I want to eventually expand my grow, but one thing I’ve been wondering about, should the exhaust fan be placed outside the tent?? My tents now (2x4 and 4x4) have them inside, but I feel like it’s not necessary and takes up room that it doesn’t need to.
What do you guys think?
I go out side tent more room inside for the plants 
Right its not necessary. Also outside here. My reason, not to interfere with adjusting/changing lights so easier maintenance
The placement of your fan doesn’t matter. What you want to consider is the placement of your carbon filter. If filter is inside of tent you are filtering through outside of your filter vs pushing through inside of your filter if it’s outside of your tent. There is more surface area on the outside of your filter so it’s expected to last longer when setup inside of your grow space.
@dbrn32 Might be a dumb question- how important is a carbon filter if I’m not concerned about odor?
Not very important at all.
good question, i myself have been contemplating moving it outside. from what i’ve read it really is up to you. if you dont have to worry about the smell then hell yeah don’t bother using a filter.
If noise isn’t a consideration , outside is probably the way to go , more room . I’ve never tried it so I’m just speculating really but I don’t see a problem if noise doesn’t matter . Peace .
I’ll go a step further: If you don’t care about odor, there’s no reason to buy a useless filter that loads your exhaust fan unnecessarily, reduces its CFM, and probably wears its motor out sooner.
Exactly. I am only hooked up on super loud girls. A lot of strains are.lower odor. The stinky ones I hook up filter.
For my 2x4 i have the fan on the outside for extra room and my 4x4 i have the fan on the inside.
I don’t use a carbon filter either. My exhaust fan is outside the tent. With a 4” hose Plumbed right into the top vent with string cinched around it. The exhaust is sitting on a table about 3ft away from the tent
On a separate note guys @dbrn32 @Storm @Venturi @Templeballs @Jaysittinback
I want to expand my grow set up from a 2x4 and 4x4 to include 4 4x4’s and the 2x4 for mother plants. How would you go about analyzing the ventilation/ air / environmental control needs for a room with that set up? The idea is to have the 2x4 for clones and the 4x4’s be planted cyclically in a SoG
I would concentrate on the lung room. Get that in line with enough cooling to handle the sq footage. I have a 12k U type Window unit holding my lung room in line.
I vent back into room as the unit can easily handle it. Out the tops and passive inflow from bottom. I can maintain 3 tents easily vented in. BUT if I vented out, or through attic, I could drop electric a bunch. Too lazy to do it. I can maintain an even 80-84 tops with lights full blast running together. I hit 70 at lights out with unit sitting on 70. I tried microclimate tent by tent. Too difficult to chase in my climate. Hot/dry 9 months a year. I found the macroclimate with tents in it regulated everything all by its lonesome. Each tent an exhaust fan and a circulating. No ac in tents. No humidifier in tents. Just the 2 fans. If using any of the portable gear, use to control the lung room outside of grow tents.
Just my thoughts.
If I had this space I would go 1 4x8 and 2 4x4. That 4x8 can stay on constant flower with a ton of room to assembly line through the 2 4x4 and the 2x4. A light rail mover would drop the 4x8 light needed by 25% at least if used. can run closer with less chance of heat damage from hot lights.
I was thinking the same thing. Each 4x4 space will have a 4x4 or rather 40inch flood table. They will be planted in succession about every 2 1/2-3 weeks. So maybe hanging up a piece of plastic in a 4x8 or something to reduce the extra light on a freshly planted half until it catches up could be the answer. At work rn so will think over the rest of your comment but thanks so much for the in depth response brother, appreciate you!
I couldn’t imagine growing out of 4 different tents. Hopefully this is a single flower room with 4 areas offset by timing, strains, etc?
@dbrn32 Yes, 4 areas offset by timing and potentially strains. A growmodel of mine runs a system i want to imitate, and eventually adopt. He supports one 4x4 flowering table with 100wLED of veg light. So a 400w veg light for mothers should supply clones for four 4x4 tables, all in the same room.
Clones are taken every 2 1/2-3 weeks. Once rooted they are planted in one 4x4 table directly into flower. Then another round of clones is cut. Rinse and repeat. Timeline of a table once planted is usually 10 weeks, but staggering it this way he cuts down a harvest about every month.
You can run one area with 4 different tables on the same light schedule and just place the clones 9n each table at whatever frequency you want. That’s how I would set this up anyway.
You’ll need space for the 4 tables and room to navigate and access each. If you want to keep 2x4 in here then you’ll also need room for it, and potentially space dedicated to rooting clones if you’re not going to do it in 2x4 with mother plants. Once you determine size of your grow space you can calculate the volume of space and I would shoot to be able to exchange air at least once every minute. This is a little overkill, but better to design for a little more than needed with proper controls to dial in. This will at least take care of replacing co². From there you’ll want to have some control over your intake air conditions to help run at proper temperature and relative humidity. I would also make considerations to address fresh air moving throughout room and to exhaust and not just moving directly from intake to exhaust. You can do this by using multiple smaller intakes and exhaust fans instead of singular large units, and some circulating fans.
If you get above settled, make sure it’s light tight and you can support the power demands of your equipment. You’ll need a light controller to run all those lights from a single circuit, or multiple 120v 20a circuits just to cover lighting.
I feel like this doesnt address the individual light needs of the clones as they progress thru flower stage since young clones on table 4 would be under the same light as clones 8 weeks into bloom on table 1 or so. But I have wondered about setting up a room over tents also. Going to ask my guy and see what he thinks.
As far as the environment you have given me a lot to think about and I gotta say I love this community.b you guys take the time out of your day to answer my questions and engage with the stuff I can’t talk about with anyone else. I appreciate yall
You’re not going to find a single light that covers four 4x4 areas. So you can address this by designing with one light per table. Just about every light available this large is going to have some sort of dimming feature as well, so it shouldn’t be difficult to tune on a per table basis. This being said, once rooted clones are mature plants regardless of size. They will probably take a lot more than you expect.