Happiness is a NEW AC UNIT!!!!
Let's put a few things that are unbelievable into perspective.
This is a 5 x 5 x 9 tent. That's 225 cubic feet. It's the same size as a small bedroom closet roughly. Would you use an entire 5000 btu AC unit to cool a room the size of a small bedroom closet? Of course not, it would be way too much for such a small space. It would be frosty and 58-60 degrees in the closet if you cranked the unit to high. Many of us have used these units in our lives to cool an entire bedroom, and in my experience this size unit always crushed any bedroom I happened to have at the time.
So I have TWO of these now on the 5 x 5 tent. It's been an hour since I started the new unit and began two on the tent instead of one. Normally at this time of day the temperature and RH smack dab in the center of the thickest part of the canopy is around 83 degrees and 42-45% RH. It is the canopy level that I want cooler and at around 40% RH, down to even around 35%. I know that's low, but you gotta see what's going on in here and you'd do the same I suspect. This forest is thickening up with buds so quickly I can't even comprehend it, there's a few examples in the pictures. I want it much lower temperature-wise because this part of the day is as good as it gets until 7 pm. From here, we just get hotter and hotter as the day goes. It's just the canopy level. If you feel down low it's perfect. But in the hottest part of the day it gets to 92-93 degrees in the canopy for like 3 or 4 hours. I can't have that, it's way too hot I don't care how hot they grow in nature. I'm not in nature. I'm in a tent with an LED. We don't do 94 degrees here.
After one hour with the second unit in play we are looking at 74.6 degrees and 39% RH in the hottest part of the canopy, right in the middle of the tent (with the gauge on a long stick trick it's easy to measure up there without hanging something). That's right now. If we assume a 10-12 degree rise as the day goes on (as it's been) and project, that makes the hottest we should get up top around 87 degrees max. That I can live with for four hours a day. This will also allow me to get it as cold as I want overnight, whereas with just the one unit we were waking up 78-80 degrees or so. That's okay for overnight temps if I have to live with it, but of course I'd like it lower than that with the possibility of getting into the low 60s territory for color if I want. Now I can. But also very importantly, my RH will never get above 45% now at canopy level, and it's a solid 30-35% anywhere in the tent with space that's not a crowded canopy locale.
In short, it's perfect. I'm the happiest guy on the forum right now, at least until we do the net later, lol.
The perspective part is, WHY does it take two of these to create this environmental reality in such a small space? Both units are cranked all the way up. It seems unbelievable and excessive, but it's really not, and here's why:
- it gets to be in the mid 90s in the garage for several hours a day, the tents are IN the garage, and as the days of the month progress towards summer it gets a little worse, not better
- I have no way to mitigate the garage temperature, so I must mitigate the tent temperatures
- this tent is more filled with plant mass by 100 miles than any grow in my experience, and all of that plant mass is currently engaged in it's highest level of biology exactly right now
- this much plant mass along with the almost 30 gallons of soil in the tent (including the old pots I'm using for support that are filled with soil, along with the light, creates WAY more heat than I ever knew to be possible - plants really crank it out when they're gigantic in a small space I have found in this grow, meaning in terms of how much heat and water they put out in the act of becoming giant buds
- the first unit I've been using up to now is older and many not be functioning at 100%, I'm sure the brand new one is more efficient even though they're identical, Toshiba 5000 btu window AC units ($162 at Home Depot with stepdad's military discount)
When you add all of that up, it isn't that surprising that I can use two units in this particular tent and have it work. And working it is!!!!!!!!!!
YAY.
So here's a shot of the new unit and then two shots of the back door tent view at my head level to show you what's going on inside, below the show buds up top. This is where the bulk of the actual canopy is, and whoa is it dense with buds. They are getting larger very quickly.
Only 8 am and already everyone is watered, the new AC unit is in and just need sealed before 6 pm, and I'm ready when steppops is to install the stupid net! NOICE.
Day of rest my ass.
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