An inline fan is a crucial tool for indoor gardeners using an increased space, grow tent, or maybe an indoor garden. Whereas oscillating fans disperse airflow within the region, this particular fan type also does a fantastic job of moving or even extracting air through an expanding technique.
Want to enhance airflow in your home, greenhouse, or even grow room? With inline duct followers, regulating and monitoring temperature and moisture is all too easy.
Temperature and moisture are required for the germination and development of vegetation. Nevertheless, a lot of one or the other elements may well affect crop production negatively, particularly in growing greenhouses and rooms. In order to keep these growth factors in check, you want an inline duct blower. These efficient airflow enhancers have additional programs. For example, they might be utilized in household atmosphere filtration, cooling, and heat distribution.
When you’re within the industry, you are going to come across 3 major kinds of inline duct fans: mixed, centrifugal, and axial flow. Each one of those inline duct fans has demerits and merits. Today, our mission nowadays is to help you discover a unit that is going to meet your requirements growing space without sacrificing performance.
Below are the top picks of ours for inline followers as of this time, together with a few essential information regarding how to choose one which best suits your dimensions respective produce tents or rooms.
ECO Farm 6 Inch In-line Fan Exhaust and Intake Fan for Grow Room
Features:
The ECO Farm inline fan has a heavy-hitting blower with a fan speed of 2550 RPM for an airflow of 390 CFM. Moves air through your target location efficiently for optimal ventilation. A powerful fan puts out only 50 dB noise level. Tight, precise construction eliminates rattling and reduces wear and tear to give the element a long life. The aerodynamically designed centrifugal impeller of this unit delivers strong airflow with a disproportionately low sound profile. Ideal for cooling lighting fixtures or controlling hot and humid conditions in grow tents/rooms.
Hydrofarm Active Air 6" Inline Duct Fan
Features:
Keep the fresh air flow in your grow tent or grow room with a 6 inches Inline Duct Fan by Active Air. It comes with a ceramic-coated metal housing for high durability, thermally-protected AC motor for high speed and noiseless operation, optimized energy usage for money savings, and other great features. It is designed to generate high airflow throughout the indoor grow or hydroponic system. The fan is equipped with a powerful motor that runs silently to ensure silent operation. This Inline Duct Fan is energy-efficient. It consumes just 115-watt power, which is low. This will help you save money on your electricity bills.
Can-Fan Max Fan Pro 6" Mixed Flow Inline Fan 420 CFM
Features:
The Max-Fan® Pro Series is even more efficient and stronger than the original Max-Fan® design. The Max-Fan® Pro Series has a much more robust housing due to the fiberglass reinforced plastic compounds that meet all of the UL and CSA requirements. The fans have three control speeds for true performance. These fans run quieter than the Max-Fan®. The fans come with the EZ Mount™ bracket for easy mounting.
What to Consider Before Buying an Inline Fan
As with anything related to growing cannabis, there’s a lot to consider before making any substantial purchases. Knowing beforehand your exact needs will always make your decision that much easier.
In the case of inline fans, they play multiple roles within the grow room, and it’s best to understand how you’ll utilize them first.
Inline Fan Size
As always, size does matter, but only in the sense of how much air will be needed in the grow room. A 10’x10’ grow tent will need a much larger inline fan compared to a 2’x2’ closet space. So, you’ll first need to measure your grow space.
After measuring your grow room, it’s important to visualize where everything will be once the room is up and running with plants.
Every inch of the room needs to be accounted for because it’ll be a disappointment to buy an expensive inline fan that won’t fit.
By visualizing your grow room, you’ll be able to decide if you’ll hang the inline fan outside the room, in the room and on the floor, or in the room and attached to the ceiling. Generally, these are your only three options.
Inline fans come in a broad range of sizes, from 4” to industrial-grade 18”. Such a wide variety of sizes presents growers with many options.
Some may decide to size up to allow for a smoother transition into a larger room or some may size down because their grow space won’t let anything more substantial.
This is why it’s crucial to measure and visualize the grow room so you can purchase an appropriately sized inline fan.
Power Rating
Another essential aspect to consider when buying an inline fan for your grow room is its power rating. This is typically presented in CFM (cubic feet per minute).
