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Growing your weed indoors offers you with a large number of benefits. However, the biggest and the most popular reason as to why people tend to do it is that it gives them a much greater amount of control over the environmental factors than growing outdoors. You see, growing weed outdoors basically means you are leaving everything to the mercy of mother nature. In times with excessive heat, rain, or snow, your plants might not grow as well as they’re supposed to. Growing indoor means you could control all these factors. You could provide as much light as you want and for however long you want. Another factor that you get to control is the temperature in which your plants are growing! In this article, we shall specifically be dealing with the burning question of how to cool a grow tent!
We shall first begin by addressing the need to keep a grow tent cool, followed by some traditional as well as off-beat methods that people use to keep the temperatures in their tent low. Temperature plays a major role in the growth of your plant and the idea behind this article is to familiarize you with the role that temperature plays in the growth of your plant as well as help you learn a few tricks of the trade as to how to cool your grow tent.
Temperature and the Marijuana Plant
There are a number of factors that you need to keep in mind when you are growing your cannabis plants indoors. These are light, air, nutrients, water, humidity as well as temperature. The temperature in which your plants are growing can have quite an effect on the growth of your plants. In general, however, marijuana plants require a cool climate to grow (not hot, not cold, but cool). Moreover, talking of temperature, plants need different temperatures at different stages of their growth cycle.
Having unfavorable temperatures can shock a plant or can stress it out – leading to it wilting, defoliating, having a slow and stunted growth, and in the worst-case – dying. Hence, you need to make sure that the temperature is in check and under control. As a basic rule of thumb ensure that your temperatures never go below 15 degrees Celsius or over 30 degrees Celsius as anything beyond that would be very harmful for your plants. An ideal temperature would be between 20 to 25 degrees. This range of 15-30C has been provided by us because this is the ideal range under which photosynthesis can properly happen. It will happen in other temperatures beyond these limits also but it won’t be as effective.
The process of photosynthesis helps plants produce various sugars (like molasses) which it needs as ‘food’. When the temperature falls below 20C, it becomes very hard for the plant to move the ‘food’ around to all its different parts. Coming to hotter temperatures now, there’s a major need to keep the temperatures cool because while colder temperatures have an adverse effect, hotter temperatures have an even worse effect as they can ‘burn’ your plant or stress it out too much to a point that it won’t be able to grow properly. There are a number of sources of heat inside a grow tent, the biggest of which is the grow light. Followed by that there are a number of other electrical appliances that generate heat. The natural weather surrounding the grow tent can also be a reason of excess heat and hence the temperature needs to be kept cool. Let us take a look at what the ideal temperature is for different phases of growth of the marijuana plant.
When it comes to heating up the grow tent there are a number of things which contribute to that, but the biggest reason as to why this happens is because of grow lights. The heat coming out of the grow lights is the biggest source of heat inside a grow tent. Then there’s the operation of a number of electric devices such as carbon filters and fans which add to it. Lastly, the external heat can also affect the overall temperature of a grow tent.
Ideal Temperature during Different Phases of Growth:
As mentioned above, different phases of growth of the marijuana plant require different temperatures. Here’s a look at what the optimal temperature is during these different phases:
- Seedling Phase: The plant is at its most vulnerable and weakest during the seedling phase when it has just popped out of the ground and is a teeny tiny version of itself. A temperature of about 20 to 25C will be sufficient for the proper growth of these seedlings, but one of the most important things that you must ensure is that you need to provide high humidity to the plants here because the roots haven’t been developed yet and it depends solely upon the environmental humidity for water.
- Vegetative Phase: The temperature requirements at this phase will still be the same, between 20 to 25C, but the humidity can be lowered a little. In the past, you needed humidity above 70%, but that can now be reduced slightly. During dark hours, you can reduce the temperature by another couple of degrees but make sure they remain above 15C at all times.
- Blooming Phase: You can now increase the warmth slightly and provide temperatures up to 28C in the lit hours and reduce the temperatures in the dark hours. Reducing the temperatures in the dark period makes sure that trichomes are produced properly.
- Harvest: The drying and curing process of the harvest phase need to be paid special attention to. Post the harvest, keep the temperature at around 18C and humidity at around 45% to ensure an optimal result, and get a nice and sticky bud which stoners would really enjoy smoking!
How to Cool a Grow Tent?
There are a number of ways in which you can cool down your grow tent. The most traditional of these methods would be by using an Air Conditioner but that adds a significant cost in terms of electric consumption. However, there are a number of other ways which you can keep your grow tents cool and we shall be looking at all of them in detail now:
1. Air Conditioners
As mentioned above, air conditioners are the classic way to keep temperatures cool. These are a good option if you have a grow room or a large grow tent where you can set up a portable air conditioner inside the tent or set up an AC outside which would help cool the grow tent overall. Nonetheless, for most growers, an air conditioner can be quite an expensive device to operate because of the electricity consumption. But on the contrary, when it comes to maintaining temperatures at a certain degree – there’s nothing better than using an AC, a perfect option for growers growing in a grow room.
2. Using Proper Air Circulation
The use of air circulation is very important in a grow tent. When done right, it is the best and one of the most cost-effective means of ensuring that your grow tent remains protected from heat. When it comes to answering the question of how to cool a grow tent, you must make sure your air circulation is up to the mark. The heat generated by the grow light inside the tent tends to accumulate in one point but once you switch on the inline fans, it gets circulated and eventually moved out of the tent via the meshed openings on the bottom.
3. Using LED Grow Lights
When it comes to growing indoors, grow lights are of prime importance. There are many different options – CFL lights, Metal Halides, HID grow lights, etc. However, the one thing that you must know is that these are all lights which operate at very high temperatures. Especially the HID grow lights (HPS lamps and Metal Halides). Replacing all your lighting with LED grow lights can have a significant difference on your growth operations. This is because these grow lights tend to emit much lesser amounts of heat when you compare them with other older lighting systems. In fact, the latest version of many grow lights are now ‘fanless’ because of the very low amount of heat that they emit.
