Hello everyone! I am a bit of an old school grower that is just recently gotten back into the practice since the late 80’s early 90’s and WOW has the tech gotten good!! I have a Spider Farmer 2’x4’ grow tent, a good Spider Farmer SF2000 LED, an AC Infinity 69Pro controller, an Spider Farmer humidifier, and a clip-on oscillating fan. Plants will be be in 5gal fabric pots with Fox Farm Ocean Forest soil and Real Growers grown dots mixed in. Watering will be with Real Growers Recharge on recommended schedule. Grand Daddy Purps seeds from ILGM germinated and cracked open on 4/20 in less than 2 days!! With that out of the way how about some pics?
Front shot of open tent. this tent is going to be out in my garage unfortunately. Heat this summer will be a problem but I have remedied this with a 6" intake that pulls cool air from inside my house, through the adjacent garage wall and into my tent via and inline 6" fan. Light sits exactly 18" from top of soil. 2 temp and humidity probes dangle at canopy level and will be moved as needed.
Here is a shot of the intake duct and fan. I have mounted this fan to the wall since this pic was taken so it no longer pulls on the tent.
This is the intake duct that brings in cool air from the house, cleverly mounted inside a cabinet. The clip on the shelf helps keep the door slightly ajar. Behind those louvers on the faceplate is a 1/4" carbon filter padding cut to fit to keep the air going into the grow space nice and clean and free of any curious bugs.
This is the 4" exhaust fan with carbon filter. I am not concerned with smell so I may at some point remove the filter but I opted to leave it on to provide a little resistance to the airflow leaving the tent. I have the intake pushing more air then the exhaust to create positive pressure ever so slightly. It’s very slight but just enough to ensure I am not sucking in any air from the garage space. With the heat out there and a cat litter box 10’ away I do not want my grow space contaminated with garage air. So far this is working perfectly!
On the left is the ambient temp and humidity of the garage, on the right side is my controller showing temps and humidity for the tent. I am aiming for 76F, RH 60% for veg, 40% - 50% for flower with a VPD of 1.0 - 1.2 give or take.
PPFD readings with light set to roughly 40% of max power @ 18" from soil level.
I may also move this humidifier outside the tent and modify the tent to bring humidity in with the extra flex hose it came with. I’ll have to pop a hole low to the bottom of the tent because I want the humidity near where the cool intake air is. If I feed it through the only duct hole I have that isn’t being used it will be much too high on the left side right where air is exhausted out. So I’ll most likely pop a hole into the inline duct and just feed humidity into the tent with the cool air. If I get too much dripping I may adjust this.
So yea, this is what I am working with so far! How do I rate? So far our spring here in Phoenix AZ has been mild but temps are creepin’ up to 90F during the day already. We will most likely see temps near 115F this summer per usual. Luckily my garage is well insulated and typically stays in the low 90’s even on the hottest of day with no additional cooling whatsoever. If I absolutely must I may supplement my cooling with a small window style AC unit I have on standby but I really don’t think I’ll need it as the air coming from inside the house is nice and cool!
Thanks for reading and for any and all feedback!
