Combating summer heat...

Hey guys that dreaded time of year for us indoor growers is once again upon us, so i figured it would be a good time to start a thread based around the idea of combating summer time heat for indoor growers, i've got a few tips for you guys and i and I'm sure many other people would appreciate any additional input that you guys have to offer on keeping heat under control during the summer months...

Advisory: Be aware that if you are exhausting your grow cab or room to the out doors that every bit of air you pull out of your house is being replaced by hot air from leaks and ventilation in the structure...

TIPS

Use CFLs in your house hold lighting fixtures 90% of the power that incandescent bulbs use gets turned into heat cfl bulbs are much more efficient and generate much less heat so your AC has to work much less hard much less offten to cool your house.

Insulate your windows with 2 inch thick reflective foam insulation from your local home improvement store, this will keep the radiant energy from the sun out of your house and will also insulate your home from the higher ambient temperature of the out doors.

Set your flowering cycles 12 hour dark period to coincide with the hottest part of the day, that way you are not compounding your heat problems, this can also save you money on the KWH price in some areas.

Last year our power bill got to be outrageous because of our ac so for a while i have been looking into getting a large exhaust fan to cool our house as much as i can in the spring and summer months to save some money, but a few days ago the temperature got into the record breaking triple digit range in the middle of spring and it made me start to rethink my strategy, i originally came to the conclusion that cooling the house with a fan would be ineffective in extremely hot weather because i would just be moving hot air basically, but i started thinking about it more and i started thinking about c02 enrichment and i realized that by moving such large volumes of fresh air threw my house i would effectively be enriching my plants air with c02, any thoughts on this?

psilocybindude said:

Last year our power bill got to be outrageous because of our ac so for a while i have been looking into getting a large exhaust fan to cool our house as much as i can in the spring and summer months to save some money, but a few days ago the temperature got into the record breaking triple digit range in the middle of spring and it made me start to rethink my strategy, i originally came to the conclusion that cooling the house with a fan would be ineffective in extremely hot weather because i would just be moving hot air basically but i started thinking about it more and i started thinking about c02 enrichment and i realized that by moving such large volumes of of fresh air threw my house i would effectively be enriching my plants air with c02, any thoughts on this?

Click to expand...

You should try getting a more powerful AC, if the AC works less then it uses less electricity. I dunno how many lights you're using or how many BTUs your AC is, but each 1000 watter produced 3.7k BTU of heat so you want at least 4k BTU of AC per ballast/light. I just ordered myself a 12000 BTU AC on Amazon for my 420 sqft room and it should solve all of my problems. The AC will produce enough cool air to easily cool the entire room and it likely won't be on all the damn time.

kratos015 said:

You should try getting a more powerful AC, if the AC works less then it uses less electricity. I dunno how many lights you're using or how many BTUs your AC is, but each 1000 watter produced 3.7k BTU of heat so you want at least 4k BTU of AC per ballast/light. I just ordered myself a 12000 BTU AC on Amazon for my 420 sqft room and it should solve all of my problems. The AC will produce enough cool air to easily cool the entire room and it likely won't be on all the damn time.

Click to expand...

That is somewhat correct. Rule of thumb is 3.5k per vented light and up to 5k per open bulb.

Psilocybindude, I'll be following up on your idea about the reflective foam for the windows. Here's a thought for those who are willing to venture from the traditional 18-6 lighting schedule for veg and 12-12 for flowering: the 12-1 lighting system. For veg, the lighting schedule might be from 8pm to 8am to take advantage of the cooler hours of the day. Halfway between the 12 hour dark period, you program in another hour of lighting from 1:30pm - 2:30pm. Then the lights come on again at 8pm and the cycle repeats. That eliminates five hours of lighting, heat and electricity costs in your veg area. The schedule for flowering is 10 hours on, and 14 hours off. So maybe you run lights from 8pm to 6am, again to coincide with the cooler hours of the day. In the process, you've also cut another two hours of lighting. If you're running both veg and flowering lights, you have now eliminated a total of seven hours of lighting, heat and electricity costs. Proponents of the system (yes, I use it) say besides reducing electricity costs, you experience less stretch in flowering and you don't use quite as much nutes. I can't explain the rationale behind the last two points but there's a Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/347890575247222/?fref=ts on the subject, as well as a book http://www.agardenofpeace.com/

Thanks for the information on air conditioning kratos and adower, but i would really like to stay away from air conditioning as much as possible, i don't have a major grow op going on or anything like that i've got a 400 watter in a 2.5x5x7 foot closet, i have an older central air unit probably mid 80s but i believe it is still in decent working condition, i also believe it is pretty powerful and possibly over sized for our tiny house 500 square foot house, but it does seem to turn on and off a lot so does our heater in the very cold winter. A while back the condenser fan went out on our AC and we had to replace it, while i was looking into the problem i found that running the ac while the condenser fan is not running can damage the unit so i decided to test it and make sure our ac was working correctly, the way i was told to test it was to measure the temperature of the air coming from the vents and compare it to the ambient temperature of the house and that as long as the air coming from the vents is 16 degrees below the ambient temperature every thing should be working correctly, when i measured the difference the vents were putting out air that was 27-28 degrees lower than ambient so i figured it must be in proper working order.

