My first grow - Could use advice about air flow

[Tardigrade89]

Hello everyone, this is my first thread on this forum.

I recently aquired some Blueberry chessecake seeds (At least that was what I was told from my friend) and have decided to set up a small grow closet with three plants.

This is my growroom. The space is 0.56 cubic meters (19.9 cubic feet) and as in the image contain a power socket at the base. Water might be a big problem considering the placement of the socket but I intend to build some kind of protection around it to keep any water away.

The bar in the image has been used for cloth hangers until now, and this is where I will hang my lamps. The walls will be covered in Mylar, and my hygrometer will be placed on the back wall.

Now to the interesting part. At the base of the closet I will drill a hole where air can flow into the closet. Above the closet is a smaller cabinet near the roof where I will run the exhaust through and along the roof of the room through an 160mm airduct tube that will end out the window and be disguised as a heat pump.

In order to lead the air all the way out of the room the duct will have to be 5.5 meter in length. The fans I intend to use are 140mm PC fans with a CFM of 60. The RPM of the fan is listed at 900. I plan on putting one fan in each end of the air duct to suck air through it.

Now, I dont know much about airflow, but I imagine that as the length of the airduct increases, the fan will be less effective at moving air through, is this correct? If so, how do I know if my fans will be good enough for the job?

The reason why I picked PC fans to do the job is that they will mount perfectly at both ends of the air duct, and because I am on a (very)tight budget and can get the fans for free.

In my mind this should work well enough to grow three plants, but as I hate doing things less than optimal I thought I would ask before I do anything

 

[brightlight]

Re: My first grow. Could use advice about air flow.

A good general rule is to replace the grow space air with fresh air every 2 minutes.

 

[CO Finest]

Re: My first grow. Could use advice about air flow.

I would say make sure before you are ready to put plants in I would run a test with lights on (for more then a hour) and everything on to do temp and humidity checks. It is a lot better to trouble shoot without plants already in the mix

 

[CO Finest]

Re: My first grow. Could use advice about air flow.

Do the test without fans on get the numbers then turn fans on to see what temps you are really going to be dealing with. You may get by for now in veg and give you time to get bigger fans by flower time. Just remember the smells when going into flower.

 

[Tardigrade89]

Re: My first grow. Could use advice about air flow.

Doing a test drive of the closet is not a bad idea, thanks. Installed a new power socket today, glad that electricity education finally paid off, haha. To solve the problem with the socket at ground level I basically just put a big plastic tray in there meant for seedlings. It covers almost the entire floor space and is about 10 cm tall. Should stop water from leaking out onto the socket, although I still need to shield it in case water should somehow form on the leaves from condensation (not likely) and drip down.

Will include more pictures as soon as I get the Mylar installed, although come to think about it I might just make a grow log thread instead.

 

[Tardigrade89]

Finally got around to installing ventilation in my grow room, and I have run into the next problem. Figured I would just use the same thread, as I already have a picture here of the cabinet before I did anything.

My biggest problem as of right now is that my cabinet leak light. I dont know how big of a problem this is, but I would like it to be really tight once I induce flowering to prevent any light from entering the grow and potentially disrupt the formation of buds.

As you can see, the light is leaking through the ventilation. This is the least worrysome issue however as I consider just putting a black sheet of clothing around the pipe as it run along the wall up to the roof. No light leak through the pipe at near the roof.

The second image is the thing I want to solve. This was taken during night, and I have massive leaks all the way along the door. The closet is old, which is why the door do not fit very well, and it only lock by using magnets near the handle. I dont know much about construction, but maybe I can get some black rubber seals that I can glue along the inner side of the door?

And last, a few shots of how I solved the power socket problem using half of a PVC pipe screwed into the wall, as well as a shot of the completed closet. Maybe you guys see improvements that I dont. The plants I grow right now are just bag seeds meant for testing purposes, but they are starting to look very good, although small and bushy that I think has to do with the light (70% 630-660nm red light and only 20% blue)

 

[armoire grow]

Have you thought about getting some door strips that they sell at home depot.

 

[Tardigrade89]

Good idea. We dont have home depot here (Norway). But we do have other kinds of hardware and carpenting stores, I might be able to find something there.

 

[armoire grow]

hey btw, how are those led bulbs working for you. I might get me a few.

 

[Tardigrade89]

I dont really have anything to compare then with, but so far they seem to work quite well. The two smaller spots are some cheap stuff I got from China (epistar diodes though), but the UFO is something I paid good money for, and I successfully grew some chilipepper under it this winter.

Its a 135W UFO, but the effective power usage is 90W (LEDs usually run lower than specified to last longer) and the color spectrum is mixed, with the following ratios:

660 nm 45%
630 nm 24%
460 nm 20%
440 nm 4%
410 nm 1%
20 nm 2%
White 4%

As I said, I dont have anything to compare it to but it seems to work very well other than some penetration issues, which is why I got the two smaller bulbs that I have now placed to shine sideways into the plants.

 

[mike86182]

first time grower here. I'm looking for advice on my setup. I have a 5x5 tent, 600w cool tube, 6 inch inline and filter combo. the fan/filter is 440cfm. I'm thinking of buying a hydrofarm 400cfm fan for cooling the tube. Can anyone give me some advice?

 

[armoire grow]

I hear I have a 180w UFO. just thought of adding the cheap led lights bulbs, replacing some of my cfl.

Mike- wish that I can help you, but I'm not very knowledgeable but I would exceed the fan to be greater than the filter.