than others but how close you getting to your plants with the 400?

I usually keep it about 8 inches off the top of my plants, not because of light or heat but because I want my fan to have room to blow over all of the tops. When I got light burn, I had an over grown plant and one of the colas grew into and past the light. That cola turned white where it was touching the glass, it was light bleached white. I ended up trimming that cola to about 1/2 size and 8 inches below where it turned white.

Thanks, I had something similar happen as well....I stay around 10-12 over my plants.

heres a question, this may not be the place for it but maybe someone can at least point me in the right direction. if I wanted to switch my 12/12 schedule, how would I do that? as in, I'm running lights on at 4AM lights off at 4PM. if I wanted to switch that up to say... lights on at 5PM lights off at 5AM.. how would I do that? it would help with temps for me since the lights would be on at night mostly.

Ya, from what I've read, my temps are way too high! The box is built in place so not moveable, that's why I was thinking about pumping air from a portable ac thru some ducting ran to the box using an intake fan, but wondering where can I get one without spending an arm and leg on it, for a small one cause it will end up running thru the day and dont want to use up too much electricity or have to vent a lot of exhaust heat from unit, I've read portable ac units have exhaust heat that needs vented, or would an evap air cooler work since I can get one for round 100 bucks, humidity is pretty low in attic, as for in the box, it fluctuates depending on outside humidity since my passive intake is a vent hole in the roof, and what size intake fan would I want to get?

you're in the same position I'm in bud, ambient room temp is WAY too high. growing with CFL I've noticed so far that whatever the temp of the room the grow is in, add about 8-10 degrees to that and that's what you'll get around the top of your plants...

so ideally you want the room your grow closet/box is taking in air from to be around 65 degrees when lights are on. sounds to me like there is no chance for that in your situation. if you are in the attic you may be able to intake to your grow box from a room below, depending on how cool the rest of the people in the house are...

Thought about running ducts down to a lower level of the house, but room below attic is around 84 during hot days, so wouldn't be greatest place to run ducting to for cool air, but would be the "safest" place to run ducting to, ideally, your right, 65 would be optimal intake temp, because I too have noticed about 5 to 8 degree difference from ambient room temp, but in my case during summer, even a 75 degree intake temp would be acceptable since 85 is the highest you can go before perspiration of the plant and photosynthesis is affected, even tho during summers, I don't expect outside temps to be as high as they have been, we've had an unusually hot last couple weeks, but nonetheless, heat in the attic during summer is going to be an issue, but I've also thought about insulating the outside of the box to see if that keeps the ambient room temp from affecting the air inside the box so much, but on the other hand, I don't want to make the box an oven, but I do have ventilation of fresh air right now, tho it's coming in from outside, and I have a normal size ossilating fan in there moving the air around, but I have a small exhaust fan pulling air out right now, it's a 50 cfm kitchen exhaust fan, feels like it's pulling a decent amount of air out of the box tho, but I'm not sure if exhausting air with with a bigger exhaust fan would help seeings that the nice bigger exhaust fans are a bit more money, and I didn't want to shell out that much extra cash since I wanted to spend the money on important things like lighting, which high wattage cfl's are not cheap, but cheaper than hps/mh lamps, and other things like soil, nutes, timers, box material, ect. I have everything for a perfect grow but didn't account for high temps, but I didn't know they were so tolerant to heat inside either, I just have five growing right now for about 5 or 6 weeks from seedling, I'm almost 2 weeks into early sexing them, so I'm too far along to just say wait till fall, even tho theyre not that big due to all the heat the last couple weeks, so I just wanna try and find a way to salvage what I have and make the best of it, btw, no sign of males, almost 2 weeks into flowering, but no hairs yet either

ii dP ii said:

heres a question, this may not be the place for it but maybe someone can at least point me in the right direction. if I wanted to switch my 12/12 schedule, how would I do that? as in, I'm running lights on at 4AM lights off at 4PM. if I wanted to switch that up to say... lights on at 5PM lights off at 5AM.. how would I do that? it would help with temps for me since the lights would be on at night mostly.

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Leave plants in complete darkness for 24 hours, then change the cycle

It's like a reset button on your router