Lets see your vent intake light traps

[Iraganji]

Lets see how you light tight your flowering areas vent intakes.

I have a couple new builds going and thought it would be nice to see some of what others have come up with to take care of light removal in vents. Perhaps a chance for me to adopt a new design this go around. I've seen a few designs, but not in one place.

Thanks in advance everyone!

 

[DnKNg5]

Here are a couple of not so good shots of my cab. My camera battery is charging so I'll take a couple more detail shots this evening. My design was relatively simple, I cut a rectangular hole in the side of my cabinet and put an over sized intake duct on the outside; opening orientated down, painted flat black on the inside. On the inside I built a filter rack around the opening and lined it with weather stripping. My filter fits nice and snug for optimal air flow. With the blinds to the room open (which they never are) and the sun shining into the room, inside the cabinet it is pitch black, I cannot see my hand in front of my face. If you wanted to take it a step further you could put another piece of ducting on the inside, exactly like the outside. The problems I see with the second piece of ductwork are 1) it takes up more space inside the cab 2) It creates more restriction for your exhaust fan to overcome and 3) filter access because much more of an obstacle (however there are obvious ways are around this). I think the second piece of ducting would be overkill unless your flowering area was going to be in a room with a large quantity of constant light.

The intake is on the lower left side of the cab. The intake duct overhangs the opening by about 6 inches

The filter rack is on the lower left
​

 

[Marlo]

I use these.....

Darkroom louvers. 100% light tight. They come in various sizes. I use the 8x8 ones myself. I installed 4 of them on the lower portion of my growroom door. The airflow is greatly restricted, which is why I have 4, but are great for letting in passive air and keeping negative pressure. And most of all, for keeping light out.
Some models have a fan attached directly to the louver itself, as an add-on.

 

[dank.frank]

as do I Marlo....


dank.Frank

 

[Darkstarlive]

I use a dustroom, the mfg says it has zero cfm loss but I think thats bullshit, anything over the intake will reduce flow.
expensive but effective, plus my ducting has a black lining to inhibit the light.
I like Marlo's solution, I'll have to check it out myself.

 

[Vesuvius]

dont have pictures but i build my own light trap box.kinda a bigger version of the vent marlo uses.
for a 6" round vent i build a 10x15x24 box that has inner blocking walls so light has to make 4 180deg turns before exiting.
kinda looks like a simple maze inside.
i paint the inside flat black.
no restrictions really cuz my twisty tunnel is bigger than the backdraft damper that connects it to my grow box.

 

[messn'n'gommin']

I got lazy and just hung one of the aluminum angles on the edge of the table and butted the other upright to it and used metal tape to mate them together. Plastic corner bead will work and cost less than the aluminum stock. About 2-1/2" deep but it stands about 1" proud of the wall.

“DIY A new angle on light proof vents,” by ScrubNinja
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=135524

hth

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

This is just a cab grow but these have to be light-tight too! I don't have room for pvc elbows so I substituted a false floor cut smaller than the footprint and raised for air-flow.

Damn thing's like a vacuum cleaner so I had to filter the intake holes. I cut pvc pipe for headers and glued em to the floor. Used dryer sheets make pretty good filter material and plastic tie wraps make filter changes a breeze.



That's ~4 weeks worth of crap that didn't get in my buddage. Hepa material would be even better but this stuff is free.

 

[OvergrowingKiwi]

Build is on my construction thread in sig

 

[Phaeton]

No pics but built a floor level box 2' x 3' and put baffles in similar to above post, works very well and moves plenty of air. Cheap too.

 

[simon]

Nice to see folks using louvers. Kinda funny; they were met with some skepticism, when I built the box above back on OG. Everyone had PVC then. It's a terrific solution, IF the pipes can be setup as to not take away from the floorspace. That's the beauty of the louvers. No need to compromise a plant to house them in a relatively small space. But, I digress. The box above - ~18" x 44" uses a pair of 8x8 louvers (2 panels each) on its side and four 4" louvers on the back running the length of the floor. With a 600HPS, a Vortex600, and a CAN66 the temps hinge ~1-2F above ambient.

FWIW, I use a pair of 8" pipes as integrated light traps/intakes in my main room. If folks are interested, I can take some pics when the lights come up.

Simon

 

[intotheunknown]

i also use these louvers Marlo uses. they dont allow much air to pass through, so you need quite a few of them to get the flow you want. and theyre expensive!
but they are 100% lightproof.

 

[simon]

i also use these louvers Marlo uses. they dont allow much air to pass through, so you need quite a few of them to get the flow you want. and theyre expensive!
but they are 100% lightproof.

No, they don't allow a lot of air to pass through all 4 panels. If the louvers vent close to a wall, for example, 2 panels can be used to allow more air to flow without losing the ability to trap external light sources.

As for expensive, c'mon. ~$30 each for a 8x8. That's, what, a pizza and a six-pack, not even a 1/8 at retail? It's not like we're growing potatoes.

Simon

 

[intotheunknown]

No, they don't allow a lot of air to pass through all 4 panels. If the louvers vent close to a wall, for example, 2 panels can be used to allow more air to flow without losing the ability to trap external light sources.

As for expensive, c'mon. ~$30 each for a 8x8. That's, what, a pizza and a six-pack, not even a 1/8 at retail? It's not like we're growing potatoes.

Simon

maybe i should have shopped around before i bought the ones i did.
yeah, hence multiple louvers. thats where it gets expensive...

 

[Eol]

I just use black carbon filter pads, the type you use for aquariums. Box of six was like £6, put two of them together and boom! Plently of airlow, lightproof + stops any nasty stuff from getting in my cab =)

 

[Iraganji]

.