A simple way to determine how much power is required is by quickly measuring the height, width, and length of the grow room.
Next, multiply these three numbers to determine the total cubic feet of the room. As a rule of thumb, growers have established that 3-minutes is the maximum amount of time that it should take for your inline fan to exhaust all the air in the room.
Therefore, divide the total cubic feet by 3. This should give you a basic estimate of your CFM requirement.
Your CFM requirement will increase as you add additional items to your inline fans, such as ducting, carbon filters, and the heat from grow lights. Once again, it’s important to understand the CFM requirements before you begin your grow operation because it’ll be a disaster if you realize your inline fan is too weak to exhaust hot air efficiently.
Inline Fan Noise
This is usually the most significant factor to consider when buying an inline fan. Unless you’re lucky enough to live in your own house with no one to complain about noise, then you’ll require the quietest inline fan.
You might not think it’s all that important, but once you’re standing next to a 12” inline fan on full power, you’ll reconsider.
Although cannabis is legal in many states, most growers don’t wish to advertise their business.
There are many reasons why growers want to keep their hobby discreet: professional ambitions, family matters, courtesy to others, or just plain privacy.
Luckily, the vast majority of inline fans are incredibly quiet compared to those on the market 5 years ago. Still, it’s important to shop around for the quietest inline fan on the market.
Some inline fan manufacturers go so far as to encase their fans in special housing to decrease their decibel output. Your overall environment will dictate how far you’ll need to go to keep your inline fan silent.
Heat From Lighting
Grow rooms require a high amount of light. This light comes at a cost: heat. The thousands of watts that you throw at your cannabis plants eventually catch up with your grow space by increasing the temperature drastically.
A hot grow room means a slow death for your cannabis crop.
The best Inline fans act as regulators by exhausting this hot air from the grow room. They counteract the heat by bringing in cooler air from another source.
This is why it’s essential to determine your power requirements beforehand, so your inline fan can quickly exhaust your grow space before any heat can adversely affect your plants.
Growers commonly use high-intensity discharge (HID) lighting.
This type of illumination encompasses both HPS (high-pressure sodium) and MH (metal halide) and ranges from 300-watts to 1,000-watts each.
Your choice of lighting will directly impact the power requirements of the inline fan.
Inline fans cool grow spaces down by not only pulling in cooler air from another source, but also by venting the heat through ducting that’s attached to the lights.
Usually, HID bulbs are placed within hoods that boost the light output with reflectors. These hoods are generally semi-sealed, with a glass panel directly below the lamp. Built-in flanges on the sides allow for an airtight connection to ducting.
The ducting is routed outside, or to another room. Whether your inline fan is pushing or pulling the hot air out, it’ll effectively keep the temperature at a reasonable level.
Humidity
Mold and fungi are every grower’s worst nightmare. Mold is too difficult to spot until it’s too late, and fungus is capable of wiping out your entire stable within weeks.
Humidity is the primary cause of mold and fungi outbreaks, and the best inline fans are the first line of defense when battling a humid room.
First, you’ll need to determine what season you’ll be growing in. Second, you’ll need to understand if the region you live in is prone to high humidity.
The information gleaned from these two factors will give you a great idea of which inline fan is right for you.
When grow rooms aren’t vented properly, the air becomes stagnant and moist. As time increases, so does the possibility of issues such as powdery mildew.
The constant burst of fresh air that circulates through the grow room lowers the overall humidity, thus lessening your chances of contracting a devastating plant disease.
Carbon Filters
The aroma of cannabis is variable, but everyone can agree that it’s very noticeable. You’ll be hard-pressed to convince someone that you keep a skunk in your house, so you’ll need a method to scrub the smell.
Carbon filters do precisely that, and they come in a wide range of sizes depending on how many plants you’re growing.
Inline fans work in conjunction with carbon filters because they are usually mounted on them. When viewing pictures of grow rooms, you’ll always see a carbon filter attached to an inline fan, or vice versa.
This is because a carbon filter needs an inline fan to pull or push the tainted air through the carbon particles.
Conclusion
Now that you are done reading this best inline fan guide, I hope that it is easier for you to make the right choice! With a well-designed and high-performing fan, ventilation in the grow room does not need to be a problem.