The summer heatwave will soon be upon us!

The heat of summer poses serious risks to indoor growers, as temperatures increase and our equipment heats the environment further, plants start to suffer. Some gardeners cease their activites during the hottest months but with some simple changes to their set-up, they can easily avoid this down-time.

Now is the perfect time to upgrade your equipment and prepare for the summer season. Fine-tune your garden with hydroponics to optimize your space and get the most fruit and blossom possible – even in soaring temperatures.

A multi-layered approach to dealing with high temperatures is often the most succesful, think of it like tuning a car; many small gains can lead to big overall changes.

Nutrient Chillers

Indoor growers should plan for the temperature rises by getting their nutrient chillers ready. Best to be prepared! Nutrient chillers allow you to maintain temperatures within your reservoir by circulating the nutrient solution from the reservoir, through the chiller and back into the reservoir. This keeps the temperature just where you want it. We suggest you move all air pumps and chillers outside your growing environment to avoid re-circulating warm air into your root zone so not to encourage Pythium and other root disease.

Iceline Pipe

We Suggest you pair your Nutrient Chiller with Iceline insulated tubing for the most efficient cooling possible. Using Iceline by itself has been shown to decrease nutrient temperatures by as much as 15%. Once installed, you start getting the benefits immediately, with no further input from the user required.

Ventilation

Ventilation is crucial in all indoor gardens as plants use the available CO2 in the room, new fresh air should be brought in to replace the used, heated air. The most basic ventilation works well for small scale gardens, where there is just an outtake, venting the stale, smelly depleted air from the grow space. In these systems air is ‘passively’ brought into the room due to the negative pressure of the outtake. Fresh air comes into the room through small cracks and openings.

‘Active’ ventilation intakes make use of a fan to draw fresh air into the growing area. Active intakes allow you to choose where the fresh air is being drawn from so cooler or warmer air can be brought in from different areas of the house. Those lucky enough to have a basement will find the ambient air temperature there to be much lower than in the rest of the house during summer. drawing air from cooler areas such as the basement or directly from outside will allow you to keep temperatures lower than when passive intake is used or if your intake is from a hot area such as a loft-space.

Fan Controller

Pair your extraction fan with a fan controller to enable you to turn down the running speed. Running the fan at a slower speed significantly reduce the noise output and gives gardeners some wiggle room to increase the speeds when the temperatures start rising. We find that many growers use controlled fans year round so that when temperatures rise, they don’t have to buy a new, larger extraction setup, saving money and installation time.

Air Movement Fans

For the essential movement of air within the room, a range of oscillating & floor fans can help transfer air around your space, averaging the air temperature throughout the indoor garden. This will ease the burden of heat on your plants and mean that any temperature measurements will be more accurate since they will be more representative of the space as a whole.

G.A.S DiffuseAir

The DiffuseAir system efficiently mixes the air in your grow room, removing microclimates, high humidity zones and hot spots. you can also use the DiffuseAir as the interface on your intake, eliminating wind burn. The DiffuseAir system can be ceiling hung, meaning less space taken up with circulation fans and more room for growing plants!

Liquid Ice

Liquid ice by Evoponic, is an amazing product that tricks your plant into thinking it’s cooler than it actually is. This makes the plant able to function better at higher temperatures. Developed in glasshouses in the Middle East, Liquid Ice is an absolute must if high air and water temperatures are a factor in your garden.

Liquid Oxygen (hydrogen Peroxide)

Hydroponic growers may find their reservoir temperatures are slowly increasing. When temperatures in the tank increase above 22 degrees celsius, roots become at risk from infection from diseases such as pythium. The use of Growth Technology’s Liquid Oxygen helps eliminate the conditions in which such problems can flourish by directly attacking the pathogen.

CO2

CO2 can also effect how plants cope under high temperatures. When the parts per million (PPM) of CO2 exceeds 1200, plants actually require higher temperatures to increase their metabolic processes to make use of the extra available CO2. Gardeners who use closed systems with elevated levels of CO2 (between 1200 – 1500 PPM) keep their rooms between 30 – 35 degrees celcius. There are a number of options for someone looking to raise the levels of CO2 in their area, with the cheapest option being my CO2 bags which slowly and naturally raise CO2 levels with a mass of fungus. Other options include CO2 generators, that burn a combustible gas to produce CO2. Alternatively you could use a CO2 bottle with regulator to maintain the correct CO2 PPM. CO2 bottles are only available in-store.

Reflective Sheeting

Reflective sheeting is able to reflect more than just light! The silver or white side is also able to reflect thermal energy or heat. If you cover reservoirs and pots with reflective sheeting, they won’t get as hot meaning your chillers and extraction won’t have to work as hard to maintain the correct temperatures for optimal growth.

Opticlimate

Our Opticlimate range is the best way to stabilise your temperatures throughout all the seasons. Night and day, summer to winter, having stable temperatures and environment is the key to getting the best from your plants.