Need help designing stealthy grow mh/hps

Hi all!

So my second grow is about 1 week into flowering (not sure of either of the strains, I'm afraid, but they came out of tasty sacks). For my next grow, however, I want to build something of a stealth room for them.

So what I was wondering is if any of you experienced growers had any kind of input on what dimensions my box would need to be (with appropriate ventilation).

I plan on running a 400w MH for Veg and a 400w HPS for Flowering. The girls will probably be bagseed or clones from a successful bagseed mama, just not sure yet.

I figure heat is probably going to be an issue with this much lighting. Anyone had a successful stealth grow using 400 watters? I wanna try to be growing four plants in this space, either ScROG or LST (not sure which yet) but aside from that, the smaller – and therefore stealthier – I can get the grow space the better.

So again, anyone have any suggestions on different dimension/ventilation combinations? Any cooling systems work particularly well? Any other general tips that I might find useful in planning/building this sucker???

Also, try to keep in mind, please, that I am still pretty new to this and that resources are limited.

Thanks so much, look forward to hearing your opinions!

how stealthy are we talking? be in the same room and not tell or be in the same house and not tell?

same room stealth is going to be most difficult.

Not necessarily same room. But say if we had it in a garage and there were people in there for some reason, it would just look like normal garage mess. I considered Rubbermaids for a while until I realized just how hot the 400w hps really runs, but really all that would be required is in the house. A closet with some kind of light trap would be feasible, but ventilation would still be an issue (as i couldn't really drill holes in the walls of the closet itself for exhaust).

This is still in the drawing board stages, certainly, and am open to a wide variety of options – though again, the garage-stealth type setup would be my ideal (seemingly reasonable) solution.

i have some ideas - mainly centered around building a box or area larger than what you need and then partitioning it off so you can draw fresh air and expel hot smelly air all within the larger area.

But before we go down that road i want to ask - your garage, is it climate controlled or is it the temperature of the outdoors? If it isn't climate controlled, you'll need to plan on having heaters and chillers (AC) for the room itself and possibly the reservoir as well - and that can get pricey!

If depends on your climate where you live.