My New Room, A Few Questions.

I finished my new room a few weeks ago, its 21'x13' total 11'x13' for flower room, rest is for veg, 7' ceilings. Its a sealed room, I built the walls, put up 6mm vapor barrier plastic on all walls and ceiling, put 1/4 plywood on all walls and ceilings plus I painted all walls and ceilings with kilz, then put up some 1/4" foam with silver foil on all the walls and ceilings. Caulked and spray foamed as another layer of protection for smell and leakage, room seems sealed pretty well, this was a priority of mine.

Carbon filters mounted on the ceiling in each room for smell (so far no smell in house and outside door to grow room with 36 8" plants) you can smell the plants in the grow itself though.

I have a 12k btu ac unit in the flower room, its a portable with intake and exhaust hoses going outside, ky32-as air conditioner recommended by my local grow room (was told it did not vent air in the room outside and pull outside air in, that it was a closed system). have a 65 pint dehumidifier as well.

I am using co2 with atlas 1 controller on a 20lb tank with regulator, set at 1400ppm.

I have 6 adjust-a-wing 600's in flower and 2 600's adjust-a-wing in veg running with 4 lumatek dual 600 ballasts. A 4' T5 fixture on mother located in veg room.


I have air being circulated from veg and flower room by two 6" fans located in the wall between the two rooms, configured so no light will go into flower room.


I have 6 wall mounted fans for air flow, 4 in flower and 2 in veg room.

Ok, couple questions. with just the 2 600's in veg room going I don't need to run the ac, temp is 82 with thermometer sitting on the pots under the lights. temp in room is 70ish if I move the thermometer from under the lights (lights are currently 21" away from top of plants. For the past week I have had half my plants under the two 600's in veg room and 2 600's running in flower room (19 hour on cycle in each room) and have had ac running, with temps still only at 82 with thermometer on top of pots under the lights.

To test temps with everything running I turned on all my lights, ac on high, dehumidifier running.. the room temperature not under the lights gets to 80, but putting the thermometer on the pots under the lights in flower room it gets to 91 degrees.. I am concerned this is to warm, even though in the rooms itself its only 80-81 not under the lights. stays at 82-84 under the 2 600's in veg room. Is this a problem? do I need another ac unit?

Another questions I have that makes me think the ac unit is not a 'sealed' unit like I was told, is once I started using the ac my last 20lb tank of co2 lasted only 3 days before empty, the first 20lb tank I ran without ac running lasted 6-7 days. Thoughts? Its a ky32/as portable air conditioner.


Thanks for any input/suggestions you can offer me.

With co2 your safe at 86 so I would say add a fan or 2 to move the heat from under the lights. And for the co2 as plants get bigger they use more. That size room might use 3 20lb a week.

DAMN this is a really nice setup i wish i had the extra space to do this good job man.

i dnt have any answers to ur Qs not really my area but i do think 91 is a lil to high..

Great setup man,have you thought about using cool tubes?would definately bring temps down under lights.I am having same problems with a simillar but smaller setup , too much heat and was thinking of venting some hot air outside , but my big problem is its 45 C (113 F) outside and to vent air out I would need to suck back in outside air ,which is hotter......Good luck though to you.

Warlock1369 said:

With co2 your safe at 86 so I would say add a fan or 2 to move the heat from under the lights. And for the co2 as plants get bigger they use more. That size room might use 3 20lb a week.

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I'll try to move/add some wall fans and see if that helps move the hot air from under the lights better and see how the temps are then. thanks

I think you definitely need more ac. My rooms are in my garage and very similar to yours. I use 3600W in flower and my 17k btu wall unit barely keeps up in summer. That's with air cooled lights. Rule of thumb: 4000 btu cooling power per 1000W of lights. I think that generally applies to air cooled lights which really puts you at a disadvantage.
I don't have any experience with portable ac's so I can't say about CO2 consumption. I mounted 17k btu units in the walls. They have a two chamber box built around them. One chamber supplies fresh intake air and the other is attached to a 6in vortex drawing exhaust into the attic. It's not too late for you to consider something like this. Much more efficient and they don't remove any CO2 from the rooms.
Hope this helps,
Fred

Try cool tubes first , much cheaper, fans won't do anything but push hot air around, more ac would be my second choice

eather air cool your lights or get more BTU's of AC......problem solved....

shankae said:

Try cool tubes first , much cheaper, fans won't do anything but push hot air around, more ac would be my second choice

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i agree to use cooltube fixtures. but the fan blowing on the lights would cool it down under the lights. in turn it will blow the hot air around the room and even the temp throughout the room. even without a cooltube and a fan blowing on the light, you can get the bulb closer to the plants. these are not my pics, but i tried this similar setup and was able to get the bulb much closer to the plants since the fan was blowing the heat away.

