3 Top Grow Tents Tested Out. Heres the Results!

I have had the pleasure to test out 3 different grow tents for various operations. We have the Homebox XS, GrowLab 80 and Secret Jardin DR80.

I have read various sites of people claiming which they feel is best, but never heard anything about people testing more then one. I have always used a Homebox as you can tell from my other grows. I feel that was always my standard for grow tents. For starters the Homebox I have has the white interior, 3 4" ports and the flaps. After one year of use the zippers have been fixed and frayed a lot. It ended up resorting to the clone room/mom room. Good for a T5 lamp, even though I've ran a 250 HPS in there. I personally would recomend this for someone who is starting off and will upgrade later. But I still love her. Its only $119 from most places.

Next we have the GrowLab 80, Now I'm big on stealth. and this thing is a monster grow tent, I have a feeling it was deffintly meant to hold a nice hydro table with a 600 watt hps or soil with a 1000k. Its 6 feet high, even though they claim it to be 5'11". I love The large space and the amount of exhaust holes it has, great for an air cooled and Co2 injection. Silver interior walls. It has some great flaps to view your grow from inside, but the windows are a bit hazy to look through since its thick plastic. The windows dont do much for stealth since any person can walk up and rip open the heavaly velcroed windows and see them/ruin a light cycle. Unlike the Homebox XS I was unable to attach my locks on the tent zippers just for home security. This would deffinitly be a good tent for someone who lives alone or can stash this in a basement behind a refrigerator lol. Price is around $200

Now, The final grow tent I have tested is the Secret Jardin DR80, They are a bit harder to find and deffinitly a bit cheaper then the grow lab pricing at $180. Now from the pictures I have seen on the net I wasnt so sure about this one, But heard great reviews online. It also has silver walls, Extremy tight nit vents with velcro. Its a 7" shorter then the growlab but 1" wider. I like the idea that this tent has 2 zippers but they meet up to make it one long line of zipper to throw a lock on it. No windows with this one, but it does have an amazing Port lay out, Not as many as the Growlab but it has double flaps in the ports to make it extreamly air tight. The only thing i didnt like was the top braces that hold the light wasnt as tight fitting as the growlab or Homebox. And the secondary floor was pretty loose. [

Hope you all learned some info on this. Any questions please ask, Im willing to answer. Good Luck on your tent hunts.

So Which one is the winner? Secret Jardin. Its my personal favirote. But others may say different.

Could I use CFLs for light source in any of these boxes? I am complete noob so if thats a dumb question, I'm sorry.
My goal is to get one of these premade setups and either put in my basement or a spare bedroom on 2nd floor and see if I can learn how to do this.

thanks!

You surely could if you had enough light in the right spectrums, would be plenty for a few small plants and a small yield for personal usage. I would encourage you to go with a high quality LED though because watt for watt the CFL's will likely produce just as much ambient heat as HPS if you are running alot of them and you still won't have the light output of the HID. This means you are likely to have heat issues and need ventilation, etc. The LED's run much much cooler, use way less electricty and put out basically all PAR watts which is the usable plant growth spectrum.

A good starter light that is extremely bright and only uses 125 watts of electricity is the Procyon 100 LED, equal to approx 250 watts of Metal Halide HID in real world usage for flowering Cannabis, and to about 400 watts of HID for leafy crops like spinach, lettuce, etc. They easily cover a 2 ft x 2 ft area and plants up to about 24" tall effectively. The lights run about $500 each online and will give you many times the useful output the CFL's would and last many many years, however because they are just blue & red spectrum for use during flowering you will need to introduce some full spectrum light into the mix to power certain processes the plants use for budding signals. You can use just 2 CFL's to accomplish this (I would use one warm white 2700k bulb and a full spectrum 5500k in say the 100 watt equivalent sizes) There are some home depots & lowes stores that have huge ones that are like 300 watt equivalents and put out many thousands of lumens each. One of those would surely work too.

If you don't have the budget for the LED then make sure you get as many CFL's in there as you can without having a heat issue. Any constant temps over 85 F or God forbid 90 F without any added CO2 enrichment are not going to be good for your plants health or their growth and will severely affect their yield, flowering time, & potency not to mention make them stink alot more smell wise and dry everything out constantly. Ideally you want temps in the 75 to 78 F range...a little warmer is fine but they transpire alot more at higher temps and you will have humidity issues with no active ventilation/exhaust etc. If you can spring for a small 4" can-fan combo (costs like $139 or so for the combo) and exhaust all the hot air outside of the small tent that would be ideal then you could run a shitload of CFL's in it or even a small HID light like a 250 watt HPS for instance. It would likely yield more than the LED light but will use twice the electricty and runs very hot.

