So basically I’m going to be doing my germination and growing my seedlings indoors up until they are ready to be transplanted from their 1 gallon smart pots indoors, into the 30 gallon smart pots which will be outdoors. My grow light research is going just fine, but I’m planning on doing this without a grow tent, as it would just be unnecessary, more than I need, and space consuming, however I am concerned that not having reflective mylar walls surrounding the plant area might be a strong drop in light efficiency. So I decided to come here to get opinions. Let me know what you think.
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Flat white paint does almost as good a job and it’s cheaper and easier to install.No hot spots and it’s even all the way through.Works really good with the cheap red and blue led grow lights too
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Long as you’ve got enough light and your environment is decently controlled you shouldn’t have problems. I’ve started seedlings in my bathroom several times now and kept them going in there for the first couple weeks of veg each time.
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You don’t need it. It can help, if your light’s too weak. You haven’t told us anything about the space or the light you intend to use.
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flat white paint
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if you have ever tried to wipe down mylar, you see why white paint rules!
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Mylar died many years ago, white blockout paint has black in formula and makes a great reflective.
Cheap too. Sign supply places have it.
I use flat white paint in my closets, easy to clean and repaint if i let a male do his thing in the flower room.
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I guess I wasn’t specific enough. My debate wasn’t between mylar and white paint. It was between taking the time, expense and effort to try to build some kind of an open topped, short walled horizontal box to attach mylar to the interior sides of, while still being able to reach over the sides to reach the plants, which I would set up on a large table, or to do nothing, and just put the plants on trays on the table with the grow light hung from the rafter above it.
The building I’m speaking of could be considered an in law unit, as it is a building in our backyard, completely detached from the house, with a carpeted floor over the sealed concrete foundation, fully insulated wood and sheetrock walls etc. However we call it “The Barn” as it’s design was the shape of a barn, with big double doors on one end. In reality it has been used as a workshop, storage, extra meeting space, and some of my friends have even lived out there for a while.
So it can be easily climate controlled, and the design keeps it very temperate out there regardless of whether its overly warm or cold outside.
Anyways, there are three large exposed rafters that run across the building at the height of the top of the walls and will be perfect to hang the grow light from when I decide precisely which one I am going to get, and there is a large table set up in the spot I have picked out where I can set up the plants underneath the light. However it is a large building and the walls would not be anywhere near where the table is set up.
So as I said, my options were either, 1) just put the plants in their pots on trays sitting on the table underneath the grow light and ignore the dropoff of the light intensity towards the edges of the lights area of illumination since they will only be inside for 3/5 weeks while germinating and going through the seedling phase or 2) build some kind of a box for them to sit in that would provide short vertical surfaces around the grow area for me to attach mylar to to create a reflective surface for the light to bounce off of to even out the dropoff rate of the light towards the edges.
At this point It doesn’t seem like its something I really need to worry about, and the lights that I am looking at are designed to cover a 3x3 area even at flowering stage intensity, and all my seedlings together in their 1 gallon pots wouldn’t take up that much space, so it’s probably not an issue I should be concerned about.
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Actually the setup that he shows about 3.5 minutes into this video would be perfect for what I am talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSaScnI8laA
There is definitely a huge dropoff between growing them out in the open vs in a reflective box of some sort. I have tested this with one of my lights. Needed to be much closer in the open area.
That said, I agree with your thinking that it’s not really necessary or worth the trouble for a few weeks before going outside.
I’ve used foam insulation, the hard back stuff as walls. Heck you can gorilla glue, luan to it as I made grow boxes from the stuff years ago now. I still use pieces of it after 20 years.
That and roll of silver duct tape.
I think you just want a corral of sorts, cut it to fit your area, tape it up, inside and outside the joints.
The stuff is freaky strong.
I known you do not need a plenum, just an example of one of the many things I made with foam. That plenum, in summer had an in room AC behind it, the AC ducts into another foam contraption screwed to wall to cover a window, cold air into tent, exhaust out a window.
Then in winter, remove AC connection and suck cold out of the exhaust window. Sounds confusing but worked a treat.
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That looks like it would be great for a male flowering chamber 
Now that I got rid of my propagation tent I need to build one
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Ok so in case anybody comes across this thread later, I did some thinking about it and decided what I’m going to do.
I’m going to use a 3ft by 3ft cardboard box as a frame. I will tape the bottom up and then cut the flaps off of the top. Then I will cut the seam between two sides and the bottom seam on one wall, so that one side can function as a hinged door that can be opened and closed, then held closed with just a piece of tape. This will sit on top of the large table I have set underneath the rafter the grow light will be hanging from. Then I’m going to glue mylar to the inside walls, and use a drain pan for the plants to sit in and to contain any water that may leak out of them.
In past years I have experimented with both fabric and plastic 1 gallon pots for the seedling phase after germination, but I find that trying to transplant from the fabric pots is significantly more difficult, so I am going to use plastic 1 gallon pots this year. The seeds (All Feminized) will germinate in Rapid Rooters in a tray with a plastic humidity dome. Once they are sufficiently established they will get transplanted into Big Rootz super soil and the 1 gallon plastic pots. Then once they are ready to be transplanted into their final pots and moved outside, sometime in early march probably, I will transplant 5 of the 6 strongest into my 30 gallon fabric pots, and the strongest of all of them into my 150 gallon fabric pot to all be grown outdoors. Below I have linked the equipment Ill be using at this phase as well as the 4 strains I will be germinating this year.
Strawberry Lemonade by Barney Farms
Biscotti Mintz by Barney Farms
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apparently “new users” can only put in two links per post, so here are a bunch of replies with two links each lol.
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