Hiding your OUT-TAKE heat sig?

Anyone got any good ideas on howto hide your out take heat sig??????

use your clothes dryer vent

Is this scrubbed exhaust or just exhaust for the light? Having 2 exhaust systems could lower your grow heat as well as let you exhaust your light into the attic or something. Unless you are pumping out multiple 1000w lights no one will notice or care. My first 4-5 grows I just vented into the house and used my AC to get rid of the humidity and heat.

Batman83 said:

Anyone got any good ideas on howto hide your out take heat sig??????

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Where does heat normally escape from a house? Water heater vent, clothes dryer vent, ...

vent it out of your bathroom vent

if you got the money get a portable AC with a carbon filter, if not i would go with dryer vent or make it look like a dryer vent.

NOW THAT IS A SWEET IDEA..... Nice one man...

People nice one....!!! I was going off on one the other night. Thought. If i cut a whole out of the top of a chest freezer big enough for my duct... (10"). then drilled 5 small holes either side the air would be chilled and then can release slowly you know.... The joys of weed hey lol.....

Na its just the heat from the lights. I'v got like x4 600w in two rooms both vented out into another room.... AC good idea!!! You really think that sort of heat wouldn't get noticed????? I'v got 10"inch fans...
Your first 4-5 yeah... you dont a few then??? This is my fist one but i got a pal helping me mind... Cheese Rhino !!!! You tried it???

Since even HPS lights are relatively inefficient in turning electricity into light, if you're running 1000W of light, then most of that 1000W is being converted into heat.

That means you'll probably need ANOTHER 1000W of A/C if you want to cool off the hot air, effectively doubling your energy consumption.

I think the question is where is your heat signature being generated, and who are you trying to hide it from?

Running your hot air out the chimney won't really conceal the primary IR heat signature given off by the hot lights themselves, and having heat pouring out your chimney or other vents continuously might itself be suspicious as well.

I don't have a good answer here, but that IR reflecting paint on the ceilings of grow rooms might help reduce external IR signature.

There is no IR signature on a light inside of a house. When they look at your house with infrared they only see if something is hot or not. They cannot see through walls or even windows with it. They can only sense heat on the surface of whatever they are looking at. They can see your exhausts coming out or that your roof is hotter than other roofs.

If you want to vent outside, get an old nonworking window unit AC and vent it out of the back of the AC. Make sure your CFM isn't too high though, you don't want it to look like y are shooting a flame thrower out of the thing on FLIR. I exhaust a couple thousand watts worth of lights into my attic. My house air conditioner easily kept about 2000w of equipment cool just by having an exhaust on the total room blowing it into the area where my AC took air in.

Jogro said:

Since even HPS lights are relatively inefficient in turning electricity into light, if you're running 1000W of light, then most of that 1000W is being converted into heat.

That means you'll probably need ANOTHER 1000W of A/C if you want to cool off the hot air, effectively doubling your energy consumption.

I think the question is where is your heat signature being generated, and who are you trying to hide it from?

Running your hot air out the chimney won't really conceal the primary IR heat signature given off by the hot lights themselves, and having heat pouring out your chimney or other vents continuously might itself be suspicious as well.

I don't have a good answer here, but that IR reflecting paint on the ceilings of grow rooms might help reduce external IR signature.

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Well the heat sig coming from the x4 600w. Lights give off a fair amount of heat dont they!! An i'm trying to hide it frm the only people that i need to. The old bill !!!

Have you ever used the mega shelid reflexed sheeting..???????

Carthoris said:

There is no IR signature on a light inside of a house. When they look at your house with infrared they only see if something is hot or not. They cannot see through walls or even windows with it. They can only sense heat on the surface of whatever they are looking at. They can see your exhausts coming out or that your roof is hotter than other roofs..

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You are correct, though I didn't make myself clear.

If you're running 2400 watts of bulbs in a grow area, each 600 watt bulb is going to give off quite a bit of heat. Unless you're continuously cooling these lights directly (as many do), the heat from each lights will rise/radiate upwards and heat the ceiling/roof right above the lights in the grow area. The same thing could happen to a wall next to a light. Either way, depending on how close the lights are to adjacent surfaces, and what's behind/beyond them, the heat from the lights might create "hot spots" that are potentially detectable as abnormal IR signatures from outside. This could be true even if the room as a whole were vented to an average air temperature of 75F.

