Think i fixed my humidity issue but still need some advice :)

Hey growers!

Hope everyone is surviving through this pandemic!

I have had my 3x3 grow tent for a few months now. Initially i didnt have an extractor but as the plants have filled up the tent they were looking quite sickly and wilting, as well as getting spots on their leaves. I got a hygrometer and saw that the temps were like 18 degrees celcius and the humidity was 71% which is way too high for established plants and not seedlings.

So today i bought an extractor, i placed it outside of my tent with the ducting hanging down into the tent. The humidity is now sitting at around 40 to 50% which to my knowledge is ideal! Temps are now 23% in the tent

However, i have the tent in a garage with hardly any insulation in the roof and its on a concrete floor. Which i thought perhaps i should place the tent on a wood pallet. The plant always had a super high amount of condensation in the mornings but now we will see how that has changed due to the extractor.

So my questions are:

Should the end of the ducting be at the top of the tent or the bottom? I dont have a inlet fan for intake, i simply use the mesh vents for passive intake its a mars hydro tent btw and im using the Mars hydro LED aswell.

Also should i wrap the tent in blankets over the top to try warm them up? or retain heat. and could i perhaps use heating pads on the floor of the tent or maybe a heater that blows air into the intake mesh holes at the bottom of the tent? In an attempt to keep it warm in the early hours of the morning when the lights are off. My dark cycle is currently from 8pm to 2am and its winter here in Cape Town currently.

Any advice is greatly appreciated thanks homies!

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"Should the end of the ducting be at the top of the tent or the bottom? "

The exhaust ducting should be at the top of the tent, to draw out the hot air.

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No need to wrap your tent in blankets, the LED light will warm your tent if you have a temperature/humidity switch for your exhaust fant - fan comes on at 85 degrees F or when the humidity goes above 50%. You set the numbers.

With the lights off the exhaust fan will only come on if the temperature goes below you night time figures.



HT-2 Humidity Temp Controller


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Awesome thank you for the info! I went and checked the tent this morning and the condensation that use to collect on the roof and leaves has gone, but my hygrometer says the humidity is at 75% now LOL. fml. So it doesnt seem to have done anything. Im thinking the humidity in the garage outside of the tent is probably high and its just being pulled into the tent?

That or my hygrometer is seriously not reading properly lol

Vent the garage some to allow any collecting humidity out - can be a daily routine opening garage door if you struggle to vent well maybe.

A good extractor can go anywhere but air will be travelling to fast if you put it directly next to plants or pots so the roof is always best.

You cant heat a tent only the room the tents in, a tent with lights and heaters wont work if the extraction exhausts it quickly.

So i checked the relative humidity outside in my suburb on google and its 75%. So basically i will have to move the tent inside my house to improve the conditions? The inline extractor definitely helps excess moisture but relative humidity will stay what it is outside because my garage has no insulation in the roof, is on a concrete floor etc.

If moisture isnt building or condensing from the air to plants and surfaces and your planrs have good air flow through the tent then 75% humidity is good.

Thats what the outdoor plants are doing right? How is humidity a problem in the right enviroment i say.

Ok cool thanks so much for the info man, its just that the meter inside says 75% humidity, temp is 22 degrees Celsius. The theory is that for seedlings up to 70% humidity is desirable but for more grown plants below 60% is desirable and when its flowering time below 40% is desirable.

So from my understanding now, as long as its not humid in the tent and theres no condensation on the walls of the tent as well as the leaves, and the temperature doesnt get below 15 degrees celcius or 59F i should be good?

I think another issue could be the fact that i originally was growing 4 plants and then i got some seeds from a friend a good few weeks later and sowed those. So these small plants are low down in the "canopy" compared to the others so theres an abundance of moisture or lack of airflow for them. As well as being further from the LED lamp.

I bought another larger oscillating fan to create more airflow and rid the dead spots in the tent as i only have one fan currently which is not very powerful and doesn't oscillate. However since i installed the inline extractor, the small plants are not showing as much wilt as they were since yesterday already

Yes why not, already its working better. Humidity isnt a problem so much as air flow and temps which are the main ones as your seeing.

Joncoh101 said:

Ok cool thanks so much for the info man, its just that the meter inside says 75% humidity, temp is 22 degrees Celsius. The theory is that for seedlings up to 70% humidity is desirable but for more grown plants below 60% is desirable and when its flowering time below 40% is desirable.

So from my understanding now, as long as its not humid in the tent and theres no condensation on the walls of the tent as well as the leaves, and the temperature doesnt get below 15 degrees celcius or 59F i should be good?

I think another issue could be the fact that i originally was growing 4 plants and then i got some seeds from a friend a good few weeks later and sowed those. So these small plants are low down in the "canopy" compared to the others so theres an abundance of moisture or lack of airflow for them. As well as being further from the LED lamp.

I bought another larger oscillating fan to create more airflow and rid the dead spots in the tent as i only have one fan currently which is not very powerful and doesn't oscillate. However since i installed the inline extractor, the small plants are not showing as much wilt as they were since yesterday already

Click to expand...

Awesome thank you! will see how things play out the next few days

So the humidity is still super high in the garage, the plants are not looking healthy either. It would be impossible to put a dehumidifier in there as the old doors and windows let cold and humid air in.

My best option at this point would be to move the tent inside i reckon. The humidity is sitting at 55% easily in most parts of the house without excess ventilation, whereas we are approaching winter which will be super cold and have large temperature fluctuations in the garage as well as the impossible humidity conditions. The only concern now is light pollution in the house. 18/6 cycle is easy to manipulate so that the dark period is in the middle of the night. But how does one set the flowering stage of 12/12 without getting some kind of light pollution in the tent due to there being passive intake vents at the bottom that need to be open?