Why Do Grow Tents Need Ventilation?

 One of the advantages of growing in a greenhouse is that growers can eliminate factors such as inclement weather, and most pests, while still benefiting from the sun’s natural light and the complete control that indoor growers experience. Greenhouse growers do, however, have to consider ventilation.

Regular air exchange will allow crops to thrive and promote a healthy temperature range. There are several methods, tools, and tactics growers use to achieve proper ventilation, but the best operations often use a combination of both passive and active ventilation. By designing their greenhouses using both methods, growers can effectively ventilate their structures while keeping costs down.

What Is Grow Room Ventilation?

A grow room ventilation is a system that ensures a continuous flow of air between the outside world and the indoor grow area. It also includes some mechanism for keeping airflow inside the grow room.

The most common grow room systems use a combination of exhaust fans and ducts or pipes to maintain airflow. And circulation fans are used to keep the air flowing within the room.

Do Plants Need Ventilation?

Ventilating a grow tent is definitely important, and for many reasons.

Photosynthesis
First of all, cannabis plants need a constant supply of fresh air for photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is a process in which green plants take CO2 and water, apply energy that they receive from the sun or lights, and convert all this to plant matter.

Thus, CO2 is actually food for plants. Your goal as a grower is to provide plenty of food every day. And grow tent ventilation is one way to do it.

Keeping temperature down
Second, indoor grow lights generate a lot of heat. Marijuana doesn’t like too hot environments. It thrives with temperatures of up to 85°F (30°C), but then shows the symptoms of heat stress and basically stops developing. Apart from installing a grow room air conditioner, venting a grow tent is the only way to keep the temperature down.

Humidity control
Grow room ventilation also keeps the relative humidity in check. This is especially important during the flowering stage when buds begin to fill out and become susceptible to mold. Novice growers seldom realize it, but mold and bud rot are very common problems.

Remember that a lot of water evaporates from your soil, or coco, or another medium. Even more, humidity is released into the air by plants themselves. This process is called transpiration. An exhaust fan for grow room takes care of all that excess moisture.

Pests prevention
Hot and humid environments also attract various pests. Spider mites, for example, thrive and multiply in great numbers when the air is hot, humid, and stale. If you don’t want to lose your whole crop, set up a good ventilation system.

How Does a Ventilation System Affect Plants

The main focus of a grow room is to provide plants with a better growing environment than outdoors. This also means providing fresh, CO2-rich air.

A ventilation system is crucial to keep the CO2 content inside the grow room at optimal levels for the plants. As the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is low, a constant flow of fresh air from outside is necessary.

Plants are used to growing in the outside weather, exposed to the wind and elements. When they are deprived of these conditions, it can affect them in unexpected ways.

Check out the following section to learn why a ventilation system is essential for plants in an indoor grow room.

The Importance of Grow tent Ventilation

A greenhouse’s most important function is to provide the perfect environment for plant growth. Storing the sun’s energy and harnessing it to benefit your crop is the key to all good greenhouse design. Ventilation is essential for balancing an indoor climate that makes the most of the powerful solar spectrum while keeping an optimal temperature and air quality to help your plants thrive!
Air exchange is important not only for providing the carbon dioxide and fresh air that plants need for photosynthesis. It also helps keep the temperatures inside your greenhouse regulated. In Winter, a greenhouse’s function is to store heat from the sun, creating a warmer temperature in the greenhouse versus outside of it. But in the Summer, an unventilated greenhouse can turn into a furnace, holding withering heat instead of protecting your plants from the elements.

Active Cooling System
Active cooling requires mechanical tools, like fans and evaporative coolers, to create air exchange. These tools require electricity and, therefore, money. So it’s important to have a passive system that can cut costs in place. The best part of active ventilation is that it ensures precision control, making it an important factor in creating the ideal controlled climate.

Fans are an obvious go-to for growers, and they’re extremely effective. One often overlooked piece of equipment is an evaporative cooling wall. It’s especially great for warmer climates because it can bring in fresh air while significantly cooling the growing environment. The wall pulls air through a damp pad, and then fans distribute the cool, moist air. Evaporative cooling walls can easily reduce temperatures by 20°F, and they can also help to reduce the need to water.

Passive intake air is most effective when using lighting systems under 400 watts. Depending on what kind of lighting you’re using (LED, high-pressure sodium, etc.) your grow lights emit a certain amount of heat. At 400 watts your lamp’s heat output can be exhausted by a low CFM inline fan while being replaced by passive air. This method is recommended for smaller grow tents. Larger grow tents can benefit from using passive air intake as well but will require higher CFM exhaust fans.

Air intake is only a part of the indoor growing equation. Many factors like grow tent size, grow lights, and inline fans contribute to creating the optimal growing environment.

Conclusion

Ventilation for a grow room is as important as breathable air for us humans. In the absence of a proper system of ventilation, your indoor growth will never succeed.

In larger, more powerful grow systems, creating a suitable ventilation system can be a complex task indeed. But the complexity of these systems is directly proportional to the size of the grow room.

So if you are a beginner, creating a basic system should not be too hard. You can even opt for an even cheaper passive system if there is enough room for large intake holes.

Whatever your choice, your plants will ultimately benefit from the effort. That is certain.