Help Us Out (Cooling a Closet) Please!!

SpoCannabis · Apr 1, 2006

Well....one of our medical patients in growing in a small 2'x6'x8' apartment closet. He has a 400w MH/HPS and 4 DWC bubbling buckets. Ventilation has obviously become a major problem for him. Being as how it is an apartment, he cannot do any major construction, although "stealth-ness" is not really a big issue here. He has been able to maintain temps in the high 70's by keeping the closet door open and a box fan boosted up about 1' blowing into the closet. However, the temp does climb up around 80-81 as well...

Any ideas to help out a friend...?

Blunt_69 · Apr 1, 2006

Yeah, he needs to put in proper ventilations.Passive intake near the bottom and a good exhaust venting outside of the apartment(your exhust connot vent into the same area as your intake). If this is not possible the only other option is to get a portable ac unit.

SpoCannabis · Apr 1, 2006

Thank you blunt....however, I obviously was not clear. I, myself am very familiar with the proper ventilation techniques. In this situation, those do not apply as easily because he cannot do any cutting into the building/doors. I was thinking about just getting a piece of plywood the size of the door and putting hinges on it to use as the door for the grow. That way we would at least be able to cut holes in the doors for an active exhaust/passive intake system.

Anyone got any ideas???

Sauce · Apr 1, 2006

There are 2 main ways to cool down a place and that's a/c and ventilation. Both need venting going to the outside or to some place other than that room. Without cutting it's impossible to do anything major.

I suggest either cutting a hole in the door and just buying a new door when he moves out, or leaving the door open with a large box fan blowing air out or in, whichever works better.

I think you could probably get a decent door and paint it for under $100 easy. Imo that's a small price to pay.

SpoCannabis · Apr 1, 2006

Yeah....at this point we have just left the door open with a large box fan blowing in. The surrounding rooms are fine to vent to/from, but it was the door posing the main obstacle. Wouldn't you think it would be more cost effective to just buy a piece of thin ply wood and put hinges on it, use it to cut up for ventilation, and then just scrap it and the end of the grow???

BlindDate · Apr 2, 2006

You can buy a cheap interior door at a home center for about $35. You can't keep that door open forever. What will you do for a dark cycle? Cutting vents is the least of your problems. They need to be light proof as well, that means providing a torturous path for the light which will require an extraction fan etc. Also what about oder control? It's impossible to live in a house with a flowering plant.

Haps · Apr 2, 2006

Yeah the plywood is a good idea. Find some elbows [ plumbing, furnace, etc.] and install at the bottom facing down to keep light out.
H

CarharttKidd · Apr 2, 2006

Haha what a pain in the ass for a 400w grow. Like someone already said, you NEED ventilation or A/C (which ammounts to ventilation eventually), which means you need stink control. Someone already mentioned the concern of light proofing. Way I see it, the cheapest thing to do is get a decent size dayton style blower that can exhaust and handle the load of a carbon filter. Make the carbon filter yourself out of a bucket or hardware cloth for something that small. The plywood cabinet idea is definately the way to go in my opinion. Set up some passive intakes and do your best to make sure that the fan will create a negative pressure environment (eliminate gaps with expando foam and weather stripping and don't have too big of an intake- shit I don't even know if a dryer parascope would be small enough- may have to go with pvc elbows) You should def. be able to get this slapped together for less than 2 bills.

gregor_mendel · Apr 2, 2006

I agree that your plywood idea is good, but you will need 3 or 4 elbows at each duct to lightproof. Three will work for sweeping elbows, but you will need four if they are ninety degree angle elbows. If stealth dosen't matter, this should work well.

I used to use R-MATT for what you are proposing with plywood. It is a dense foil backed foamboard found where all the other foam board is at home improvement stores. Not all places carry it.

You can cut it with a utility knife and assembe it with foil tape. Make doors out of it, too. Run those ells throgh it. Probably not sturdy enough for mounting a heavy fan, though.

GM

SpoCannabis · Apr 2, 2006

BlindDate said:
Also what about oder control? It's impossible to live in a house with a flowering plant.

Really?? Impossible eh? I must have experienced miracles....time and time again, lol.

What many of you do not seem to realize is that this is a LEGAL MEDICAL GROW. THERE IS NO NEED FOR ODOR CONTROL.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks H & GM for your positive input - I keep thinking to type K+ and then damn near shed a tear for OG.

I will keep you updated on everything....should have a few pics up in the next couple of days.

G35DarkO1E · Apr 2, 2006

u sounded kinda ass holish lol when u said lol u guys dont seem to realize lol im a patient or blabblity blah . all i can say is if ur gonna do a med grow. dont bring schwagg to the bay . or diz ur self wit that ha ha in san diego. cuz i will see it. im a patient and ewwww ude be on blast if i saw u on here doing brix "" bud enhancer"" quick growing techniques . and then try to flip it in sd. omg it would be funny but a harse reality .

Sauce · Apr 2, 2006

Good reply g35..... :wink:

The plywood idea would work fine but honestly how much more is a door? Whatever works though...

