yoozername
Active Member
Hello all,
First post so please excuse any etiquette blunders. In the design phase of a grow room and as the title states, trying to figure out air distribution. I've seen in various videos and pictures of larger setups, people using hard ducting with the ends capped off and holes punched throughout the ducting to distribute air in the room. Has anyone here successfully done anything like this? I'm hoping to be able to have enough air flow to replace oscillating fans all over the place. What I need help figuring out is the number and size of holes and cfm's to push through it. I know this will depend on the length and size of ducting, bends, how forceful I want the air to come out, etc. Does anyone know a formula to figure this kind of stuff out? I remember seeing a video a while back where a commercial grower (or maybe it was a design company) briefly mentioned this aspect of the grow space, pointing out how it eliminated the need for oscillating fans but they didn't get into any details. I realize that the plants wouldn't get the same benefits of stem strengthening but I figured that by the time they're in flower, especially later on, they've already developed much of their stem strength. Plus, depending on how dense the canopy is, gusts produced by an oscillating fan that are strong enough to shake the plants wouldn't reach much of the canopy anyways. I guess it would be more for air movement throughout the canopy. There are companies out there that make fabric air distribution "socks" and now Ideal Air makes their own overpriced version. A while back, I called one of those companies that makes these but they told me that they would need to engineer the sock(s) for the space and my needs and it wasn't going to be cheap. Looking at the Ideal Air Gro-Sok, they give a cfm range of 1600-2000 for the 16", and 800-1200 cfm for the 12". Theirs are 20' long. I know Ideal Air isn't exactly the gold standard of HVAC but if there were a way to figure out about how many square inches all those "micro-perforations" amounted to, I could make something equivalent. I'm hoping to get some input from someone who's done this (with metal ducting) or has some knowledge in doing these types of calculations as trial and error could get expensive real fast. Also, does anyone have any recommendations on how to punch larger holes (1" or more) in hard metal ducting? Thank you.
First post so please excuse any etiquette blunders. In the design phase of a grow room and as the title states, trying to figure out air distribution. I've seen in various videos and pictures of larger setups, people using hard ducting with the ends capped off and holes punched throughout the ducting to distribute air in the room. Has anyone here successfully done anything like this? I'm hoping to be able to have enough air flow to replace oscillating fans all over the place. What I need help figuring out is the number and size of holes and cfm's to push through it. I know this will depend on the length and size of ducting, bends, how forceful I want the air to come out, etc. Does anyone know a formula to figure this kind of stuff out? I remember seeing a video a while back where a commercial grower (or maybe it was a design company) briefly mentioned this aspect of the grow space, pointing out how it eliminated the need for oscillating fans but they didn't get into any details. I realize that the plants wouldn't get the same benefits of stem strengthening but I figured that by the time they're in flower, especially later on, they've already developed much of their stem strength. Plus, depending on how dense the canopy is, gusts produced by an oscillating fan that are strong enough to shake the plants wouldn't reach much of the canopy anyways. I guess it would be more for air movement throughout the canopy. There are companies out there that make fabric air distribution "socks" and now Ideal Air makes their own overpriced version. A while back, I called one of those companies that makes these but they told me that they would need to engineer the sock(s) for the space and my needs and it wasn't going to be cheap. Looking at the Ideal Air Gro-Sok, they give a cfm range of 1600-2000 for the 16", and 800-1200 cfm for the 12". Theirs are 20' long. I know Ideal Air isn't exactly the gold standard of HVAC but if there were a way to figure out about how many square inches all those "micro-perforations" amounted to, I could make something equivalent. I'm hoping to get some input from someone who's done this (with metal ducting) or has some knowledge in doing these types of calculations as trial and error could get expensive real fast. Also, does anyone have any recommendations on how to punch larger holes (1" or more) in hard metal ducting? Thank you.
