LED cool box to fix heat issue! 10+ degrees cooler in tent!

Hey RIU!

I'm usually pretty quiet on here, but I wanted to share this with you guys. I grow in the desert in the Southwest and it gets up to over 100 degrees in the summertime. This makes growing mid-May to mid-September pretty tough. I use LEDs to help with the heat, but 950 watts still puts out a lot of heat, even with LEDs. Temps in my tent have been getting up to the low and mid 90's. After setting this thing up I have kept the temps below 83 degrees, making a pretty drastic improvement. I searched here and the rest of the net for something like this but couldn't find anything, so I made my own with mostly spare stuff I had around the house.

Storage bin for housing the lights
Wood from a left over pallet for the frame.
Four 3-inch eye screws with nuts
Four large but with smaller hole washers to go with the eye screws
Chain to string it up
6 loop fasteners for connecting the chains
Roll of ducting tape (I used the foil or reflective kind) for sealing the storage bin and ducting
7-inch ducting starting collar
7-inch round semi-rigid duct
7-inch fan
3 - 12x16 cuts of replacement glass from Home Depot
1 glass cutting (scoring) kit from Home Depot

I used a heat gun or soldering iron I had to cut (melt) through the plastic of the storage bin to make to necessary holes and openings for the lights, fan and ducting.

I still have some adjustments to make to maximize my light coverage by cutting back parts of the wooden frame that is blocking some of the light spread. But other than that, it seems to be working pretty good.

Hit me up with any questions or concerns that I haven't thought of yet!

Few more pics

Thanks! Yeah, that was my idea, to have a cool tube for my LED's because of temps but I couldn't find anything on online like it. I was hoping for 5 degrees but am thrilled to get a 10-degree difference! Those lights were putting out a lot of heat.

This pretty interesting , but had some questions because I have a set of panels that I was going to " air out " by a similar "push pull " exhaust for them.
But why add glass ? I would think that allowing hot ambient air to " rise up " into shroud would be better exhausted. The glass would retain heat and the panels already have their own glass.

I am thinking that black turbo fan fitted with a modded duct reducer fitted with tubing to bring outside air in ( maybe from an existing port in tent or adding a side hole , would bring lower temp air in then " force fanned " thru hood to opposite exhaust tubing. And with an " open bottom " rising heat will trap itself in hood and flow to the exhaust.

You gave me a couple of ideas to play with .

Budzbuddha said:

This pretty interesting , but had some questions because I have a set of panels that I was going to " air out " by a similar "push pull " exhaust for them.
But why add glass ? I would think that allowing hot ambient air to " rise up " into shroud would be better exhausted. The glass would retain heat and the panels already have their own glass.

I am thinking that black turbo fan fitted with a modded duct reducer fitted with tubing to bring outside air in ( maybe from an existing port in tent or adding a side hole , would bring lower temp air in then " force fanned " thru hood to opposite exhaust tubing. And with an " open bottom " rising heat will trap itself in hood and flow to the exhaust.

You gave me a couple of ideas to play with .

Click to expand...

I added the glass because I had to cut out parts of the storage bin for the lights to come out. I was worried about the plastic of the bin not holding up and my lights falling through. So I bought the glass to cover a larger area than the hole cut out to provide better support to keep the lights from falling. But even then I was still unsure if it would hold so I decided to build the wooden frame.

But yeah, bringing in outside air through the fan for cooling could bring down temps even more. But where I live the outside temps are 100 or more so that wouldn't work so well in my area. But I have a refrigerated air unit in my grow room and now that most all the heat the LED's are producing is being ducted out, that turbo fan is pulling in nice cool air from the a/c.

Forgot to mention that I'm growing autos right now so my tent is open to let the air from the a/c in. With a closed tent, outside air would be beneficial.

Chuckonit said:

Forgot to mention that I'm growing autos right now so my tent is open to let the air from the a/c in. With a closed tent, outside air would be beneficial.

Click to expand...

I noticed something I didn't catch earlier. The position of your panels .
Is there a reason you positioned them side to side INSTEAD of end to end
( length wise ) ?

Your light coverage would improve dramatically / light field overlap.
Those 2 MH ( white ) length wise would carry an intensified area of light overlap.

This is what I mean :


I also use those panels , but in this picture I separated the panels because of 2 different stages , but the tent on the left I added more hanger bars to support the other panel to work side by side. I have grown very healthy plants when I do this. When I am growing -
( running 1 good strain ) in this overlap area it is KILLER. I plan to run a Lemon Venom Auto this way after I complete my current grows.

AND that third panel can be used as a side light for deeper light penetration.