GroLab™ Automation of the Day – How to Control the Temperature from your Growing Area?
Welcome to another post of GroLab™ Automation of the Day video series!
These videos will take you on a guided tour of all the GroLab™ functionalities. If you want to see more, check out our YouTube channel or keep following our blog.
In this second episode, divided into 2 parts we will show you how to control the climate🌡 in your grow, and talk about its importance.
The first part of this episode demonstrates how you can automate your growing area ventilation based on temperature, allowing you to create alarms to maintain the ideal temperature🌡 for your plants.
Throughout this post, we will also explore some topics about climate, highlighting the importance of the temperature to the plants. But… to start, watch the episode: 😉
What influences the climate of a growing area?
There are multiple factors that influence the climate of a growing area, being air quality the most decisive (most importantly temperature and humidity), be it in a tent, a room and even a greenhouse.
Today we will be talking about how important it is to have a good control over the temperature in your growing area. As an example, heat radiated from lamps should always be controlled by ventilators, or your grow may overheat and could even kill your plants.
How can one control the temperature in a grow?
There are many ways to control the temperature in a grow area.
- The one most frequently used is the ventilation or exhaust system for pulling out hot air from your grow area while also improving air circulation which is very important in order help your plants to thrive. This system could be a simple extracting fan on the wall (make sure your fan is placed high on the wall, because the heat rises) or ceiling of your grow room, but can also be directly connected to your lights, which are the main cause of heat. The duct of the exhaust system should be as short and straight as possible in order for a faster and better ventilation. For air circulation optimization you should also use some fans inside (depending on your grow area size) for clearing all the hot spots of the grow area. You must also remember to have not only a hole for air removal, but also one for air intake on the lowest part of your tent, to ensure that the air that comes in is as cool as possible.
- In case you live in a place where the temperature gets too hot at a part of the day, consider having that specific time as night schedule for your plants, so that your lights will be off, therefore it won’t get as hot and you will save some money on cooling.
- Given that lights are the main heater of the area, firstly consider changing to LED lights, because they are not only not as hot, but they are also more economic. In case you don’t want to change to LED, you can use dimmable ballasts, lowering the intensity of your lights therefore the temperature, or you can decrease their size if it gets too hot, or in the opposite case of the area being too cold, you simply have to increase the lights’ size, improving the yield at the same time that you heat the room. If, by then, the area is still cold, consider improving the isolation and maybe acquiring a heater or air conditioner, in this case never blow hot air directly into the plants for it will harm them, always try to increase the temperature of the area evenly.
Plant Stages and their ideal temperature(Celsius)
Vegetative: 23ºC – 30ºC during the day and 18ºC – 24ºC during the night.
Flowering: 18ºC – 27ºC during the day and 16ºC – 23ºC during the night.
Curiosity: Plants can withstand around 5ºC higher temperatures when supplemented with a rich CO2 environment. But remember, they also need more light in such environment.
How can GroLab™ help me with my temperature automation?
The main advantage of using GroLab™ automated system is that you do not have to worry about the temperature of your grow, and when you do, GroLab™ will warn you via e-mail.
The fact that you can automate the ventilation system is of utmost importance. By eliminating the human error, you are guaranteeing the perfect temperature for your grow at all times, while also saving money and getting a better and consistent yield.
As shown in the examples in the video, thanks to the versatility of the GroLab™ Software we created two different alarms, one day time and one for night time, so that we can have different temperatures when the lights are on and off. As an example in the video, for day time, if the temperature rises above 25ºC the system will turn on the ventilator until the temperature is below 23ºC. This will make the grow at an average 24ºC during the day. For the night the average selected temperature is of 20ºC with hysteresis of 2ºC, turning the ventilation on at 22ºC and turning off at 18ºC. These are just some examples, both the temperature range and device to use is up to you to define. We are showing here how to get your temperature down, but you could easily use the same process to bring the temperature up if that’s a problem in your grow.
If you have any questions or suggestions do not hesitate to comment, or if you need a more individual assistance, message us by using our contact form or send us an e-mail to info@opengrow.pt, we will be happy to answer you.
On the next part of this episode we will explore another climate🌡 factor , the humidity💧, which is also extremely important to plants🌱. We’ll also show you how to automate and control the humidity of your growing area with GroLab™!