Help me ventilate! W/ Pics

[Walter Mozart]

Hey everyone this is my first post on 420Magazine and I'm hoping some of the most experienced members can lend me some ventilation advice.

This is my first grow. I'ts a few plants Deep Water Culture and a few plants organic soil. Jock Horror and bagseed (commercial indica stuff). Closet grow, 6' wide x ~1.5' deep x 8 feet in height. I've got a 400w MH warm deluxe, a 400w hps full spectrum, and 10x 26w cfl's.

Ventilation has been a disaster from the get go, I've put holes in all six sides of the closet trying to find a place to vent heat to. I ended up using a duct booster fan and venting heat back into the room and a register grille for stealthy-ness.

This 6" duct booster fan moves 160 cfm and the closet is 72 cf. I'm only running the 400W mh in the room. (Base up burn without reflector) Current temp in the grow room is 88.9 F, current temp in the bed room is 77.2 F.

This ventilation seems very poor to me. The question is how to improve this as cheaply as possible. Also this duct seems to roar or howl. The fan itself wasn't so bad when run alone. Is there a way to significantly reduce some noise. (Possibly removing that 90degree elbow?)

 

[tricome]

You want your exhaust vent to be up high, because heat rises. You also need an intake down low to let cooler air in to replace the outgoing hot air. I recommend venting the exhaust through the ceiling into the attic and putting an intake vent low to take in cooler air from the bedroom. Maybe even duct an a/c vent into the grow room. I had to do this to keep temps down.
Good luck!

 

[DroJo]

do what blubullett said.

 

[Dragonchaser]

Yeah, what he said.

 

[akaman]

yeah, what they said. seriously tho i believe tricome knows his stuff so listen up cause he has answered some of my questions. good luck

 

[OldMedUser]

You want your exhaust vent to be up high, because heat rises. You also need an intake down low to let cooler air in to replace the outgoing hot air. I recommend venting the exhaust through the ceiling into the attic and putting an intake vent low to take in cooler air from the bedroom. Maybe even duct an a/c vent into the grow room. I had to do this to keep temps down.
Good luck!

Venting to the attic is a good idea if you live in Florida but I'll tell you a little tale about what happens when you do that in the Great White North.

About eight years ago we bought an old mobile home in a neighbourhood of like units. Not a trailer park but close enough. It had a nice 18x24' heated insulated garage so I proceeded to build myself a 5x12' grow room

inside. Had to be stealth as the homes are very close together. Put a 6" hole in the ceiling with a Living Air ozone generator hooked up to do the venting and odor control. Worked like a hot-damn and you couldn't smell nothing outside.

Ran all winter without a problem, then spring came. I walked into the garage one warm morning and it was freakin' raining in there. I climbed up to look in the attic and it was a winter wonderland up there. All that water I'd been feeding my girls had condensed and froze and now was coming back to haunt me. We average -20C for five months up here with dips to -40C which is the same as -40F which is freakin' cold on any scale!

I rigged the furnace to blow air only, put another 6" hole in the ceiling to vent the attic and spent three days up there chipping out as much ice as I could.

New exhaust went through the floor. :0)

Our new place is on an acreage, grow in basement and only vented at night.

 

[Nerdly1]

Should he filter the air coming off his Home AC unit for airborne stuff?

 

[exAkT]

hypothetically the A/C already filters the air. but most people buy the cheap filters, if they even change them at all.

A decent filter that lasts 3 months is only 5 bucks. A great filter that lasts 3 months is less than 20. A cheap one?.....1 or 2 bucks