i have a hang up on my design

ok here is my dillema. i am going to be running a 10x5x7 recirculating dwc setup with 2 1000w raptor hoods. at first i wanted to put the scrubber in the tent but im going to have an ac unit in it. so on one hand, i dont want to just suck all of the cold air out of my tent and blow it outside. but on the other hand, the cooler air through the 2 raptors could work wonders for my grow room temp. so now im thinking it might be better to just scrub the whole bedroom with a bigger fan and filter. but the bigger fans and filters are a lot more expensive and cost more to run and replace. what do you think is the more cost effective route? scrubbing the whole bedroom or just scrubbing the tent and losing some cold ac air. i know the ac air adds up fast though.

any feedback would be great, thanks.

thats alot of light for your space.

not really, im actually gong to be cutting the room down more. im putting my pumps ac and control rez in the last 2 feet of the tent. so its actuall going to be 8x5x7 growing space. that only comes out to 50w a sq ft. id actually like a lil more light to be honest but 50w a sq foot will do.

cool the bedroom. take the air from the bedroom into the tent, through the filter and out.

why not get the air for the hoods from outside & dump it back outside? not contact w/ the plants so no smell & no need to scrub it & you are not wasting AC.

smoke and coke said:

cool the bedroom. take the air from the bedroom into the tent, through the filter and out.

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thats the same thing as scrubbing the tent but on a much larger scale. i dont want to have to cool the whole bedroom if i can cool just a fraction of it. what you posted seems even more wasteful imo.

mrmadcow said:

why not get the air for the hoods from outside & dump it back outside? not contact w/ the plants so no smell & no need to scrub it & you are not wasting AC.

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the only problem i see with that is now i have to have 2 exhaust systems instead of 1. i still have to scrub the room no matter what.

im thinking scrubbing the bedroom and exhausting it outside through the raptors and then cooling just the tent might be the cheapest option.

id scrub the tent seprate from your lights. id run a scrub threw my filter and out of the tent. then i would run a separate one for the lights i would pull in from outside the room threw the tent and back out of the room. just cleaning the air in the tent and not releasing any heat in the room or the tent. and run the ac in the room not the tent.

hey bro you can always put the scrbber on the outside of your tent have the ducting and one inline on the inside of the tent and one on top of the scrbber cleaning all of the air that is pushed out of the tent....hope this helps

idk i have always wanted an a/c for my room but even if my lights had a seperate vent system, i would still have another for the room for air exchange and its just going to take all the a/c air right out.

you could rig up a wye fitting in your vent to use 1 fan and have it take air through the lights and the tent both. a passive intake taking air from the bedroom. also vent the exhaust to the outside and not back into the bedroom.

Flip The Script said:

hey bro you can always put the scrbber on the outside of your tent have the ducting and one inline on the inside of the tent and one on top of the scrbber cleaning all of the air that is pushed out of the tent....hope this helps

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well im trying to keep the cold air in the tent and stay as energy efficient as possible. i am even thinking of running that 12-1 light cycle. have you heard of that? sounds interesting and the logic is sound. but anyways i think i have figured out the best design for my needs. let me know what you think of this?

scrubber outside the tent to get negative pressure in the bedroom. then running the scrubbed air through the raptors and outside. but put a y off the scrubber and have a blow back line into the tent providing constant clean fresh air to the garden. idk maybe reduce it down to an 1 in or 1.5 and just have a steady stream, but not overwhelming enough to affect the ac much. I might have to use a 10in fan to up the cfms and run reducers but thats not a problem. this way i can just cool the small 10x5x7 area. would this work or am i way off base?


btw i am going to be running dwc at about 120 gallons so water temps are huge for me. im kinda hoping if i can keep the tent nice and cool i wont need the $400 chiller. i have the chiller in the budget but if i can get by without it i will. im really shooting for efficiency.

yeah I have a A/C and I love that shit I never noticed any differential from when the inline flips on and when it is off.. The A/C will always push out that cold air you don't have to worry about that air being taken out of the room. But I understand what you mean about being cost efficient. The portable a/c I got kind of sucks only because I couldn't hook it up to my environmental controller. So I would have to go in there and turn it off every night at the same time or run the risk of having it run all night which it did times that I had things to do.

Flip The Script said:

yeah I have a A/C and I love that shit I never noticed any differential from when the inline flips on and when it is off.. The A/C will always push out that cold air you don't have to worry about that air being taken out of the room. But I understand what you mean about being cost efficient. The portable a/c I got kind of sucks only because I couldn't hook it up to my environmental controller. So I would have to go in there and turn it off every night at the same time or run the risk of having it run all night which it did times that I had things to do.

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you just need to put that ac on a cheapo timer and that will give you piece of mind. do you think its unneccessary to have a blow back into the tent, do you think thats a waste? my thinking is to put the cleanest air in your house back into your garden and not just outside. with the scrubber in the tent wouldnt that just drag all of the dust and spores into your grow room? making for dirty lenses and less then perfect air conditions?

iv heard of the 12 1 light thing but dont trust it. iv had my plants hermi case of a bad timer one time it sucked

if you scrub the air in the tent with a carbon filter-inline fan, you can use the fan to blow over the canopy of your plants. two birds with one stone, and it keeps the cold air inside.
if you're adding CO2 though, that would be blowing it away from your plants (even if you have a high ppm), unless you get the CO2 behind the fan.

well I grew in soil so I expected dirty hoods and dirt hanging around but i got a dustshroom. A hepa would work better I'm getting one this run too. Essentially the point of having the filter is to take all of that smelly air and run it through that either by means of having it in the tent and pulling the air from the room through the filter through the ducting and out the room or have the air in the room pushed out of the room and through the filter on the outside cleaning the air. I cant speak for which is more efficient but I had it inside of my room and it worked fine.

This time I think I'm going to place it on the outside because I too need to put the a/c in the tent just in case but hopefully this run the a/c wont be needed as i'm getting a shit load of inlines and i'm hooking one up to an environmental controller and the other to a timer running the entire 12 hrs. so one is for if the room gets to hot that will flip on and hopefully in theory cool the hoods to the temp desired. But I realize there will be days I'm going to need the a/c and every once in a while I'm going to throw it on just because The fact that cooler air = less chance of pesticides and other stress factors. the air situation in the veg room is another story I still have an inline in there and a couple timers so maybe I'll put those to use with no ducting just pulling that stale air straight up and out the room and put a couple fans to add to the oscillating fan i have in there. I'm just gonna veg with t5's and a CFL for now until my LED project gets underway in another month

oh and the timer doesn't work either the a/c had some kind of saftey relay where if it cut off it wont cut back on again once power is restored until manually reset. Great for safety but for my needs not so much