Passive veg ventilation help

Hello!

I recently bought an air cooled hood and inline fan, I'm a little uncertain though as to how I'm suppose to setup the ventilation when I'm not using a carbon filter (for veg months) to help minimize stress on the fan.

From my understanding, it would be worth it to hook up ducting from one of my two passive intakes to the side where I would normally connect a filter to maybe minimize the work the inline fan has to do by supplying the fresh air right to the hood and exhausting the hot air the other direction?

The exhaust is either going to be going straight outside a window or up into another part of the house until I switch to flower and hook up a filter.

Please excuse my paint skills, I'm rather stoned, I hope it explains what I'm trying to achieve/ask

Any help is greatly appreciated!

How big is your fan? Is it a can fan like a vortex or just the little inline fan from the box stores? Also how big is your lamp? You might be better off disconnecting the intake side and letting the fan pull air in from both intakes and the hood. Depends on how big your fan is and if smell would be a problem. You can also do it the way you have it drawn but the tent isn't getting any fresh air.

jay5coat said:

How big is your fan? Is it a can fan like a vortex or just the little inline fan from the box stores? Also how big is your lamp? You might be better off disconnecting the intake side and letting the fan pull air in from both intakes and the hood. Depends on how big your fan is and if smell would be a problem. You can also do it the way you have it drawn but the tent isn't getting any fresh air.

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I'm running a 400w HID, the fan is a hydrofarm 6", rated at 400cfm. The closet is roughly 3.5'x3.5'x7'. The hood is rather large, the typical barn shaped ones with two 6" holes on each side.

Smell most likely won't be a problem until flowering at least so I'm just looking for the most efficient way to run my setup without running a filter for right now .

So while knowing my specs, and even having two intake holes, do you think it would be better to just leave the one side of the hood disconnected and have the inline pull the heat from the lamp and let my two passives do most of the work to bring in fresh air?

Either way works just fine, just depends on the temps in the space. It will be cooler if you leave the hood disconnected from the intake but your humidity will probably be pretty low. So I would try it hood hooked up to the intake, watch your temps, and if that works I would run it that way to keep the humidity up.

If you have a speed controller for the fan you can probably dial it in if the hood is not connected to the intake for good temp and humidity, just depends on ambient temperature outside the grow. It's a balancing act!

jay5coat said:

Either way works just fine, just depends on the temps in the space. It will be cooler if you leave the hood disconnected from the intake but your humidity will probably be pretty low. So I would try it hood hooked up to the intake, watch your temps, and if that works I would run it that way to keep the humidity up.

If you have a speed controller for the fan you can probably dial it in if the hood is not connected to the intake for good temp and humidity, just depends on ambient temperature outside the grow. It's a balancing act!

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Very informative, thanks a ton! It's super dry here in the winter months so knowing I can do a little trial and error with the ventilation for that is fun news to me.