Hey DGC,
Been listening your show and growing for about two years. I just recently moved in to a new place and the only room I can grow in is the garage. I live in Montana and it is already getting very cold here. It’s been in the single digits all week and sometimes below zero at night. It’s been getting down into the lower 40’s in the garage, possibly colder. I have a small heater in my 4×4 tent (in a safe spot) connected to an ink bird temperature controller set to 80 degrees. The heater keeps it between 75-80 degrees but it losses heat very fast. My main concern is that when my single speed six inch exhaust fan turns on every hour and a half for 15 minutes the tent cool down to around 60 degrees even with the heater going. Will this temperature change in such a sudden amount of time become a problem and how should I go about resolving this issue? And is there a type of insulation you would recommend to keep the tent from losing heat so fast? Thanks for this resource and the show makes my work days way better!
what temperatures your house? can always run ducting to the tent and pull heat( and c02) from there.
make your tent a puffer jacket. you wouldnt go out in snowy weather wearing a t-shirt.
rockwool insulation and black white/sheeting with a little imagenation and your there.
Sounds like a good excuse to start another tent. You could run them at opposite times and vent them back into the room to keep temperatures the same all day.
led day time hps night to balance things a bit better maybe?
Haaaa haaaahaaaaaaaaa. So finally, hps to the rescue. Good thing I dident toss mine into the trash like good little tree hugger. But really, it’s all about insulation. It’s also about duct work moving in a really mindful way. Pull your fresh air from the warmest place you can. Diffuse it as it enters the garden. Have the exhaust pulling at the lowest rate possible . I use the good old fashioned fan speed controllers with cold temp shut offs. I have removed all the glass from my HPS so I get as much heat as possible. I have a long baseboard heater on one side of garden that kicks on when lights go off. It is positioned on opposite side of exhaust. So it is being pulled threw the garden. Then my exhaust is also heating my whole shop. Soon the exhaust will be getting used out in the greenhouse for my winter vegetables. Find a way to use all the heat you create. Insulate like a motherfucker. I will simply stack soil bags along a colder wall to take advantage of the layering against the outside. We have so many things we can do to incrementally get closer to our goals. I enjoy books about creating heat and cool through design. Hps. Haaaaaa haaaaaaaaaa. Everything has its uses.
i made a box in panels out of 4×2 studwork insulated with rockwool sealed in black/white plastic sheeting a while ago. a screw in each corner to hold it together and a foil tape seal over the edges. dismantled like a kit-cat.
definetly kept the heat, light and noise in.
i kinda hate grow tents. they encourage half-assed-ness from the start.
I put fiberglass batting on top of my tent for light weight insulation. Rigid foam insulation on the sides. Finding a used HPS rig is a great idea. You can’t have mine, lol. It’s got an old style remote magnetic transformer that makes a great radiator. Barring that, just hit the hardware store and get some incandescent grow spot lights. You might as well get some light along with the heat.
i swear half the grow tents out there are like paper mache balloons by the time people sort the flaws with them.
then they realise the paper mache costs less than the balloon theyre rapping.
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