But heat coming out a chimney is *normal* Summer months may show different unless its gas/oil hot water.

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The Temporary Relief Assistant Trailer Park Supervisor. Carmelisous Jornl :: ElecUsageCostsCalc (now with carbon footprint) :: FloroTubeCompendium ::

So Who has the scoop on FLIR?

I know that venting a 400hps out a non-working chimney is no big deal. True it is not like a few 1000 watters. But since I know that the chimney is non-working I think that the neighbors will notice steam from the chimney and be wonder.

. . .Remember I used to live two houses down as a kid. These people have been here since than and could possibly know more about my house than I do. Anywho I do believe that the best solution would be to scrub the air and dump it inbetween the floorboards, they're a foot tall and wide. Or in the furnace room but it would get awfully hot in the course of a day. Even in winter.

. . .But what about this FLIR??

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Yeah; i'm no expert, but i'm sure 20-30 ft of cold winter brick would prolly ensure no 'heat' is coming out, and all the water moisture in the air ventilating would condensate to the cold brick before it got to the top, so if your talking about what i'm assuming appears to come out of city sewer lids when it's cold outside, I don't think you'll look like you have a sewer coming out of your chimney. Are you planning on humidifying or using CO2?

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Hwy420's White Widow Grow

FLIR Stands for Forward Looking Infa Red, basically it's a high tech thermal camera that generally county police put on their helicopters. They flyover communities and rural areas and take some digital thermal images of the houses in an area, and they identify some high profile homes that appear to have thousands of watts of HEAT exhausting inappropriately out a garage or something silly. Supposedly the supreme court in USA has found it unconstitutional to warrant for a search based on simple flyover images. (Meaning they aren't allowed to flyover and then begin an investigation or get a warrant just for heat escaping from your home (the judge deemed that a violation of privacy, so one should only be concerned with FLIR Flyovers AFTER they are already on to you. If they don't find anything, it's less evidence to warrant a search/raid.

If your police have been notoriously known for doing whatever the fuck they want in your county or state, then it's possible they won't have any hesitation with trying to get a warrant based on the FLIR images alone. 400Watts of heat will never call for a warrant. If your really paranoid like I am, ventilate out of your chimneys or attics (that's generally the one exception to the rule about warranted searches), where is the heat emitting from the home. Natually homes ventilate at a high rate that a 400W wouldn't warrant for a search either. Aren't street lights like 250Watt?

More about FLIR How Police IR Helicopter Function Work THREAD

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Hwy420's White Widow Grow

most are 1000 watters,,, the orange are HPS

I own a thermal cam.

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The Temporary Relief Assistant Trailer Park Supervisor. Carmelisous Jornl :: ElecUsageCostsCalc (now with carbon footprint) :: FloroTubeCompendium ::

Post Re-Edited for clarity.

I have a little portal door, which leads to the chimney in the same room that my little grow box will be. I'm thinking about venting into there to avoid the cost of buying a scrubber, but am not sure exactly how the whole chimney thing works. Picture the chimney as a big square shape that extends upwards. There is a small corner that is physically separated by bricks (like a mini-chimney in this big square at the corner), which the furnace exhausts into and upwards (again, it's separated physically from my side).

Question: Does my side of the chimney (the bigger section minus the little corner chimney belonging to the furnace) also exhaust all the way to the top? I'm not sure how chimneys are exactly constructed, and I was a bit surprised at the separation. I'm not sure exactly why it would be made this way.

PS With a small grow box in a room, is it simply ok to clean (using a scrubber) the air out of the box, and *right* back into the same room?

Neigbours? How about a FLIR pig seeing a hot jet of air coming outta there?!!?

I thought a chimney had hot air coming out of it anyway

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Mr. Therapy Man

Just vent the damn 400watt HPS out the chimney. Its an easy exit and no one will see anything unless on FLIR and even that won't seem suspicious at all. A helicopter isn't going to wonder why there is heat exiting a chimney. Unless your house gets cold in the winter, venting into the floorboards would provide you with an extra way to heat your home (though it'd heat it very little, but every bit counts)

I have a basement apartment and use 600watts HPS to flower... it gets cold here in the winter so I use a 1000watt (I think, sounds about right anyway) electric heater sometimes to keep 1 room warm. Do you honestly think my 600 watt HPS creates even more heat than a 1000 watt heater DESIGNED to create heat? Do you honestly think the cops are going to waste time hunting down every person using an electric heater and assign surveillance to their house? How about when I use my damn oven?

Keep yourself below 1000 or 2000watts for lighting and you won't raise any suspicions when it comes to heat, the only thing that might ever be suspicious is the rythm of your light usage to the power company. For that, you can always use a timer to schedule random 15 minute shutoffs throughout the lights-on period during the day so that there isn't a constant 12 hours of 1000watts being drained, or set up a switch so that you have 2 different lights on at different times so the wattage stays constant.