Proper grow tent ventilation is essential to healthy plant growth, and proper filtration is equally essential to clean the air and remove all odors.
You should be replacing the air in your grow space at least every 5 minutes when the lights are on, and even quicker if your environment is struggling to combat heat or humidity.
On top of this, it is important to circulate the air within your tent. This will keep temperatures and odors down, strengthen plants, and more.
When it comes to indoor growing, its so important that you control your environment. A good ventilation system is necessary to make this happen.
Why Do You Need to Ventilate Your Grow Room?
So why do grow rooms and grow tents need to be ventilated? As it turns out, there are quite a few reasons.
Plants grown outdoors enjoy the mitigating effects of light breezes, sunshine, evaporation, and precipitation. Indoors, we substitute fans for breezes and evaporation, grow lights for sunshine, and watering systems for precipitation. What we often forget about is that outdoors, air circulates more naturally than in your grow room.
You need both a fan and carbon filter combo, also an air extraction system to keep the air in your grow room fresh. Here’s why.
Remove Excess Heat
Grow lights emit heat. It might not seem like much to you, but a few degrees in temperature can mean the difference between a successful crop and a less successful one. Certain grow lights emit more heat than others, but all produce enough heat to merit ventilation.
Control Humidity
Humidity is another factor that can contribute to problems with indoor growing systems. Plants emit water vapor throughout the day which increases the humidity of your grow room. Uncontrolled humidity leads to poor growing conditions and can result in the development of pests and diseases.
A good ventilation system also wicks away some of the water released during transpiration, allowing your plants to absorb more water and pull up nutrients through their root systems, boosting growth.
Prevent Pests and Diseases
Air circulation helps prevents pests and diseases. Mold, powdery mildew, spider mites and fungus gnats prefer stagnant, humid conditions. Pests lay their eggs in damp topsoil, so having a fan to keep the surface layer of soil dry can slow their reproductive cycle, and a steady breeze makes it harder for them to establish themselves on your plants in the first place.
Control CO2
Plants need outside air for one very basic reason: CO2. Plants absorb CO2 throughout the day as part of their nutrient cycle. If your grow tent setup is sealed, this means that the level of CO2 in the room gradually decreases, limiting your plants’ growth. Ventilation brings in fresh air and fresh CO2 from outside and removes the old air from your grow room, boosting growth and yields.
Manage Wind Stress
Outdoor plants are constantly buffeted by the wind. This makes the stems of the plants stronger, which serves them well when the time comes to bear fruit. Stronger plants produce and grow better than weaker plants, which can break under the weight of their own yields.
So why do you need a grow room ventilation system? Let’s review. A good ventilation system:
Reduces the chances of diseases like mold and powdery mildew from developing
Helps protect your plants from pests like spider mites and fungus gnats
Helps you control the temperature and humidity of your grow room
Helps strengthen the stems of your plants
If those reasons still don’t convince you that you need a grow room ventilation system, then consider cost.
Grow tent setup is not cheap. And a complete grow tent kit may help you more. If you are going to invest in a grow tent or grow room, you might as well do it right.
There are several ways you can connect the exhaust port to the inline fan to the carbon filter.
How you set it up exactly will depend on how your lights are hanging and the type of grow lighting system you’re using — does it use a reflector or not?
When your ventilation components and tent are physically in front of you, setup and configuration make sense, so don’t worry.
For LED, CMH, and Fluorescent users, you won’t have a reflector you’ll have to connect to. Setup couldn’t be easier for you guys.
Step 1. Attach your inline fan to one of the extra ceiling bars that your grow tent most likely came with — adjustable rope clip handles work great as your fan will hang only a few inches from the ceiling.
Step 2. Either slide the inline fan over to fit into an exhaust hole or even easier connect your inline fan to the ducting which can be run through and out an exhaust hole.
Step 3. Hang your carbon scrubber — it most likely will come with ropes for hanging.
Step 4. Attach the carbon scrubber to the inline fan so that the fan is pulling air through the scrubber — you can use ducting or simply connect them if they are the same size.
Step 5. Confirm your components are in proper order: Outside air is passively pulled in through the bottom intake ports up into the filter (passing air through the lights), which then moves the air through the inline fan and out the exhaust holes.
Final thoughts
Choosing the right ventilation system for your grow room is complicated, which is why I think it is important for indoor growers to understand how ventilation systems work and the benefits of grow room ventilation systems. Once you know the basics, you are in a much better position to choose the right system for your operation.