Environmental Controls & Airflow Help Needed (Room Inside a Room -Sealed/Vented Hybrid)

Hello Y'all, I'm hoping to get some advice regarding environmental control from some of you deep thinkers )
I'm close to a decent enough solution, but need some creative solutions and some devil's advocates to think of extremes in each space since the only way I see to manage such a small flower and veg space without filling the flower space with a bunch of redundant equipment) is to share air thus having a hybrid room (sealed with some venting).

Room diagram attached.
Available space: 10x10, will likely go with a tent due to budget/time/wife/budget (unless I could just use wood with no insulation)
Space Allocation: 4x4 flower, the rest of the 10x10 for veg/propagation/equipment (yes, this is opposite to most, but I focus more on veg and clones). This means I'll have a 4x4 flower tent inside the 10x10 veg tent/room.
Lights: a 1,000 watt HPS, a 1,000 watt MH, a 630 watt CMH, and a rack with LED and t5. The MH is usually only set to 400/600 depending on how much growth I need.

I'm using vapor pressure deficit figures as a guide rather than generic temp or humidity ranges...maybe that's wrong, but looking at VPD charts, I'm thinking 80-85 degrees and 60% humidity for flower, (reducing temp & humidity over last 2-3 weeks of flower) @ 1500 PPM CO2 and for the veg room, I'm not that worried about CO2 so thinking more like 70-75 degrees and 70% humidity keeping CO2 around normal levels.

Main Problem: Budget and space. Not wanting 2 different CO2 setups, 2 different humidifiers/Air Conditioning units, heaters, etc...plus not having space if I did. Also, I can't exhaust air into the basement space as smell would be an issue so any exhaust is out a window only.

Basement Temps/Humidity:
Summer average: Temp 60-70 degrees, 50-60% humidity
Winter average: Temp 60-70 degrees, 35-45% humidity




What I've Come Up With
1. The flower space:
HUMIDITY
To Dehumidify, pre-filter with intake fan, hooked up to humidity controller (dehumidify). This would pull in less humid air from the basement area and pump it into the tent. This would passively push the humid (and CO2 rich air) into the Veg space (but...being a "sealed room" I would also need the exhaust of the Veg room to exit the window, otherwise the air (smell) will push itself out somewhere).
To humidify, the controller can be hooked up to either:
a) a small humidifier in flower tent (likely best option)
b) an intake fan pulling more humid (but cooler) air from the veg space (passively pushing more arid air into the veg space in a loop) or
c) carbon filter and exhaust fan to the outside (this would still passively pull air from the veg space, but the arid air (along with any CO2) would be exhausted, rather than put into the veg room

TEMPERATURE
Variable speed temperature controller hooked up to HPS/MH hood fan. If temps too low, fan would slow, if too hot, fan would speed up. This would need to be backed up with another temperature control as the cooled hood itself is likely unable to keep temps down during Summer and will also effect temperature in the Veg Space since the MH light runs on the same exhaust.

Only other options besides buying the world's smallest A/C unit are:
a) hot air exhausted through carbon filter and out of house (which means humidify option "C" above couldn't be chosen since no controller I've seen allows the same device to be activated for both heat AND/OR low humidity--although there are numerous ones that would allow for Hot Temp AND/OR High Humidity)--and CO2 will be lost, or
b) hot air is exhausted into veg room (this would also either passively pull in air from the veg room creating a loop or I'd have to actively pump in air from the basement space which means the intake fan listed in the "dehumidify" setting above would activate to both dehumidify or cool down the room (which there are controllers for). This would mean that every time temperature was brought down, so would the humidity. If temps were very hot, humidity would plummet.

2. The veg space:
HUMIDITY
Humidity controller, dehumidifier and humidifier

TEMPERATURE
A/C and heater

Other Considerations:
Smell and Cycling Air: Yes, a carbon scrubber in the room will be there, but it would be nice to cycle air (maybe on a timer) out of the house, pulling in air from the basement every once in a while. In the example above, as the flower room pulls in basement air to dehumidify, there must be air that leaves the system somehow (air in = air out). This also needs to be hooked up to a carbon filter so again, I would need a controller that would activate on a timer AND when humidity is low in the flower room...which I don't think exists. If such a controller did exist, I'd still prefer it to exchange air directly with the basement air rather than via the flower room.

