Long time grower....first time tent user???

Hello fellow normal human beings.....unfortunately I went from a whole bedroom with 2 1000 watt HPS'S to a 3x3x51/2 grow tent with a 2 foot 8 bulb T5HO, I must say as a longtime grower I've never personally use fluorescence to grow before but so far they are impressing me. I also have a 150 watt HPS that I will add shortly....I know I know should a used 400 but my only problem is I can't ventilate properly...it has to go back in the room the grow tent is in but I can cracked windows for fresh air when needed. I have a 6 inch fan and filter that WILL NOT FIT IN MY TENT. So my question is...I have my fan sitting on top my tent in the exhast part of the tent it works fine, but can I run a piece of duct from that fan to the filter???? I know the best way us to draw through but I cant....Sorry this was so long and fucked up....I'm stoned....Thanks

I didn't understand the fan part. You can put the fan outside the tent and pull air from the tent (the filter inside, whatever). The fan doesn't have to be inside the tent with the filter.

Did I get it right?

I have the intake side of my fan sitting on top of my tent where the exhaust hole is so it sit down in that 6 inch hole on top of my tent inside the room so it drawing from the room I have negative pressure and everything

And I only have my speed controller on the lowest setting if I even turn it up the medium it sucks that tent in a lot further so I'm getting good draw

ductwork dosent help? i guess i dont understand either

The answer is just yes.. It's fine to do that

Lol....thanks man..... I really couldn't explain it any other way. I'm basically doing it just because if I don't have something growing the world seems tilted off its axis I've never grown autoflowers neither but I have a Humboldt seed organisation UK cheese Auto and a Robert Bergman ilgm marijuana Super Skunk Auto. These things are only 15 days old and they have my room thinking like roadkill skunk already

That UK cheese on the left is spitting out sets of 9 already. Most aggressively growing plant I've ever seen if you couldn't see the bucket you would swear it was in hydroponic as long as the but turns out decent I wouldn't see any other reason to grow any other kind of auto flower

I vent a 600w into the same room.all you needs a strong fan n youre grand

I had fan filter problems for the longest. Exhausting back into the room will always defeat your purpose and leave a faint smell. I think the filters knock out about 95% of smell. But if you continue to exhaust that remaining 5% into the room, the odor builds over time. You may not smell it, but otherrs are like "what is that?" My filter is barely crammed in my small tent. 4" fan, into a little section of duct, then into filter, and ducted out of tent. Lights are Led so no need to vent/cool them. Speed controller doesnt really kill noise noticelably. Thinking of adding a duct silencer but no room inside.

Smokenpassout said:

Speed controller doesnt really kill noise noticelably. Thinking of adding a duct silencer but no room inside.

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The $20 (US) dimmer-like speed controllers create a buzz because they chop the AC sine wave. It's like 60 on/off pulses per second. The more "off" the chop becomes (slower) the more audibly noticeable it is.

Spend $65 on a 3amp variac and you'll hear an amazing difference. When I turn my 6" ActiveAir fan down to a very slow speed (enough to replace the air every 5 minutes, about 30cfm), I hear nothing.

az2000 said:

The $20 (US) dimmer-like speed controllers create a buzz because they chop the AC sine wave. It's like 60 on/off pulses per second. The more "off" the chop becomes (slower) the more audibly noticeable it is.

Spend $65 on a 3amp variac and you'll hear an amazing difference. When I turn my 6" ActiveAir fan down to a very slow speed (enough to replace the air every 5 minutes, about 30cfm), I hear nothing.

Click to expand...

Luckily I really dont get the dreaded buzz at all when I turn the speed on the controller down. However it is a $20 cheapo speed controller....and the problem I have is when I turn it down to low, there isn't a huge decibal drop in sound. I may as well have the switch set to full on! My fan is a 4" htg, with a 200 cfm phresh filter. Do you think three times the investment in a speed control will get me the stealth I desire?

Just a heads up...

... of a potential problem that you might run into with your set up.

