exhaust or not? (frist floor apartment)

Its my first (real) grow. 4x4 tent, 600w hps, 400 cfm hydrofarm inline fan. Im running a couple of autos to test the environment and within the first week of running my 600w 24/7 my electricity bill has gone up 2 fold. Currently i am exhausting the air cooled light into the same room as the tent (actually the closet beside the tent, with the closet door open. my thought being the closet would serve as a chamber to allow hot air to rise, then cool and fall the the floor and out back into the bedroom the tent is in. although in practice this theory seems stupid lol) The reason for not wanting to exhaust is obviously due to security issues. I could devise a way to vent out the bedroom window but id rather not. The window is facing the parking lot where there is lots of car and foot traffic. What would you do? 1. pay the high light bill and play it safe 2. come up with a stealth way to vent out the window (i.e.. window fans, fabric etc) or ?????


any thoughts or opinions are appreciated

You have a tiny apartment with a window that watches foot traffic?
Forget it man- you are going to get arrested.

How would not venting it directly out help? Duh- it will build up the stank in your apartment and will catch the attention of the people walking passed! You will grow use to the smell and not even realize how bad and obvious it is to everyone else. Then one day a cop only has to knock on your door and immediately get probably cause to search based on the smell. They wouldn't even need a warrant then- they'd get in on a "knock and talk".

Seriously man, unless the laws in your neck of the woods mean it wouldn't hurt to get busted then save yourself the bum rape in jail

As long as your filter does it's job, then you shouldn't have any odor issues.
Changing where you vent is not going to change the light bill.
The problem you are gonna have is the ambient air temp in room with tent is going to go up, Therefore temp in tent is going to go up

@hydrogreen and this rising ambient air temp will have to be cooled by the a/c in order to maintain proper grow temps thus raising electricity usage
@dl my apartment isnt small but it is a one bedroom and im growing in the bedroom. when my autos show their sex i will buy two filters. one for the light and another for a scrubber inside the tent. so i dont think smell will be the issue. the issue is dealing with the heat from the grow room. Im thinking either deal with the cooling costs or subject my plants to too much heat

So true, that will raise the power bill.
If you're going to do it, then you def need to deal with the cost. High temps will do nothing but cause you problems and hurt your yield and quality. ! good filter should be a plenty, just have your fan pulling air thru the filter into light and out into closet.

You can also close down some of the vent registers in the other rooms to allow more air to be sent to bedrrom.

Ok i'll just play along and say there is no smell

Then I say I wouldn't be so much worried about the temperature as the humidity... not to say the heat isn't going to be bad but you'll mold to hell with high humidity (especially so if it's coupled with high temp).

You are going to have to AC the place heaps. Like even at night or you'll have big spikes in humidity in those time periods the AC is off.

Yea i think you guys are pretty much right. Deal with the high light bill and cool the place down. I have been thinking about buying a dehumidifier, i guess ill add that to the list. ducting outside sure sounds appealing tho, minus the risk factors

I've never owned one but i've heard that dehumidifiers produce heat?
Look into that. If it's true you might need to run an air conditioner instead (or AC during the day and dehumid at night)
In case you didn't know, air cons work by sucking the moisture out of the air. If you use one, you should rig the drain tube to fill a big bucket and use the water for your plants (I use to do that at one house).

For what you're going to pay for a dehumidifier you can buy a small in-room ac

and i would have to exhaust that a/c wouldnt I? ive thought about this, you dont think it would be a security issue?

If you have sliding closet doors, run the exhaust ducting to the side of the closet and hang it pointing out. Then leave the door open enough to allow all the air to flow out. Hang it so that you can still close the doors though, don't want ducting stick out of your closet. If the room gets to hot and you need to vent just buy a window fan and put it at the top of the window. Hang a blanket around the window frame to block light leaks, just make sure you don't block the air flow. You can run your lights at night and have the fan bring in cool air have it push the warm air out. Up to you. Use a good carbon filter, Phat makes a great one on the cheap. A ozone generator used in bursts of a couple minutes every few hours will cut down on any remaining odors during harvest and late flowering.