CO2: Veg space CO2. If I can cycle air in and out of the veg room, there should be enough CO2. Also, if I dehumidify and cool the flower room by exchanging air with the veg room then some CO2 will be supplemented into the Veg space but will this be enough given the temp / humidity targets and accounting for the fact that the CO2 will shut off for 6 hours of the veg cycle while lights are off in the flower room.

WOW....That's all I can think of for now. Insight very, very much appreciated. It's a lot to read.


Happy Growing!

Titikshu said:

I can't exhaust air into the basement space as smell would be an issue so any exhaust is out a window only.

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With the proper carbon filters, you wont smell a thing. I pump all my grow room air into the basement and it circulates through the entire house fresh as can be. Keeps temps right where I want them. This will solve all your climate issues. You wont even need co2. You and your family put out plenty of it. Regulate the air in your house to a comfortable 67-70 degrees and 35% humidity using the furnace/ac and a dehumidifier and then the air going into the grow room is perfect. The heat coming out of the grow room will heat your basement and your entire house. If your really crazy about smell, you can double filter the air. I used to use this setup until I bought better filters and found that 1 was enough but the fan/filter in the tent was pushing air into the trash can and then another fan/filter in the trash can was pulling all that air through a second time and pushing it to the basement. Now i just run a single 10x39'' Phresh/Phat filter with a vortex VTX fan and it does everything i need it to but this is the old setup.

JoeBlow5823 said:

Regulate the air in your house to a comfortable 67-70 degrees and 35% humidity using the furnace/ac and a dehumidifier and then the air going into the grow room is perfect.

Click to expand...

I like the double-carbon filter set-up. I've seen inline ozone generators and inline carbon filters as well so it is worth a looking into. Regarding pulling in air at 35% humidity, believe it or not I've had powdery mildew at that humidity level. Also, I'm really trying to get environment dialed in. While CO2 supplementation may not be necessary, I do still want to be able to control temp and humidity pretty close to whatever I want. This is for experimental purposes as well. It allows me to provide the perfect conditions and the worst so I can stress test plants and really pull out and express what each pheno has to offer. My grow is small so I just want to find / collect amazing genetics that I can share with others.

I will look into more/better filters. So far, the ones I've used haven't helped much. My house may not smell like weed, but walking past it does. If I could exhaust into the basement then it does open more options, but at least now guests come over don't smell anything inside the house.

Thanks!

Titikshu said:

I like the double-carbon filter set-up. I've seen inline ozone generators and inline carbon filters as well so it is worth a looking into. Regarding pulling in air at 35% humidity, believe it or not I've had powdery mildew at that humidity level. Also, I'm really trying to get environment dialed in. While CO2 supplementation may not be necessary, I do still want to be able to control temp and humidity pretty close to whatever I want. This is for experimental purposes as well. It allows me to provide the perfect conditions and the worst so I can stress test plants and really pull out and express what each pheno has to offer. My grow is small so I just want to find / collect amazing genetics that I can share with others.

I will look into more/better filters. So far, the ones I've used haven't helped much. My house may not smell like weed, but walking past it does. If I could exhaust into the basement then it does open more options, but at least now guests come over don't smell anything inside the house.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Yeah man having constant negative pressure to your grow room with fresh, scent free air being exhausted back into the house is the way to go. especially in cold climates. With filters, the bigger the better. Air has more surface area to move over so it does so slower and with less restriction which allows the carbon to pick up more odor.

bump...

that space looks really cramped, why so many clones and moms is there a flower room somewhere else? any reason why not just doing one sealed room with feminized seeds with a mini split and co2

xox said:

that space looks really cramped, why so many clones and moms is there a flower room somewhere else? any reason why not just doing one sealed room with feminized seeds with a mini split and co2

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You didnt read his well articulated post.... Sad when people take the time to post very detailed threads and people comment even though they are to lazy to read it.

