Closet getting pretty hot. First closet grow. Any sugesstions??

Looks like we have similar rooms (I have twin 2x3x3 rooms) and set-ups, and heat issues. I fixed mine so let me tell you what I see wrong with yours:
I see your HPS ballast is in your grow room. Very bad. It produces major heat, plus, if it can't cool itself it will start a fire. Best to relocate it. I also see you and I have identical vortex fans (180cfm?). But you have a reducer on your output, so your fan isn't 180cfms anymore. You really need to maintain the factory duct diameter or you loose the cfm rating. Infact, with my small rooms and a 400w HPS i had to experiment with bigger and bigger fans until I could control the temp. So should you.

lastly, 1000 watts for what you are doing might be the real prob. Its just putting out too much heat and your room isn't that big to warrant such power...though the more light the better . Try dropping to a 600 atleast.
I see you have a vacuum attached to the HPS but it looks like it dumps the hot air inside the room...am I correct? That will not help a whole lot with your average room temps. If you can vent that air outside it would make a world of difference...

Good luck, I'm sure other pros will chime in and help.


Markavelli

Yeah iam crazy for trying to pull this off in a small closet. especially with a 100 watt light.
I want to try a little more first though. Iam going to vent that vacuum fan out also, beacuse right now its just sucking hot air though the lights.
Thanks for the tip about moving the ballast.

I would like he said remove the ballast from the room, get the air from the hood vented out of the room, I usually go to the attic but near the closest window works in a pinch, moving that air doesnt help much if it does not leave at least the closet. Also you should get some sort of residential fan to move air over the plants/ below the light, that should help disperse the remaining heat.

After looking at your picts once again, here's what i would advise you do:

Currently your fresh air is pulled through your hps, then into that vacuum (the vacuum alone creates a slightly warm exhaust btw (air is run over the electric motor to cool it), then dumps into the room.

Try this, kill the reducer on your Vortex output (go back to 4" or whatever its supposed to be), connect the Vortex to your HPS, connect your carbon filter to the other end of your HPS. This way the hot HPS air and room air goes straight out. Next, either use the suction power of your vortex to pull fresh air in (only if your room is air tight), or get a small 5" 120v electric fan to pump fresh air into the room.

Is the intake air coming from outside or from inside your home?
Mine comes from inside my bedroom, so the fresh air is already warmed up. The warmer the air you bring into your grow room, the more air you will have to cycle through. It can be 85 degrees in my bedroom and i can still maintain 90 under my HPS (summertime). I'm just pulling a lot of air through my rooms per minute (co2 is not an option for me).
I'd seal my grow room off so you can take control of the intake CFM's (cubic feet per minute of air). Next, maximize your exhaust output and fresh air input until you can maintain an acceptable room temp. I use a "cooling" thermostat, connected to my Vortex, which turns it on once the room temp climbs. It will go on every few minutes in the winter and stay on all day during the summer. Ace Hardware has a great, $12 cooling thermostat.
The smaller the room, the more wild the temp fluctuations will be. I attached picts of my small rooms. They work just fine now. I can run a perpetual grow of 17 plants (SOG). On extreme hot days i put a portable AC near the fresh air intake to control the temps....

hope this helps...


Oops, i just re-read your original post. We don't have the same Vortex fans,mine are 4"rs, if you can keep your output @ 6" then your fan should do the trick, just need to fine tune your set-up as per the advice you're getting on this board. Cheers.

Too large of a light for that room. I'm also not familiar with the fan you're using to cool your light. You most likely need to use a vortex style fan. I'd get a 6 inch to 8 inch ducting adaptor and see how well your six inch vortex cools that light. I'd then recommend you buy another fan to cool the light. The only problem I have with your setup is that you bought an 8 inch hood. You should in theory buy an 8 inch fan to go with it (buying a smaller size fan with an adaptor will wear out the fan quickly). Most 8 inch fans are in the 780-800 CFM range. Thats way too much power to cool a light (too many CFMs makes for inefficient cooling). Even with a fan controller your not going to make that fan go much slower (maybe 50% slower). Bottom line is you only need 200-250 CFMs per 1000w setup to cool it down. Anymore and you're just wasting power, amperage, and not cooling things well. You should have gone with a six inch style hood. You only need 8 inch hoods when dealing with 3 or more lights (usually more than 3).

Also remove all unnecessary items that generate heat out of your room if possible (i.e ballasts, high performance vans, ect). Get some fresh air in there or an AC unit and that should cool things up. Also if you have the luxury to I'd remove the ceiling off your closet. I know this may sound stupid but cathedral style ceilings (those with areas to trap heating) do wonders to cool rooms down (this depends on the whats above you and the type of structure you have).

P.S. if your hood is a 6 inch hood (it's hard to tell from the pics), I'd ignore what I said above and buy a 6 inch vortex and a fan controller.