# 9 x 12 Room Setup



## NorBudMan (Jan 13, 2010)

I am setting up a room in my upstairs bedroom. The area is 9 ft x 12 ft. There is a large window on one wall that I have covered. I used a sheet with cardboard backing. From the outside it just looks like someone hung a sheet over the window so I am pretty happy with it. I covered the floors with white plastic so the carpets would not be ruined. Next I bought a 30 dollar window fan and put it in the window. It has two fans one blowing in and one blowing out. I made a little cardboard enclosure around the fan and ran some 4" ducting out of the card board ( so light couldn't get through). When I put my hand up to the end of the duct I can feel slight air flow but not very much. I pointed a occilating fan at the tray about 4 ft away. I have a 4 x 4 tray that I plan on putting my plants in that I set up on a coffee table about 18" off of the ground.   Around it I built a PVC structure that is about 8 ft high to hang my 1000 Watt HPS light from. I turned on the light for a while too see how everything looked. When I came back to the room a few hours later it was around 90 degrees in the room and close to 100 under the direct light. I assume that these temps will be too hot for the plants. 

So here are my questions: The hood for my light has the option of being air cooled should I take the duct from my window fan and hook it up to the hood? Is that window fan providing enough air flow? Should I cover the walls in plastic? How many plants should I put in the 4 x 4 tray? What size pots should I buy? Also if you thought of anything that you feel that I should know while reading this It would be greatly appreciated.


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## DonJones (Jan 14, 2010)

*WELCOME TO THE FORUM!*

*Remember, you need a lot of fresh air exchange to insure tghat your plants have plenty of CO2, temps between a low of around 60F and  a High of 90F, and hopefully you can keep the temp within a 15F range for a 24 hours period, lots of the proper light at the proper time, water and nutrients to grow MJ.*  You need to balance the effect on all of these factors in deciding how to deal with any particular item. IF you can do it, use one thing to handle more than one issue at a time.  For instance, you can use your window covering to deal with light leakage, temp control and fresh air all at the same time if done correctly.

My first thought is that you need to separate your intake and exhaust openings a lot more than they are. A 6" fan will probably draw all the air that it will exhaust in under the door if you have at least at 28" x1.5" gap between the floor and the bottom of the door without any problems of sucking the hot air back in from your exhausted air.   If you have any HVAC ducts into the room, the exhaust fan will also draw air through them, so you probably only need an exhaust opening at the window but I think a 4" one is probably too small, especially from your experiences so far.

Also that ducting is really cutting down on your air flow.  Try this.  Disconnect the ducts, cover the holes, open the bottom of your box up and mount your exhaust fan in the top area of the window.  Then turn your light on at night, go outside and check the window and see if it looks like there is any more than just a night light on.  If not your light control is okay.  If it is, then try to paint the inside of the box flat black to help keep the light from reflecting around inside of it.  Then try your temp check in the day light.  The absolute top that I would consider for the temp on the plants is 90F and that is with plenty of breeze generated by an oscillating fan.

Then comes the really bad news, you need to find a way to confine the light in your growing area because 1000 watts is going to disappear in the rest of the room without having some kind light confining method.  Cover the cardboard with mylar film, shiny white Panda type plastic or at least paint it with white -- not off white, eggshell or anything like that, in my opinion I use semi-gloss white or high gloss but some here say to use flat, but we all agree on the whitest white you can find-- just pure white paint.

Get yourself a good grade of poly tarp and put it down on the  floor.  If you can get it, the silvery colored stuff is good, but in my opinion protecting the floor is more important than reflecting light off of the floor.

When I started I was trying to do the same thing in a 13' x 10' room and it really sucked even though I was running 3  400 watt lights.  It looks like you are at least growing in the corner which will really cut down on light loss.

I ran a 6" high volume commercial fan exhausting through the boxed off window area much like you are doing and in the Summer with the central AC for the house running, I could keep the temps down to around 90F which is on the upper side of acceptable.  To lessen the problem of light leakage, I set my lights to come on at 5 AM and go off at 9PM in veg and on at 8AM and off at 8 PM which are very reasonable hours for my household to be up.  I moved my operation to a similarly sized downstairs bedroom in a split level house and not only drew the fresh air in from near the cool concrete floor but exhausted it back into the rest of the house from about 4' off of the floor.  It also made hiding the odor easier because it wasn't actually vented outside.  I have split the downstairs room into a 6' x12' flower room and a 4' x 12' veg room and it is working real well.

I hope this gives you some ideas and don't hesitate to ask more questions.

Oh, try to get it right the first time, because when you say I'll fix it later you will find later never comes.  At least that sure is the way it works for me.  I waited to paint my downstairs room and wound up using it for over 6 months before I got it empty enough to actually finally paint it all white. And I'm still trying to get the veg room cleaned out enough to paint it.

You are on the right track and have a great area to work with in comparison to what a lot of people have to work with.

Great smoking!


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## PUFF MONKEY (Jan 14, 2010)

:yeahthat: :goodposting: ...loooks like you have a good idea of how things need to work.. good luck


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## The Hemp Goddess (Jan 14, 2010)

Ninety is about 10 degrees too high.  You want to keep your plants between 60 and 80.  

You are going to need substantially more/better ventilation.  I use a 435 CFM Vortex fan (with speed controller) to cool 2 600W lights.  Check into a 6" Vortez, Can, Eclipse fan.  This is what you are going to need.

You also need to get your grow area smaller.  Your light is being disbursed throughout the entire room and it is being wasted--not utilized by the plants.  You can use PVC pipe to make some self standing "walls" that you can cover with panda film and box in the grow area.

And you will not get everything right the first time--don't worry about it.  A grow room is a living evolving thing--you will be making constant upgrades and changes to it.  Don't be discouraged--there is a huge learning curve to this growing thing.


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