4. Insulating Your Room
Another way to ensure that you are keeping temperatures from getting hot is by insulating your room properly. This works really well for people who live in places where the temperature are naturally hot. What happens in a insulated room is that once the temperatures are lowered, the room retains the temperature and doesn’t really get heated up so quickly, thereby keeping the temperatures controlled for a longer period of time than a regular grow tent would.
5. Air-Cooled and Water-Cooled Lighting Systems
In case you’re not using LED grow lights and are still using some older-generation lighting methods (which a lot of growers still do), the best way to ensure your tent’s temperatures remaining cool is by using air-cooled and water-cooled lighting systems. Basically here, with the help of fans and ducting, the hot air from your fans moves outside the grow tent. In water-cooled systems, a water pump and a series of pipes is used to circulate chilled water around the grow light which keeps its temperatures low.
6. Move Underground
Growing in a basement is actually quite a sane idea for growers who wish to reduce the temperatures. This is partly because of insulation as the lower you go the cooler it becomes. The soil around the room provides a great insulating layer and makes sure the room remains cooler compared to the temperatures on the ground.
7. Use Lights During the Night Hours
Another interesting fix to lowering the temperatures, especially in areas which are naturally hot, would be to reverse the day and night cycles. While in the daytime, the temperature outside is hot, using grow lights could make it even hotter and hence you could instead have the lights function at night while your plant rests during the hottest hours of the day. By this, you’re making sure that you’re not adding on to the naturally present heat.
So these were some of the best and the most effective tips that we have when it comes to ensuring that the temperatures inside your grow tent remain cool. Having a cool temperature is great for the growth of your plant and it ensures you get good growth without any damage to the plants. Make sure you follow some of these techniques and use them in combination with each other to get a better growth environment for your plant. We shall now answer some frequently asked questions before concluding the article.
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Frequently Asked Questions About How to Cool a Grow Tent?
We get asked a lot of questions about keeping grow tents cool. Here are the answers to some of these FAQs which will help you get a better, clearer picture:
1. How to keep outdoor growth cool?
When you’re growing outdoors, having a good air circulation is your best defense against the heat. In case there’s no breeze make sure you use a combination of fans to create a gentle breeze which will help ensure that all the heat that is being accumulated gets dissipated. You will also need to protect the plant from excessive heat by sometimes pulling up a canopy so that the plants don’t get burnt. Sprinkling water around the growing area will also help create a colder environment for your plants.
2. What is the best option to ensure optimal temperatures in grow tents?
While we’ve provided a lot of options above, the single best option that you have here is using an air conditioner. This will ensure you can set a temperature and it stays that way throughout the growth. A temperature of about 25C will indeed be best suited.
3. What are the appropriate humidity levels for growing marijuana?
This depends upon the stage of growth. The early seedling phase requires over 70%-80% humidity, you can reduce it to about 60-70% during the vegetative growth, and even lower as the plant matures into flowering where you can drop it to about 45-55%
4. What is the best temperature to be maintained for growing weed?
An ideal temperature ranging between 20-25C is perfect for most of the early stages and about 27-28C is ideal for the flowering stage of the marijuana plant. Anything below 15C and above 30C is not suitable for the growth of the marijuana plant and needs to be adjusted accordingly.
5. What are the best ways to cool down a grow tent?
There are many ways to cool down your grow tent and maintain optimal temperatures for your plants. Some of the most effective methods are:
- Air conditioners
- Proper air circulation
- Insulating the room
- Using LED grow lights
- Using light during the nighttime
- Water-cooled & air-cooled lighting systems
6. Why is maintaining the right temperature for cannabis plants so important?
When growing cannabis plants indoors, you control the environment. Maintaining the right temperature is important for proper photosynthesis by the marijuana plants. High temperatures impact the photosynthesis process as the level of enzymes reduces. On the other hand, extremely low temperatures are also not good as it reduces evaporation through the leaves. This builds up a suction force that takes up nutrients via the roots, to become smaller.
7. How to improve airflow in a grow room?
By improving the airflow in your grow room, you can keep the temperature down. For this, you will need a slightly bigger or stronger fan. It should blow out more than sucking in. This will help create a negative pressure inside the grow room, which in turn will help to maintain proper airflow.
8. What is the ideal temperature needed by cannabis plants in the seedling phase?
Cannabis plants are the weakest during the seedling phase. At this stage, it requires a temperature of about 20 to 25C for proper growth. But you need to provide high levels of moisture for your plants. That’s because it depends solely on the environmental moisture levels for water.
9. What happens to weed plants when the temperature is too hot in the grow room?
If the temperature levels are too high in the grow room, it can make your marijuana wilt, curl, or droop. It can also stop the production of trichomes. Overheated weed plants experience slow nutrient uptake and perspire too quickly.
10. What happens when the temperature falls below 20C inside a grow room?
When the temperature falls below 20C, it becomes difficult for the plants to move the food to all its different parts.
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Conclusion
We hope that by the time you’ve reached the conclusion, you’ve gained a much better understanding of the things that you can do to keep the temperature in your tent cool. It is also important to know why you are keeping it cool and what is the optimal temperature during different phases of growth and we hope that this article has helped you with that. If there’s anything more that you would like to know about keeping your tent cool or about having an ideal temperature for your marijuana plants, do let us know in the comments below and we shall get back to you soon. Till then…
… Happy Growing! 🙂
I’m an avid gardener and cannabis enthusiast. You can usually find me in my garden caring for my plants or at my computer crafting helpful blogs for my readers.
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