My very first grow I set up a tent much like your plan. Filter inside the tent connected to ducting that ran outside of the tent to a fan. I couldn't exhaust outside through a window so I just exhausted outside of the bedroom. I had decent neg pressure, which I relied on to draw fresh air (from a window cracked open in the bedroom) into the tent. Everything was fine, but once the plants started getting bigger I noticed some necrosis on the leaves. So I hit the forums looking for an answer to it, since it started to get bad.

Everybody diagnosed lock-out due to salt build up, causing nute deficiencies. I flushed and flushed and dropped the nutes down because some said it was just nute burn. Nothing worked and I ran myself around in circles trying to do something as my plants slowly ate themselves to death.

What the problem was... quite simply... was that the exhaust from the tent (even though it was going to another room) was just being circulated back into the grow tent by neg pressure and I was choking out my plants. They weren't getting the co2 they needed, not even with the cracked window in that bedroom, and they were cannibalizing themselves looking for that co2. At first, I didn't believe it... just thought it was more bad information given by a well-meaning forum member. But it turned out that he was absolutely 100% right.

My second grow, I ran the extact same set up and nute regimen. The only change I made was that I used some ducting and a 4" muffin fan to draw fresh outside air into the tent.

Problem solved.

While the first grow was an absolute disaster (see the pics), the second one turned out very very well.

So... I understand you're an experienced grower and might be beyond all this, but... thought I might add my 2 cents because its something that is easily overlooked...

The pics show 30ish days, then at 60 days and the at 90 days. All of the four I had at the time did the same thing to varying degrees. Note: I did not do any defoliation or anything like that. the missing leaves just browned up died and fell off...

Smokenpassout said:

Do you think three times the investment in a speed control will get me the stealth I desire?

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It depends on how important stealth is too you. I don't understand what you're hearing (or not). It's hard for me to comprehend that you hear something loud at full speed and at low speed. I don't know if a variac would help if the sound is endemic to the fan. (Is it an inexpensive duct fan, or the heavier inline fan?).

With my Active Air 6" I hear mostly air at full speed. When I turn it down (using the variac), I hear *nothing*. If I'm near the business end of the exhaust tube, I can hear a low "exhale" sound.

I hear the LED fixture fans come on and off (with the timer) far more than I hear the exhaust fan.

I was interested in a Phresh HyperFan because it has an integrated speed control. But, I saw a demonstration video and it sounded *loud* (at the speed they said was the lowest) compared to what I'm accustomed to.

You could wrap your fan in bubble wrap, or move it outside the tent and contain it in a box lined with foam? (External would create a stealth visual challenge).

Its the cheapest 4" fan/filter combo htg carries. Retail around $120. Big orange inline fan. Nothing fancy. Id say the speed controller turned down to half speed kills the sound maybe 25 percent. Noticable, but not whisper quiet stealth.

Smokenpassout said:

Its the cheapest 4" fan/filter combo htg carries. Retail around $120. Big orange inline fan. Nothing fancy. Id say the speed controller turned down to half speed kills the sound maybe 25 percent. Noticable, but not whisper quiet stealth.

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I don't know why it would be like that. It looks like the same fan as the Active Air. I would have assumed it would have the buzz that I get with the $20 dimmer-like speed controllers, and that the $65 variac would be very quiet by comparison too.

I know there are about 4-5 different types of motors. Maybe that HTG orange one uses a different type of motor. (I wouldn't have thought that since it looks like a duplicate housing.). But, the Phresh HyperFan uses a different type of motor which allows it to be slowed using a similar dimmer-like controller. (It's proprietary to the fan. It may be something different compared to the dimmer-like devices.). My point is: the HyperFan sounded loud to me too (compared to the ActiveAir on a variac.).

So, maybe it's the fan. If it's a showstopper for you, I would get the variac and see if that works with that fan. If not, then buy an ActiveAir. Ultimately, you'd need both if the problem is the fan. You might as well get started with that journey via the variac. It might work.