Temperature fluxuations

Hey guys,

I'm battling a heat wave in So Cal right now and we dont have AC in our house. I have a very small grow cabinet that's less than 5 cubic feet and it's very hard to control the temperature.

Before you ask, unfortunately AC is not even an option for this grower. Therefore Im being forced to think of other ways to cool my poor babies down.

Im in the process of designing some sort of a copper-coil/ice-water/fan cooler but until that's up and running I've found that lightly misting refrigerator-cooled water from a spray bottle is VERY effective in quickly bringing down high temperatures.

The problem is it has to be done often and the temerature/humidity fluxuation is major. Like 10-15 degrees in a 5 minute period! This also causes humidity to change rapidly and it can go from ~35% up to ~70% and down again just about as fast as the temperature changes.

For the time being, is this okay? Are major changes in temperature and humdidty like this going to hurt my plants?

Or would it be better to spray with non-cooled water? This only brings the temps down to 85F or so, but obviously doesnt last as long. It goes back up to 90+ in about 10-15 minutes.

Or is it better to just let them sweat it out at 90-95F for the hottest parts of the day? At least it's constant, but it just seems so damn hot. I guess I better get some sort of cooling system going quick.

Thanks for your input and sorry for the long post.

Peace.

-David

Thanks cruzer, yea Im in So Cal. Was around 90 today and is looking to be that all week.

Maybe when I put together my cooling unit Ill try and work something into it that cools the pots as well.

What I was planning on doing was to have a small ice-chest with enough water in it to suberge a small aquarium pump. I would have a few frozen waterbottles that I would float in there to keep the water cool (rotating them daily from freezer to cooler). The pump would run to a couple coils of copper tubing mounted inside a run of insulated 6" ducting. This whole unit would be mounted in a bookshelf outside and to the right of my cabinet towards the bottom. (2) 6" fans would blow air through this duct and into the cabinet and the pump would continuously circulate ice-cold water through the copper coils.

So if I did that, maybe I could take it a step further and wrap some copper coils around the pots (or even re-pot and put them INSIDE the new pots) to keep the roots cool? That would be like a double-whammy...the air would be a little cooler from the duct and the roots would be cool too. What do you think?

Thanks again for your help.

-David