1.5 x 2 x 4 grow space lighting?

I am fairly new to growing and had a few questions for the experts out there about my set up. Right now I am using a 1.5 x 2 x 4 grow space in a cabinet with 2 plants in veg, day 6, and two more on the way under 4 42 watt cfls (rated at 2600 lumens each) I just bought a 100watt and 250watt hps ballast and was going to use both to replace the cfls? Is this a good idea? temp. is a big issue for me because of the size of my space. With the four lights im using with the door open and fan on it stays around 85 F. but for security I must keep the door shut which greatly increases the temp. So if anyone had any suggestions on that it would be a big help. Also I dont know if the upgrade to hps (@ 1x100watt + 1x250watt) will increase the temp even more. Should I just run the 100watt or will the temp not be a problem. I am not looking for a huge grow but more of a personal surplus. thanks for yalls time. peace.

Your temp will mostly likely go up with the HPS lights as they put out alot of heat so you will need to setup some kind of exhaust vent.

You won't be able to keep the Hps light far enough away from you plants to be safe. And the heat will be to much for that size of cabinet. If you need a fan buy a 4 inch duct fan from Home Depot for about $20. It flows 80cfm and is ver quiet.
Click on Error link for pic of 1 of my units.

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Thanks alot. Ya ive found out that im going to have to move my grow space. I now have moved it to my closet which is around 3x4x10 alot bigger and heat has dropped alot. And ive found that I can control the heat alot better with more height because if i have to up the security and close the door I just raise the lights a lil to lower the heat on the plants.. seems to work good for now. I think im going to do a online journel becuase ppl really seem to help on this site. again thank you.

You need to get a good exhaust system setup. You don't want to have to raise the lights just to keep the temps down. Do what ever you can to control the heat with a exhaust in there. What is the point in having HPS lights if you have to put them too far away, you are loosing the lumens of the good lights. My room is 22inX31inX5ft tall and i use one 250w hps with a cooltube and a new 6in inline fan for the exhaust and i can close the door on the room and my temps will stay in the high 70's. Good luck and get the temps under control so you can take advantage of those hps lights.

Thanks again. I looked into an exhaust system setup but didnt know if i wanted to fork out the doe for a cooltube system. they are kinda pricey. But I have a journal now so yall can check it out and give tips. again thanks.

you can grow a HPS in that amount of space with a cool tube

Yo. Get the cool tube. That sh@t should be a standard. Unless you got the space, experience, and ability to reduce temps otherwise. There are even DIY cool boxes for cool air intake. Fans. You can work it out. There are like ten posts a week with your same sitch.
Nail this one.
Go team!

Get one of the glass tubes from a candle holder from walmart and use it as a cool tube. They work great and it really helps with keeping the heat under control. I got mine from walmart for like 12$. Here is a pic of how i did mine. It is really easy.

hmm Well last time I looked the cooltube systems were over a hundred bucks. So far my total start up cost has been just under a hundred and I really want to keep it as low as possible because this is just a personal garden. But I understand your reasoning for saying to get a cooltube system. I want to explore other alternatives before I decide to buy something that would cost more than my total start up cost thus far. So far Ive kept the temps around 75-85 mostly around 78 F with the clfs abour 5 in form the plants. If you want to see my set up I have a journal now, if you click on my name, then on thread started by foreverjokker it is called "Growing 4 plants. First grow. Advice appreciated." I update it just about every day. Im a student so I have time lol thanks again for all the advice it has really helped out and I think my crop will be a success because of it. peace.

Wow I really like your setup buster7476 I think I might have to use some of you ideas when I get my hps system set up. They should arrive in the next week. The only thing now is to figure out where to expel the heat. Im trying to keep everything in the closet to avoid odor. Im thinking im going to have to get a carbon scurber.. I here ppl say that works.. I have no problems yet with odor and im using an ionic air purifier right now (walmart $25) but if odor become a problem I will upgrade. but ya thanks for the advice.. again im a student so anywhere I can cut costs would be great. later.

buster7467 said:

Get one of the glass tubes from a candle holder from walmart and use it as a cool tube. They work great and it really helps with keeping the heat under control. I got mine from walmart for like 12$. Here is a pic of how i did mine. It is really easy.

Click to expand...

