Honey Oil Riot Squad
Well-Known Member
Hello all,
My grow tent has been a bit too cold lately. I'm drawing in cold air with a duct fan from a vent outdoors to cool the tent. This method has worked great for me to keep the tent cool for the majority of the year, but I have a slight problem. When I have this duct fan on, it's too cold. When I have this duct fan off, it's too hot.
It is just a cheap suncourt 160 CFM duct fan from home depot (a nice combo of like 3 of these in different sizes works really well to keep my small tent cool without having to get expensive overpowered fans). So of course the simple solution here was to just get a speed controller attached to the thing so that I can find a happy medium that supplies the right temperature. So I took a trip to the hardware store and all I could find were ceiling fan speed controllers (that you would normally install in your wall). I figured it wouldn't work, but it was 10 bucks so I decided to try it anyways, what the hell.
I hooked it up and tried it out and a very strange thing happened...
There are 3 different settings on this low, medium, and high. ...
<--"high".
So the low and high settings don't seem to change a thing with the fan, it seems to blow at the same speed. But the medium setting, oddly enough, actually boosted the fan speed, and I mean by quite a bit. Now I don't have an air velocity meter (who does?), but I'm pretty sure that the CFM of this cheap $30, 6" home depot duct fan damned near doubled.
And now I'm sitting here thinking I just stumbled upon this ingenious invention where I hacked this cheap 30 buck duct fan into something with the power of a much more expensive duct fan for $10.
Although my only thought is that maybe I am screwing with a resistor or wiring or whatever in the fan (I am NOT an electrician lol) and that this will only really work for some time before the fan breaks on me and burns out or something. So does anybody here have electrical know-how or stumbled upon this same thing with their duct fans before as well? Does it work to keep them running while "super-charged" like this? Or am I just gonna break my fan after a while?
This is kind of a strange question... so thanks for ANY help. I might just put this on my outtake vent and do a passive intake instead, if it does work...
My grow tent has been a bit too cold lately. I'm drawing in cold air with a duct fan from a vent outdoors to cool the tent. This method has worked great for me to keep the tent cool for the majority of the year, but I have a slight problem. When I have this duct fan on, it's too cold. When I have this duct fan off, it's too hot.
It is just a cheap suncourt 160 CFM duct fan from home depot (a nice combo of like 3 of these in different sizes works really well to keep my small tent cool without having to get expensive overpowered fans). So of course the simple solution here was to just get a speed controller attached to the thing so that I can find a happy medium that supplies the right temperature. So I took a trip to the hardware store and all I could find were ceiling fan speed controllers (that you would normally install in your wall). I figured it wouldn't work, but it was 10 bucks so I decided to try it anyways, what the hell.
I hooked it up and tried it out and a very strange thing happened...
There are 3 different settings on this low, medium, and high. ...
<--"high".So the low and high settings don't seem to change a thing with the fan, it seems to blow at the same speed. But the medium setting, oddly enough, actually boosted the fan speed, and I mean by quite a bit. Now I don't have an air velocity meter (who does?), but I'm pretty sure that the CFM of this cheap $30, 6" home depot duct fan damned near doubled.
And now I'm sitting here thinking I just stumbled upon this ingenious invention where I hacked this cheap 30 buck duct fan into something with the power of a much more expensive duct fan for $10.
Although my only thought is that maybe I am screwing with a resistor or wiring or whatever in the fan (I am NOT an electrician lol) and that this will only really work for some time before the fan breaks on me and burns out or something. So does anybody here have electrical know-how or stumbled upon this same thing with their duct fans before as well? Does it work to keep them running while "super-charged" like this? Or am I just gonna break my fan after a while?
This is kind of a strange question... so thanks for ANY help. I might just put this on my outtake vent and do a passive intake instead, if it does work...