Post by Apoplast on May 12, 2014 21:41:40 GMT -5
Good day all - Finally and at long last I have got aspects of my grow room and chambers up! I guess I should explain a bit. I was inspired by this video to make a couple grow chambers in a basement room. So, I decided to expand on the idea and make two different grow chambers with different grow conditions. This is only partly done, but I thought I'd share what I have.
The first chamber I've built is going to be an intermediate chamber with day temps about 24 and night temps about 15. To do that I was going to need to cool the room from the heat put out by the lights. So I got a 12K BTU dual exhaust portable A/C unit which you can see here:
It's important to have the dual exhaust because otherwise you are pulling in hot air from outside of the chamber to replace the even hotter air that is being vented to cool the unit itself. I right now, I am just pulling in air from the room outside of the chamber:
The hot venting air is then piped out of the room outdoors (yes, I drilled a hole in my house to vent an A/C unit for my plants):
The internal fan on the A/C unit is not strong enough to move enough air as far as I need to to get it outdoors, so I have an inline booster fan in between:
The unit and in-line fan are then plugged into an outlet thermostat which sits on an upper shelf:
This is what the chamber looks like inside:
And from the outside:
I already have to change the layout. The space inside the chamber is so small and the A/C so powerful that it switches on an off far too often. It's going to wear out the compressor really fast. My new plan is to cool the room with the A/C and then use individual blowers to suck in the cold room air into this chamber and the next one I will build. That way the room air will act as a buffer to prevent the A/C from cycling so often. I'll still be able to control the temperature separately too, because I want the second chamber to be a sub-tropical climate chamber, with winter temps 8 at night and 15 in the day, and summer will be 20 at night and 30 in the day.
I'll post updates as I do more. Hopefully soon... Thanks for looking!
The first chamber I've built is going to be an intermediate chamber with day temps about 24 and night temps about 15. To do that I was going to need to cool the room from the heat put out by the lights. So I got a 12K BTU dual exhaust portable A/C unit which you can see here:
It's important to have the dual exhaust because otherwise you are pulling in hot air from outside of the chamber to replace the even hotter air that is being vented to cool the unit itself. I right now, I am just pulling in air from the room outside of the chamber:
The hot venting air is then piped out of the room outdoors (yes, I drilled a hole in my house to vent an A/C unit for my plants):
The internal fan on the A/C unit is not strong enough to move enough air as far as I need to to get it outdoors, so I have an inline booster fan in between:
The unit and in-line fan are then plugged into an outlet thermostat which sits on an upper shelf:
This is what the chamber looks like inside:
And from the outside:
I already have to change the layout. The space inside the chamber is so small and the A/C so powerful that it switches on an off far too often. It's going to wear out the compressor really fast. My new plan is to cool the room with the A/C and then use individual blowers to suck in the cold room air into this chamber and the next one I will build. That way the room air will act as a buffer to prevent the A/C from cycling so often. I'll still be able to control the temperature separately too, because I want the second chamber to be a sub-tropical climate chamber, with winter temps 8 at night and 15 in the day, and summer will be 20 at night and 30 in the day.
I'll post updates as I do more. Hopefully soon... Thanks for looking!