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Showing results for tags 'growing in cold weather'.
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Thought I would share my cold weather work around. I've seen a lot of questions on the web about how to keep your plants warm enough to grow in a shed or garage during the winter. In fact, I was looking to solve this problem for myself but did not like the idea of space heaters, etc. . So I figured out my own solution and wanted to share it with you guys. My issue is that I was growing in my house but the smell of the plants was becoming a problem. I have a detached garage but it wasn't logical to try and heat it and I really didn't like the idea of placing a space heat or oil filled radiator in the cabinet with my plants, so here is what I did. Recently, my 50 inch big screen tv died and was so old that it didnt make sense to try and fix it so I hollowed it out to make a grow box. Its pretty large, 52 inches wide, 25 inches deep, 60 inches tall. Perfect for 3 lowryder type plants (currently AMS). I wired up a six socket vanity light and stuck in 5 105w 2700K CFLs that put out 7900 lumens each. The inside has various supports and a shelf in the back that are perfect for attaching my heat source and small fans. What I used for heat are two 150w ceramic heat emitters that are not lights and are typical used for keeping reptiles warm. The inside is lined with mylar and I set up a mylar shield of sorts to keep the emitters from heating the plants directly. I just placed a small fan between them that circulates warm air and it does get toasty in there! In fact I had to put a fan at the bottom to pull in cold air to keep it evened out. The lights with fans on them keep temps at about 79F and the heat emitters just about the same. I had to find the right placement because initially the temps were in the 90's. Oh, the outside temp has only been in the teens and the temp in the garage hovers in the mid to upper 30's. For added insurance I put an electric blanket over the tv for insulation but haven't needed it. Everything is timed and when the lights kick off, the heat emitters kick on