Building first stealth grow cabinet~~Need advice!

Hey guys and girls,

I purchased some Northern Lights fem seeds from attitude last summer and I finally found the perfect cabinet. The dimensions of the grow chamber are 46" width x 53" height x 17" deep.

For my grow specifically, there needs to be NO NOISE coming from the box as well as very minimal odor. My questions are, what type of lighting/ventilation combo will allow me to maximize my yield while keeping it as stealth as possible while maintaining a good temperature. I have seen some good results with 250w stealth grows but was wondering if I could pull off a 400w? What would the difference in heat be? Would I need a 4inch inline with carbon filter? can that inline fan be heard outside the cabinet?

Thanks!

about the fan, yeah, if you care about the odor then it's pretty hard to do without a carbon filter. And together with a carbon filter you'll need an inline or blower (centrifugal) fan. PC fans simply don't have enough power to push the air through.

Unfortunately power comes with some noise...I recently got a cheap 4" inline fan to experiment with, its noise level is rated at 37dB. Running it without a filter is certainly audible or even slightly noisy. Putting it inside a cabinet will not muffle the noise completely. But after you attach a carbon filter it acts like a muffler and can make things reasonable. Then you can wrap around any ducting you use with foamy/insulating material (some people even use sleeping bags lol). That will dampen its vibrations (it will be shaking because of the attached fan). Another trick is to suspend things from bungee/elastic cords, and of course place rubber feet or a sound absorbing mat under you cabinet.

Heck, if you want to go further you can. You can semi-soundproof your growbox by enclosing it into another cabinet, but making sure to use a special soundproof adhesive (I think it's called green glue ?). You can look it up on youtube, it works pretty good. Of course the enclosing cabinet still has to have an opening for the ducting/air holes, but I'd bet that by that point the noise is pretty much eliminated, and taking care of the ducting vibrations is a trivial task.

In general think about vibrations, see what is that generates the vibrations (the fan) and how it connect to the other objects, trying to dampen each suck linkage with a sound absorbing/foamy material.

If you have a good strong reliable fan and take care to change the carbon pellets well before they get saturated, you can combat the odor issue confidently. Of course if helps to use a low-odor strain to begin with (stay away from skunk varieties)

Thanks for the reply. I have been looking at some soundproofing options. Apparently people have built wooden boxes around their fans to muffle the noise? That might be an option as well... What about lighting? How many watts could I get away with in there?

Just about what I needed.

I tested quite a few fans. Out of Vortex, Can, that expensive on that starts with a L (i think), and an economy one, the Vortex 4" is THE quietest fan at less than full speed. At full speed it was louder than some but I wanted less than full speed operation, and as quiet as possible.

Right now my vortex sucks through my carbon filter but that's overkill for my situation. It goes on once every couple hours for two minutes, on the lowest setting that it will self-start, just to refresh the air in the cabinet (seedlings).

When I get my 400w hps my vortex will cool just that, and I'll get a S&P mixed flow fan to filter & exhaust the room, again with the can9000.

GL