Cooling closet space growroom?

We are in Western US which means that summer (and the heat) will be arriving soon.

We have a good fan setup going on our plants but the last time my wife checked the thermometer the room was a little hot during the hotest part of the day.

We have 12 plants going and so our grow room space is limited. We thought about buying a stand alone fan on the outside of the growroom and angle it towards the doors (which would be closed)

I am not convinced that is the way to go....wouldn't a very small unit inside the grow space be better (any recommendations?)

(Thought I should add to this for clarification......we have some ultriquiet fans in the growspace right now that are on the plants.......a intack and a out take hole so that fresh oxigen is being pumped in and old is being forced out. But we also have 800 watts on those plants as well so that combined with the outside tempreture is the concern.

air conditioner? might be expensive.

Get a cheap old window mounted a/c unit from a yard sale... Frame one of the closet walls out for it that leads outside. Then seal it with weatherproof culk to make sure no pests get in. That should solve all your problems. If you find one with a thermostat that would be an added bounus!

What we ended up doing at present is bought a basic $49. "blizzard" fan and set it to blow air on the outside of the doors to keep hot air from going into the growspace through the front closet space doors.....

At night things appear to be ok....we are checking to see how this works during the day today......

Hi Cowart;
I'm another western grower, I have a suggestion for ya!!
Are you using a boxed grow light or open lighting? If you're using a box around your grow light you probably have exhaust holes on the sides?. We've run a couple small computer fans in the exhaust tubes and a cheap box fan about 3 feet away. It runs a constant stream of air through the box and keeps our light box cold enough to put your mouth on (wouldn't want to). As long as the room stays open to the house, it will never get too hot Saves a fortune on electricity too. Highly recommended and fairly cheap, unless you're a computer nut and have a closet full of old parts.

I'd think any small fans would work.

If you're using open lights, I guess you could put some fans up around the lights and keep the air flowing on them.

The trick is, cool the lights, the room will take care of itself. Just make it airtight. Trust me it works so SO much better and it's cheaper than buying a bunch of fans for the whole house and AC out here is friggin' expensive

Dont you guys have cool tubes over there ? cooltube

micknort said:

Dont you guys have cool tubes over there ? cooltube

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Dont cooltubes require venting the hot air out of the room? If so....how is that done growing in a closet? Are you suggesting leaving a door open and running a vent duct out the door? Otherwise you'd have to cut a hole into either the wall, door or ceiling. Which cant be done if in an apt. A home yeah....not an apartment.

Im in the same situation as the poster....considered a cooltube but havent found a way to make it work with my grow closet.

Yes you can vent out of the closet doors but the heat has to go somewhere so you need to open a window or the door to the room the closet is in.

KushMaster85 said:

Yes you can vent out of the closet doors but the heat has to go somewhere so you need to open a window or the door to the room the closet is in.

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unless the clost has two doors that wouldn't be practical for most. the problem lies in needing that door to get into the closet and keeping lights sealed from the plant during plowering. If the plants are vegging right now, could you get by with cfls at close distance? If they are flowering, would switching the light cycle till the dark hours(local time) keep your room any cooler? Just a few ideas. Hell, if you are in a rental just drill a 4" hole in the wall. I am a landlord and I have seen it done already to suport really cheasy grow ops.

Cooltubes bring down the overall temperature about 5 - 8 degrees Fahrenheit if properly exhausted out of the grow space.

A 250 - 500 CFM inline fan for $40-$100 hooked up to the hood/cooltube vented out a hole in a new door you buy at home depot (so you can replace it with the original before you move). Should vent the lights well, and then some...

Flop your lights to turn on at sunset (or later) and off at sunrise. Can you hook up an insulated duct to one of your central air ducts in the bedroom and pipe it into the bottom of your fake door to the grow room?

It may look ghetto, but will be effective.

This is what we decided to do.

- We reconfigured your setup so that we have a fan blowing on the lights to lower the room tempreture. Then we put in an extra "out" home to vent that heat. We already had a intake hole punched out as the closet is right next to the wall that is on the corner of our house. (I have a 95 pound akita guardog housed in that area...nobodies going to mess with those vents).

One other problem we are having with this setup is this is in the bedroom where we sleep....and it is getting fricken HOT in that bedroom with not a lot of air flow because we dont want to run our central air for using too much. We have just installed a 8000 window btu air conditioner. We are hoping this will also help the grow room to keep the outside room cool.

i dont know what your setup looks like. but if its a normal door you can cut a hold in the bottom of it and fit a vent grate for it. they sell them at any hardware store and if your house is air conditioned then it will pull air from your house and vent it out through your vent hole in your grow room. it might make the elec bill go up though

its a science for sure. sounds like youve got a good handle on it. happy growing

u can easily cut a neat hole into the door then vent out of it. when it comes to leaving, put the cut part back in a fill in the gaps with filler then paint over the top.

jimbo_jim said:

u can easily cut a neat hole into the door then vent out of it. when it comes to leaving, put the cut part back in a fill in the gaps with filler then paint over the top.

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Right on! I like using Latex Painter's caulk for filling anything I cut like that. Easy to apply with your finger and cleans up with soap and water.

but wouldn't this also vent the smell out into our bedroom (the smell is getting pretty bad.....we were able to dig up a old air purifyer (its kind of noisy) that has helped with the smell.....

U can either buy or make your own carbon filter. In the UK they cost about £30. Its easy to make 1 and they also work pretty well. Dont kill the smell 100% but close to it. Here some nice design

Carbon Filter - UK420
Diy Low Resistance Carbon Filter For Rvk 100 - UK420=
Another carbon scrubber design(can filter style) - Marijuana Growing - PlanetSkunk

One thing that seems to be a trend with this....the room is hotter then anywhere else in the house (I assume this is because of lack of air flow and the heat from the growroom lights)

Heat goes up...smell gets bad. Run the central air...smell goes down quite a bit (with the help of the carbon filtered air purifyer)

The problem is we are running the expensive central air just for the sake of one room.....and that will cause our electric bill to go through the roof. So we are putting in a window air unit just for that room. Hopefully this will fix the problem.