How to Set Up a Grow Tent: Step by Step Guide
For some gardeners, setting up indoor gardening is a simple process. Because they already know what’s needed to set up grow tent.
Making a grow tent setup is not as simple and straightforward as it looks like unless you know what to do.
Before going further into the deep, like finding out the best led grow light for a 4x4 grow tent, you must know the purpose of grow tent to be precise. So, what exactly are the grow tents? And what are they used for?
In general, the purpose of grow tent is to reproduce nature in your very own conditions. Grow tent will provide everything the nature required artificially. Grow room ventilation setup will control the temperature and weather itself.
Isn't it a remarkable invention?
Well, in this article, we’ll be answering some of the frequent questions that every gardener faces while setting up grow tent.
- Part 1: Why You Should Use a Grow Tent?
- Part 2: Different Types of Grow Tents
- Part 3: What Do You Need When Setting Up a Grow Tent?
- Part 4: Grow Tent Setup: The Complete Guide
- Part 5: Other Common Questions:
Let’s start with the first one.
Why You Should Use a Grow Tent?
As we previously mentioned, grow tent setup kit allows you to control the weather, temperate, light, and humidity, so the outside temperature doesn’t affect your plant and produce faster and stronger.
With grow tents, you can harvest any seasonal flowers, vegetables, fruits inside your house.
With the help of grow tent, weather and external factors are not your concern anymore. Just set up grow tent and make some adjustments like setting up temperature humidity, and the tent will do the rest.
Plus, indoor grow tent setups are highly energy efficient. The interior structure of grow tents provides reflecting coating so that the lights circulate from your lamps or LEDs.
Make sure to use proper LED lights for your plants. Don’t use an ordinary or everyday LED grow tent setup. You can get your own full-spectrum LED lights here. These LEDs are specially designed for cultivation.
Different Types of Grow Tents
Like the LEDs, grow tents can be of different types. But the important thing to know which one is best for your indoor gardening?
Let’s dive deeper into the indoor grow tent setup:
There’s no doubt about that if you’re planning for outside gardening, you’re all dependent on the weather. Even the slight change in the weather can cost more than your imagination. In the case of set up grow tent, the chances of failure will reduce to nothing.
A grow tent is usually a fabric box equipped with LED lights and ventilation stuff. The material used in grow tents reflects light and heat within the box. In short, everything that is necessarily important for a plant is produced artificially by the grow tent.
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Most beginners ask for the different types of grow tents. To be precise, there’s just one type of grow tent for indoor gardening. However, a grow tent can have many different features. Planning to buy small grow tents or hydroponic grow tents? Look for the following features:
- Removable Waterproof floor trays
- Large doors
- Quick-viewing windows
- Good ventilation ducts.
What Do You Need When Setting Up a Grow Tent?
Remember grow tent is just the exterior structure. For reliable indoor gardening, you’ll be needing some equipment’s to help you maintain the suitable environment for the plants.
So, which requirements or things you need to set up grow tent? Following list of equipment and tools you’ll be needing to set up grow tent for the first time:
Note: Not everything on the list is mandatory. However, experienced growers often use all of them.
Grow Tent Setup: The Complete Guide
You have all the necessary material and equipment to set up grow tent. Now, it’s time to make it habitable for plants.
Let’s get started with the grow tent setup:
1.Step up Grow Tent:
First things first, place your grow tent where you want to put it. This is the easiest step among all. Take your time to set up grow tent, and no need to rush. Follow the below steps very carefully while setting up grow tent.
- Choose the room where you are going to place your grow tent. It’s essential to choose the room before setting up grow tent. Many new growers who build grow tent in a different room then decided to change the room after some time because of some issues.
- The separation of poles is the trickiest part while setting up the grow tent. The poles of the tent usually come together in a group of similar poles. It’s good to separate each pole with the help of identification stickers placed on them like “1” or “A”.
- There will be some sockets to join the poles/bars altogether to make a complete frame of the grow tent.
- Now, unfold the canvas and unzip it all the way. Put the tent frame right at the base of the canvas. The bottom of the canvas must be black rather than a reflective one.
