Stealth 400 Watt Cooltube Dresser Cab Construction

Cannabachus · Jan 16, 2009

So here are some drawings of the Dresser Cab that I'm about to start building. For light we'll have a 400 Watt hps in a homemade cooltube from pyrex bake a round, cooled by a six or four inch duct booster. Ventilation for the cab will be an s&p 4in inline (very quiet) with a foothill 4x12 carbon scrubber on it. Intake will be several passive intakes coming up from the floor. Overall the cab should be 4 feet tall x 3 feet wide x 18 inches deep. I should start construction next week. Any input is greatly appreciated.

Cannabolic · Jan 16, 2009

thats around the same size grow room that im planning on doing in the next couple of weeks. i'll let you know when i get more info but i think im using cfls tho.......

justatoker · Jan 16, 2009

i'd put an air intake at the bottom or something

scoregreen · Jan 16, 2009

youre going to have light escaping...or did you have something in mind for that?

i would try doing all intake outtake out of the bottom, too...may also help with light escaping

Cannabachus · Jan 17, 2009

Im not sure how to deal with the light escaping from the intake and exhaust of the cooltube. I was thinking like a round vent cover with like some carbon filter material in front of it, but that might restrict too much airflow. I dont really want to use like flappers but could possibly. The intake to ventilate the cab will be coming out of the bottom, I didnt want to run the intake for the cooltube from the floor because i want to use little or no ducting, just straight though and out to noise to an absolute minimum, i need silence lol.. what do you think?

Cannabachus · Jan 17, 2009

Cannabolic said:
thats around the same size grow room that im planning on doing in the next couple of weeks. i'll let you know when i get more info but i think im using cfls tho.......

If i cant get this cooltube to cool properly without making a shitload of noise, i may have to use a bunch of cfl's too, problem is the plants that will first go in here are already 2 ft tall, 2 weeks flowering

scoregreen · Jan 17, 2009

if i were you i would put a lot of cfls, prolly tubes... i have a 400 watt hps. its bright. and hot. thats two significant problems.

id also rig air intake to go in and out of the bottom -- thats going to be the easiest way to hide the light...other than "s" ing some pipe with an inline fan...

sup to you

scoregreen · Jan 17, 2009

if i were you i would put a lot of cfls, prolly tubes... i have a 400 watt hps. its bright. and hot. thats two significant problems.

id also rig air intake to go in and out of the bottom -- thats going to be the easiest way to hide the light...other than "s" ing some pipe with an inline fan...

sup to you

westmich · Jan 17, 2009

Cannabachus said:
Im not sure how to deal with the light escaping from the intake and exhaust of the cooltube. I was thinking like a round vent cover with like some carbon filter material in front of it, but that might restrict too much airflow. I dont really want to use like flappers but could possibly. The intake to ventilate the cab will be coming out of the bottom, I didnt want to run the intake for the cooltube from the floor because i want to use little or no ducting, just straight though and out to noise to an absolute minimum, i need silence lol.. what do you think?

Can you mount a PVC elbow on the outside of the cabinet over each hole with a straight piece of PVC about 18" long connected to the elbow? Should keep light out without interfering with airflow too much.

As far as cooling the cabinet, mount the exhaust at the top with two elbows and a long piece (running side by side with the cool tube exhaust). Mount the intake in the bottom with another carbon scrubber on the outside. This should clean the incoming air and prevent light escaping.

Cannabachus · Jan 17, 2009

I cant have anything on the outside of the dresser, it needs to look as normal as possible. I like the "S" idea that westmich and scoregreen are talking about. Maybe i can pull air from the bottom up through the cooltube and then S it on the other side to hide the light on the exhaust side. The exhaust for the cabinet itself wont leak light because of the scrubber. Does anyone know if the air moving through the pvc will make much noise? I cant imagine it would.. i'm just worried about the "woosh" that always seems to be such a pain in the ass.

scoregreen · Jan 17, 2009

If it does whoosh, try insulating the tubes with a towel or something... it would work more or less as a silencer

Greendude · Jan 17, 2009

Looks good . I dont think you'll have much of a light leak . But when you get it built post a pic . I know that mine has no light leakage at all . Its also very quiet , you can stand next to it and cant hear anything

Cannabachus · Jan 17, 2009

Greendude said:
Looks good . I dont think you'll have much of a light leak . But when you get it built post a pic . I know that mine has no light leakage at all . Its also very quiet , you can stand next to it and cant hear anything

What kind of setup do you have? Do you have any pics of it?

