Fresh Air Intake....Cold Air?

Im putting the ventelation system in my grow room, and had two questions:

1). In the winter here it gets semi cold (still warmer then some of you), (32-45 degrees int he winter is common) and I am just wondering if bringing in that air to the room will shock the plants? I will have a seperate Heat/AC unit for temp control but dont know if it will keep the room at the right temperature if also having this fresh air? How do you guys deal with that?

2). When expelling the warm air out of the room and upon reaching outside when its cold outside is there a steam effect? Will there always look like there is steam coming from my outside vent in the winter?

i'm sure it would produce some steam if vented from a warm room to a freezing outside, the same as your dryer would. if you can vent it to your dryer output, that is the best place ;p

i dunno about taking in cold air directly..

If you have a chimney...hot air rises.

THe plan was to be vented through the chimeny...But is it going to look like I am using the fireplace 24/7? Cause my landlord knows that my fireplace is out of commision, so steam from the top of it would raise a red flag I am thinking....unless the steam is minimal, Im just not sure how much steam it would produce??

Hows the house heated?

Its not. lol. Very cold winters...1920 house, just small electrical heaters in bedrooms.

why not just vent the warm air IN the house and warm up the room a bit?

I have a very similar set up to what u describe, but I vent from outside, into the room and then into the house.
It was working great but the colder weather has had an effect on my last crop. (im cropping every 4/5 weeks there was a loss of almost 3 oz (from 16 oz to 13 oz total!!) Im 100% certain it was due to the cooling of the season and the increased difference between my high and low temps.

I'm still working on the problem and have just yesterday put my vents on the light timer so they are only on 12/12. I'm hoping that will stabalize the average temps as my lights are off in the day time and the house temp is higher. In the room I have 2 floor standing fans in the room to keep the air moving and a dehumidifier to deal with increase moisture when the vents are off. Just checked and the temp in the room had a high of 31oC and is now at 26oc (5 hrs after lights out) compared with yesterday which was high of 33oC and a low of 19oC.

I'll keep you posted on how my trial works out as I'm hoping the lack of fresh air during lights off wont create any other problems.

VaporBros said:

why not just vent the warm air IN the house and warm up the room a bit?

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Bingo. I agree. Why not keep it in house?

Well I could easily vent the exhaust to the attic but I am very concerned about odors. Venting the Carbon Filter through the chimney would eliminate ALL the still potentially odorous air (that the carbon filter didnt catch) to the outside, not into the house...

nickibus said:

Well I could easily vent the exhaust to the attic but I am very concerned about odors. Venting the Carbon Filter through the chimney would eliminate ALL the still potentially odorous air (that the carbon filter didnt catch) to the outside, not into the house...

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If there is any stink you need to deal with it, not blow it about the neighborhood. I prefer to keep it inside so I'm the first person to smell a problem with my odor control.

Well it would be very minimal Im just trying to be cautious, if its vented 8' above the roof line the smell is going to disipate very quickly before reaching anybodys actual noise....Thats my thought process anyways. Because there are people that come to my house that I do want knowing about my stealth operation, even though it is legal, thats why Id rather the potentially small amount of odor be outside then inside.
This is my first run at it, so I do not know how well the Carbon filter is going to work. I am going to go overkill on the size of the filter just to be on the safe side.

if said chimmny is out of commission how do you know it hasnt been capped off or blocked sumwhere toward the top and is gonna back up and seep through the wals and stink everyone out

tusseltussel said:

if said chimmny is out of commission how do you know it hasnt been capped off or blocked sumwhere toward the top and is gonna back up and seep through the wals and stink everyone out

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Well I know its not backed up because I have looked at the chimney. I will be running the ducting all the way to the top about 1' below the top of the chimney..

nickibus said:

Well it would be very minimal Im just trying to be cautious, if its vented 8' above the roof line the smell is going to disipate very quickly before reaching anybodys actual noise....Thats my thought process anyways. Because there are people that come to my house that I do want knowing about my stealth operation, even though it is legal, thats why Id rather the potentially small amount of odor be outside then inside.
This is my first run at it, so I do not know how well the Carbon filter is going to work. I am going to go overkill on the size of the filter just to be on the safe side.

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And when the carbon filter goes bad? Just wait until a neighbor brings it up? Hope you smell it first when you're walking around outside?

A proper carbon filter is pretty darn close to perfect. I vent into my house and when things are working properly you smell nothing. But like I said, when there is a problem I want to be the first to smell it, not the neighborhood.

Thank you for your input guys, I understand what you are saying Piccasso and will take it into consideration. Also thinking of using an Ozone Generator wherever I end up dumpin the exhaust....

So back to the first question, does anybody have any other input on fresh cold air? The Heat/AC unit pulls air from the room cools/heats it, then I was going to have a passive intake in the room, should the intake have ducting that goes near the AC/Heat unit so that it pulls the cool fresh air sooner and heats it appropriately? Or just have an open passive intake with no ducting?

If your worried about the cold air, have a carbon filter in the intake, and have it take air from another room, and use that as your fresh air source. The filter will, get this...filter any particulars from inside your house so you grow room doesn't get contaminated. If its cold out there will be a greater exchange of heat from the ducting to the cold air within the chimney, by the time it travels the 10'-12' to the top it should have dissipated a majority of the heat a creating less "steamy" effect than the dry thats 4-5' away, and over 90*.

If its colder outside I'd say the smell will keep rising and will never be detected.

nickibus said:

Thank you for your input guys, I understand what you are saying Piccasso and will take it into consideration. Also thinking of using an Ozone Generator wherever I end up dumpin the exhaust....

So back to the first question, does anybody have any other input on fresh cold air? The Heat/AC unit pulls air from the room cools/heats it, then I was going to have a passive intake in the room, should the intake have ducting that goes near the AC/Heat unit so that it pulls the cool fresh air sooner and heats it appropriately? Or just have an open passive intake with no ducting?

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i live in washington and have the same temps, i put a 4x8 peice of shiething "cheap plywood" over the window and put a inline boost fan in a hole i cut out, hooked the boost fan into my cool tube and as the cold air passes the bulb it warms up. in the end you have fresh air coming out of your cool tube, make scense? works for me, i used to have my fan on a timer to go off 15 minutes every hour. that also works, u need fresh air, but not if its gonna bring your room temp below 60 and shock the shit outta the girls.