"4x4 flower, the rest of the 10x10 for veg/propagation/equipment (yes, this is opposite to most, but I focus more on veg and clones). This means I'll have a 4x4 flower tent inside the 10x10 veg tent/room. "

JoeBlow5823 said:

You didnt read his well articulated post.... Sad when people take the time to post very detailed threads and people comment even though they are to lazy to read it.

"4x4 flower, the rest of the 10x10 for veg/propagation/equipment (yes, this is opposite to most, but I focus more on veg and clones). This means I'll have a 4x4 flower tent inside the 10x10 veg tent/room. "

Click to expand...

i did read the whole post, im sorry you didnt like my question if you were offended i can tell you a safe space you can go.

xox said:

i did read the whole post, im sorry you didnt like my question if you were offended i can tell you a safe space you can go.

Click to expand...

I wasnt offended. If you read the whole post, why did you ask?

i just figured that was alot of clones for such a small tent unless he maby has some sort of flood table and flowers lots of clones at say 8” tall. if there wasnt another flowering room i was curious where all the clones were going. i had a similar size room with the inverse of his layout i had a small 3x3 tent and a seperate table with a 4 ft flourescent tubes that i would use for a mother and an aeroponic cloning machine the rest of the space outside of the tent i used for flowering in a 3x3 i could stick almost 35+ rooted clones with the mother in the corner then id do everything else outside the tent using the rest of the space. i just thought it would be more efficient use of space

xox said:

i just figured that was alot of clones for such a small tent unless he maby has some sort of flood table and flowers lots of clones at say 8” tall. if there wasnt another flowering room i was curious where all the clones were going.

Click to expand...

I provide a different service to the marketplace than dried flower. I have collected and continue to collect a lot of genetics. The bottom layer of my rack will eventually have 20+ bonsai mother plants each taking up less than a square foot and the table has 30 mother plants ranging from 1-5 gallon containers (small). This allows me to provide a wide variety of over 40 strains to other growers and collectors while also having 2-4 strains at a time in higher volume for a handful of larger production growers who also depend on me regularly.

The flower space is only to pheno hunt and test genetics. Sometimes 4-6 plants from seed (I lab test for gender to save space) and others a Sea of Green with 25-36 plants.

Right now I'm doing it in that same space, but it's open to the world and IPM be it's a b****, as is controlling the environment. With so many strains, it's impossible to tell--when issued pop up--what the underlying cause is and it's impossible to purposely stress test or provide optimal conditions to test genetics.

Thanks for your time and attention.

JoeBlow5823 said:

With the proper carbon filters, you wont smell a thing. I pump all my grow room air into the basement and it circulates through the entire house fresh as can be. Keeps temps right where I want them. This will solve all your climate issues. You wont even need co2. You and your family put out plenty of it. Regulate the air in your house to a comfortable 67-70 degrees and 35% humidity using the furnace/ac and a dehumidifier and then the air going into the grow room is perfect. The heat coming out of the grow room will heat your basement and your entire house. If your really crazy about smell, you can double filter the air. I used to use this setup until I bought better filters and found that 1 was enough but the fan/filter in the tent was pushing air into the trash can and then another fan/filter in the trash can was pulling all that air through a second time and pushing it to the basement. Now i just run a single 10x39'' Phresh/Phat filter with a vortex VTX fan and it does everything i need it to but this is the old setup.


View attachment 4705109

Click to expand...

I do same as Joe Blow kinda, but an L shaped 3 grow rooms connected. Ducting room to room none to the outside grow

JoeBlow5823 said:

Yeah man having constant negative pressure to your grow room with fresh, scent free air being exhausted back into the house is the way to go. especially in cold climates. With filters, the bigger the better. Air has more surface area to move over so it does so slower and with less restriction which allows the carbon to pick up more odor.

Click to expand...

