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Grow Room Ventilation |
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| You could have the best lights, the best growing system and the best nutrients in the world – if you don’t get your grow room ventilation right then your crops won’t do very well at all. Good ventilation is the key to healthy growing - learn more here. |
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Heat Problems
If you are growing under High Intensity Discharge grow lamps (Sodium, Grolux and Halide) then you will already know about the heat that these lamps can give out. If left to build up without any kind of forced air exchange in your grow room, this heat can become hazardous to your grow – damaging your plants structure, affecting your plants performance and ultimately reducing your yield. By extracting this hot air out of your grow room using an extractor fan you can create a much friendlier environment for growing plants. Ideally you are trying to create a lights on grow room temperature of between 24oC – 27oC and a lights off grow room temperature of between 21oC – 24oC for optimum plant performance. You can keep temperatures more friendly by drawing air in from indoors during winter (cold air from outside could drop temperatures too far).
Pest Problems
Inadequate ventilation and stale stagnant air provide airborne pests such as fungus gnats or sciarid flies a greater opportunity to infest your grow. By keeping the air constantly moving using oscillating fans or air circulators and by creating a constant flow of fresh air using an extractor fan you can create a less hospitable environment for these pests and reduce your chances of infestation.
Air quality
Your plants need fresh air to grow efficiently. Without going into too much detail, the CO2 content of normal air is around about 0.03% and your plants need CO2 in order to photosynthesise, create energy and grow. Because there is such a low percentage of atmospherically available CO2 you plant will quickly deplete the available gas if you are not constantly replacing the air in your grow room. As a general rule of thumb, you should be looking to replace the air in your grow room at least 20 times per hour to maintain a reasonable air quality.
Humidity
Inadequate ventilation can lead to high humidity, and high humidity can lead to a number of plant health problems at certain stages in your grow. Ideally, you want to maintain a humidity of around 60% RH during vegetative growth (as your plants do not have a very large root system and you want water to be taken in through the leaves) and during flowering you need to reduce this to around 40% RH. The reason you reduce the humidity during flowering is rot. After spending months growing your favourite plants, the last thing you want to find come harvest day are rotting flowers or fruits and very humid conditions are the ideal environment for rot to take hold. You can prevent humidity from rising too high with adequate ventilation. By extracting hot and humid air and replacing it with cooler less humid air from outside your grow room, high humidity will automatically become less of an issue.
So how many fans do I need?
Determining you extraction requirements can be difficult. Basically you need to take care of all of the above factors when buying your extraction equipment. When you are talking about a small grow room, usually one extraction fan to take air out of your grow room and ventilation holes to allow fresh air in. Larger grow rooms will normally also require a smaller extractor fan to force fresh air into your grow room as ventilation holes on their own will not be sufficient in larger spaces.
We recommend using the size and number of grow lights that you have as a guide to what kind of extraction you will need. A full table of fan recommendations is available in the blueprint section of our catalogue which you can request a copy of here.
As a general guide though we recommend:
250 Watt Lights
For 1 x 250 Watt Grow Light:
Output: Either an RVK100A1 or Closet Fan for Extraction
Input: Closet Fan or ventilation holes to allow fresh air in
For 2 x 250 Watt Grow Lights:
Output: RVK100A1 for Extraction
Input: Closet Fan or ventilation holes to allow fresh air in
400 Watt Lights
For 1 x 400 Watt Grow Light:
Output: Either an RVK100A1 or Closet Fan for Extraction
Input: Closet Fan or ventilation holes to allow fresh air in
For 2 x 400 Watt Grow Lights:
Output: RVK125A1 for Extraction
Input: RVK100A1 to allow fresh air in
600 Watt Lights
For 1 x 600 Watt Grow Light:
Output: RVK125A1 for Extraction
Input: RVK100A1 to allow fresh air in
For 2 x 600 Watt Grow Lights:
Output: RVK150A1 or 160mm Acoustic for Extraction
Input: RVK125A1 to allow fresh air in
1000 Watt Lights
For 1 x 1000 Watt Grow Light:
Output: RVK125A1 for Extraction
Input: RVK100A1 to allow fresh air in
For 2 x 1000 Watt Grow Lights:
Output: RVK150A1 or 160mm Acoustic for Extraction
Input: RVK125A1 to allow fresh air in
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GroWell Hydroponics Ltd, Solihull, Birmingham, UK
Blooms Garden Centre, Kenilworth Road
Hampton-In-Arden, Solihull, B92 0LW
GroWell Hydroponics Ltd, Fulham, London, UK
1 Royal Parade, 247 Dawes Road
Fulham, London, SW6 7RE
GroWell Hydroponics Ltd, Merry Hill, Dudley, UK
Unit 52 Enterprise Trading Estate,
Off Pedmore Road
Brierley Hill,
Dudley,
DY5 1TX |
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Solihull shop opening hours:
Monday-Saturday 10am-5pm
Sunday 11am-4pm
Closed Bank Holidays |
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Fulham shop opening hours:
Monday-Saturday 10am-5pm
Sunday 11am-4pm
Closed Bank Holidays |
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Merry Hill shop opening hours:
Monday-Saturday 10am-5pm
Closed Sundays & Bank Holidays |
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Mail Order opening hours:
Monday-Friday 9:30am-5:30pm
Saturday 10am-5pm
Sunday 11am-4pm |
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