Hey guys I really love the show. Currently have been flowering in a 4 x 8 with two HPS lights and one exhaust fan with a couple clip on fans that controlled the temperature down to 75 to 80° the plants did very well at this temperature. Well after we worked out the bugs with that we decided to step up the game and jump to an 8 x 8 tent with four HPS 1000w lights . Currently the lights are all daisy chain together with 6 inch vent tubing with one exhaust fan driving air out of the tent. With a box fan running as well temperature Is 95 to 100°. We then tried moving the exhaust vent to bring in cool air from outside of the tent through the lights out the other side where it never comes directly into the tent and saw the same results. Do you have a recommended way to keep this kind of a set up cool around 75 to 80° with 4 HPS lights running full blast?? i’m not sure of daisy chain and four lights together will keep it cool or if I need to separate exhaust fans for each pair of lights? If you recommend an air conditioner which is the best way to add that to the system as well I’ve seen the portable ones with the snorkels or should I get one that goes inside the tent? We just wanted to get our temperature dialed in before we put any plants in this tent this was a dry run no plants just exhaust fans and a box fan.
regards
atlantic jungle
Need more airflow. Maybe another 6in or 8in exhaust fan.
What are your outside temps? Or do you have a crawl space?
If you can push cool air through insulated ducting and back outside, you will have no problem keeping it cool.
Insulated ducting to prevent moisture and your HPS hoods must be sealed.
If it’s too warm outside, you gotta find cold air from somewhere or make it cold outside the tent. Either way move that air out of the grow space.
Otherwise you need a/c to simply recirculate the tent air while still drawing the lighting air outside the tent and the incoming air should be from outside the grow space too so you aren’t creating a negative pressure in the space which will make your a/c work harder than it has to.
I hope I made sense there….basically treat the light ventilation and tent ventilation separate. Cool air through the light will drop the temperature considerably, but if you still need a bit more cooling, lower the temperature or your grows space, but don’t blow ice cold air directly in the tent.
Going to need an AC. 4000w of hps is going to create a lot of heat. You might be able to get away with a portable AC unit, but if you are serious about growing and plan to stay in that location for a while I would recommend investing in a good minisplit ac.
Alternatively, it might make sense to start upgrading your lights to LEDs instead.
You could replace that 4000w of HPS with ~2000w of led and it would reduce your heat load by quite a bit. You still might need an ac, but you could definitely get away with a much smaller one.
The savings on your power bill alone would probably make it more than worth it.
Check out the “550 Eco” light from HLG… seems like a great replacement for hps without spending too much money.
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Thanks guys ! So regretting going with the two more extra hps but oh well we learn. Equipment is brand new so I’m going to get through this run and sell it all and start investing in LED.
I figured keep with hps since I already had 2 in hand but now it will cost me more in fans . I ordered 2 8” exhaust fans to pull air from outside through each pair of lights . I also ordered a bigger online fan for my car on filter which pulls air from the tent outside . All exhaust will be vented outside the building for this run. Hoping I don’t need an intake fan with all this negative pressure but I’ll do another dry run when fans are here.
After this run and outdoor pull. We are ordering 20+ fluence spydr or the ones your recommended in the show to do a rack system with thee tiers like all of the Colorado guys haha.
Atlantic Jungle