A lot of growers have sent me, panicking that they have forgotten and left their grow tent door open for several hours. On the other hand, I have seen many growers leaving their grow tents open on purpose trying to get the temperature down. This led me to write this post, Can you leave a grow tent open?
Can You Leave A Grow Tent Open? A grow tent can be left open as a method to decrease the internal high temperature that is being produced by grow lights when run at 100% capacity.
Leaving a grow tent open could be a quick and easy fix to bring the internal temperature down, especially on summer days when the growing lights are running at full capacity. We all know that significantly high temperatures could dramatically stunt a plant’s growth.
However, leaving a grow tent open could expose your plants to a lot of trouble that you might not be aware of.
Disadvantages of Leaving A Grow Tent Open
Mother nature is a complicated ecological system that plants are part of. Sunlight, temperature, humidity, and insects are important members and factors in any ecological system as well.
The whole purpose of a grow tent is to isolate a plant from the external conditions related to mother nature and to provide a controlled environment where optimal levels of all the growth factors required to produce the maximum yield are present.
By leaving a grow tent open, you need to understand that you are breaking the barrier that your grow tent made in order to isolate the plant.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against opening a grow tent in certain situations. However, you need to understand some aspects before opening up your tent.
Where Is Your Grow Tent Placed?
Whether you are going to place your grow tent indoors or outdoors, both have two different scenarios and aspects that you need to consider.
Opening your grow tent outdoors
Putting your grow tent in your backyard could be a good solution if you don’t have enough space indoors. However, outdoor areas will invite a lot of unwanted intruders, aka Pests.
By leaving the grow tent door unzipped outdoors, you are going to attract all kinds of mice, spider mites, and aphids. Before that, your only concern was to reduce the internal temperature of the grow tent. Now, you are trying to revive your plants after being hit by an aphid attack.
According to where you live, and what season of the year you are in, the outdoor conditions might significantly affect your grow tent plant. An extremely cold winter or severely hot summer might be the case if you are living in the USA. In a state like Nevada, the relative humidity could reach as low as 38%.
Leaving your grow tent open outdoors will make it very difficult for you to control any of the variables that are essential for growth. As a result, your maximum yield will be hugely determined by the environmental conditions of the area that you are living in.
Opening Your Grow Tent Indoors
An indoor environment is somehow considered manageable when compared to outdoor ones.
A major factor that might affect your plants when you leave the grow tent door open is light. You need to make sure that your plants are completely isolated from any source of light during dark hours. For example, placing your grow tent in a living room where lights are always on might affect it negatively. Instead, you could move your grow tent to a separate room where there are no lights available.
Moreover, you should also check whether the amount of light leaked from the grow tent when left open is significant or not. But in my opinion, light leaks don’t significantly affect a plant unless the grow tent is too small.
Pets are lovely companions to have inside any home. Personally, I am a dog person and I own a fluffy german shepherd whom I have been friends with for the last 7 years. However, leaving your grow tent door open might allow them to enter and mess around your precious setup. So, make sure that your pets are not allowed to reach your grow tent. You can place the grow tent in a locked room or install a little fence around the grow tent to avoid waking up one day to find dog poop laying beside your lovely herbs.
You can save up on heating bills when you place your grow tent in an unheated room, the heat from the grow lights will flow from the grow tent and spread into the room. I know it might not have that much effect but it would be a cool idea to try it out.
Reducing The Temperature In A Grow Tent
As I have mentioned before, grow lights tend to shoot the temperature upwards when running at maximum capacity, which is the reason why so many growers tend to open the grow tent doors as a solution.
So, why don’t we find an alternative solution to lower the grow tent temperature instead of opening the door and exposing our precious babies to various threats from outside?
Upgrade Your Ventilation
You must make sure that the problem isn’t from your ventilation system. Sometimes, the ventilation fan’s efficiency decrease as time pass.
Getting newer ventilation fans with higher specs will increase the amount of air getting inside and outside of your tent, which significantly will allow heat to escape and thus lower the temperature inside.
Change The Grow Lights
If you are using an HPS or an HIP growing light, you should consider switching to an LED growing light with a power output that is compatible with your growing tent size.
We all know that HPS and HIP have been available for ages. However, they tend to produce a lot of heat when operated at the maximum capacity. On the other hand, LED growing lights are the latest technologies available and tend to produce a lot less heat when compared to other growing lights.
Some growers tend to encounter overheating problems although they are using LED growing lights. Cheap, non-genuine LED grow lights are spread all over the internet. You need to make sure that you are getting a high quality LED grow light setup
Place The Dehumidfier Outside The Grow Tent
In certain instances, dehumidifiers can produce a lot of heat that can affect the grow tent internal temprature. Placing your dehumidifier outside will not only decrease the internal temprature, but it will also save you a lot of space that you can use for more plants.
Most of the dehumidifier available on the market are ducktless. You should try and get a ducted device that can allow you to connect the dehumidifier from outside the grow tent.
If you already have a ducktless dehumidifier and you are on a low budget, you could make a DIY duct base that you can fix on you your ducktless dehumidifier and save up some extra cash.
Source
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0304423886900130