I run a hybrid loop system with dedicated cool air intakes to each room and moderately neg pressure too to keep co2 within rooms too. I designed a triple insect, heppa air filter for intake, and filter air being exchanged room to room. To cool hids, I use a 8" hurricane on timer for lights in pushing cool air from master bedroom via can filter and on other end of daisy chained air cooled hids a 6" pulling that hot light air out which heats our house, haven't turned central heating in all winter and run 18/6 off 3pm to 9pm

F1_Grower said:

I do same as Joe Blow kinda, but an L shaped 3 grow rooms connected. Ducting room to room none to the outside grow

I run a hybrid loop system with dedicated cool air intakes to each room and moderately neg pressure too to keep co2 within rooms too. I designed a triple insect, heppa air filter for intake, and filter air being exchanged room to room. To cool hids, I use a 8" hurricane on timer for lights in pushing cool air from master bedroom via can filter and on other end of daisy chained air cooled hids a 6" pulling that hot light air out which heats our house, haven't turned central heating in all winter and run 18/6 off 3pm to 9pmView attachment 4843747View attachment 4843739

Click to expand...

Here are my out take and intake controls, both AC variable intakes located outside of rooms go on only during lights on along with hurricanes used to cool hids. The control room i have is a room within a room. Double zipper wall x2 made to separate control room

I have a suggestion not sure if it's going to help but this is the way I have my sealed room set up similar to what u have in regards to venting the MH and HPS light I would use 6he air from out side and dump it back in your basement , in your diagram u have the arrow growing out the window so it looks like our pulling air from your basement in the lights and out the window , that would be a lot more efficient if u did it the other way around a way of also heating your house in the winter or in the summer I do the same but instead of dumping hot air in the house I pass it through and back outside just a little more piping but I have it to do both

Rdubz said:

I have a suggestion not sure if it's going to help but this is the way I have my sealed room set up similar to what u have in regards to venting the MH and HPS light I would use 6he air from out side and dump it back in your basement , in your diagram u have the arrow growing out the window so it looks like our pulling air from your basement in the lights and out the window , that would be a lot more efficient if u did it the other way around a way of also heating your house in the winter or in the summer I do the same but instead of dumping hot air in the house I pass it through and back outside just a little more piping but I have it to do both

Click to expand...

I was worried about pulling sub-zero degree winter air directly from outside across my lights so I opted for this direction. I did--as you suggested--direct that air to my main ducting to the house though so the warm air would help heat the house.

What I ended up doing for winter was taking an idea by @JoeBlow5823 and using that to suck air from directly outside into a large plastic tote. Then I made pulled cold air from that tote (with pre-filters) to each of the tents as needed to cool the room... While this worked in the winter with freezing air, I will be disconnecting all this as temps continue to rise as Michigan has lots of bugs and PM spores everywhere so I will not be pulling any air from outside.

In the summer months, I'll just pull air from the basement space directly as the humidity is generally around 60% and temps are around 65-70. Hopefully this works.

Thanks for the input

F1_Grower said:

I do same as Joe Blow kinda, but an L shaped 3 grow rooms connected. Ducting room to room none to the outside grow

I run a hybrid loop system with dedicated cool air intakes to each room and moderately neg pressure too to keep co2 within rooms too. I designed a triple insect, heppa air filter for intake, and filter air being exchanged room to room. To cool hids, I use a 8" hurricane on timer for lights in pushing cool air from master bedroom via can filter and on other end of daisy chained air cooled hids a 6" pulling that hot light air out which heats our house, haven't turned central heating in all winter and run 18/6 off 3pm to 9pmView attachment 4843747View attachment 4843739

Click to expand...

Just when I thought I was creative you have to post stuff like this!

I've never seen vertical ScrOG's (or any setup) like yours. Very interesting. Thanks for the input. I ended up doing something similar for the winter, but pulled cold air directly from outside into an area and then pulled air from that area to each of the individual spaces as needed. I'll need to change everything again for the Summer, but it did work well for winter.

