[killabrown420]

Hi all, I'm in the process of designing and soon to be building a new growroom. I have ordered or bought most of my growing gear, I just need to get down to building a suitable grow room.

My space is a spare bedroom, with two small closets, and 4 windows. I haven't measured the exact dimensions but that's not so much important as is the design I will be using, which is what I'm focusing on now. I would guess the room is somewhere around 10x10x8.

I've built a sketch up model of the room that will be used. While the dimensions are not exact, it is meant to merely show my intentions. What I need from you guys is any potential problems you see from this setup, or any tips you think would help.



The flower room will be a room within a room. Using 2x4's and black poly. Mylar will line the inside.

For ventilation I will have a 424 cfm inline fan which i believe might be enough to vent the lights and the room alone, but if not i also have a 265 cfm blower that could be used as well. The plan is to pull air through the lights in the flower room along with the air outside the flower room and up through the attic into a carbon filter. Cool air will be brought in through the window by the negative pressure in the flower room.

Lighting will be 2 400 watt air cooled hps for the flower room, and for veg, ~120 watts of t12 floros. I will have a oscilating fan in the flower room, and one small desktop fan in the veg room. For intake I will have a window cracked open, with a light diffuser of some kind over the window so that no light escapes. I'm still researching possible solutions to this problem, but any links would be appreciated.

Thanks for any help, and if I can get a hold of a camera I will post some pics of the build. I've used all the great threads from OG and IC to come up with design. Hopefully I can pull it off.

Killa

I dont know if that fan is going to be big enough to create alot of negative pressure. Not enough to keep the window cracked.

And speaking of leaving the window open in your flower room.... Does not sound like a smart idea. Power failure= air coming out the window


BTW if you are going to do all this, why not use 600's or 1000's?

[killabrown420]

thanks for the reply...

i will test and see if the fan is strong enough to pull air from outside the window. the window will be kept open by a L brace or something...the fan will not have anything to do with keeping it cracked ajar. The window is the only source of fresh air I forsee, unless i drill a hole through the floor.

To address the power failure possibility i was thinking of some kind of box that would act as a go between from the window to the flower room, and using this box maybe the intake could have somekind of flap like a dryer hose exhaust that will limit the amount of air escaping. That all depends on having enough negative pressure to lift the flap and allow air to come inside.

The reason for using 400's and not higher lamps

1. cost effective, i can run cmh lamps for veg and beginning of flower
2. low wattage - my house is old and the wiring is anything but up-to-date I wanted to keep total wattage for the entire room @ under 1500 watts.
3. low heat, closer to the plants. I have grown w/ 400's and know how to squeeze every last ounce out of them.

[Pseudo]

put your tables on wheels and push them together so they benefit from sidelighting, maybe rig up some kind of reflectix curtain

[Pseudo]

kinda reminds me of my room, but i have one rolling table with dual 4x4 trays, and my veg area built into/under table, and 600s

[killabrown420]

the room looks rectangular, but it's more of a square than the drawing i did. the lights will definately be closer than what it looks in the drawing. it's basically going to be 2 of these boxes together in a room.

[Quazi]

That's a sweet setup from the looks of it.

However, it appears that you are pulling air from the vegetative area before you get to your lamps. Considering air follows a preferential path, aren't you worried about most of the air being pulled in there and not much air being pulled in at the end where your intake for your 400Ws will be? It would seem that keeping your flowering lamps cool would be as high, if not a higher priority than the lamps in veg.

Keep us posted on how it turns out man.

-Q

[killabrown420]

thats a very good point. i've been trying to think of a way to cool the lights and veg area with one fan and using one scrubber. but it does seem to pose a problem as far as air flow in the flower room.

one solution would be to isolate the air traveling through the hoods by having the intake directly into the open window and exhaust into the veg area using a seperate fan, and then use the inline fan/filter to scrub that air, and the air around the veg area.

would an air diffuser on the end of the veg intake maybe help match the resistance of the flower room ducting? something like this?

[Lagertester]

you may wanna put a filter in the fresh air intake to prevent bugs sneaking in, I grew in a shed once that used fresh air and I had all kinda mite troubles. Since I have gone sealed room no more mites!

[Quazi]

That air diffuser idea is an interesting one but it sounds like it'd be more of a pain in the arse to try and figure out that equalization point (even if you could find it).

I took a bit of liberty with your image, I hope you don't mind. The yellow is where you could place fans, and the blue indicates direction of air-flow:


Here's the idea. Split your exhaust cabinet into two halves. Put the first fan in the lower half of the exhaust cab and have it blowing into the upper half. Also, have the veg room exhausting into the upper half. You won't have too much heat in there, so you can use a pretty small fan or two to get the job done there.

Now you have a single room where both sources of air are running into. Now you just need to exhaust that small space with your final fan on the other side of your filter at the top.

You would still probably need a single, decently powerful fan for pulling through the 2x400W, but the other fans wouldn't have to be near as powerful. This reduces running cost and noise. Really, your cost will be pretty close to the same as having one gnarly-huge, powerful fan to run the whole thing.

In addition, you'd be in a better position to avoid the single-point-of-failure scenario.

Just an idea.

-Q