 

[señorsloth]

right now my intakes are just open holes through the false bottom of my cab, they lead into the veg room which i still have not started working on so it has no lights or equiptment in it, just a dark little space leading into the flowering room above it. i have been planning to get dark room louvers as well, has anybody worked out a general formula as to how many you need for a given space? for instance my cab is 24" by 40" by 72", the bottom 2 feet are veg and the top 4 are flower, i pull air through the bottom and exhaust through the top. im using 190 cfm's pulling through a cooltube and pushing out through a carbon filter. i was thinking since i'm using 6 inch ventilation tubing that two 8x8's would allow sufficient air to be pulled from the veg cab into the flowering portion, and another two to bring in fresh air to the veg cab, while exhausting through a 6 inch hole....how much do these things restrict? i have heard that you can take off a couple of the louvers and increase flow without adding light leaks...is that true?

for my exhaust i use a homemade can style carbon filter to block the light, it works great, cuts down on sound, and smell obviously, this goes into a big Rubbermaid tub meant to sit on top of my grow cab to hide the filter, soon i'll be lining the Rubbermaid tub with sound dampening foam to further quiet the exhaust.


previously i have taken a length of ventilation duct and twisted it into a few loops to block the light, but this adds noise and is bulky, i have also made light traps of cardboard and duct tape, you just have to make sure you make them big enough that they don't restrict airflow, so several times bigger than your vent tubing, and make all the 90 degree turns have curved elbows instead of straight elbows, which would create turbulence and junk and slow down the air while making it louder.

 

[thefatman]

Just about anything with convolutions will work but what helps a great deal is to spray the vents surfaces with flat black paint which will not reflect light rays.

 

[señorsloth]

well i'm headed off to menards to see what i can find for light trap materials, i spent hours last night trying to get an idea as to what the guts of these comercially available light traps look like, to see if they were really worth the money or if it was something i could fabricate. unfortunately i didn't find much info, from the little i could find it seems that they are just layers of "M" shaped, or "N" shaped fins, stacked on top of eachother with gaps for the air to flow through, is this acurate?

i have seen several tutorials building these sorts of vents, but always using very thick pre-bent angle iron or aluminum , this always seemed like it would cause even more obstruction for the air to go through, because the vanes are so thick they block a LOT of potential air travel.
i decided to get some very thin aluminum flashing material and make the bends myself, to greatly increase the aerodynamics over a vent that is literally half metal vanes, half air channels, i think with very thin aluminum you could get it up around 85 percent air channels and only 15% of the vent being the thinner metal vanes. this should increase flow a lot!

another couple ideas i plan to experiment with are the angles, do they have to be 90 degrees? it seems if you have more, thinner veins directing the flow, you could decrease the angle by a lot and still keep it light proof, this should increase flow a lot as well, but it's going to take a lot of experimenting i think.

another idea i was thinking about was, why use sharp right angles? it seems to me like you can make "N" shaped fins that still even have 90% angles but instead of coming to a sharp elbow, they could be curved at each bend, decreasing turbulence inside the unit and allowing for more air flow, again they might sacrafice a little light security but more fins, spaces closer together should take care of that.

I was wondering, because i am about to spend a lot of money on materials, and spend most likely many many hours to get what i feel is the best flowing light trap i can possibly figure out...well...has anybody done any of the leg work already? are my ideas old and tried out already? there are almost not DIY's for light traps here which i find crazy since it's literally one of the most important things you need to set up a good grow cab! if you have tried any of my ideas, or have taken a look inside those premade "darkroom louvers" i would love to hear about it! it could potentially save me a lot of trial and error as well as save a little money on supplies, i intend to make a tutorial if i can get something that works well and is significantly different than the other diy's out there...

another thing i was thinking about would be a sort of corkscrew inside a section of tubing? so the air has to travel up through the tube in a long spiral direction...i don't know. lol

 

[señorsloth]

well after searching all over menards i found many, many possible materials to make a darkroom louver out of, however, upon going home and doing some math i realized i would need about 90 feet of V shaped material for the fins, this basically rules out all thicker metal stock anyway, even though i wasn't really planning on using it. i did find some semi thin aluminum corner stock but again 90 feet of it would be out of this world price wise, not to mention the thicker the veins the less efficient the unit will be. i also toyed with the idea of bending flat sheets of thin metal, there were many sheets of varying thicknesses and materials, but after calculating the shear amount of material i will be needing, it sounded like much to much work, to cut it all into strips and bend it. i will say though, from what i found, stovepipe material seemed to be the best option if going that rout. i say this because the stovepipe comes as a semi bent sheet, ment to be attached later, but unlike all the other materials, wich were oiled and shiny, all stovepipe material seemed to have the finish brushed off and painted flat black, so that would have made it easier to put a second coat on them. as i said however the logistics of cutting up that much material did not appeal to me so i went with an easier, and probably cheaper, as well as more effective material.

what i finally found and ended up purchasing was the thin metal angle material that people use on corners of drywall, to protect it. it comes in ten foot lengths for less than 2 dollars a piece, very thin metal, with a paper backing to make painting easier! it is only v shaped so every vein will be 2 pieces put together, to form an "N" shape. i thought of making a couple 8X8 units, but decided i could get almost the the same surface area from one 10x10 inch unit, i am going to space the fins with a double layer of weather seal foam stripping, the awesome advantage to using this material is i can literally choose my spacing by squeezing the fins together and letting them expand, with a light behind it, till i get the spacing just perfect for maximum airflow and 100% light blockage. additionally, having the soft foam in between each vein will ensure that it is silent and vibration free. my diy darkroom louver will basically be ripped off from other tutorials and improved, so i will probably post a new diy by next weekend.

i would surely like to hear from anybody who has made one or looked inside one they bought, so i have an idea as too how simple this build will or will not be...