Once you have your door or piece of plywood in place, you want to drill 2 holes.

One at the top and one at the bottom. The bottom one will be a passive intake and should be a slightly bigger hole. The top one needs to be hooked up to some ducting and a fan/blower/inline fan, whatever you choose to use. The more powerful the better. The important part is mounting.

Mount the fan at the back top of the closet and use ducting to run back to the door. This way the air runs through the entire closet rather than just the door area. Much more effective venting.

I recommend picking up a quiet bathroom fan for a fan. They are fairly cheap, powerful, and are available many places.

Or use a/c, but a/c sucks up a lot of power compared to a vent fan.

Guest · Apr 2, 2006

I had a similar setup and did a Mills Pride within the cabinet, and ducted venting through a wall in the closet to another room.

It was minor construction, and I kept the 4" circles, and repatched the walls when I moved - they didnt notice it.

10k · Apr 3, 2006

The plywood idea would work fine but honestly how much more is a door?

EXACTLY ! Why screw around with cheapass plywood ?

Lowes, home depot etc, they all sell cheap hollow core interior doors and you'll have a much easier time mortising a few hinges to fit your existing door frame hinge locations, than you'll ever have trying to make some wobbly sheet of plywood act as a decent & light tight closure for that closet.

PS... if the replacement door has just a passive exit opening at the top and a passive inlet opening at the bottom, you'd be absolutely shocked at how well the closet will cool itself by convection alone, provided the room the closet is in is well air conditioned. convection = heat rising out of the top exit and pulling the cold air into the closet as a biproduct of that heat rise, ala the old phototrons lift up panels heh heh heh.

However, a good exhaust blower will give much more airflow to the plants, which would give the plants all the co2 they'd need.

purpsmckenzie · Apr 3, 2006

get a 4" inline exhaust fan...then go to ace hardware and for 40 buks get a new door take off the one that is on there now....in the new door cut a 4" circualr hole in the top of the door and one in the bottom as well...run 4" ducting through the hole in the top of the door so it will suk the heat out of the top(heat rises) and the hole in the bottom will automatically suk in coll air from outside the room to replace the air that is leaving the room through the ducting at the top...you can either put black screen on the inside and outside of the hole son the door to block the light from coming in when your light in the closet is off...or you can get 4" curved black pipe and make a light block for the holes...you can put the fan wherever it fits and run the ducting to it...you should have no problem at all with temp after this...i am doing basically the same thing with a 10" inline exhaust fan and a whole room lol good luck!

Jnugg · Apr 3, 2006

Buy a new closet door and drill a 6" hole in the top,thats where the 6" 449cfm inline exhuast fan will go.Route some ducting from the fan/closet door to the other side of the room (dryer vent ducting is best over flexible alum ducting IMO).

This way the hot air dumps out at the other side of the room and can go out a window or be cooled by you central A/C.

I grow in a cab and the 4" inline fan is at the top of the cab.It blows the hot air into my bedroom which is cooled by the cool air coming out of my A/C vent.Cool air is sucked up via passive intakes at the bottom where cool air pools up.Ambient temps right now are 75F and temps in the cab 10 inches under the light is 78-82F and I only use a 4" 170cfm inline and temps outdoors are soaring into the high 80's already.

BlindDate · Apr 3, 2006

Really?? Impossible eh? I must have experienced miracles....time and time again, lol.

What many of you do not seem to realize is that this is a LEGAL MEDICAL GROW. THERE IS NO NEED FOR ODOR CONTROL.

I don't even know where to start with this one!! I suppose you don't bother to change your underwear either. And he probably wonders why he can't seem to get a girlfriend!! lol!!

This guy probably lives on welfare, in a house with 50 cats pissing all over the place.

OK,,So now you have your marching orders given to you with painfull repetition. BUY a door, Cut a vent, Install a fan, Attach a carbon filter.

CarharttKidd · Apr 3, 2006

Haha BlindDate thats fucking hillarious.

Wanna be medical grow dude with your weak ass 400w grow, listen up and humble your self. I've been a cocky mother fucker before (when I was runnin 3kw bloom, still tiny btw) and it didn't get me anywhere. If you knew it all, you wouldn't be asking how to vent a hot closet. This has got to be the most common problem people face growing in a closet. The door idea is right on. It wouldn't be too much of a bitch to put a real door in. If you used 2x4's to frame in the area and a plywood skin(or even greenboard), that would work fine too. You could even insulate the room that way with a roll or so of insulation.

10k · Apr 3, 2006

NOT funny !

Excuse me...
Attention G35DarkO1E, BlindDate, Carhartkidd...
Is that kind of personal abuse language really necessary here ?

This forum, and this website for that matter is NOT here for you to make off topic rude remarks about other members.

Next time please just have a few puffs and be kind to your fellow stoners.

DJ Twist · Apr 3, 2006

For real.

Someone seeks some advice and help and he gets ripped a new one. (for no good reason I can discern)

Ya'll need to chill.

Help Us Out (Cooling a Closet) Please!!

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