Tomorrow I will order the tent, and probably the exhaust fan and carbon filter too.
I think I'm going to stick with the Secret Jardin HS80 tent, it is 80×80×160cm. Since I don't smoke a lot and currently have no plans to go on a commercial way with it (though if I did, I guess one simple grow with 3-4 plants would easily cover the cost of the whole setup), I won't be disappointed if I only make like 80-100 grams first. Given that my led draws almost 200w, as far as I know, 0,4-0,5g/watt with an led is nowhere near expectional. I smoke somewhere between 10-15g a month if I have the stuff in my hand, so even only 80g would be enough for ~4 months, and I could share a bit with my friends too. Well, these are theoretical numbers, but a theory is still more than nothing
So doing a bit of math; the tent is 160cm tall. My 15l fabric pots take away 25cm. If I put the carbon filter above my led, I think it takes about 15-20cm with the space between them, though I could also put them next to each other. The light is about 8-10cm thick, I didn't measure it. So I am left with 105-110cm for the plants to grow. Take away 12-18 inches (as suggested mostly everywhere) or 30-45cm for the distance between the light and the canopy.
According to Royal Queen Seeds' datasheet, this Royal AK grows 60-70cm tall indoors. I know that it's only an estimation, but I imagine it could provide a decent base to build my thoughts up on. I very much hope that these numbers are meant to be an estimation for an
untrained plant. I will definitely try to do some LST, so given all the above information, I'm not really worried about this 160cm not being enough for my first grow.
Moving to the exhaust fan and the carbon filter. There's this table I found on Secret Jardin's website:
It's for the 2.0 version of their Hydro Shoot tents, but the only significant difference for me is that here the HS80 is 180cm tall. I think the one that's available for me must be the 1.0 version.
For the HS80 with led lighting, they suggest 70m3/h exhausting. For anyone, who's more familiar with CFM, doing a bit of math, it equals to 41,2CFM if I'm not mistaken. (70×35,3/60) Well, it sounds like a quite low number, but it's what they suggest on their official site. Probably it only considers exhausting heat, and not much about sucking fresh CO2 into the tent, I don't know.
This inline fan below (VKO 125) is quite cheap and it can extract 185m3/h. That's about 2,5 times the recommended value. Do/did any of you, dear 420ers, use this kind of cheap inline fans? What can I expect from it?
There's also this one, called Vents TT inline fan (100 or 125mm):
It obviously looks cooler (
), and must be a better quality unit. It has a two-speed motor and other fancy stuff, but the TT 100 model has a 145/187 m3/h airflow, while the TT125 has 220/280 m3/h. So looking at the naked numbers, it is not that much stronger. The TT100 is 3 times, the TT125 is 4 times as much money to spend as the cheap VKO125 above.
Would the extra things and (probable) build quality justify the cost?
I'm not going into carbon filters now, I'm in the office and have to leave in 10 minutes, but I'll have a post or two on them too.
I guess today evening is a great time to upload new photos of my babies too.