Titikshu said:

I was worried about pulling sub-zero degree winter air directly from outside across my lights so I opted for this direction. I did--as you suggested--direct that air to my main ducting to the house though so the warm air would help heat the house.

What I ended up doing for winter was taking an idea by @JoeBlow5823 and using that to suck air from directly outside into a large plastic tote. Then I made pulled cold air from that tote (with pre-filters) to each of the tents as needed to cool the room... While this worked in the winter with freezing air, I will be disconnecting all this as temps continue to rise as Michigan has lots of bugs and PM spores everywhere so I will not be pulling any air from outside.

In the summer months, I'll just pull air from the basement space directly as the humidity is generally around 60% and temps are around 65-70. Hopefully this works.

Thanks for the input

Click to expand...

yes absolutely, u make a good point I’m in Michigan as well and if im not constantly there to adjust the speed of my fans then yes it can be too cold and not because it will break the light or glass but especially with a double ended HPS or MH they need to operate at a Higher temp to get to full power so let’s say I’m not home timers are set to turn fans on with lights , you should always have a delay so that the bulb gets up to operating temps and then dial in the fan slowly and keep it light air flow I don’t use A/C winter months room stays at 80-85f and I think that’s perfect! Also yes pre filter everything not worth the chance keep it clean! Good luck to you

some things to think about...

if ur adding co2 to the flower tent i dont think u want to exhaust anything. it would have to be a closed system durring the day unless u want to buying more co2 every other day... it goes fast enough already. but operating in a tight space w what could be a big canopy iv found you need to exhaust at night. ull end the day at 1600 co2... over 2000 is toxic for plants... so as they release co2 at night u will need to exhaust that once u have a certain amount of biomass or it will quickly exceed 2,000.. iv had people tell me this is irrelevent. based on my anecdotal experience it needs to be done.

closing a system is difficult. u will need a good dehu and an air conditioer... that being the case i dont messa round w the co2 for propogation, mothers, or even veg. u really dont need co2 untill they hit the veg stage and it seems like ur area is so small u wont be able to get over the amount of light nessesary to really have the co2 make any difference that early in the grow.

VPD is a good guide. those 85f and 70 hum are for co2 supplimentation as the absortion rate of the co2 increases as the temp increaes. so people are pushing temps as high as possible. iv went 86 and 70 and ur really on a knifes edge for a small amount of absorption. u are much safer being loser to 80. and most of the time when u want to be at 70 humidty (early grow) theres not enough biomass in the room to put off 70 humnidty and maintain temp... as in the AC kicks on too much pulling the humidty out of the room and u end up w 85 degress and 60 humity. this will probable cause problems if left for a few days. and keep in mind the high temp VPD is a photosythesis thing.... theres plent of times durring the grow when were not nessesarily trying to maximise photosythis. at some points its about medicianl production and those things might contrast.

also should add if ur going to be pushing an environment like that i would look into a sulphur burner. when ur on the knifes edge u may contract disease that wont show up untill temps start lowering durring the last few weeks of flower. the burner would also would be helpfull if keeping genetics for a long time....

i proabable went over some stuff u already wrote i just started typing.. sorry

can i ask what ur plan for air conditiong...

portable are just brutal on electricty.... i mean brutallllll.
minisplit is nojt feasable for u i dont think
window acs are great.. but in an area like u have speced im not sure if the exhaust would make the area surrounding the tent too hot. iv put window ACs into tents w tight surroundsing like urs and the exhaust would make the outer room so hot that the AC couldnt finght it enough to lower the room.

JonCreighton said:

some things to think about...

if ur adding co2 to the flower tent i dont think u want to exhaust anything. it would have to be a closed system durring the day unless u want to buying more co2 every other day... it goes fast enough already. but operating in a tight space w what could be a big canopy iv found you need to exhaust at night. ull end the day at 1600 co2... over 2000 is toxic for plants... so as they release co2 at night u will need to exhaust that once u have a certain amount of biomass or it will quickly exceed 2,000.. iv had people tell me this is irrelevent. based on my anecdotal experience it needs to be done.

closing a system is difficult. u will need a good dehu and an air conditioer... that being the case i dont messa round w the co2 for propogation, mothers, or even veg. u really dont need co2 untill they hit the veg stage and it seems like ur area is so small u wont be able to get over the amount of light nessesary to really have the co2 make any difference that early in the grow.

