Doing my first grow and wanted to ask how do you guys handle constant fluctuations in your tent?
From looking at my pulse monitor there is constant up and down in all levels of the tent. The lights generate heat so the mini split in the tent turns on, but since the ac turns on the Co2, Humidity all take a dump, making those turn back on. It is wave of up and down in levels of my tent. Is this normal?
Since I feel like a straight line when it comes to levels of Co2, humidty, temp would create less stress on the plants instead of these nonstop ups and down.
In the tent…
Is your mini split actually inside the tent?
The fluctuations this would cause would be huge.
If so you should try to control the environment of the room and not the tent.
Then you will have much more even specs.
I am using timber grow lights, a company out here in SoCal, looks like they went out of bussiness since there website isn’t working. Found the lights online though:
My idea was to create a closed enviroment, but I can see that it may be a bad idea with the mini split inside the tent. I was thinking about taking the minisplit out of the tent, and funneling the cold air from it into the tent, that way the tent is getting the cold air out without the intake from the minisplit which shouldnt dehumidify the air.
From the snapshot of my pulse, I just don’t feel like the constant up and down is right, but again this is my first grow.
How big is the room the tent is in?
Do you have a pic of your setup?
You are experiencing the same thing a house does when the ac unit is too big. It cools too fast and beyond the set point you wish to be at. Then it cycles frequently and does not remove humidity well. Letting it cool a larger space it will get the humidity down more and the temperature will stay in a much smaller range. The unit will actually run less and more efficiently. And because your tent is in the room (Lung Room) it will stay cooler too.
It is an 8x8 tent, and the lights just turned off. I will send you a picture of the complete setup in a few hours. Below is the mini split when first setting up the tent.
The ac I feels causes so many problems. With the lights off now, my pulse meter is not showing any major fluctuations since the heat is gone from the lights not causing the ac to turn on.
Spiney_norman has you set with all the right advice here. Your ductless unit is too big for this space and just sits there short cycling when lights are on. I agree the best course of action here is to move your air handler out of tent and use it to cool the room the tent is in. You probably don’t even need or want to direct the conditioned air to your tent. Just get a slightly oversized extraction fan setup to exhaust from top and make sure you have a good amount of passive intake opened on bottom.
Once you get setup like this you can play with tenp settings on split to tweak where your canopy temps run.
Are you using the ac infinity controller to control the on and off set points? Or another thermostat?
If so have you set the buffer points?
The ac unit is short cycling because it’s so oversized for the area,
Are the led drivers external of the tent to minimize heat?
The ac infinity controller is controlling the humidifier, and I have a nest thermostat inside the tent controlling the mini split. I dont have a dehumid since there as never been a need for one in veg.
The led drivers are on top of the lights itself. In the link below they are sitting on top of that black part.
The ac infinity controller is controlling the humidifier, and I have a nest thermostat inside the tent controlling the mini split. I dont have a dehumid since there as never been a need for one in veg.
The led drivers are on top of the lights itself. In the link below they are sitting on top of that black part.
If you are looking for perfect consistency I think it should really be outside of the tent. It’s going to take some practice with outside temps and ventilation fans.
If that’s not possible see if you can find a way to control the ac with the controller and set the buffer points…
at least with that option you can control based on canopy temps, not wherever the nest is located.
I think you are right. The ac, I feel, causes big fluctuations which I dont think the plants enjoy.
I will look into taking the ac out. Opening the holes of the tent and exhausting the room air inside the tent. Then probably have the exhaust fan go into the attic/outside. This may work will see if I can do it during this grow but might have to wait for the next grow.
If this first grow goes decent well then I plan to do another room, and since the two biggest costs by far are the lights/mini split, I planned on doing some homework and seeing if I can just build my own lights and save some money. With the business we do here in the states, we have contacts in China, but this is so far down the road. I need to make it through this first grow and perfect it since I feel like a lot of things have gone wrong already.
With your suggestion should I exhaust the hot air back into the room outside the tent so the ac can take care of it or should I exhaust the hot air into the attic/outside?
Try exhausting right out of tent back into room. You should depend on the heat exhausted to cycle the ac unit some. The key here is to keep air exchange rate up with exhaust fan in tent. It should be expelling the warm air at top of tent and bringing in conditioned air from bottom.
After seeing the pics I have to say I wish it did work because its so elegant looking.
I am disappointed in your behalf. I would probably go ahead and see if the plants finish. They may tolerate the temp swings without issue. I don’t know if there is any info out there about this.
