Need Ventilation Advice Badly -- w/ PICS

I am in need of some ventilation advice to say the least. Here is as much detail as I can think off about the setup.

600w HPS

The room is under a set of stairs, the grow area is roughly 41" x 41" x 50" tall. There is additional room but it will not be used for growing, as the stairs slope down.

This is the non growing area.



The vent that you see in the lower right corner is an intake. There is a 6" suncourt fan in the room pushing air in. From the booster there is 6' feet of the slinky like duct stretched pretty well to another 6" suncourt booster fan.



The booster runs right into the main AC duct. In the winter I will add another 3' and pull the air from the floor of the garage.

The exhaust is much the same. It starts at an enclosed reflector one side is open while the other side has a 6" suncourt booster. From the booster I have about 4' of slinky duct to another 6" suncourt booster. From this booster it runs straight down, pulled very tight to the ceiling of the garage.



Note the light here is lowered ALOT.



The flash and the angle makes it look like air would struggle to get through but looking up at it there is plenty of space. I hope.


My temps are as follows;

During the day when the AC kicks in and the stat directly below the HID reads around 85. The stat outside of the light area reads around 78-80.

During the night without the air on the stat below the light can get in the upper 90's. Outside of the light area is about 85.


My plans are to eliminate need for the AC to be running by hopefully circulating the air better or upgrading to a can-fan inline for exhaust.

I think hte first thing I am going to try today is putting a fan in the room to distrubute the air evenly.

I am looking for any suggestions from experience anyone might have.

Most of the pictures above are old, I have panels to cover alot of areas where air was escaping. I have have also used a little liquid nails to seal spots where air and light were escaping.

Here is a shot of the doorway into the room.




Thanks,

SuM

u crawl through that little hole?! that would creep me out haha

Mr Bud said:

u crawl through that little hole?! that would creep me out haha

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You have to work with what you are given. Its roughly 2' x 2', with the door on it looks TINY because of the illusion the trim gives you. I am planning a build journal once I get the seeds in the ground.

The wife was a little freaked 2 Saturday's ago when I cut the whole Its 6 feet back in a closet and than a right into the grow room. Once I get going there will be only a few times I need to actually crawl in. The plants will be accessible by leaning in on my BELLY.

Any ideas here ? So far I got the door is small which doesnt help any..

Sum

I suspect the reason you've got so few comments is because people are as confused as I am - you seem to have fans and ducts going all over the place.

Nowhere do you even mention the CFM of your fans.

Are you using the the fans for air cooling the hood as well as extracting air out of the area? Having an active intake in that area is pointless to be honest - a passive would work just as effectively.

What are you doing about odour control?

Am I right in thinking you have two separate circuits here? One to cool the hood and one to cool the area?

Sorry if my descriptions are bad, let me try again;

Intake;

Starts - AC UNIT -to- 6" booster -to- 6 feet of slinky duct -to- 6" inline booster -to- floor of the grow room.

Exhaust - Starts sealed reflector (ONE side is open see pics above) -to- 6" inline booster -to- 4 feet of slinky duct -to- 6" inline booster -to- 2 feet of slinky duct -to- ceiling of the garage.

No odor control yet but it will come in due time.

The fans claim to be around 160 CFM free air but its likely around 80.

If using a circuit as an analogy I would say its ONE circuit broken in the middle. Does that make sense ?

Today I added a small stand alone 12" fan to the room. The room feels like 75-80 however the stat is telling me 86.

Will the HID shinning directly on the stat give me an inaccurate reading ? I was trying to get this answer in another thread..

SuMsHaDy said:

If using a circuit as an analogy I would say its ONE circuit broken in the middle. Does that make sense ?

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It does make a lot more sense - but it all depends entirely on how effective those boosters are in pushing the air along the system. The further air has to travel - the more pressure you need to move it. The longer the ducting and the more turns and curves in it the more air resistance there will be and the harder it'll be to move the air.

Can you explain what those boosters are and what they're doing?

I'm kinda thinking it might be better to have the air in the garage cooled by the a/c, with two intakes coming from the garage - one going into the room itself and one going into the hood - both exhausting out into the same place, powered by two fans.

babygro said:

Can you explain what those boosters are and what they're doing?

The boosters are these High Tech Garden Supply

As I explained above there are 2 blowing air into the room. Broken Circuit. Two blowing air into the garage from reflector.


I'm kinda thinking it might be better to have the air in the garage cooled by the a/c, with two intakes coming from the garage - one going into the room itself and one going into the hood - both exhausting out into the same place, powered by two fans.

I dont think I could go this route, the idea of cooling the garage with AC is scarey. In the summer its in the upper 90's despite being mostly finished and w/ the floor sealed. Not to mention I work on my TJ on the weekends with the door open.

The grow has to be completly stealth. The room is located in the middle of the middle floor of a townhome. We are planning on telling noone however we do have guest at the house and dont want to answer any questions.

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See above ...

SuMsHaDy said:

See above ...

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Hmm ! So they're basically just inline fans?

I knew you were going to make life hard for yourself trying to cool a 600w HID in such a small space! The setup you have is fairly complicated
and it's all down to how efficient those inline fans are in shifting the amount of air you need to move.

I'm not convinced that having them inline with each other is going to be effective enough.

The cooling of the hood is going to depend entirely on how effective the other fan is in bringing in cool air to the grow space - because you're using that air to cool your light - ideally you want cool air coming in from OUTSIDE not using the warm air from inside.

Is there any way you can have your a/c unit outside of the door to the closet? Rather than say coming in from the garage?

So its your suggestion that I should add a 2nd circuit to the mix, one running through the sealed reflector. I was thinking this but want to try and keep holes to a minimum.

The only other thing I can think of is adding a can-fan for exhaust and remove two of the boosters.

I went ahead and bought a "CAN-FAN 6 INCH HO 440 CFM INLINE FAN " and something to regulate it. I will be installing this and removing the two suncourt 6" boosters in the exhaust line.

I am convinced I am not getting enough air out of the room at this time.