How To Reduce Heat Build Up In Your Grow Room
For most people, Summer is a time for sitting in beer gardens, enjoying the longer days and basking in the sun. However, the increase in heat throws up certain obstacles for indoor gardeners. In today’s blog we’re going to explain how urban gardeners can break down these obstacles and keep producing successful crops.
Summer might seem like a good thing for traditional gardeners but for indoor gardeners the increase in temperature can throw up a few obstacles. One of the big obstacles is how to keep their indoor garden cool enough so that plant growth isn’t impacted. Fortunately, there are a few techniques that gardeners can use to keep their grow room below 28C and keep producing good quality crops.
Light Kits With Adjustable Ballasts
One of the best things an indoor gardener can do to reduce heat build-up within a grow room is reduce the heat produced by their lighting. The best way to do this is to have an adjustable ballast that allows users to reduce their bulbs output. Simply turn the ballast wattage down to either 250w, 450w or 600w to reduce the heat produced by your bulb.
One of our top picks for an adjustable ballast is the 600w Elite Ballast.
- Each ballast is dimmable to 250w,
- They’re lightweight so they can be placed either on a floor or hung on a wall,
- They produce little to no heat so won’t damage other pieces of equipment or increase grow room temperature,
- Can run HPS, MH or Dual Spectrum singe ended bulbs.
Other great dimmable ballasts are available
LED Lighting
Another way to reduce the heat your lighting makes it to change to a LED light. As you may or may not know, LED lighting produces no heat which means the light doesn’t contribute to the temperature within your grow room. Furthermore, as they use 50 – 70% less energy than traditional HPS bulbs, they also save you money!
Some of our favourite LED’s include Elite Quantum, Mars, Telos and probably one of the best LED on the market … the MaxiBright Daylight 660w LED.
Extraction Systems
One of the main things you need in a grow room is an effective extraction system. When plants grow, they consume Co2 and produce moisture. This moisture is then heated up by grow lights which subsequently produces a warmer, humid environment within a growing area. This environment can produce a stale, hot atmosphere that can damage and reduce a plants health and size.
An extraction system reduces heat build up by drawing in cool air and then transferring warm air out of the growing area via ducting and a carbon filter. If you introduce a fan controller with temperature probe, your extraction system will automatically react to the temperature you set it too which also allows you to control you grow rooms temperature.
The Environmental Control Unit
It’s safe to say every indoor gardener would like an Opticlimate Control Unit as they are the crème de la crème of environmental control units.
The water cooled Opticlimate 2000 Pro 3 can be used for circulation, cooling, heating, dehumidifying and filtering. There is over five years of development and testing in the design of the Opticlimate which makes it one of the best environmental control systems on the market today!
Each unit cools the air by using water and can on the other hand heat the air through ceramic heating elements. Furthermore, as water is more efficient at cooling than air, only small amounts of water are needed. This helps reduce running costs and saves water.
For more tips and tricks, check out the rest of our blog