I do have a window unit but because of the size of my grow and the way my ventilation in my grow room is set up i don't want to use it, on my first grow i was exhausting all of my hot air to the attic it was a very inconvenient set up and threw out most of my flowering period i believed i had odor problems but i couldn't check because i couldn't get into the area where my exhaust was being pumped to smell the air, i was also pumping all of my hot/cool air out of the house in 2 out of 4 seasons of the year. So when i remodeled my grow room i started exhausting into my house because i figured in the winter it would heat my house, and in the summer i was pulling hot air in from out side when i was exhausting into the attic anyways, and now i also have the added benefit of knowing when my filter starts to go bad. Anyways i fear if i used a window unit in the intake room to cool the grow room that with my exhaust sucking air threw the light and out into another room the window unit would probably never shut off.

Sorry i felt i had to explain all of that to establish some context and sorry if it didn't make much sense but yeah im pretty high lol, anyways this is why i made this thread to find innovative ways to keep the house/grow room cool in the summer months.

Pcinla said:

Psilocybindude, I'll be following up on your idea about the reflective foam for the windows. Here's a thought for those who are willing to venture from the traditional 18-6 lighting schedule for veg and 12-12 for flowering: the 12-1 lighting system. For veg, the lighting schedule might be from 8pm to 8am to take advantage of the cooler hours of the day. Halfway between the 12 hour dark period, you program in another hour of lighting from 1:30pm - 2:30pm. Then the lights come on again at 8pm and the cycle repeats. That eliminates five hours of lighting, heat and electricity costs in your veg area. The schedule for flowering is 10 hours on, and 14 hours off. So maybe you run lights from 8pm to 6am, again to coincide with the cooler hours of the day. In the process, you've also cut another two hours of lighting. If you're running both veg and flowering lights, you have now eliminated a total of seven hours of lighting, heat and electricity costs. Proponents of the system (yes, I use it) say besides reducing electricity costs, you experience less stretch in flowering and you don't use quite as much nutes. I can't explain the rationale behind the last two points but there's a Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/347890575247222/?fref=ts on the subject, as well as a book http://www.agardenofpeace.com/

Click to expand...

See this is exactly what I'm talking about, any more innovative ideas anyone? I figured this thread would have blown up by now with innovative ideas for helping us maintain decent temps in hot summer months...

Thanks for that info pcinla i believe i will be implementing it in my tiny veg cab because it gets pretty hot already and this heat is probably really gonna fuck with it...

Moving air, CO2 enrichment, insulation, air-conditioning/cooling. afaik, they're the only options on the table if you want to keep the same wattage all year round.

... I'm subterranean so avoid heat issues.

Gas Lamp lighting schedule uses less power..less nutes...less time for lights on....also reduces yield significantly...this is why you use less nutes because your plants grow slower.

I still havent seen proof that this method works all that well and would be reticent to try this with any poly hybrids as the risk of hwrmaphrodism from this light schedule is definitely greater...no where in nature does the sun come back up for an hour every night.

There is a reason indoor growers use 12/12 for flower and its not because growers in the cannabis field are afraid to try new things...it is because 12/12 works to induce budding (on almost all cannabis) and gives us the most light hours and thus a greater yield.



Anyway, im like moe i grow in a cement basement thats sunk into the earth on three sides so i dont have much trouble with heat.

I think your idea to supplement co2 is the best one...ive used co2 and it is amazing the improvement in growth that it supplies. Also you wont need to worry about nearly as much AC as the room i used it in routinely hit 92 and the plants loved it.

Potassium Silicate is good to use when plants are challenged by high or low temps, drought, disease, or excessive stress or neglect are expected. It helps most notably in the production of thick woody stems capable of supporting large yeilds. It is versatile, inexpensive, organic, and effective. Protect your girls.

Led's would give off less heat, and lower power consumption too. I used a tabletop dehumidifier filled with ice last weekend to cool my 3x3x5 closet and it dropped it by 10 degrees, Ice is cheap and the fan helps move the air, removed the room fan so I'm using the sae amount of power, Try using a cooler filled with frozen milk jugs, make a hole and attach the fan, make a small hole for the cold to escape, see how that works.