Ventilation and exhaust questions...please help

Hi everyone

I will be installing a Can filter 66 with a 6" or 8" Can fan with at least 300 cfm. This combo will blow out thru a hole in the roof. My room is 12' x 10' x 8' high and I will have air cooled(hopefully) 4 x 1000 watt hps lights. These lights will be used for 12/12 only and nothing else.

The only air intake is my central a/c duct which turns on about every 20-30 minutes cooling my whole house (and the grow room) to 77 degrees. Always hot here in Florida . There is no other air intake except the door to enter the room. The window is blocked off for security reasons.

I really can't have the door stay open cause I'm afraid of the smell thru the rest of the house. I can bring in air from another cooled room via the attic but that would be used to air cool the lights and not for fresh air intake.

I am trying to figure out if I can air cool the the lights by pulling air from the other cooled room, thru the ducting and the 4 lights, and out thru the can filer/fan combo which goes out thru the roof. But if I do this I think the fan would have to stay on 24/7 and would suck up all the air in the room.

My questions are:

1) Can this work with only the A/C vent in the grow room running every 30 minutes?

2) Would I have to separate the air cooled lights and filter/fan combo to their own exhausts systems?

3) How long do people usually leave their filter/fan combos running for? Is this a 24/7 thing or do you use them when you need it?

I have a few ideas in mind but I just wanted to ask the pros around here what they think. One of my ideas is to put a 300 cfm 6" fan in my attic above the "cool" room and suck the air from there thru a duct and into my grow area. Then drop down a "y" pipe from the ceiling in the grow area that would send air thru my reflectors AND down towards the floor thus increasing my air intake in the grow area. This would leave my filter/fan combo alone and able to run on a timer if need be and I could run the fan for the lights and air intake 24/7 if I like.

OR, would I need 2 separate intakes? 1 for the lights and 1 from another room with its own fan and ducting for the intake?

Basically I know a little bit of what's going on but I'm concered about the exhaust/intake part. I'm not sure how that works or how long those fans should stay on before they suck all the air out of the house and I implode from lack of air. Forget it, I think my brain already "ex"ploded by thinking too much

Any help or ideas will be much appreciated. Thanks

Hot:

I am planning 8 X 10 X 8 room and I have the same questions....

From what I can tell from reading on multiple lights, the lights must be in line and you can exhaust all of them with a single fan, but it seems to me that you mount the exhaust fan on the inline side of one light with an air source coming in and exhaust on the other side the heat that is blown out and this will require seperate air sources other than the air exchange for the room. One for the lights and one ofr the air exchange I must admit I am still studying this and I am a total newb when it comes ti light exhaust systems. This part is the most perplexing to me.

Hmmm 4 lights....I am looking at 1 1000 w system with 2 1000 watt bulbs for my little area the hydro system I am considering is only 4 x4...

Good luck to you...and I hope you get an answer from a vet, I am interested in this as well.

Hotwired said:

1) Can this work with only the A/C vent in the grow room running every 30 minutes?

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i think you'd have to aircool the lamps but sure. the only thing about it is that since you're not getting fresh air (from outside) to the actual plants, you might wanna run some CO2 setup.

Hotwired said:

2) Would I have to separate the air cooled lights and filter/fan combo to their own exhausts systems?

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yes. because you said you'll pull air from another room...if you pulled the air from within the grow room then you could make both in 1 exhaust system. so using 2 systems, you'd have the aircool exhaust pulling air from that other room and dumping it either in or out of the grow room (i don't think this matters too much) and then you'd have the other system pulling air from INSIDE the grow room through a carbon filter to clean up the odor.
if you were to put the carbon scrubber on the end of the aircool exhaust system then the filter would only be filtering air from outside the grow room, which defeats the purpose cause then it'll still REEK of the sweet sweet dank!

Hotwired said:

3) How long do people usually leave their filter/fan combos running for? Is this a 24/7 thing or do you use them when you need it?

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24/7 when you have plants in the grow room. they don't intermittently stop smelling ... although if you get one of those nice weekly timers then you could set it intermittently for short bursts, but it would still have to happen throughout the day/night

looking forward to hearing more about this room! 4x1000watts means a whole lot of flowers