mr.bond
Well-Known Member
Hi all,
I'm in the design phase of building my own grow tent.
Some key things I wanted to accomplish in this build:
- Enough room for up to 24 plants
- Reflective interior surfaces for light distribution
- A 'sealed' environment for maintaining ideal temperatures*** (very important)
From what I have planned so far, it will be a 7'x7'x7' grow tent. I already have a 1000w large 8" vented hood for the tent. There will be multiple DWC buckets in there, and possibly a soil plant or two.
I had planned on using 1/2" metal conduit as a frame, because it is lightweight, easy to assemble/disassemble with a Phillips screwdriver, fairly inexpensive (compared to PVC, wood). I have even priced out all the materials, elbows, joints, etc. I'm looking at about $71 in conduit for the whole tent from Home Depot. Also planning on two 4'x8' pieces of 3/4" plywood for flooring.
---Temperature Control---
This is a key item for me, and one of the primary reasons for doing this tent. The room that the tent will live in is prime territory for heat, especially in the summer. My thinking was that if I build a tent, give it some basic insulation, and pump a small amount of A/C into the tent on a periodic basis, I will be building a controlled environment not as susceptible to the temperature spikes I see currently in the room. Currently I sometimes see spikes of up to 100F in the room. This is not feasible for DWC without a chiller.
Hopefully since the tent will be insulated a bit, I won't have to run the A/C all the time, and that will help my power bill tremendously. I was thinking of using this as a form of insultion --
http://www.homedepot.com/Building-M...Id=10051&catalogId=10053&superSkuId=202938809
Since I'll be pumping in A/C, I'll probably have a passive exhaust vent at the top of the tent (cool air forced in by A/C ducting at bottom of tent, pressure builds, warm air gets pushed out passive vent at top of tent). I'm wondering what the temp. range will be, how long it might take for the tent to warm up to the ambient room temp. outside of the tent. Because if its only like 15 minutes, that isn't going to work. Ideally I'd like to do something where the A/C is on for 15 minutes, cools the tent to 72F, maintains that tent temp. for 2-4 hours, while the temp. outside the tent is lets say 85F. I'm not sure how much insulation would be required to do that, or even if the Reflectix radiant barrier that I linked would be up to the job. I'm not sure how to correlate R-value into actual thermal protection.
As for my light hood generating heat, it would be actively cooled with a 450CFM 8" ducting fan, which would intake air from OUTSIDE of the tent, not inside (so that it's not intaking the cold tent air). By intaking air from outside, and exhausting it outside, I feel that there wouldn't be much heat generated from the hood (not removing cold air from tent, AND not pumping warm air into tent)
I guess I'm looking for your thoughts on this idea. I'm particularly interested in the temperature control. If you have any feedback please let me know and I'll be happy to spread the rep around. Thanks in advance for your help!!!
Cheers,
Mr. Bond
I'm in the design phase of building my own grow tent.
Some key things I wanted to accomplish in this build:
- Enough room for up to 24 plants
- Reflective interior surfaces for light distribution
- A 'sealed' environment for maintaining ideal temperatures*** (very important)
From what I have planned so far, it will be a 7'x7'x7' grow tent. I already have a 1000w large 8" vented hood for the tent. There will be multiple DWC buckets in there, and possibly a soil plant or two.
I had planned on using 1/2" metal conduit as a frame, because it is lightweight, easy to assemble/disassemble with a Phillips screwdriver, fairly inexpensive (compared to PVC, wood). I have even priced out all the materials, elbows, joints, etc. I'm looking at about $71 in conduit for the whole tent from Home Depot. Also planning on two 4'x8' pieces of 3/4" plywood for flooring.
---Temperature Control---
This is a key item for me, and one of the primary reasons for doing this tent. The room that the tent will live in is prime territory for heat, especially in the summer. My thinking was that if I build a tent, give it some basic insulation, and pump a small amount of A/C into the tent on a periodic basis, I will be building a controlled environment not as susceptible to the temperature spikes I see currently in the room. Currently I sometimes see spikes of up to 100F in the room. This is not feasible for DWC without a chiller.
Hopefully since the tent will be insulated a bit, I won't have to run the A/C all the time, and that will help my power bill tremendously. I was thinking of using this as a form of insultion --
http://www.homedepot.com/Building-M...Id=10051&catalogId=10053&superSkuId=202938809
Since I'll be pumping in A/C, I'll probably have a passive exhaust vent at the top of the tent (cool air forced in by A/C ducting at bottom of tent, pressure builds, warm air gets pushed out passive vent at top of tent). I'm wondering what the temp. range will be, how long it might take for the tent to warm up to the ambient room temp. outside of the tent. Because if its only like 15 minutes, that isn't going to work. Ideally I'd like to do something where the A/C is on for 15 minutes, cools the tent to 72F, maintains that tent temp. for 2-4 hours, while the temp. outside the tent is lets say 85F. I'm not sure how much insulation would be required to do that, or even if the Reflectix radiant barrier that I linked would be up to the job. I'm not sure how to correlate R-value into actual thermal protection.
As for my light hood generating heat, it would be actively cooled with a 450CFM 8" ducting fan, which would intake air from OUTSIDE of the tent, not inside (so that it's not intaking the cold tent air). By intaking air from outside, and exhausting it outside, I feel that there wouldn't be much heat generated from the hood (not removing cold air from tent, AND not pumping warm air into tent)
I guess I'm looking for your thoughts on this idea. I'm particularly interested in the temperature control. If you have any feedback please let me know and I'll be happy to spread the rep around. Thanks in advance for your help!!!
Cheers,
Mr. Bond
You know I used to think the 5gal buckets was the greatest idea ever, but I won't be exclusively using those buckets in there, I'll have a few for single plants or 3 plants in one 5gal for LST. I made a couple grow buckets out of some 27gal containers. Each 27gal is good for 8 plant sites. Obviously I won't be growing trees in these 27gals but was thinking more along the lines of single cola plants that don't have very much or any side branching.