For yield I would rank them like this:

1 - HPS
2 - Metal Halide
3 - LED
4 - CFL

For quality/potency of bud I would rank them like this:

1 - LED
2 - Metal Halide
3 - HPS
4 - CFL

For initial first cost I would rank them like this:

1 - LED (cheapest in long run due to very long life & less heat)
2 - HPS
3 - Metal Halide
4 - CFL

For most heat I would rank them like this:

1 - HPS
2 - Metal Halide
3 - CFL
4 - LED

Hope this helps! :rastasmoke:

Great write-up on the tents by the way OP. :thumbsup:

Personally, I would choose the newer GrowLab tents for many reasons including their IR blocking highly reflective inside material and updated features like built in vents with drawstrings / covered viewing windows / most frame weight capacity for holding equipment / ability to just set the exhaust fan on top of the tent instead of mounting it inside and much more. From what I can tell they are the best on the market and virtually lightproof.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FreeDaHerb

For most heat I would rank them like this:

1 - HPS
2 - Metal Halide
3 - CFL
4 - LED

Hope this helps! :rastasmoke:

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Thanks for the invite. Just curious, is this part from personal experience, or is it just an assumption?

HPS puts out LESS heat than MH because it is the most efficient. More watts turned into light less turned into heat. MH runs HOTTER because it puts less energy into light, and more into heat, of course because it is less efficient. I would have thought someone with your VERY EDUCATED OPINION would know that, but hey, it's just an opinion right?

The only part you left out was the radiant heat which in many cases is alot more than ballast generated heat INSIDE THE TENT since it's in a grow tent here in this discussion and 90% of the time the ballast is OUTSIDE the tent. The HPS light makes alot more lumens in the high heat spectral range, i.e. "warm white" as opposed to the MH "cool white" and thus generates more ambient heat. But hey, let the trolling begin because you obviously now have to prove how big your pecker is. :jointsmile:

So to summarize: the HPS makes more light = more ambient heat.

You proved that in your post so thank you.

Here's my tents with the ballasts on the outside of them.

HPS ran around 80 degrees light on, MH ran around 87 degrees. Not opinion, no science needed. Pretty simple observation if you have experience running both. Notice how i'm not speculating, but sharing actual living experience. I only lack the pictures of the thermometer to prove it. BTW, I only had to look about 4 or 5 posts back to find something I felt like commenting on, I'm sure I could find plenty more.

I'm done pestering with you. To each their own. If you prefer what you read and hear that's fine by me. I'll take experience every time.

Well, I guess you can assume what you will as far as my experience goes, but I did'nt learn what I know reading High Times lol. Your MH bulb type (enhanced or standard) would definitely have a big impact as well as your hood type and ventilation along with many other factors. I don't think there is a HUGE spread in the first place between the heat output of HPS & MH and it's a good debate on which bulb is "hotter" or radiates more heat but simple science proves that more light = more radiant heat. the HPS is proven to make MORE LIGHT, so you do the rest of that equation. What we have you saying is one thing and no real evidence to back it up, no pics of temp readings just you using "evidence" to support your side that really is not evidence because you don't have the real information.

I was going to just rank them as "HID" to keep it simple but since the other rankings all broke down HPS, MH, CFL, LED (and you don't seem to want to debate any others of them) I figured I would keep it the same and seperate the HPS/MH. Bottom line is HID is way hotter than LED and I think we can all agree on that. From my experience HPS is the hottest light source. Maybe your experience is different but that's okay because that's not really what this thread was about in the first place. You found a post of mine because of our "discussion" in the other thread about the lumigrow light and tried to come into this one and discredit me somehow, someway. The truth is I actually do know what the fuck I'm talking about. Believe it or not. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FreeDaHerb

The HPS light makes alot more lumens in the high heat spectral range, i.e. "warm white" as opposed to the MH "cool white" and thus generates more ambient heat.

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What's the "high heat spectral range?" New one on me....:i feel stupid:

I'd like to avoid those wavelengths if possible. I hope it's not Starburst Orange. :(

or not. For the most part anyways :thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DreadedHermie

What's the "high heat spectral range?" New one on me....:i feel stupid:

I'd like to avoid those wavelengths if possible. I hope it's not Starburst Orange. :(

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The higher the Kelvin, the "hotter" the light.

Quote:

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The Kelvin rating (the term degrees is not used) is a color index that is
derived by heating a black body (a Carbon instrument). As the black body is
heated it glows and emits light. EG. at 3,000 K the black body emits a very
red orange light (similar the color of your standard houshold tungsten
filament bulb). At 9,000 K the black body is emitting a very blue light
(similar to the light reflected off of a blue sky). And by the way it's very
hot!

