Detection by helicopter

Hi all I'm about to start my first grow in my out door shed in a grow tent. My question is I live in Australia and I'm starting to get a little worried about detection by helicopter thermal imaging.
Can the police detect a grow tent in a shed if so how ?
Also how do you mask/ cover up go stealth

Don’t you guys have drug sniffing kangaroos there? That’s what I would be worried about!

There fine lol

Rollingreggie said:

Hi all I'm about to start my first grow in my out door shed in a grow tent. My question is I live in Australia and I'm starting to get a little worried about detection by helicopter thermal imaging.
Can the police detect a grow tent in a shed if so how ?
Also how do you mask/ cover up go stealth

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They can only read the temperatures of the surfaces of the shed, they can't magically see through walls like in the movies. If there is a hot spot in the shed that makes the wall hotter in an area then that can be seen. They can see heat plumes from exhausts.

So I take it I should try and cool the exhausted air as is come out of the tent before it excites the shed ??

Rollingreggie said:

So I take it I should try and cool the exhausted air as is come out of the tent before it excites the shed ??

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Not sure how you will go about that but a hot air exhaust coming out of a shed would be a red flag.

They have busted grow houses because of seeing heat plumes coming from under homes, out of odd places where heat normally isn't produced, seeing a bed room thats 85F when the rest of the home is 75F. If you used an AC unit, thats going to look weird on a shed and the condenser unit will show the heat.

One way or another you need to move heat out of the grow space, an undetectable way eludes me. Even a trenched exhaust piped to another place would have to be deep to prevent them from seeing a hot line on the ground leading from the shed to the vent with it's associated heat plume.

About the best possible solution I can come up with is a heat exhanger on the exhaust. This would use air flowing in from the outside to temper the exhaust heat but it still won't remove all the heat and your intake air is now pre heated so that would suck.

I can't think of a solid solution.

Thanks guys for your comments keep them coming

Yeah, insulate the shed, grow tents dissipate some heat through the walls.
Then maybe run your exhaust underground. You don't want heat sig anywhere near the shed.

If you ran enough duct under ground you could cool the air leaving to ground temp

There was an old guy in UK came home from work to find the police had smashed his shed in , turned out heat had tomatoes in there and a green house heater, they had to pay for the damage.

FLIR cant see hot air either. Only surfaces . Its something to do with mass.

Theres a good vid on youtube demonstrating this with a jet engine. The air is stupid hot but doesn't show with a flir gun but soon as you put something in it solid it glows like a MF.

Edit, then again, this other vid shows otherwise.

I will try and find the one I saw a few years ago.

Ok cheers bud

coreywebster said:

FLIR cant see hot air either. Only surfaces . Its something to do with mass.

Theres a good vid on youtube demonstrating this with a jet engine. The air is stupid hot but doesn't show with a flir gun but soon as you put something in it solid it glows like a MF.

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The vent is still hot though.

Renfro said:

The vent is still hot though.

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Yeah true, everything would have to go straight under ground and come out somewhere stealthy , I have no idea how much of a run it would have to be to cool the air to ground temp though. But its defo possible.

I was thinking of venting it into a pool of water just an idea atm

This is like the vid I was talking about.


Not sure at what point of humidity it would begin to show.

Yeah thanks for the video mate certainly interesting

coreywebster said:

Yeah true, everything would have to go straight under ground and come out somewhere stealthy , I have no idea how much of a run it would have to be to cool the air to ground temp though. But its defo possible.

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And how deep does it need to be such that you don't see a line of warmed soil leading from the shed. I know those FLIR things are sensitive, I say an episode of COPS where they were tracking a suspect on foot, they could see the foot prints where he had stepped recently because the grass was just a cunt hair warmer than elsewhere. Thats sensitive.

Its australia, most acs vent hot air, buy an old ac put the vent through that or another ingenious idea of similar great yhinking.

2Hearts said:

Its australia, most acs vent hot air, buy an old ac put the vent through that or another ingenious idea of similar great yhinking.

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Might look odd though when it's cold out, to be running an AC unit.

If we can accept the AC as a shed solution then he could just run an AC and not exhaust.

The cheapest way might be to flower at night and run your exhaust thru the ground as previously mentioned. you could lay insulating material on the ground (bales of hay ?) if you don't think the ground is enough to dissipate any heat. In the States, most regular helicopter pot pigs fly during the day as they use visual means to identify the killer weed. Found that out the hard way.

Your best stealth is don't go showing people your grow or talking about it. Of course if they really really want to get you they will, they're peeking in your windows right now, from space. Hide your pipe and put your porn away fer chrissakes!