Grow Room in the Great North ventilation issues

AKgrower29

Well-Known Member
Let me I've you a little run down about my setup I'm attempting. I Live in Alaska and This will be me and my wife's first grow. I have built a 10x8 fully insulated, heated, wired grow room behind my house. And I have come to planning the ventilation setup and can't quite figure out the best way.

I was going to grab outside air through a phresh intake filter setup and exhaust through a Carbon filter.

I have 2 600w lights with air cooled hoods and planned on ducting outside air in then and exhausting outside creating a separate ducting system for my lights reducing the need to filter for odor. My MAJOR concern is intaking air temp down to 0 or more and running it to the lights. I believe that condensation will be a big issue.

So I have thought of other options such as intaking and exhausting air in the room already, then only have an exhaust setup with a passive air intake?

I don't believe that heat will be a major issue as I can exhaust faster bringing more cold air in the passive intake.

I would prefer to stay with my original plan with a separate system for the lights. Has anyone had experience intaking cold air and removing or avoiding condensation?

Sorry for the long write up just want to give you all the info.

Thanks
 

gnrfan316

Active Member
Have you considered exhausting the room through the lights? So instead of bringing in cold air through the lights you put a fan on the end of the light, pulling air from the room through the lights then outside. The air will be warmer then outside yet still cold enough to cool because it'll pull air from your passive intake once the air in the room is exhausted. Put it on a timer and set it to exhaust every half hour or so or as often at as needed to cool the lights and still maintain room temperature. Just an idea
 

AKgrower29

Well-Known Member
I thought about It but wasn't sure that 70-80 degree air would cool them properly. So I guess another question I have is do the lights NEED some sort of cooling all the time?
 

Creature1969

Well-Known Member
HID's run at obscene temps. Pulling 80 degrees through them is plenty. You're not "cooling" the bulb, you're pulling it's heat away and out of your grow space.

I don't think I'd try pumping arctic air over one.
 

Jaybodankly

Well-Known Member
If you are running sealed hoods dump that hot air into the house. I have Y adapter on 6" exhaust pipe. One side goes inside the other side goes outside. I stuff a shirt in a garbage bag to block one side. When it gets warmer I switch so it blows outside.
Use the air from the home as intake/makeup air. It is warm and full of CO2. Plants will love it.
Something that I did for a cold air intake. I cut a black garbage bag the shape of my square intake. I held it in place with thumbtacks only on the top edge. When the exhaust fan goes on the plastic gets pulled up and lets cold air in. When the exhaust fan goes off. the plastic falls down limiting cold air intake.
 

AKgrower29

Well-Known Member
I don't really have the option of using air from the house as it's to far away. This is a separate building not attached to the house so its either warm air inside the room or cold air from outside.
 

justugh

Well-Known Member
I don't really have the option of using air from the house as it's to far away. This is a separate building not attached to the house so its either warm air inside the room or cold air from outside.
answer for u is hard as the temps vary so greatly

the only effective way is going to be buiild a treatment area
the air comes in from the outside and while in this area it is heated up/cooled down and RH is removed (lucky RH removal uses heat so u can go normal heating with a good dehumidifer working instead of bumping the heating up to something massive ).......cooling down is simple a 10k btu AC should handle that more then effectivly

think about building a shed have the air go into there then ducting sucking in from there (use a filter to clean the air before it goes in grow area)
shed can be used for tools and other things that will not be effected by the air movement and the air itself will not cuase mold or other things to grow

it is simple just make sure the air coming in the area has time to be worked on so u over size the area by 1.5 (your moving 400cfm a min your area needs to be 600 cf) then use a over powered AC system a 10k on high will cycle 600cf 3 4 times in a min .......cooling the air for yah
 

justugh

Well-Known Member
side note for yah

if u hook up a UVC light in that treatment area u will kill all mold spores and virus in the air before it goes into grow area......it will keep things from growing in the area too where ever the light hits it

just rem to turn it off before u go in or wear glasses that filter it .......UVC is the bad kind of UV light go blind
 

AKgrower29

Well-Known Member
Ok thanks. I will have to look into building something off of it that I can heat before it enters the grow room.
 

luv2grow

Well-Known Member
dual rooms " IE: veg and flower rooms" in your area or a single 8 by 10? that's the question to ask here..
 

justugh

Well-Known Member
Ok thanks. I will have to look into building something off of it that I can heat before it enters the grow room.
yah

u can mess around with the intake
summer time keep it low to the ground for the cool air ....mid 60s
fall winter keep it up high so u are moving warmer dry air .....above 40f with no moisture

just rem if u are moving this air directly over the bulbs u never want to let cold (freezing air with any moisture) come near those bulbs ......they can exploded on yah if the air is to cold or if enough RH in it to allow to make to light (but the grow rooms RH of 50% is perfect and less u would need to spend on treatment area)

i would build the treatment area and have it feeding into the grow area ......then have the carbon filter in front of the ducting and cooltubes with it sucking the grow room air
insulted ducting does help alot with cooltubes and all that u will run cooler temps in the grow room

just when u build it over build it .........if u are using 6 inch ducting ......have extra lines run to allow u expand later if u want (or split the load ) ..........really any large building as long as u treat the air in will work so this place could be a 2 story pole barn u sealed up for this

the treatment area will always smell like outside .....no worries on smell leaking the negative pressure u make prevents that
 

thumper60

Well-Known Member
It's a single 8x10 room
is it built inside of bigger building? what u need is a lung room somewhere to draw in that cold air warm it a bit before entering the room,i run sealed in the winter here in maine ,try bringing in 0 degree air into 75 degree room its going to be raining,run sealed with small co2 burner have vent come on only when to warm
 

AKgrower29

Well-Known Member
No it's a standalone building.

The room is completely sealed now. So would I be better leaving it without an intake running a scrubber and supplementing with CO2?

I have a couple 150cf CO2 tanks that I can use just don't have any experience with using CO2 for grows.
 

thumper60

Well-Known Member
No it's a standalone building.

The room is completely sealed now. So would I be better leaving it without an intake running a scrubber and supplementing with CO2?

I have a couple 150cf CO2 tanks that I can use just don't have any experience with using CO2 for grows.
I use a burner,never used tanks I need the heat co2 is a bonues, until it warms up run sealed going to need dehuy to run sealed,
 

AKgrower29

Well-Known Member
Ok so a little bump and update here. I scrapped the original building for my grow room due to no good supply of intake Air. I have since moved it to a new building behind my house that fixes my issues. I will post pictures of the build in a new post.
 
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