CLIMATE CONTROLLERS

If you are bothering to grow your plants indoors under HID lights, you probably care quite a bit about them and want them to be healthy and produce well for you. If this is the case, you need to be aware of the environmental factors that will affect your plants' growth the most. Probably the largest problems associated with growing indoors are ventilation, or Carbon dioxide related. The current of air that circulates in a grow room is as important as light, water, heat and nutrient. Proper ventilation acts as a mediator between light and water, removing excess heat and humidity, while providing plants with a healthy supply of CO2.

The amount of control you will need to exercise over the environmental factors in your room will greatly depend on the scale of your growing area - the number of plants, the number of lights, the size of the room, and whether or not you are supplementing with CO2. It also depends on the kind of result you wish to get.

If you would just like a quick, at-a-glance easy way of visually monitoring your environment, we suggest a hygro-thermometer that monitors temperature and humidity.

It is very important to keep your room's heat and/or humidity levels in check. Growing plant produces humidity. Hot lights product heat. If you are using CO2 enrichment you will have to pay extra attention to this area, as rooms can get extra hot and humid. (This discussion assumes you are not using CO2 enrichment...if you are using or plan to use CO2 enrichment, check the next question on CO2 control .

The easiest method is to install a *VENT FAN* such as a Vortex on a timer. The timer will regularly turn the vent fan on and exhaust hot and/or humid air. An intake fan could be used as well, to bring cool outside air in. While this will help considerably it is still a very rough method of control.

We prefer more precise humiudty control and therefore use a vent fan powered by an automated controller which will keep the Relative Humidity (RH) level within a set perameter. The controller will sense the RH level in the room and will turn on the vent fan whenever humidity levels reach too high. It will turn the fan off when the RH level has fallen below your chosen setpoint. Here’s an example of a controller we like: the *RHC-1* from Green Air.

If heat is your main concern, we suggest using a vent fan and coupling it together with a *TEMPSTAT*. When temperatures get too high, the tempstat will turn the vent fan on until the temperature drops below your chosen set point. In most idoor environments, lighting is the major source of heat. Air Cooling your lights is another possiblen solution. Most horizontal reflectors can be easily converted to air cooling by using a lens, the correct hose fittings & ducting to a 265 CFM vent fan.

When enriching a room with CO2 the idea is to produce just enough to be effective, but not so much that the precious CO2 is wasted. CO2 control equipment for indoor gardens is an efficient way to accurately control CO2 generators or CO2 emitters. CO2 controllers will pay for themselves in the long run. Some Carbon dioxide controllers actually sense the amount of CO2 in a grow room and control equipment according to actual CO2 levels in the space. These are know as Monitor and Controllers. Other CO2 timers run production equipment off of very precise timed intervals.