I moved my wall fans down the wall some, lights at 22" from top of plant, got it to go down to 87-89 at the canopy with all the lights on in the room.

Nice setup. I ran a similar setup and had similar problems. The only AC I could find that was an in room, and was really sealed, was from C.A.P. and the smallest ones were $1500. I
almost went for a split AC but they start around $900.
So my solution was, instead of buying another AC, to put the AC in the room that the intake for the flower room is. I put the lights in hoods(wished I'd gotten cool tubes & still might, hoods weren't sealed worth a crap) and run that tube with it's own fan. I'd recommend 8" or larger. Then I have 2 more 8" fans, one on intake and another with carbon filter for exhaust, hooked up to a controller that comes on when temps hit 86. Fans take the temps down to 83, shut off and Co2 kicks on. My room is 12'x15' and I use 1 small propane tank every 3-4 weeks.
This works great in the winter, but might not work so well in the summer. I plan to cut out the Co2 next summer for 2 months to save on cooling costs. Also, if hooked up right, you can heat your house with the light exhaust and save a bunch. Indoor growing in the winter kicks ass!

CaptainCAVEMAN said:

Nice setup. I ran a similar setup and had similar problems. The only AC I could find that was an in room, and was really sealed, was from C.A.P. and the smallest ones were $1500. I
almost went for a split AC but they start around $900.
So my solution was, instead of buying another AC, to put the AC in the room that the intake for the flower room is. I put the lights in hoods(wished I'd gotten cool tubes & still might, hoods weren't sealed worth a crap) and run that tube with it's own fan. I'd recommend 8" or larger. Then I have 2 more 8" fans, one on intake and another with carbon filter for exhaust, hooked up to a controller that comes on when temps hit 86. Fans take the temps down to 83, shut off and Co2 kicks on. My room is 12'x15' and I use 1 small propane tank every 3-4 weeks.
This works great in the winter, but might not work so well in the summer. I plan to cut out the Co2 next summer for 2 months to save on cooling costs. Also, if hooked up right, you can heat your house with the light exhaust and save a bunch. Indoor growing in the winter kicks ass!

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I will look into the C.A.P. ac units. looks like I will need a 24k unit for during the summer.. the unit I have now has got to go.. like this week... I can't have it venting that smelly air outside, not to mention its going through a 20lb tank in 2.5 days of co2. I looked at a few split units like you mentioned but having to install part of it outside during the winter might not be an option. As of now I am not going to replace all my light fixture, just spent 800 on the 8 adjust-a-wings, I think the adjust-a-wings will be fine if I get enough ac in the room.

thanks for your input.

*After looking at the split units looks like that is the way to go, looks relatively easy to install and about 1400 or so dollars for a 24k unit from ac world.

CAP is a name product. Most of it is shit. Returns are hard to do. Don't belive me ask your store about R&M. Good ideas Shity manufacturing.

Warlock1369 said:

CAP is a name product. Most of it is shit. Returns are hard to do. Don't belive me ask your store about R&M. Good ideas Shity manufacturing.

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I was looking at this mini split, these work well? they do not exchange air at all correct?

http://www.ac-world.com/proddetail.php?prod=AX24&cat=DUCTLESS SYSTEMS


thanks

No idea on that item. But I know someone eles is asking about split a/c and the is what the thread is called. Split A/C. I'm just worning about cap products. I've returned almost everything within a year. And if you use tape to hold something up and it damages the foil tape that won't take it back even 2 weeks later. I hate them and will never get from them agine. And my store dosnt want to deal with them ether but people aak for there product so yes he will sell it. Hell I Stil have 4 fans there needing a return with broken parts and R&M won't take them back. 6 weeks old. Just read up on what you buy. Don't buy the name.

Bought a ramsond 24k mini split, arrived today, installed today, it works beautifully.

might want to use the co2 at night cycle with the exhaust fans turned off for an hour or 2. Otherwise, your just wasting the co2.

Weedasaurus said:

might want to use the co2 at night cycle with the exhaust fans turned off for an hour or 2. Otherwise, your just wasting the co2.

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Plants don't take in Co2 at night so that would be a waste. And RH gose up at night so fans are needed then too.

Thanks for taking the time to post. This will be another awesome thread!!! I'm drawing up plans and I'm glad I came here first.