The point is that having a normal-temperature grow room is helpful in avoiding IR detection, but its not by itself sufficient. You also have to make sure that your setup isn't also generating "hot spots" that could appear suspicious to IR surveillance.

Now in practice, you may have insulated walls and/or an attic, and if there is insulation between the outside surfaces and the heat sources, you probably won't create any hot spots like I described above. But this may not be a given depending on where you're growing and how.

Those hot-spots, by the way, include externally vented heat. You may think that venting hot air through a chimney, drier vent, or air-conditioner would "fool" law enforcement, but they're not complete idiots. Any cop smart enough to operate an IR camera is probably also smart enough to wonder why you're running your furnace in July, your A/C in January, or why you're doing laundry at 3am. If they're scanning you as part of a random scan of say an entire neighborhood, this might slide. But if they're scanning you specifically because they have a tip off or other reason to look for a grow op, they they will be more attuned to specific heat leaks.

As a relevant side issue, like everything else, IR imaging technology has gotten much cheaper over the last few years. You can purchase a high quality handheld IR thermal imager for under $2000 nowadays. That's a lot of money, though in perspective it may not be very much as a one-time business expense for a serious grow operation. Its certainly less than the cost of a bust!

More important, you can often RENT these, and I think that may make a lot more sense. I saw a price quoted of 300 pounds for a week's rental in England:

http://www.bis.fm/thermalimaging/index.asp

You can rent them in the USA for $500 - 600 per week.

With one of these you could potentially do your own examination of the outside of your grow area, see if or where you are creating detectable IR signatures, and then make whatever changes are necessary.

first of all its ilegal for police to use FLIR unless they have a search warrant and if they got a search warrant you think there going to sit there staring at your house with a device when they can enter it lawfully ???
you guys are getting out of hand with this FLIR )

DrFever said:

first of all its ilegal for police to use FLIR unless they have a search warrant and if they got a search warrant you think there going to sit there staring at your house with a device when they can enter it lawfully ???
you guys are getting out of hand with this FLIR )

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Well, the original poster is in England, so he's not entitled to US 4th Amendment protection.

Also, this sort of surveillance has been ruled legal in Canada, so there are other places where IR surveillance by law enforcement could pose a threat to illegal growers.

Within the USA, this is the Supreme Court decision in question, where it was determined that IR surveillance without a search warrant is unconstitutional: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States

But note that just because this kind of searching would violate the 4th amendment, that doesn't mean it can't happen or never does.

In fact, cops do illegal searches all the time, and they're generally quite adept at doing so. In practice, all it means is that any evidence they gather illegally is inadmissible in a court of law. But it does NOT mean they can't act on illegally obtained evidence in a variety of ways outside of a court of law.

Here's a hypothetical: Lets say a cop thinks you have an illegal grow op or just wants to screen for them. They can do this sort of surveillance illegally to confirm/support their suspicion or just to identify potential targets for further investigation.

Once they find targets like that, where they think there probably is an illegal grow op, even without a warrant they can then use conventional surveillance to find some scrap of evidence to justify issuing a warrant. In some cases, judges will issue warrants based on pretty weak stuff. Alternatively, police can try to gain entry into a grow site on some pretext, and then any evidence they might find would be admissible. All they'd need to see is a pack of rolling papers, and that could be evidence of drug use, and then that might be enough to get a warrant.

The point is, the necessity for a warrant isn't an absolute protection against IR searching by law enforcement.

Jogro said:

Well, the original poster is in England, so he's not entitled to US 4th Amendment protection.

Also, this sort of surveillance has been ruled legal in Canada, so there are other places where IR surveillance by law enforcement could pose a threat to illegal growers.

Within the USA, this is the Supreme Court decision in question, where it was determined that IR surveillance without a search warrant is unconstitutional: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States

But note that just because this kind of searching would violate the 4th amendment, that doesn't mean it can't happen or never does.

In fact, cops do illegal searches all the time, and they're generally quite adept at doing so. In practice, all it means is that any evidence they gather illegally is inadmissible in a court of law. But it does NOT mean they can't act on illegally obtained evidence in a variety of ways outside of a court of law.

Here's a hypothetical: Lets say a cop thinks you have an illegal grow op or just wants to screen for them. They can do this sort of surveillance illegally to confirm/support their suspicion or just to identify potential targets for further investigation.

