Air Floor

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I've been thinking on and off about air flow in the garden and how any intake vent on the bottom side of the grow room is going to curve up to the exhaust and air in parts of the garden may be stagnet. I've seen some cabinet grows with air intake vents under the floor so I drilled 120 x 1/2" holes in the 8' x 3' floor of my flower cage and made the rest of the cage more air tight. My cage floor is 34" off the room's floor. The cage walls stop just below the cage floor to allow lots of air flow.

I rolled my walls down and right away I could feel a positive air pressure. I stood up on the air floor with the walls down and I could feel a breeze coming up through the holes, all over the floor. When I put the plants back their leaves were shaking slightly from the breeze. Now I'll see if the fresh air coming from under the leaves makes the plants grow better.

I didn't want to weaken the 1" plywood too much so I drew a grid with rows and columns 3" apart and skipped every second spot on the grid. I'm going to use a 1" drill bit to ream out some of the holes on the two end panels,to increase the air flow away from the air exhaust in the middle of the cage. 6" between holes in a row or colum, ~4" diagonally. The area of a 1/2" hole is ~0.2", a 1" hole has an area of ~0.785".



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My floor is cut into 4 sections of 24" x 37", I drilled 30 holes per panel. On the seams I drilled every spot because there was nothing to weaken. The faint circles are where each of the 12 buckets go when the garden is full.

The grid feels like a low flow air hockey machine.





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The Light Rail and closed interior, the air exhaust on the middle left. Putting the Reflectix roof on brightened the room more than I thought it would.






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"A leaf is usually a thin, flexible "sandwich" of plant cells. The outside, the "bread", has waxy cells, to help keep moisture inside the leaf. But it also has holes, called stomata, that allow for the exchange of gases for respiration. Plants "breath in" carbon dioxide (CO2) and "exhale" surplus oxygen (O2), through the stomata, which are mainly on the underside of the leaf."
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Leaf pores, called stomata, are microscopic structures that control the exchange of water and carbon dioxide between the plant and the atmosphere. Stomata evolved when plants colonised land about 400 million years ago and have kept the same general shape ever since. But their size and number has changed quite considerably throughout their history.

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Stomata in green.



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nice dude. Yeah, my normal tents have panda film but one had that etal stuff inside and the reflection was awesome. As a joke I draped some aprty mylar over a light and it was awesome. Like another light. I got to get some of that stiff metal up. Lol, I saw the floor and thot of an airhockey table. That would be awesome, let your plants bump around. Talk about light. I dont think that the leaves woud get wind burn. I had this happen. It is ugly. But was a big fan right next. Nice room. Co2 ready?

Nice Hobbes. I totally understand your idea of drawing the fresh air across the stomatas from the underside up. Brilliant!

I just wonder if the amount of air that you can have flowing across the leaves without windburning them will be enought to keep your temps at the right level. Since you're using a lightrail and it's a huge tent I think you'll be fine, especially if you're at a higher latitude. I'm really far south in a hot, hot place and I need crazy heat extraction via fans and portable a/c. Hmmmmmm, if i could do the same and have my a/c output cold air under the floor to be drawn upward I think even I could do the same...

I wonder though, it's preferable to have the substrate a little warmer than the air above the ground level so I wonder how this will affect that?

Gotta keep us posted on this one bro! Great ingenuity!

Hobbes great ingenuity at work

It worked or what?

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The Air Floor works very well Kevin - my yield is up to just over: 3 litres a bucket (average); 12 buckets in an 8'x3' garden; under a 600 watt light. Weight per litre at a low estimate of 60 grams per litre after a 4 week cure; 25% of cut weight; 40% cut volume. It comes to just over 3 1/2 cured grams per watt.

60 grams x 3 litres x 12 buckets = 2,160 grams / 600 watts = 3.6 grams / watt

The Air Floor: feeds fresh CO2 to the stoma under the leaves (yield, potency, flowering time); removes excess humidity from the canopy (mould and bugs)

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I was just thinking the other day about large server rooms and how they vent. It's very common to find this sort of floor injection, and I was wondering how it would translate to growing. Bad ass to see that you've played around with it!

Hobbs I must say it's a great idea. I just duplicated your room last week and put 2 twenty inch fans underneath. But i was wondering from the wood deck to the floor did you cover the frame work around your the lower part of your box or was it left open like mine?
I was thinking of sealing that bottom part where the fans are to create more pressure.That way the air is forced up and not pushed out the sides. Is that what you did? I couldn't tell by your pics.

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Congratulations Just Grow It, it looks great.