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Kelvin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thermodynamic temperature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So in essence this would say the majority of the light a MH creates is hotter temperature wise ( except they are not equal in light output to the HPS which creates far more lumens) It really depends on the bulb..a hortilux HPS with the added blue for instance is one of the hottest bulbs there is temperature wise / radiant heat. Being that bulb is the only one I ever really used that would explain the HPS always being "hotter" than anything else. More lumens + tons of blue light = hot as hell lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DreadedHermie

What's the "high heat spectral range?" New one on me....:i feel stupid:

I'd like to avoid those wavelengths if possible. I hope it's not Starburst Orange. :(

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Hey DH,

I think "Starurst Orange" is a candy and "Sunburst Orange" is the new LED colour de juour. And don't feel stupid about not knowing about "high heat spectral range" that was a new one to me, I feel stupid too.

Yo' irydyum,

You can't go questioning FreeDaTerd's experience, didn't you hear that he's a genius who's just here to help us all. Never mind what your observations are, how the heck could they be right, he's knows it all and then some.

I love this gem, "the higher the Kelvin, the "hotter" the light."-FreeDaTerd

Gentlemen we are truly in the company of greatness. He has the ability to turn color tempertures into thermal tempertures. I am humbled.:)

I shouldn't be questioning anything anyways. I'm just here to fight and talk shit. 1700 plus rep points, I must be damn convincing then if all I'm doing is fighting. :rambohead:

I'll go back to lingering and not commenting, apparently all the new members know what's best already. Good thing, cause they sure the hell don't know how to listen.

Where the heck did all the fun go? It must have left with Stinky :(

Well hate to break it to you but it's in essence true if you were previously unaware. Different spectrums of light have different heat properties. The kelvin scale is related to the light produced at lower or higher temperature.

Objects that are made hot will glow red. The hotter they get, the more white or even blue they will glow and thus light they emit, the blue light spectrum carries more energy per photon than red light and thus more heat. Proven fact.

Also, on the other end of the spectrum why do you think they use Infared heat lamps to heat food? It's HOTTER light. Maybe you did'nt actually read the Wikipedia links about thermodynamics and what kelvin actually is...figures lol

You care to dispute these facts with a relative argument of supporting info?

Of course not, just more posturing from the experts of nothing but drama.

I'm not going to argue at all. I'm just going to post what I feel to be the pertinent Wiki info from "Color Temperature" as it relates to heat.

"For colors based on the black body, blue is the "hotter" color, while red is actually the "cooler" color. This is the opposite of the cultural associations that colors have taken on, with "red" as "hot", and "blue" as "cold". The traditional associations come from a variety of sources, such as water and ice appearing blue, while heated metal and fire are of a reddish hue. However, the redness of these heat sources comes precisely from the fact that red is the coolest of the visible colors, the first color emitted as heat increases."

This would mean they use infared because it takes less energy to create heat in the infared, than in the visible, since it is the first color to appear upon heating. So for heating lamps, it's about energy consumption more than anything.

I still feel this supports my observations about the heat output I got with my MH vs. HPS.

Exactly, just like I posted above in post #12

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FreeDaHerb

So in essence this would say the majority of the light a MH creates is hotter temperature wise ( except they are not equal in light output to the HPS which creates far more lumens) It really depends on the bulb..a hortilux HPS with the added blue for instance is one of the hottest bulbs there is temperature wise / radiant heat. Being that bulb is the only one I ever really used that would explain the HPS always being "hotter" than anything else. More lumens + tons of blue light = hot as hell lol

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Also, since the infared is so far red it has a different wave length and is absorbed more by matter (more like x-rays) = hotter :thumbsup:

Thus the quirks of the HPS being hotter than the MH, esp. when it's the hortilux type most growers use that contains the hotter blue too. But yes, pure blue is hotter than pure red for certain as it contains more photon energy.

So we agree here dude.

oldmac is all by himself out on that branch in the wind lol.

Yup, that's me out on my branch in the breeze.

I tend to agree with Irydyum about light tempertures. MH lights run hotter then HPS lights. I've measured the difference in 600w HPS vs MH and the MH bulb produces much more direct heat then an HPS. The reason is as Irydyum stated, for 600w energy in the MH bulb produces about 40,000 lumens of light, while the HPS converts 600w into 90,000 lumens. What does not get converted into lumens goes to extra heat. If you want to consider secondary heat generation, then the HPS will heat an object greater because it has more then twice the radiant energy then the MH. But the greater radiant heat produced is a product of simply more light energy then spectrial differences.

This can be seen better with say a T5 fluro tube. If you measure the heat output from an actinic white @ 420nm or abt 12,000K, a 6500K daylight tube and a 2,700K bloom tube, they all produce the same heat output even tho they are way different in Kelvin temps. According to FreeDaHerb this can not be, the 12,000K should be much hotter then the 2,700K tube. But in the real world it is not.

