Critique/assist with my new grow tent setup

Ok, so ive just bought pretty much everything im going to use for my first grow.


All ducting, fan and carbon filter are 6" fittings


4.5' x 4.5' x 7.5' grow tent
375 cfm mixed flow inline fan
Insulated Flexible Acoustic Duct
6"x 23" carbon filter
400w GE Lucagrow HPS + ballast (will change to 600w in winter)
Parabolic Vertical & Horizontal switchable 3' reflector
Small clip mount fan
Everything needed for DWC except the buckets (trying to find bigger than 5g) so clay balls, net pots, powerful air pump + big air stones
GH nutes
+ bunch of other little bits and pieces

The thing im not decided on yet is placement/setup of the ventilation, since my biggest and only concerns are odor and sound.

I was originally going to have ducting from top of tent, to the fan on the ground with a wooden box built around the fan with noise reducing material on the inside of it, then either ducting to the carbon filter, or attach the carbon filter straight onto the fan. So the fan would be pulling air out of the tent and into the carbon filter.

But every grow i see has a fan + filter in the tent with the fan pulling air through the filter and exhausting out the tent? i just dont know about the sound doing it that way?

it will be much quieter if you have the fan separate from the filter, in a box. i have mine in a box stuffed full of old clothes, can't hear it unless you're within a couple of feet of it.
my filter is in the tent, with the fan pulling through it. you will need to dump the heat from your lights, makes it a lot more convenient if you're pulling through the filter, you just have to find a place to run the vent, out a window or into a dryer vent...

have you picked up a ph meter, a ppm meter? the indoor outdoor temp rh units are nice, you can sit the display anywhere and see it.
gonna need ph up and down.
bamboo stakes are handy to have around, and i like the twist-ties on a roll to keep stuff where i want it.
gonna need a good pair of shears when it comes time to harvest. rubber gloves are handy to have, as is a bottle of alcohol, to get some of the stank off.
this one may sound funny, but benadryl cream is good, a lot of people, myself included, have a histamine/allergic reaction from physical contact once they start flowering.

Buy a chiller before you even start. You will need it.

hotrodharley said:

Buy a chiller before you even start. You will need it.

Click to expand...

Not necessarily if you can keep temps at bay. I use quantum boards though so my tent never gets hot.

Roger A. Shrubber said:

it will be much quieter if you have the fan separate from the filter, in a box. i have mine in a box stuffed full of old clothes, can't hear it unless you're within a couple of feet of it.
my filter is in the tent, with the fan pulling through it. you will need to dump the heat from your lights, makes it a lot more convenient if you're pulling through the filter, you just have to find a place to run the vent, out a window or into a dryer vent...

have you picked up a ph meter, a ppm meter? the indoor outdoor temp rh units are nice, you can sit the display anywhere and see it.
gonna need ph up and down.
bamboo stakes are handy to have around, and i like the twist-ties on a roll to keep stuff where i want it.
gonna need a good pair of shears when it comes time to harvest. rubber gloves are handy to have, as is a bottle of alcohol, to get some of the stank off.
this one may sound funny, but benadryl cream is good, a lot of people, myself included, have a histamine/allergic reaction from physical contact once they start flowering.

Click to expand...

Thanks mate I think I'll do it that way. And yeah I've got a pH + temp meter, a ppm meter, and calibration solution for each as well as pH up and down.

The space the tent is in is a large probably 1.5 car garage, and the roller door has quite large gaps to each side of it to outside.

I was planning on rotating a few frozen bottles of water during summer as I've read some others do. But would a fluctuating temp be better or worse than a high temp?

What are quantum boards?

Thanks all for your replies

You're gonna need more light to flower.. or are you only plannin on using part of the tent? imo even 600 isnt enough.. I would look at 1000w cool tube/air cooled personally.. probably need ac during summer but you would make that shit back in yield over a 400.. If youve got the budget Id look into quality LED (quantum boards, strips). You can wire them up yourself and save a good chunk of change, pretty easy to diy.


Good luck!

check out HLG (horticultural lighting group) or Timber lights, they make good stuff, and both are advertisers on the site that you can get ahold of if you're having problems

i have a 10" 800cfm fan on a can 125 filter outside my tent that pulls through 8" insulated ducting through the hole in the side of the tent.
Its really quiet even at full power with my setup. It just sounds like a small desk fan across the room
The insulated ducting makes a HUGE difference on sound.