Bam! At least try something like his joint. There is also a DIY thread on here that shows you how.
The only reason i'm a little excited is that you always read about someone starting before they have a decently situated setup. And bc of the setup, their stuff gets fragged. Alot of wasted time, effort, and most of the time money. All time = $.

Good luck, buck.

foreverjokker said:

Im trying to keep everything in the closet to avoid odor. Im thinking im going to have to get a carbon scurber.. I here ppl say that works.. I have no problems yet with odor and im using an ionic air purifier right now (walmart $25) but if odor become a problem I will upgrade. but ya thanks for the advice.. again im a student so anywhere I can cut costs would be great. later.

Click to expand...

There's another DIY that had recent replies for the scrubber. Besides yeast in a bottle for CO2. The scrubber thread is just about the easiest one to make.

Yes, i just added a 6in inline exhaust fan that vents the heat in the room to the outside of my house. And the cooltube sucks air in from one side of the room, goes thru the cooltube and then out the other side of the room. If sealed good, then none of the smell will be blown in the house. I am in the process of building a bigger grow area that should be done in a couple weeks. I will use this one for clones and mothers. I want to build a bigger flowering room so i dont have to worry about the heat so much. I am going to make the new room that will have two seperate flowering rooms that will be 2ftX3ftX8ft tall each. I want to be able to get good harvests every month. I will be using one 250w hps light in each flowering room. I am really happy with how my 6 plants are doing under the one 250w hps that i am using now. Plus I am not trying to grow enough to get rich on just enough to justify doing it in the first place.

I run a 400W HPS in a 2.5x3x8 closet. It is aircooled on its own intake and exhaust, separate from the chamber's main exhaust. On 12/12 the temps stay in the 70s. Always on, the temps fluctuate from 78 to 84 (but the chamber isn't really meant for vegging just doing it now to start a bunch of plants so I can sex them and get this op up & running. My normal clone/veg cabs are too small for that.)

I use a hydrofarm blower fan to move air through the hood, and an axial fan to pull hot air out of the top of the chamber. When I have mature plants flowering in there, I'll have to pull off the axial fan and switch to another blower, with a scrubber mounted to it.

I'm also working on another cabinet, a really vertically tight space overloaded with CFLs, intended to be a hydro micro-scrog. In there, I don't have room for an enclosed hood, so I mounted all my CFL sockets to a board, that has fans mounted in it, pulling air from around the bulbs into a rectangular "space saver" duct, attached to the top of the board. The space saver duct connects to the adjacent cabinet by going up and over the cabinet wall inside the dropped ceiling, coming down into a 4" duct tee. The tee connects to another vent further down the wall in the chamber, as well as to another blower fan intake. The fan pulls air both out of the grow cabinet at screen level, as well as through the duct attached to the light fixture cooling fans. It blows into a small plastic storage container converted into an air-scrubber, and then out the far side of the
cabinets.

I'm working on getting temps under control, but with a little fine tuning (and maybe not quite as large of a carbon bed in the filter, as the blower is having a little trouble with it) it should be OK for 12/12.

The plant sites in the hyrdo system alternate front to back, and the light sockets are staggered in reverse so the tops can grow up from the screen between the lights. At this point it's just a matter of getting the ventilation right and then doing a test grow to see if I can get acceptable yield with so little vertical space.

For my clone/starter cabinet, I actually cut into an armhole into a crawlspace above and ripped a handful out of the side of a fiberglass AC duct so I could stuff a vinyl duct in there and pull cold air into the cab.

So, to make a long story short, where there's a will there's a way--so long as you're not scared of a million fans and cutting a few holes in walls/cabinets to accommodate ducting.


Hot tip: if you can't afford blower fans, use 4" or larger 12DC or 120VAC cooling fans from Radio Shack. They're about $25 or so. (Of course, they're not nearly as effective but beggars can't be choosers. Buy two.) You can use those soft plastic containers that salsa and other similar things are sold in as couplings to sort of turn them into inline fans, by taking two, cutting the bottoms off of them, and attaching one to each side of the fan. The ducting will them slip over the smaller end of the coupling. Be careful to secure the coupling on the unguarded side of the fan such that it won't come into contact with the fan blades if a little pressure is exerted on the assembly.