Growing in cold garage

Indoor Growing
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Hey everyone. So I’m moving my tent into the garage, but it’s rather cold and I’m up here in Canada where the outside temp can go down to about - 20c on the regular during winter. My lights keep my plants warm enough, 400w LED lights in the tent is sufficient for that, but I’m concerned about the ventilation to and from the room. How do I deal with the cold air, both if I am to exhaust, or use the window as an intake?

Has anyone done something similar and can share some design ideas?

Thanks guys!

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You would be surprised. I’m in michigan and have to have space heaters running constantly in my outbuilding I grow in.

I’m actually picking up a cmh because I want the heat. I haven’t used any HID in almost 10 years.

I ended up going to home depot and getting a few sheets of insulation to put around my tent and on the floor.

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Well the one good thing is that my garage is insulated and drywalled so it maintains heat fairly well. I picked up a small oil heater to run when the lights turn off (outside the tent of course), right now it’s got the room at 65 degrees F on the dot, which in my mind is alright for lights off temperature

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So it maintains heat but only when there’s no exhaust lol… So this is the problem. Hmmm

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Nice! Thats great! He’ll its in the teens here and I can hit 76 lights on, I had to fight for that to happen though.

So I just run my exhaust on a timer and let air creep in from cracks, etc. That keeps you from having a single locus of where cold air is coming in.

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Do you run the exhaust right out the window?

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I thought about running the exhuast from the tent right into the room (running constantly) and then a smaller exhaust fan with a back flow valve out the window running for like 3 mins every 30 mins or somethin on a cycle like that to fully exchange the air…

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I run my exhaust to outside through a hole in the wall. I have it on a timer so it runs about 25 mins every 3 hours during lights on.

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If you have a tent you can intake and exhaust out of the tent into the garage. Then you just have to worry about keeping the garage a stable temp. Garages usually are never air-tight sealed, so air-exchange will sort itself out.

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If the floor is slab-on-grade you will want some rigid insulation (1") between the floor and your tent (to keep the roots warm(er))

Cheers
G

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This site is awesome, thank you all for your ideas. I think that’s a big 10-4 on insulating the concrete floor - I did some research and apparently concrete just sucks the heat out of a room, but also acts as a good insulator because it retains heat just as well. So all in all I think for now I’ll insulate the floor and just keep an eye on the temps for a few days. The temps I’m facing inside are much worse than the problem would be outside I’m sure. I’m talking 35+ degrees celcius sometimes.

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I have a unfinished garage, space heaters in my insulated boxes. Also have a heat/ac unit in there to help keep it somewhat normal temps.

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I put a sheet of plywood over carpet than put insulation over it. I have mine in a walk-in basement. I bought plastic shelving to keep them off the floor.
I exhaust into the room and have a smaller exhaust into the tent. I put the heater and humidifier in front of the inlet of that for my flower tent.

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I think you’ll be just fine. My grow areas in my basement both get down to 60f at night during the winters, other than maybe a bit of slow growth you shouldn’t have any problems at 65f lights off

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I have never had a problem being at 60 to 65 at night. To me that seems like a cool late summer night. I mean outside during fall is gets into the 50 and 40s at night. Plants do fine.

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It’s really slowing my vegging plants. 77.6F day, 67.2F nite (22 day avg). They will grow thru it, IME. Just my .02