Does anyone vent the cooltube and cabinet seperately?

Did some research last night about venting a cooltube and the cabinet separately. Read over the millspride thread, the 400hps thread, and quite a few others. Most people are using one giant fan to pull through a carbon filter > Light > Inline > exhaust. This creates a massive wind tunnel and if you have dry air it causes taco leafs.

So I am trying to avoid the wind tunnel and came up with the idea of venting the cool-tube separately with a dedicated fan and the grow area would have an additional dedicated fan.

So here is my idea:

I want to get two 4" s&p blowers, the smallest ones should be fine I would think.

The first would just vent the cooltube from one side of the cabinet straight through to the other side and/or maybe some ducting twisted around for light leaks but it wouldnt be pulling through a carbon filter.

The second would be pulling through a carbon filter and would vent the "grow area" of the cab. Since its a smaller fan pulling through a carbon filter it should reduce the wind tunnel effect and since the cooltube is being cooled by a totally different fan my temps should stay within ambient give or take a degree or two.


Does this make sense? Anyone have a link to a cab like this or personal experience?


*Other thoughts*

I was thinking you really don't need a powerful fan for venting the cooltube if its straight through however I didnt want to use axial fans due to the heat but the 4" blower seems a bit over kill to vent just a cooltube, anyone have any other fan ideas for the cooltube?

Thanks for any help. Tried to search best I could to find examples but not many people do this with their cabs.

running any room or cab with 1 single extractor fan will work but just because it works doesn't make it right. usually those folks are limited on funds or space, but your new plan sounds on point. lights and grow areas should have their own separate ducting (especially when the amount of heat u produce requires a cool tube).

Check out Redgreenery's sticky thread in the ventilation section. He has all the info on this you will ever need.

I run two seperate fans. One through my vertical cooltube, and another one to vent the chamber. I have the one venting the chamber on a cycle timer, while the one cooling the cooltube runs constantly. I do this for the exact reason you mentioned.

just a thought..as is, but flip second fan to bring air into chamber...or have cooltube open ended pulling from inside chamber , second fan pulling in.....otherwise all the air inside chamber is being sucked out.

Cheers
StellarP

I like to keep the cooltube sealed. The air that cools my light vents back into my house, so any smells that come at late flower do not vent into my house. Also I would never advise using a powered intake. I have found that my carbon filter becomes completely useless as the positive pressure inside my box ened up pushing the smells around my house. I want the air inside the chamber to be sucked out so new fresh air can come in, But I do not run a sealed room or CO2.

i tried doing it seperate. now i leave open end of reflector and run an active intake too.no carbon filter. air into attic where it meets ozone

Part of our problem is a lack of air conditioning in the summer (worse, we have evaporative cooling in our home - at least for for now) so our best growing season is over the winter, when we can control heat and humidity better. The other big problem is that our room is tiny, we can barely fit four good sized plants in there and still be able to get to all sides of them. So duplicating the sun's 1K / sq. m. of light without cooking things is tricky. And then there's the 100 year old wiring and construction, and the difficulty of running new circuits through old walls without tearing out walls...

Anyway:
I have a 6" Vortex cooling my main hood (400W HPS now, but hood and fan were chosen to cool a single 1K HPS). The air is pulled from outside and pushed through the hood and room ducts, then exhausted (through a sound muffler and light lock) to the outdoors. It's adequate if the supply air is unusually cool air from outdoors but it wasn't enough when it was pulling room-temperature air from the house.

A second 4" Vortex pulls grow room air through a charcoal filter and exhausts the space through the muffler/light-lock. Make-up air comes from the house through air filters. For now, that exhaust fan runs 24/7. I do not have CO2 yet, that will have to wait until we build a purpose-built room that can be sealed up more effectively and which will (hopefully) require less exhausting. Some day.

I've been painfully aware that I had insufficient light, but I am on a viciously tight budget. Fortunately, I acquire a lot of odd things at low cost through friends, miracles, and dumpster-diving. So for the bloom phase of the last run, I have another 400W (4X100W) of high-UVB MV floods, roughly doubling my light, and yes, significantly altering the spectrum. I'm comfortable with it, and I'm aware of the standard wisdom. The difference in results was dramatically positive in trich size and density.

Those have integral ballasts which I can't move outside the bloom room, so they really heat up the space. To combat the added heat, I added a third 4" blower (off-brand/import, a bit louder, a bit less pressure and flow), controlled by a day-night dual-temp variable speed fan controller, which pumps very cool air from the outdoors (filtered poorly for now, but soon to be filtered ridiculously well, I'm still building the box) into the bloom room. This final addition was a HUGE boon, as I have never had good control over the room temperature until now. We got luck to not have any problems with bot. or PM.

I plan to replace the rectangular hood with a straight cool tube when I upgrade to a 1K HPS, but that could be months or years, depending on what happens with income. We don't grow for sale, only for our own medical needs.

Axial "duct booster" fans have nearly zero ability to overcome duct resistance, so I wouldn't consider using less than a 4" blower for your 400 W HPS.

Cooltube Venting

Cooltube Venting

Bobbles said:

Did some research last night about venting a cooltube and the cabinet separately. Read over the millspride thread, the 400hps thread, and quite a few others. Most people are using one giant fan to pull through a carbon filter > Light > Inline > exhaust. This creates a massive wind tunnel and if you have dry air it causes taco leafs.

So I am trying to avoid the wind tunnel and came up with the idea of venting the cool-tube separately with a dedicated fan and the grow area would have an additional dedicated fan.

So here is my idea:

I want to get two 4" s&p blowers, the smallest ones should be fine I would think.

The first would just vent the cooltube from one side of the cabinet straight through to the other side and/or maybe some ducting twisted around for light leaks but it wouldnt be pulling through a carbon filter.

The second would be pulling through a carbon filter and would vent the "grow area" of the cab. Since its a smaller fan pulling through a carbon filter it should reduce the wind tunnel effect and since the cooltube is being cooled by a totally different fan my temps should stay within ambient give or take a degree or two.


Does this make sense? Anyone have a link to a cab like this or personal experience?


*Other thoughts*

I was thinking you really don't need a powerful fan for venting the cooltube if its straight through however I didnt want to use axial fans due to the heat but the 4" blower seems a bit over kill to vent just a cooltube, anyone have any other fan ideas for the cooltube?

Thanks for any help. Tried to search best I could to find examples but not many people do this with their cabs.

Click to expand...

Got a similar set-up & I got a double in-line system. I use a dedicated intake pipe for the lights.(covered with a dust filter) Acoustic duct to a first 4" fan then ducted up to the first light. Ducting between the three lights then on to a 5" fan to another 5" pipe out of the opposite wall. This is completely independant of all other exhaust/intake fans. Keeps the lights real cool, even against the glass.

Stay safe