- The base part is completed; move to the top poles as we did earlier while connecting the frame base.
- Now wrap all your remaining canvas onto the frame. The canvas should be gently tight from all of its sides.
- It’s time to zip all the sides of canvas right from top to bottom.
- Puts some lights and extraction. Place the drip try right at the bottom of the tent.
The construction of the tent is completed! Now, add necessary material and equipment to your indoor grow tent setup.
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2.LED Lights, Reflectors, Holders, and Straps
Grow lights are the most important equipment in an indoor grow tent setup. It is light that gives your plant energy and nutrients. Other sources of light can be used to set up a grow tent. However, LED lights are much more energy-efficient and easier to put into the grow tent.
If you’re planning to purchase the best and energy-efficient LEDs for your indoor grow tent set up, it's important for you to know the difference between LED grow light and regular light.
Setting up the holder and LED is the most straightforward and easy way to do it. Just attaching the hood and organizing the wiring neatly directly to the timer and plugs. Just attach the LED light to the holder, and you’re set to go.
There’s another benefit of LED; if you’re using LED as a source of light, then you shouldn’t be worried about powerful ventilation.
3.Ventilation
After setting up the lights, it’s time to set up grow ventilation. Make sure your grow tent has proper airflow and ventilation. Plants also need air to grow faster and healthy.
Sometimes, your tent gets warmer because of HID grow lights; airflow and ventilation are the only way for plants to breathe and also helps to maintain the temperature within the range. That’s why we recommend you use LED grow lights to sustain the temperature.
Note: Fans can also use exhaust heat from the tent. So it’s better to set up grow tent fan.
4.Odor Control
Sometimes your plants emit a pungent odor. To reduce the odor, you can use cardo odor filters. Well, this feature is optional. If you don’t care about the fragrance or environment free of smell, you don’t need to install any of these filters. But again, we’d recommend using carbon filters.
5.Dialing In
Dialing In is just a safety scan protocol. After successfully setting up grow tent, the most important and last step is dialing in. It will figure out the balance of the environmental factors such as airflow, humidity, heat, and many more.
In short, it’s like alpha testing. You run it for a while to see every piece of equipment or material working correctly.
Well, that’s how it is done to set up grow tent for the first time. We know it’s not an easy task for the first-timers, but if you followed the exact same mentioned above steps to set up grow tent, we bet you’ll be successful.
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Other Common Questions:
We see a lot of people have many questions regarding setting up grow tent. Some common and most frequent question asked by people are as follows:
1.Is it okay to leave my grow tent open all day?
To be honest, yes, you can keep it open 24/7. But you’re opening up your plants to everything that is in the room. Probably you’ll get ants and other insects inside your tent.
2.Should I open the flaps on my grow tent?
You have to take care of the air during all the phases of plants’ growth. So, you should close all your flaps during flowering. And don’t forget to put on a booster fan for inhalation.
3.How long should you run carbon filters in grow tent?
It depends on the carbon quality, humidity, usage of the tent, plants, etc. Generally, you should change carbon filters after 18 to 24 months of regular use. However, carbon filters can last up to 4 years.
4.What is too hot for a growth room?
The ideal temperature for the room plants is 90-100℉ and an even higher temperature. Anything that exceeds that amount is considered too hot to grow room plants.
5.Should I leave my fan on when the lights are off?
When the lights are off, there’s some sort of heat roaming inside the grow tent, which will disappear after some time. If you’re using two fans, one for intake and another one for exhaust, keep the oscillating fan all the time and turn off the other fan after the 1 hour the light goes off.
6.How often should I exhaust my grow room?
Ventilation is necessary for every plant to grow healthy. It depends on the size of the grow tent. A regular-sized grow tent required three to five minutes to exhaust the grow room. However, you can run the exhaust fan all the time.
7.Do grow tents keep the smell in?
No, grow tents are not smell proof. They are not protective enough to block odors.
8.Can you have too much airflow in a grow room?
Having too much air directly to the plants can cause windburn. Speed can vary in different situations; for example, if your temperature and humidity are high, you can speed up the fan. Some say having too much CFM flow on your tent is not a big deal, but we won’t recommend that.
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