Indoor tent in the attic

First off, I know how many people are going to post about how i can build my own and save money. Please save those posts for someone else.
I plan on buying the tomato tent from Sunshine Solutions. It comes with everything needed for the whole op except water and seeds, which i have. I have grown before but never hydro. My main concern, considering i live in Texas is that the attic will soon be in the 100's very quickly. Now, assuming that my tent will be 5-15 degrees hotter than room temp, is there anyway i can pull of a tent grow in my attic?
Is it possible to use an A/C duct from my house for air intake to keep the tent temp around 70 degrees?

Matt an attic grow in TX during the summer is going to be a tough go. Even if you can tap into the house A/C it's going to run off of the thermostat. If you take too much air your living space will suffer. Unless you use T5's I would expect the temps to go up mote than 5-10 deg, so it's in the higher end of your range. Good luck if you go for it.

I agree that it will be tough. I will be using a 400W metal halide light, which with the cooling system from what i understand, really won't emit much heat and are room temperature to the touch. Do you think the T5's would really make a difference? I still think i can pull off a 60 day grow if I start now seeing as how the scorching heat wont start until late June. I will be happy with that, and hopefully can move it downstairs or somewhere cooler during the July and August months.

be way to hot in the attic maybe with its own air conditioning and if the attic is really insulated well keeping heat out my box in my garage hit 84 the other day here in cali off cfl's and were only in april i heard indoor plants stop growing at 84 from a good friend

Good to know. This is something that i greatly want to do, but i can't grow in my house and im not seeing any options opening up . Not sure what to do. However, i do have a shipment of thc bomb seeds coming in that i would like to plant in the forest behind my house. Only problem is its 150 miles away and i dont trust my brother to take care of it like i could.

do what i do and run your lights at night when its cooler

I grow in a tent that's in an attic, I insulate my tent walls with blankets. I grow with vertically hanging bulbs, it allows all the heat it generates to rise to the top of the tent and you would just extract out the hot air with a strong fan. It also allows me to grow around the bulb fitting more plants and I have more light penetration. I think I understand you have an air cooled hood? If not that is a must.

Some growers use "swamp cooler" to cool the grow.

Are you in a low or high humidity area of Texas? If in a low humidity area you could buy or build a small swamp cooler to run all the time and with the a/c coming on likely fairly often you MIGHT be able to pull it off ... maybe .. but if in a high humidity area a swamp cooler is not of much if any use.

The only other chance I can think of right now would be if you ran an a/c duct to your tent that had a fan in it so it would continually draw cool air from your home up into your tent even when your a/c wasn't running. That would make your a/c run more often, but if you want to grow and can only grow in your attic one or possibly both options combined might be your only chance .. that and having daytime be your plants night so your light would be running at night when the attic would naturally be cooler and off during the day when it would naturally be hotter. Without the light on it would take a little less cooling to keep temperatures in a proper range.

Possibly a portable a/c unit might work ... maybe.

But I still think it would be a long-shot whichever option or options you went with.

I appreciate all of the input. My gut tells me to give it a try, thus i must. What do you think about building an artificial room around the tent so that the room is A/C'd?

Matt Z said:

I appreciate all of the input. My gut tells me to give it a try, thus i must. What do you think about building an artificial room around the tent so that the room is A/C'd?

Click to expand...

If you heavily insulated it .. and I do mean heavily.

Would this be of any help? never had any dealings with one btw jus saw it on another thread


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I would definitely advise against this. I am new to hydro growing as well, I originally had my grow tent in the attic and I live in the southeast. It's early april and attic temps would be 15-20 degrees above living ambient temperature and about ten degrees above outside temp. They are heat traps, that only need sun to significantly rise in temperature, quickly. My reservoir(14gal) temp was constantly too high or just right and my ambient temp in my grow tent was 80 plus on average. It's a total pain in the ass and the work/money it takes to control that environment most often out weighs the benefits, at least in my case. I now have my grow tent 3X3X6 in a large closet with 400 watts of light hooked to a cool tube with a 500 cfm fan exhausting into the attic and you wouldn't believe the control it provides in maintaining optimum temperatures both reservoir and ambient. I would grow in the attic if I could provide either a completely sealed temp controlled/environment or..... well that's about the only way.

Regards

I forgot to mention the same temp extremes apply in cold weather as well. I also forgot to mention I tried reversing my day light period, having dawn in the late evening and sunset early morning... didn't work. And it's not like it never worked but consistency is what you want and that's exactly what it lacked. Hydro is hard in those kinds of conditions as a particular Oomycota member would love to live in your soup.... and that's on top of plant stress. If you do it, which you most definitely can, plan it out very well with your budget in mind.

Regards