To insulate or not to insulate is the ?

I'm building a 10x10 grow room in my garage with wood frame and dry wall. I have 9000btu portable ac and a dehumidifier. I have 4 x 1000w ballasts with large
adjust-a-wing
Should I install insulation in the walls?

Yes.
Why not?

What I can tell you is this, I have a friend who grows in an attic area in a box he built himself.

He insulated it seriously well with rigid sheets of insulation called KINGSPAN.

His attic area can reach in excess of 35C during summer and the most his room runs at with 3x400w is 32C.

All because its well insulated.

He's since bought a portable AC to cool it more to control his temps even further.



J

my bad misread first post..
insulate it if need be, make sure you air seal first though, to prevent air leakage thus losing efficiency

enotee said:

I'm building a 10x10 grow room in my garage with wood frame and dry wall. I have 9000btu portable ac and a dehumidifier. I have 4 x 1000w ballasts with large
adjust-a-wing
Should I install insulation in the walls?

Click to expand...

yes.

jondamon said:

What I can tell you is this, I have a friend who grows in an attic area in a box he built himself.

He insulated it seriously well with rigid sheets of insulation called KINGSPAN.

His attic area can reach in excess of 35C during summer and the most his room runs at with 3x400w is 32C.

All because its well insulated.

He's since bought a portable AC to cool it more to control his temps even further.



J

Click to expand...

I dont understand this. Before the AC was there..how was it that the insulation dropped the temperature below the ambient temp of the room the box was in,especially with 1200 watts inside it? Did he have ducting bringing in cooler outdoor air through the box and/or hoods?

BustinScales510 said:

I dont understand this. Before the AC was there..how was it that the insulation dropped the temperature below the ambient temp of the room the box was in,especially with 1200 watts inside it? Did he have ducting bringing in cooler outdoor air through the box and/or hoods?

Click to expand...

Yes.

Cool air intake from outside the attic area.

Exhaust away from attic.


3x400w in air cooled hoods using cold air intake and exhausting away from attic area.

My point was that the ambient temp of the attic was not impacting on his over all temperature.


J

Insulating also helps with noise control

Insulate it. If your using a ducted AC, itll exhaust hot air into the garage out of the grow room. The ambient air temp of the garage is going to get real high (unless your exhausting more hot air out of the garage as well). Insulating it will help alot if the garage temp gets really high, and keep the grow room cool. Or unless your using a mini split AC and the compressor is going outside the garage.

Im not a pro on the subject but if your using a ducted AC, I dont think a 9,000 btu AC is going to cool 4,000 watts of lights with adjust a wing.

Right now Im in an 8x4 tent, 3-600W adjust a wings, 14,000 btu AC. I have the ducted AC running out of the tent but not exhausting out of my garage, it gets really hot in the garage. Up to 95 on a hot day. I had to turn all the 600W lights down to 400W and my max temp in the tent gets to 84 still. At 600W each the tent gets to 90 degrees +. If I leave my garage door open all night and let all the hot air expel, the temp is fine. But I still dont think my AC could handle another 2000W(even with the garage door open).

If you are using a ducted AC, use something to raise it up high off the ground. That helped me alot, it used to just blow cool air under the canopy and never circulate around the lights where the heat really is.

Insulate it, it will help with both cooling and heating (if needed in the winter), well worth a few bucks, will pay for itself in reduced air conditioner operation costs. I used this stuff, available at HD, called DuroFoam. insulated the concrete walls with 1 1/2" and lined the inside walls with 3/4" reflective side out. Served 3 purposes, cooling in summer, heating in winter, highly reflective walls year-round...

Insulate and add a vapor barrier imo. Use blueboard and paint with satin white exterior latex from a good manufacturer (satin cleans better than flat, exterior is mildew resistant).

Get wiring in the walls first of course.

Snaps is bang on enotee. I just had to do a bunch of work cause my vapour barrier had leaks.

You'll save yourself a shitload of hassle following his advice. Go in once, do it right, clean when necessary.

If i had done it right (and i should have: i have a tech background) I would have saved myself 12 hours of work and a lost week. To be fair to myself: my health is shit, the solution is very creative (uneven walls and other obstacles) and very few would have got it right the first time. Still, let me be your cautionary tale.

BTW, the solution i came up with is very creative and not obvious. It's tough to explain but i will post a how to with pics of a couple of very creative solutions i came up with that will save a lot of people hassles and problems.

Again, I cannot emphasise enough: follow Snaps advice. Especially the exterior latex. You will thank yourself and Snaps, I hope.

Snaps: I've seen quite a few of your posts over the months. You are, IMHO, a stellar member of this community. I appreciate your insights, excellent advice and am very grateful to you and many others on this site. Keep it up amigo.

You know , you look a lot like sly stallone. Adriane, adriane...

4kw= 13656btu's @ a min. not including the dehumidifier and humidity of the room adding to the a/c load. 24k btu a/c strongly recommended.

I agree on the a/c. 9k btu does seem a little light. Guys use 10k btu just to cool 1.6kw of lights. Or so I've heard

Don't insulate... nah, I'm just kidding. Everyone is right. Definitely insulate.

killemsoftly said:

I agree on the a/c. 9k btu does seem a little light. Guys use 10k btu just to cool 1.6kw of lights. Or so I've heard

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Agreed. I would recommend a minimum of 15kbtu/hr ductless minisplit.

Hey snaps, if you're around could i pm you? I'd like to ask you a technical question in private if that's ok with you.

Also, fwiw guys i came across a used portable a/c unit i might buy. I know portables suck right? This one however, uses r22. The guy selling it measured the temp with a lab thermometer (he's a lab tech) and the air coming out of the unit was 17 degrees celsius. Pretty resectable I'd say. Company was called ForestAir. Seemed like a good alternative for peeps who can't run mini-splits.

Yes, why wouldn't you insulate? What you need to worry about is that ac, portables are by far the most inefficient design you can get and there is no way that ac will cool 4k watts, probably have problems with 2000w.

GroErr said:

Insulate it, it will help with both cooling and heating (if needed in the winter), well worth a few bucks, will pay for itself in reduced air conditioner operation costs. I used this stuff, available at HD, called DuroFoam. insulated the concrete walls with 1 1/2" and lined the inside walls with 3/4" reflective side out. Served 3 purposes, cooling in summer, heating in winter, highly reflective walls year-round...
View attachment 3128264

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Could you insulate the inside of a shipping container like that?