VPD is a good guide. those 85f and 70 hum are for co2 supplimentation as the absortion rate of the co2 increases as the temp increaes. so people are pushing temps as high as possible. iv went 86 and 70 and ur really on a knifes edge for a small amount of absorption. u are much safer being loser to 80. and most of the time when u want to be at 70 humidty (early grow) theres not enough biomass in the room to put off 70 humnidty and maintain temp... as in the AC kicks on too much pulling the humidty out of the room and u end up w 85 degress and 60 humity. this will probable cause problems if left for a few days. and keep in mind the high temp VPD is a photosythesis thing.... theres plent of times durring the grow when were not nessesarily trying to maximise photosythis. at some points its about medicianl production and those things might contrast.

also should add if ur going to be pushing an environment like that i would look into a sulphur burner. when ur on the knifes edge u may contract disease that wont show up untill temps start lowering durring the last few weeks of flower. the burner would also would be helpfull if keeping genetics for a long time....

i proabable went over some stuff u already wrote i just started typing.. sorry

can i ask what ur plan for air conditiong...

portable are just brutal on electricty.... i mean brutallllll.
minisplit is nojt feasable for u i dont think
window acs are great.. but in an area like u have speced im not sure if the exhaust would make the area surrounding the tent too hot. iv put window ACs into tents w tight surroundsing like urs and the exhaust would make the outer room so hot that the AC couldnt finght it enough to lower the room.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. Yes, it really is too small a space for a perfect set-up so it's just a matter of compromising some things. Eventually high end LED lights will help keep temps down so exhaust won't be such an issue, but for now it is what it is. For CO2, I just hung one of the CO2 bags since I was exhausting for temp control and it seemed to work with my setup and the temps/humidity ranges in my environment, but this is all very specific and I wouldn't necessarily recommend this set up to anyone else. I wasn't really supplementing CO2 to attain higher than normal levels, but rather supplementing incase levels dropped below normal levels due to irregular venting schedules.

For the summer months moving forward, I'll just have a vented set-up again since my basement is pretty consistently 55-60% humidity and 70 degrees. My vegging plants will be transpiring slightly more than their ideal zone, but I'll drop nute ratios a bit and slighly increase my watering interval which will hopefully accommodate for this.

I'd like to put in some smart controls or something that could graphically show how often certain equipment was turning on/off to better create a system, but there again--tech hasn't caught up yet (or at least my wallet hasn't caught up to current tech).

I'd love to use a sulfur burner, but don't for a number of reasons. The main one being I spray Neem 1x monthly and other oil-based IPM products (like Plant Therapy) every other week and the last time I used sulfur in conjunction with oil it was like napalm...I lost 3 plants. I stick with 1-2x weekly sprayings of MarroneBio Venerage/Regalia/Grandevo (alternating weekly), Dr. Zymes, and Plant Therapy weekly with Neem and a Fatty-Acid/Pyrethrin or wipe-out (Mothers ONLY) monthly (which I'll change to Suffoil-X or something when current inventory runs out). It's worked great so far. I sterilize cuttings with peroxide or a fungicide/miticide wash at time of cutting and after rooting and transplant include them in the IPM rotation above.

As for my air conditioning plan...long-term I'm hoping LED curve a lot of the need for A/C, but ironically need A/C more in the winter since the basement becomes the warmest part of the house with all the old ducting leaks. I hope to apply mastic to ducting this Spring.

I appreciate your time! I will try to drop temps a bit and you're right about VPD...providing the plant a perfect environment isn't always conducive to attaining the best medicine since stress produces the best responses. Are there certain times you would recommend following VPD ranges and certain times you'd recommend not? I always figured the last half of flower some mild stress to the plant is beneficial so dropping VPD (temps, humidity) helps.