Honey Oil Riot Squad
Well-Known Member
I have recently set up my tent in a new location, and I am having issues with controlling the climate now. I have a very small tent, just 4 ft wide, 2 ft deep, and 5 feet tall. I like the small size and have pulled 2 very successful harvests from this setup. To this day, have yet to find any buds on the streets even near the potency of what I grew. Proud of that shit! lol.
A quick run down of the set up:
-400 W HPS, Cool Tube Hood + Reflectors
-Growing in 3 gal smart pots w/ coco coir, using GH nutrient trio + Calimagic (3 plants currently)
-One Oscillating Fan Inside Tent
-Cool tube has ventilation on each side w/ inline fan, air is taken from outside tent, pushed back outside and I have this heat venting out of the entire closet that the tent is in.
-In addition to ventilation of cool tube, I have a larger inline fan hooked up to a carbon scrubber inside the tent that sucks air out of the tent for an outtake vent (also helps with smell)
-I water all my plants by hand, anything else you need info on with the set up just ask.
Anyways, with the new location I now have my tent in a pad locked closet in the basement. It's very stealthy (why I put it in there). The only thing I worried about initially with setting it up there was the humidity. A concrete floored basement can leave for a much more humid environment than it would be else where in the house.
I have already been growing these gals for about 3 weeks in this tent, and humidity averaged about 70 to 75% I wanna say during this. I do not have a central AC unit so the humidity of my house is the humidity of outside, pretty much. A central AC would probably solve ALL of my issues honestly, but I don't get that luxury here. Now I have recently switched to flower, so I'm starting to give much more of a shit about the humidity of my tent, 70 to 75% is WAY too high for flower, that can't happen. I was hoping nature would do it's thing and humidity would naturally start to go down and maybe it will in time, but I can't count on it with this basement. So of course my initial solution was easy, use a dehumidifier. I've used one on my last grow. But that was not in a tent inside a closet where heat can pile up and you have yourself a nice sauna instead. Currently I have the dehumidifer in the closet (not the tent) and it works well too keep the air that the tent intakes to stay dry, and keep the humidity at bay, but of course in order to do that the dehumidfier gives off a ton of heat. And is in a closet with only limited space for ventilation (and trust me I've got fans on fans on fans trying to blow air in and out of that closet to cool it down). But it is not enough.
So basically, I have the problem of trying to balance temperature and humidity. If I use my dehumidifier on a setting high enough to get humidity in the tent to a nice 30 or 40 percent, my canopy temperature ends up 90 to 95 F. And if I get rid of the dehumidifier I get okay temperatures, but my humidity is way too high. So right now I have the dehumidifier on a lower setting and have found a nice middle ground. But still, temperature AND humidity are both just a bit too high like this. I feel like this is better than going to either extreme with temperature and humidity, but the only other solution I can possibly think of is to get myself a portable AC for the setup. But even that seems like it would be an extreme overkill for this small set up. I wouldn't be surprised if the AC used more energy than my entire current setup... who knows if my electrical can even take it...
Do people think my only option here is to get a portable AC, or what have people tried in situations like this? I'm kinda stuck as to what to do.
A second question: (I may just post a whole new thread for this one)
I've been looking at portable AC's and they are crazy expensive, plus 10,000 BTU is like the smallest i can find. I'm going to be venting this into about the smallest a grow tent you can get with an HID set up. There is just no way I would be needing 10,000 BTU for this. I need like a... 2,000 BTU Portable AC, is there even such a thing?
A quick run down of the set up:
-400 W HPS, Cool Tube Hood + Reflectors
-Growing in 3 gal smart pots w/ coco coir, using GH nutrient trio + Calimagic (3 plants currently)
-One Oscillating Fan Inside Tent
-Cool tube has ventilation on each side w/ inline fan, air is taken from outside tent, pushed back outside and I have this heat venting out of the entire closet that the tent is in.
-In addition to ventilation of cool tube, I have a larger inline fan hooked up to a carbon scrubber inside the tent that sucks air out of the tent for an outtake vent (also helps with smell)
-I water all my plants by hand, anything else you need info on with the set up just ask.
Anyways, with the new location I now have my tent in a pad locked closet in the basement. It's very stealthy (why I put it in there). The only thing I worried about initially with setting it up there was the humidity. A concrete floored basement can leave for a much more humid environment than it would be else where in the house.
I have already been growing these gals for about 3 weeks in this tent, and humidity averaged about 70 to 75% I wanna say during this. I do not have a central AC unit so the humidity of my house is the humidity of outside, pretty much. A central AC would probably solve ALL of my issues honestly, but I don't get that luxury here. Now I have recently switched to flower, so I'm starting to give much more of a shit about the humidity of my tent, 70 to 75% is WAY too high for flower, that can't happen. I was hoping nature would do it's thing and humidity would naturally start to go down and maybe it will in time, but I can't count on it with this basement. So of course my initial solution was easy, use a dehumidifier. I've used one on my last grow. But that was not in a tent inside a closet where heat can pile up and you have yourself a nice sauna instead. Currently I have the dehumidifer in the closet (not the tent) and it works well too keep the air that the tent intakes to stay dry, and keep the humidity at bay, but of course in order to do that the dehumidfier gives off a ton of heat. And is in a closet with only limited space for ventilation (and trust me I've got fans on fans on fans trying to blow air in and out of that closet to cool it down). But it is not enough.
So basically, I have the problem of trying to balance temperature and humidity. If I use my dehumidifier on a setting high enough to get humidity in the tent to a nice 30 or 40 percent, my canopy temperature ends up 90 to 95 F. And if I get rid of the dehumidifier I get okay temperatures, but my humidity is way too high. So right now I have the dehumidifier on a lower setting and have found a nice middle ground. But still, temperature AND humidity are both just a bit too high like this. I feel like this is better than going to either extreme with temperature and humidity, but the only other solution I can possibly think of is to get myself a portable AC for the setup. But even that seems like it would be an extreme overkill for this small set up. I wouldn't be surprised if the AC used more energy than my entire current setup... who knows if my electrical can even take it...
Do people think my only option here is to get a portable AC, or what have people tried in situations like this? I'm kinda stuck as to what to do.
A second question: (I may just post a whole new thread for this one)
I've been looking at portable AC's and they are crazy expensive, plus 10,000 BTU is like the smallest i can find. I'm going to be venting this into about the smallest a grow tent you can get with an HID set up. There is just no way I would be needing 10,000 BTU for this. I need like a... 2,000 BTU Portable AC, is there even such a thing?