Once they find targets like that, where they think there probably is an illegal grow op, even without a warrant they can then use conventional surveillance to find some scrap of evidence to justify issuing a warrant. In some cases, judges will issue warrants based on pretty weak stuff. Alternatively, police can try to gain entry into a grow site on some pretext, and then any evidence they might find would be admissible. All they'd need to see is a pack of rolling papers, and that could be evidence of drug use, and then that might be enough to get a warrant.

The point is, the necessity for a warrant isn't an absolute protection against IR searching by law enforcement.

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In the winter, when it is too cold to run your AC then it is cold enough to be running your heat and using air from outside to cool your grow. You would want to pipe your heat into the house and use it to keep your house warm.

In the summer, no one is going to question your AC kicking all summer long to cool your grow. Also, if it is 90 degrees outside, and you have an attic it is likely going to be 100+ degrees. If you are aircooling your lights and exhausting into the attic the exhaust shouldn't be that hot so you are not adding heat to your attic and the FLIR would not detect it at all. Electric bill isn't going to be a question with 3000w's running unless you have the electronically monitored type of electric box and you are having spikes all night long and someone cares. Remember that many of your common appliances use as much energy as a 1000W light, they just don't use it continuously. Try not to run 10-15 extra appliances all night long with your grow.(TV, fish tanks, xbox, projectors)

I agree that the police fly over with flir illegally. Sometimes in the guise of looking for underground powerline leaks and the like. They can not see a light through the wall, and if your light is hot enough to heat the wall up I think you probably have more likely hood of burning your house down than getting caught still, what numbnut would stick a HPS up against a wall? A HPS light against a wall will look no different than a refrigerator or a TV against a wall. IE: a small warm spot. The thing you want to avoid is a 30 foot tall plume of 120 degree exhaust into the air above your house that makes it look like you are calling batman when someone looks at your house with a FLIR.

The goal is to not make the cops suspicious of your house. Even if they see suspicious things on FLIR while scanning illegally they would have to find some evidence of your activities before they can get a warrant and search your house.

In furtherance of not getting caught here are Carthoris's helpful hints for not getting busted(apply to US but most is universal)

1) Don't tell anyone who doesn't have to know.(Kids, BFF's, family. Wife might be the exception)

2) Don't do stupid shit (Domestic violence, cheat on your wife, have drunken parties, get drunk and shoot guns in the backyard, steal the neighbors goat, or anything else that will get the cops there)

3) If you sell, don't do it at home, and don't sell dime bags at a time. Traffic will draw attention sooner than any FLIR will. You don't want to be the quick e mart of weed. Everyone talks about the good weed they just scored. I can often tell if weed is locally grown and how far from the grower the weed has come down the chain. Is it crushed, is it in jars, is it dry, is it properly cured, ect ect. There are lots of clues. Does the seller know what it is called and do they seem confident about it?

4) Don't make your house smell like a grow room and don't smoke in your living room. You never know when the neighbors kid might run away or the cops are looking for someone who committed a crime and they beat on your door to see if you have seen anything. You are stoned and the house reeks. This is bad.

5) Always have an air freshener in common areas of house even if you don't smell weed there.

6) Don't let the cops in your house and don't talk to them through the door way - go outside if you are going to talk to them. Or just ignore them, if they had a warrant they would already be beating your ass. If you aren't fucked up/drunk/stoned you might walk around back and come out from the side of the house to talk to them and tell them you were in the backyard or something. DON'T LET THEM IN YOUR HOUSE.

7) Don't look like a drug dealer. No 22" rims. No Mr T jewelry. Get a job. Don't get tattoos all down your arms. No shirts that show drying weed and say "Hanging with my buds"

I have a buddy that lives by a lake where the local sheriff flies over frequently due to the guerilla meth lab issues in the surrounding state park areas. A couple of years back, he was visited by LE due to having an excess of white 5 gallon buckets around his property. At the time he was only growing peppers and tomatoes and lives way out in the middle of nowhere. But it evidently looked odd in a flyby.
Luckily, now he can hide his exhaust heat sig by venting near his wood stove.

dont forget they can also see the actual bulbs through the walls so getting rid of exhaust heat is only have of it.

go to 8.45 of this video! its in the UK. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOMNwwSAukc
also if youve not watch it its a good watch, theres 4 parts to it.

this is how much of the bulbs they can see. i know the guys here and they rented a FLIR gun and they are now available to the general public. so we can fully see the outline of the bulb right through a 6 inch brick wall. the later pic is with the reflective coating to block it. and its the only one that does. all other failed the test.