"But i was wondering from the wood deck to the floor did you cover the frame work around your the lower part of your box or was it left open like mine?
I was thinking of sealing that bottom part where the fans are to create more pressure.That way the air is forced up and not pushed out the sides. Is that what you did? I couldn't tell by your pics."

I agree with you, most of the air being pushed up will be deflected by the floor bottom. If you put the curtain around that lower shelf - leaving the bottom free - you will get better pressure.

Another option is to do the same with the top, using your fan to create a low pressure system in the chamber and pull air through. Either way, a chamber will even pressure across your air in take holes.

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Good work!!

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I've done the same thing about a month ago and I'm loving the results with much better air flow from the floor up.

The Giant size, or full sheet Air Pot thingie stuff might be interesting for this. >>> http://www.superoots.com/air_intro.htm# <<<

Looks like your grow space can double as an Air Hockey table, or Vacumn forming table. Now if you could go ahead and vac form some custom 5 gal bucket Humidity Domes... that would be great.

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"Looks like your grow space can double as an Air Hockey table"

That's what it feels like when you lay on it Dinosaur Bone, really neat. Put your hands over the holes and there's a slight up breeze, not as powerful as an air hockey floor but enough to get fresh CO2 rich air to the stoma continuously.

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"The Giant size, or full sheet Air Pot thingie stuff might be interesting for this"

They're not ridget .... we'd have to build a frame underneath.

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I was thinking of plastic or aluminum flooring for shops and locker rooms.




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Have you noticed any specific improvements Dropastone? More lush colour, thicker leaves, faster growth, perkier leaves?

Looks fantastic!







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The slats make a lot more sense than plywood. Slapping up some grates out of 2"x4" would be quick and cheap.

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Hobbes said:

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Have you noticed any specific improvements Dropastone? More lush colour, thicker leaves, faster growth, perkier leaves?

Looks fantastic!

The slats make a lot more sense than plywood. Slapping up some grates out of 2"x4" would be quick and cheap.

Click to expand...

All of the above.

My main goal was to was to move the air more efficiently through my grow space. I was having problems with heat issues in my closet for the longest time. I tried everything under the sun to improve it with less than desirable results. So I decided to build a shelf with slates above my passive intakes and go with a 20" box fan to pull more fresh air in and push it up through the canopy. At one time my room temps were in the mid 90's. After my improvements I'm now in the mid to high 70's.

I can definitely tell that my plant is loving life in it's new environment. Also, I never really thought about the fresh co2 constantly flowing up through the plant. So that's another benefit I wasn't aware of.

Peace.

Don't you think the diamond plate would get to hot from the light? I could see the grate working though.

Dropastone said:

I've done the same thing about a month ago and I'm loving the results with much better air flow from the floor up.

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Thanks you also. I'm thinking of doing what you did and pulling the plywood and going with 2x1.
Just trying to think if there would be a down side to using 2x1 vs plywood. I don't see it! Besides having to run down to HD to get the wood.
What do you all think plywood o 2x1's?

JUST GROW IT said:

Thanks you also. I'm thinking of doing what you did and pulling the plywood and going with 2x1.
Just trying to think if there would be a down side to using 2x1 vs plywood. I don't see it! Besides having to run down to HD to get the wood.
What do you all think plywood o 2x1's?

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Going by the pic you posted I think the plywood would deflect more air than it's letting through. But lets say, if your plywood had enough support, you could get a hole saw and put lots of holes in it to increase the airflow. I think the path of least resistance is the best way to go.

Dropastone said:

Going by the pic you posted I think the plywood would deflect more air than it's letting through. But lets say, if your plywood had enough support, you could get a hole saw and put lots of holes in it to increase the airflow. I think the path of least resistance is the best way to go.

Click to expand...

Yea me too! I like your way better with 1x2's plus they're only $1.37 each I could get away with 10 or so. Plus drilling the holes is a drag.

Hey guys, I say one of Hobbe's other threads showing his air floor and I thought it was a great Idea for venting a small cabinet, so I used it to build my new veg cabinet. I am going to build an identical one for flowering, I just havent got to it yet. I used 1/4 peg board for my floor. Its the stuff people use to organize their tools in
the garage. It's the perfect material for a small air floor. I made a double floor in my cabinet, the lower floor has a computer fan pegboarblowing air up to the d upper floor. There is a nice gentle flow of air coming up very evenly through all the holes in the floor. I have 2 computer fans exhausting air from the top of the cabinet as well. The temps inside the cab are about 5 degrees warmer than the outside air. There is a 100 watt mh light and a 23 watt cfl for light. The inside cabinet dimensions are 20"x20" by 30" high.
Here are some pics: