17 December 2023: Tent Built - Pictures
I’ve exclusively grown outdoors for the last 3 years and it’s time to add some indoor capability beyond my ghetto seed-starting setup. I think initally I’ll run some seeds, cut some clones and do a selection for next season’s outdoor. Just to break myself in and adapt to growing inside.
Here’s what I’ve used for the last two years, note the aesthetically pleasing sweeps cut into the cardboard walls 
This is going to eventually be a grow log as well of the inagural operation of this tent, but at this point still getting stuff in and setting it up. I need some help deciding on the internal air circulation paths.
I live in a small home, so I can’t do a large tent, or even a moderate one. I am limited to the confines of my office, which has a small closet. You guys have already helped me pick the ventilation system, lights, and how to exhaust the air from the closet. I’ve spent the last few weeks starting to get things together and ordered as Black Friday special deals.
The Tent:
I selected the VivoSun D325 (36" wide, 24" deep and 54" tall) which handily fits in the closet with some limitations. A nice feature of this tent, at least when I was shopping for it, was the veg side partition, which is optional but for my purposes seemingly perfect. I have therefore a 2x2 flower space and two, stacked 2x1 veg spaces each 26" tall.
Lighting:
Fuck me this got out of hand quick. The whole thing started seeing a screamin’ deal on a TS3000. I got that before I even found a tent. I figured, 23" x 25" will fit in a 2’ deep tent. I hadn’t accounted for the poles which occupy space as well, unsurprisingly in retrospect, nor had I considered the air that would need to move past the light to the top of the tent where I intended to place my exhaust system. It’s just too big.
Thanks to Black Friday deals I picked up an XS1500 Pro with the lenses for about $80. This fits much better in the flower space and is really a proper fit to my limited footprint. Deciding on the veg lights caused some internal conflict. HLG 65V2 looks like a good fit for a 2x1 veg space, although I don’t like the fact that the light is just a 9" square effectively, sitting in the middle of where my propagation trays would go. I opted instead to just design my own light panels, similar to the HLG 65 but smaller footprint so I can connect them and have total coverage of the ~9" x 22" with a total footprint of 9.5" x 19" - easily clearing my tent poles while jamming 384 diodes above each veg tray.
I’m having those built right now, using inexpensive 6000K LEDs. I’ve got extra boards coming I can populate with LM301 if I’d like as well. I’ll probably make a dedicated post about these lights when they arrive and why I chose to do it this way (there are more reasons that may not meet the eye initially). Will be using Bridgelux 96W driver with full linear dimming and 12V aux supply, which I will connectorize and use for small fans in the veg section. Does any of that make sense? Probably not. I realized I had read enough about lights I just wanted to do some experimenting, so I’m spending more money than any sane person just to design aluminum PCBs and play with LEDs. This could have easily been accomplished with some LED strips, but that’s boring to me. I discovered at least one thing already from this endeavor that was worth knowing: it costs as much to ship these from China as it did to fabricate/build me 6 full copies and 4 blank boards for trying other LEDs.
They’re due to arrive next week, shipped yesterday.
Ventilation:
Opted to go with AC Infinity Pro 4" setup with filter It’s due to arrive today. That’ll go in the flower chamber above the light, standard sort of configuration. Here’s the catch, of course. It seems Vivosun expects folks to have access to the rear wall for the inlet. There’s 3 vents on top, two vents in the back of the veg section, 2 in the back of the flower section and one, thankfully, on the left upper wall.
Unfortunately…the back of the tent is flush with the back wall of the closet. There’s less than 1/4" of gap there. So all those back vents are useless to me. I can use the left upper duct port or any of the roof ports.
I’ll be exhausting to a roof vent on the house. There’s an old vent 15’ away in the attic from where there used to be a bathroom. When we remodeled things in that area moved a lot and now it’s available.
I’ll note that I would like to filter the intake air because it’s dusty AF out here. So I’m thinking of these solutions with the idea already in my head of “where can I fit a 10x20 furnace filter on my inlet” somehow. The exhaust from the tent must be carbon filtered. Even the veg plants have smelled like weed in prior years and I’m really trying to minimize that for my wife who is sensitive to the smell.
There’s two fundamental ways I can see to go here.
- The easy way, perhaps the best way, is to intake at the top of veg-side partition. Exhaust through roof of flower side. I could easily have the filter box sitting on top of the tent and get cool air flowing top-down on the veg side, and I’d cut a vent and make a light trap to seperate the two sides.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Single light trap | Preheating/humidifying flower intake air |
| Passive circulation veg side | Requires quite a bit of airflow through veg section |
- The more difficult way would be to build a low-profile duct (or just run a duct hose to the bottom of the tent) that could also serve as my inlet filter to direct air from the upper flower hole down to the base of the flower compartment. The veg section would be ventilated into the flower area with a light trap on the bottom (veg air inlet) and an exhaust fan/light trap on the top to suck a smaller portion of air through the veg-side. I like this but it’s somewhat complicated and may be excessive.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Independent veg airflow | Complexity |
Now, I’ve never been the type of person to shy away from complexity. Rather the opposite I’d say. If I can see an adequate reason, I seem to enjoy adding complexity. Part of the project. So I’m leaning towards option two, and building some light traps with circulation fans.
Which way should I do it? Inlet into flower compartment and subdivide some airflow through the veg section? Inlet into flower compartment through veg section? This
. I’m sure you could rig up something inline.
