Winter Grow Room Cold Management

Yo, dude is planning on growing this winter. The intake air from my 6 inch inline fan is going to circulating a lot of cold air into my grow room (can get down to 0 degrees at times in the winter). Dude was planning on putting a vortex whole room space heater in front of the intake, but is having doubts that it will be able to heat the room up and two of them would just kill dude with the electricity bill. Any ideas or suggestions?

am I understanding this right? you want to pull cold air in just to heat it??

hah I need the outside ventilation for the CO2 (unless it would be a better idea to use CO2 bags and skip the ventilation altogether). But if I go with the ventilation I'm going to have to heat it up in order to keep the temperature of the grow room at 75 right?

I suck air in from another room in the house and thats plenty CO2 for them. You don't NEED outdoor air. The air in your house might actually have MORE CO2 from all your exhaling.

So suck in air from another room and if you have an air cooled reflector vent that shit back into your room for the extra heat. Thats what I do during the winter, summer comes I hook the duct back up to the tee and put it outside the room again. But during the winter I need that heat.

if you pull cold air in it would only be to cool it down , indoor co2 levels are much higher than outdoor, but if you want to use the cold air to cool it down then you'll need an intake fan that's on a thermostat. pulling cold air in 100 percent of the time and then having to heat that air is a huge waste of energy.

i grow in a cool garage.

you need a 4 way of controller (heat, cool, c02, humidity). mine was 430$ on the bay and worth every penny. i have bottled co2, so it kicks on when need be. humidity kicks on an exhaust fan or dehumidifier, and if the temps get too high the cooling fan sucks air through the lights only and cools the room down in a few minutes. if need be i have a small space heater connnected to the heat outlet of the controller for night time lows during the dead of winter.

make sure you fans all go off at night (during natural daytime so it is wamest)
you should be able to run the lights with minimum fans kicking on. mine barely come on.

but yes in this situation a sealed room is much eaiser to keep temps up.

the biggest problem is humidity since when its snowing/raining outside and full on budding, lots of moisture to deal with. so i have to dehumidfy and vent.

good luck.

Need help.
If I were to suck cold winter air, say about 15 degrees, through 8" Insulated duct through three 1,000 watt lights and then exhust it outside, am I going to get condensation???
I am thinking if I used uninsulated duct, that I would for sure get condensation.
Another thought. If I were to use the reflector OG by growlite, perhaps this would help prevent condensation as it has a vertical bulb and I think that perhaps its design may help prevent condensation. Not sure though. http://www.growlite.com/#

oldschooltofu said:

i grow in a cool garage.

you need a 4 way of controller (heat, cool, c02, humidity). mine was 430$ on the bay and worth every penny. i have bottled co2, so it kicks on when need be. humidity kicks on an exhaust fan or dehumidifier, and if the temps get too high the cooling fan sucks air through the lights only and cools the room down in a few minutes. if need be i have a small space heater connnected to the heat outlet of the controller for night time lows during the dead of winter.

make sure you fans all go off at night (during natural daytime so it is wamest)
you should be able to run the lights with minimum fans kicking on. mine barely come on.

but yes in this situation a sealed room is much eaiser to keep temps up.

the biggest problem is humidity since when its snowing/raining outside and full on budding, lots of moisture to deal with. so i have to dehumidfy and vent.

good luck.

Click to expand...

How does that controller work (for example lets theoretically say that dude has CO2 generator, dehumidifier, and space heater; then does dude plug all these devices into the controller, set his atmospheric preferences, and the controller will do the rest?)

Usually a controller will have inputs that are labeled like FAN goes here, CO2 goes here, humidifier and heater and ac go here. It will also have a sensor that will be built into the controller or it can be hooked up to the controller and moved to put like right under your plants or mid way, or wherever you want to put it.

As far as I know you cannot just plug in things in random spots because the circuitry is probably designed so that when the call comes to add more CO2 it sends electricity to that plug and if say a fan was plugged into it it would just exhaust your room instead of adding CO2.

I'm not too familiar with controllers, but that makes sense to me. They're expensive, a controller that does all that will be about 500.

I wouldn't use outside air during the winter. if you can pull from the furnace room/water heater room. all that natural gas burning will give you a lot of co2. I also leave my veg lights on 24 hours a day during the winter for temp reasons. you do not want to use a electric heater, it will triple your electric bill, easily.

i use this one. works great.
it turns the co2 off when the cooling fans are on.
you set the day/night temps and humidity levels
set the co2 level
plug in your co2, dehumidifier, and cooling fan. it takes care of everything and tells you max min


i just re-red your post. you dont need to heat up your air. you only need to pull fresh air in once every few hours. (i dont know the exact numbers as i use co2)
so if you dont have a controller. you have to figure out how long it takes your room to heat up to say 80F after lights on. then have your fan kick on and cool the room down till its at say 70F this will cool your room and pull in some co2 from the adjacent room or outside at the same time. provided you are pulling air into the room and through the lights, and out. you only need to pull cool air in to cool the lights when they get too hot. if they stay cool, then just some circulting fans and kicking on the ventilation every few hours will work fine. i dont know your exact setup so its hard to say. but its a lot eaiser to use cold air to cool your lights and pull in some fresh air periodicaly. then to heat up air.

Pull air from your central air vent. You will get plenty of co2 from your living space.

I would say that if you have a cool tube or hood, then get a fan speed controller which will allow you to slow down the intake fan and allow the lights to heat the room up some.. just my 2 cents