Cannabolic · Jan 17, 2009

ok here is what you should do. go with the cfl tubes. and make a intake fan at the bottom of the dresser and an exaust fan either out of the top of the dresser or in the upper back of the dresser. and put a scrubber on the inside of the dresser, attatched to the exaust fan. this will not only keep the heat down, but also give the plants a nice breeze from the bottom up. if the plants get a little too hot from the lights i would put another intake fan on the upper side of the dresser.

uhprentis · Jan 17, 2009

Absolutly agree with Cannabolic on the CFL for ease. So many things to work out with HPS in that space while maintaining stealth. The fact that it's stealth implies one cant be opening it later all the time to fix stuff and with the potentials for heat problems it's probably best to go that route unless...

If you had your heart set on your design with a 400w in there with those stipulations in place I say an idea for a quick and dirty method is:

- Put a 6" to 4" reducer inline on both sides of the cooltube.

- Connect 6" instead of 4" vent ducting to the ends of the reducer.

- Put 6" bends internal to the box heading out the back left and right corners for intake/exhaust to the rear panel of the box using the two bends on either end of your current design.

The main thing is that if we use the 6 -> 4 inch reducers and correspondingly use 6" ducting throughout the rest of the systems, it should reduce the impact the bends would have to airflow significantly and theer definately shouldn't be any 'whoosh' sound with this setup at least (lthough straight 4" is still generally better than bent 6" (unless the bend is very wide, or increases very slowly and gradually over a long distance of course)
Light seepage without bends or some obstructing matierial would be obviously substantial and pretty much kill the stealth of the system.

Now...if 'I' absolutely 'had' to come up with something that I though was 'best effort' worthy AND it was also a 'labor of love' job where I had all the time and motivation in the world then I would:

- Mount the lamp in the vertical instead of horizontal configuration along the center line (from forwards viewpoint) of the dresser.

- As above use 4" to 6" reducers and 6" vent ducting

- Since the cooltube is vertically mounted in stead of horizontally I would place the exhaust vent at the top, with a 6" bend to the rear panel of the dresser again along the centerline with no bends left or right before exiting.

- Pipe the intake straight from the floor with no bends (which I see is raised in your design which makes this a good option).

- Fabricate a three sided 'open' box underneath the dresser to surround the Intake vent coming out the bottom (which since it is 'straight' it will seep quite a bit of light) while placing the 'open' potion of the box facing the back of the dresser. Paint to box flat black for a little extra to prevent light reflection (some light would get out but it shouldn't be too noticable).

- Though I'm not certain how I would accomplish it specifically, I would try to work into the design some sort of slider system to adjust the height of the lamp without having to diconnect and reconfigure the venting itself. (Perhaps it might be possible by using excess ventilation piping on both the top and bottom side of the cooltube and then, by running thin, maleable, but durable wire cabling along the vent duct and securing it to it to the ducting well enough that when the cable is reeled in it collapses the excess ventilation piping accordian style while it simultaneaously pulls the cooltube/lamp and conversly expands the other venting using the same method.

There are drawbacks, like having to turn plants often as they stretch to the centerline mounted light source but that could be handled outside the box with pulleys attached to plates or circular pieces of wood under each plant which could be all linked together (via a belt, chain, whatever underneath them) which is inturn linked to the pulley string outside

What do you think?

Cannabachus · Jan 18, 2009

I really dig what your saying about putting the 90's in and out the back panel left and right corners. Though im afraid that with the cab up against a wall, the intake would constantly be sucking hot air from the exhaust thus continually heating and reusing the exhausted air for cooling..? Unless maybe the back panel was recessed allowing me to separate the intake air from the exhaust air?

Cannabachus · Jan 23, 2009

Sorry for the delay on the update.. I got the cab built in the last couple nights (its finished now with top and floor) I got my S&P fan and its super quiet. Still waiting on the pyrex tube and i ordered a scrubber from foothill yesterday so things are coming along. Also do you think that a 4" duct fan at 80cfm would be enough to cool the tube? I've got a six inch but it would be nice to save the space and less noise.

westmich · Jan 24, 2009

That looks good - are you still going with HPS?

Cannabachus · Jan 24, 2009

westmich said:
That looks good - are you still going with HPS?

Ya im gonna put a 400 watt cooltube in it, hopefully i can keep it pretty quiet, but if not im just going to have to throw in a few hundred watts of cfl as a last resort.

Cannabachus · Jan 24, 2009

Alright so heres what the thing looks like so far with a fresh coat of paint.. and thats the S&P fan. Really hope my pyrex tube comes today so i can put the light together!

Stealth 400 Watt Cooltube Dresser Cab Construction

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