A grow tent is a type of greenhouse that can be used to grow plants inside of your home. A grow tent can be used to make an ideal indoor environment that has a lot of sunlight, humidity, and temperature control, all in the same place at the same time. With the right materials, you can figure out the CFM (cubic feet per minute) intake rate you need to keep your grow tent at the right temperature and humidity (room). This calculator will help you figure out how much CFM you need for your specific situation.
How much air your tent can make will depend on how many Cubic Feet per Minute (CFM) your exhaust fan can move at the same time.
CFM calculators can show you how much air your grow tent needs to meet certain conditions, like how many plants you have. All sizes of tents can use this. Use the calculator to figure out how many CFM you need. It's very easy to use and only takes a few steps.
Factor to Consider When Calculating Grow Room Fan Size
To figure out how much ventilation your tent needs, you need to think about some important factors. If you want to grow plants in a grow tent, you need to think about the things that make air flow important.
When you buy a fan for your grow area, you need to make sure it can handle the conditions inside your tent. You need a fan with a CFM that can do this. That's why it's important to think about all the things that will help your plants grow the best.
The following are the main things you need to think about when you make your calculations.
1. Grow Room Volume
This is the first thing you should think about. It's how much space and volume your fan has to work with at the same time everything in your grow room. When you buy a fan, it needs to move all the air in the Grow room. As well, it needs to get fresh air from outside. And most importantly, your fan will make sure that the air in your Grow area moves in an even way.
This is why you need a fan that can move this air well. Make sure that its CFM doesn't fall too low. It should be able to distribute and provide enough fresh air to cover the whole Grow room. Your grow fan shouldn't have more CFM than your Grow area. If this is the case, it will hurt your plants.
Calculating CFM by Volume
To figure out the CFM of your fan, look at the size of your grow area. The total volume of the tent is the sum of the tent's height, width, and length. Most fans are measured in cubic feet per minute, so keep that in mind when you look at them (CFM). Because of this, it's better to measure the size of your tent in "feet" instead of "meters."
2. The design and length of the ducts
Ductwork will decide how much air can pass through them at any given time. Ducting shapes and length will affect how big your fan can be. It's important to think about them before you choose a fan.
In most Grow tents, you will find the following types of Ducting.
Long ducting runs: Runs that are more than 10 or 20 feet long are called "long runs." They have between 3 and 6 bends in them.
Medium ducting: It should be between 5 and 10 feet long with 2 to 3 bends.
Minimal design: They don't have any ductwork, so there are no bends over them. It's just a place where you can put your fan right next to your Grow tent to let it air out.
Calculation of CFM by Ductwork
Each foot of ducting will add 1% of the fan's CFM to the length of the fan. In order to think about the curves, you have to think about the angle that they make. The more curves there are, the more fan CFM you'll need for each one.
If your tent has ductwork that is 5 feet long and has 90-degree bends, you will need to add 25% more CFM to your fan.Because bends in ducting reduces airflow. You can use the same formula to figure out how much more space you need in your tent.
3. Air Needs
It is important to know how much air your Grow area needs before you choose a CFM. As we said before, CFM is the amount of air that your fan will blow into your Grow area in a minute. These would help you figure out how long it would take to change the air in your grow tent.
Calculating CFM by the amount of air needed
If you want to figure out how many CFM your fan needs based on how much air you need to move, you need to figure out how much air is in your area and how long you want to move it. Use the same formula to figure out how many CFM your fan will need based on the volume of your tent and how long you want to change the air in your Grow tent.
4. Insulation for the grow room
If your Grow room is in an area that gets a lot of sun or isn't well-insulated, this is a very important thing to think about. These are places like the attic, the basement, or rooms facing south where you can grow plants. However, if your Grow is well-insulated, you don't have to think about this. It's fine for rooms that don't get a lot of heat from the outside world. The goal is to get a CFM that would keep your Grow room at the right temperature.
If your grow room is too hot, get a fan with 20% more CFM. When the temperature is low, get a fan with 15% less CFM.
5. Carbon Filter for the Air
When you put a carbon filter in the way of a fan, it makes it less effective at getting air out of a grow tent. A carbon filter slows down the speed of air when it goes through it, to a certain point. It is the job of the carbon filter in a grow room to clean the air and remove any impurities before they can reach the air outside.
You need to know how much air to move in order to get enough fresh air into a grow tent. As long as it takes up all the space, you can figure out how much air needs to be changed in your grow tent. You have to figure out a little more if you're filling the space with things.
Add its length, width, and height together to get its cubic feet. Then figure out how many cubic feet it is. As needed, change the units of measurement. You can think of it this way: A grow tent that is 4ft by 3ft by 6ft is called a 4ft-by- 3ft by 6ft grow tent. It would be 72 ft 3 if you added up all of the dimensions. Depending on the size of your grow space and how often you need to ventilate it, this grows tent needs 72 CFM at the very least.
Add-ons for the Grow Tent
The next step is to add your accessories' efficiency percentages to your base CFM to get more air flow. Adding things like ducting and carbon filters will make your fan work less efficiently in your grow space, which will make it work less hard.
When it comes to ducting, the number and sharpness of its bends play a role in how difficult it is for air to move through it. That's because airflow slows down the farther it has to go, so the more straight the ducting route is, the better. 30° bends cut the amount of airflow by 20%, while a 90° bend cuts the amount by 60%. Smoothing out any wrinkles can also help the fan work better and move more air.
If you are using LED grow lights, you also need to think about how much heat they make. This increases your CFM needs by up to 50%. These things add up to how much air you need to move, which means you need a high-performance fan to move the air. Because there are so many different types of accessories on the market, you can use estimated efficiency percentages based on the type of component.
When you add the base CFM and the other factors together, you get the required CFM. When we grow plants in our 4'x3'x6' grow tent, for example, the CFM is 72. In this case, we divide this figure by the percentage of each component that is at work. It takes about 60% of our ventilation system to be carbon filters, 20% of it is ducting, and 20% of it is a silencer. We get 166 CFM. Adding in the heat from your grow light (about 50%) will give us a required CFM of 249.