is it pretty much legal in au.
um, no. My op would get me 20 years.
What i have read and heard Jorge Cervantes say about FLIR is that if you have your light cycles on during the day the FLIR is useless because the FLIR only works at night,which makes sense.
I tend to disagree. FLIR can work during the day but gets progressively 'blinder' when looking for the heat signature of a grow op as the ambient air temp rises, creating less contrast between the target thermal signal and the ambient thermal 'noise'. Keep in mind that FLIR is a surface temp thermometer and can look at numerous surfaces in a single frame, giving a differential display. If other objects in frame are close to the temp of the target, the target won't be very well defined in the FLIR display image.
If a wall is in full sun, it will be warmer than any grow op could make it, so FLIR IS blind in that instance. However, if a grow room is in an uninsulated or minimally insulated structure and FLIR is used to look at a shady side of the structure, FLIR would see a warm exterior wall. It would be hard to tell if the heat was coming from an op or from other heating during the day. FLIR will work best at night or on cool, overcast days because of the higher contrast between the target and thermal 'noise.'
you forgot about the cooltubes....do you think cooltubes aid in being invisible to FLIR and thermal imaging?
Cooltubes can be an important part of FLIR defences but by themselves do nothing against FLIR
per se; they just move heat somewhere else.
They do reduce buildup of warm air in the growroom because they don't allow the room's airmass to contact the HPS bottle. They trap a lot of radiated IR but not all of it. Long wave IR is stopped in the tube. Some short-wave IR escapes and if it can contact uninsulated exterior walls, will make the other side of them appear warm to FLIR.
FLIR can see concentrations of warm air but generally only in the immediate vicinity of an exhaust which is significantly warmer than the surrounding air. Diffusing exhaust through an intermediate airmass such as an attic drops its temperature as well as distributes the cooled air through several structural vents, Unless one has an IR image of the structure when it was known that there was no grow op installed, it would be hard for a FLIR operator to tell that the attic/crawlspace vents are unusually warm.
If you're worried about FLIR, you need to insulate your walls and diffuse your warm exhaust air, usually via an attic or crawlspace intermediate airmass, either from cooltubes or the main exhaust blower.
If you'd like to see what FLIR sees, look at this
sales brochure for FLIR cameras.
Would it be better to put the clones in 1" rockwool cubes or rapid rooter sponges in a bunch of small 4x4 black plastic pots with the hydrotons in them? Would 4x4 pots be OK or would the pots take more room in the tray and give me less space for clones?
I don't like rapid rooters, jiffy pots etc which are made from organic materials (usually compressed peat or coconut coir). These organic materials can support mould growth and can fragment, making a mess in recirculating hydro systems.
Yes, if I
had to use pellets (and I really kinda hate them for a half dozen reasons including weight, difficulty of disposal, difficulty in cleaning and sterilisation of them which limits reusability without transferring root problems crop to crop) I'd prefer to use individual pots of them rather than plants in an entire bed of them. They'll keep the rootmasses from knitting, allowing you to pickup and move the plants around for evening out growth, spraying, etc. 4" cube pots might work, but that's a pretty small rootmass. I'd prefer something closer to 6".