BTW, there is a nice cooling breeze on my branch and the view is awesome.:D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by oldman

MH lights run hotter then HPS lights. I've measured the difference in 600w HPS vs MH and the MH bulb produces much more direct heat then an HPS. The reason is as Irydyum stated, for 600w energy in the MH bulb produces about 40,000 lumens of light, while the HPS converts 600w into 90,000 lumens. What does not get converted into lumens goes to extra heat. If you want to consider secondary heat generation, then the HPS will heat an object greater because it has more then twice the radiant energy then the MH. But the greater radiant heat produced is a product of simply more light energy then spectrial differences.

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Well, you are wrong dude, IF the pure MH bulb is hotter it's due to the kelvin difference in the light, hence the "color temperature" and kelvin scale. Even Wikipedia and the known laws of physics state the blue light has the most photons or really "Photon Flux Density", thus produces more radiant heat as it has more total energy. The extra heat is not from an inefficient ballast although that does produce heat due to electrical losses in all HID set-ups and that is nothing new, we all know that. PLUS the heat is outside the tent in this conversation so we are talking about light produced in the tent and the radiant heat energy it creates based on it's Photon Flux Density. The HPS light just has less photons per lumen and thus more lumens per watt produced by the light. (along with alot of infared which is very very hot, hotter than blue) The HPS has far more infared light than the MH, hence it ultimately is hotter. Then consider most HPS users run the hortilux bulbs with the blue added to the spectrum and you have a very hot light creating alot of ambient heat just like the sun that heats the earth does through light energy and infared heat, etc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by oldfart

This can be seen better with say a T5 fluro tube. If you measure the heat output from an actinic white @ 420nm or abt 12,000K, a 6500K daylight tube and a 2,700K bloom tube, they all produce the same heat output even tho they are way different in Kelvin temps. According to FreeDaHerb this can not be, the 12,000K should be much hotter then the 2,700K tube. But in the real world it is not.

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Well, again missing the simple stuff but I guess it's all too easy with a simple mind and worrying about falling off that soon to break & very thin branch.

The lights in fact are all very different temperature kelvin wise to begin with due to their obvious color differences, blue light having more photons / light energy and red having less photons per lumen. Because of their revelant spectrums they produce varying amounts of lumens or actual light in that range per watt burned, so yes they all do produce similiar heat levels most likely but from very different total lumens of light, i.e. some light is hotter, some is cooler based on the total amount of light being produced and their spectrum. Pure Blue light is much hotter energy wise in equal amounts of light than say 660 nm Red.

Plus, my original statement clearly states it's the radiant/ambient heat too.

I mean it say's it right there in Wikipedia, maybe you should argue with them.

Don't confuse yourself again. :jointsmile: :thumbsup:

"As much as I love science and believe in the law of physiscs....."

The thing I really find really annoying about people like you is thier inability to accept when someone is actually agreeing with thier facts but try to point out there are other factors to consider before drawing conclusions.

At no time do I dispute the physics of light. Listen carefully; I beleive you are right about light energy, various wavelenghts have more energy then others. This can be seen when designing say LED lighting. To achive proper ratios of red / blue we need to take into account how much energy each diode provides and that is effected by it's wavelength.

In the case of MH vs HPS you are overlooking one very important item, MH coverts electrical energy into light energy less efficently then HPS. We see it when we compare lumens/watt of each. The "lost" lumens are not wasted in an inefficent ballast but in the inefficent bulb....as extra heat. Some of this extra heat is in the form of some "non-visable" light like IR and UV, but the MH bulb's glass envelope will be considerably hotter then the HPS.

As to the fluro tube comparison, who's overlooking the simple stuff here? This is one experiment where it is easy to prove that "color temperature does not equate to thermal temperture."
I know: "theoretically the higher color temp tube should run hotter..." but it don't. The heat differential caused by spectral differences is so slight, that spread out over a fluro tube the differences become almost unmeasurable. That's what I refer to as real world vs theoretical.

Now before you start typing your responce, I will point out to you again, I am not disputing the science you have sited more then once now. I am just trying to point out nicely to you there are other physical factors you need to take into account when dealing with real world stuff.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by anbesol

So Which one is the winner? Secret Jardin. Its my personal favirote. But others may say different.

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Hello anbesol,

First let me appologize for the hijacking of the thread, that was inadvertent.

On topic, I was setting up a small system for a cancer group a bunch of months ago and we decided to use a grow tent. I had seen a hydro-hut a few years back and suggested something like that. I had gone to a hydro store (I'm not a fan of them) and this guy had just gotten some Secret Jardin's in stock and was pushing it. I was leery but it was available right then so I bought it. I was very impressed in it's construction, ease of set-up, etc.

I have not seen the other two grow tents you looked at except in advertising, so I have no way of comparing like you did. But I must say your favorite (Secret Jardin) looked like a winner to me. Thanks again for the comparisons and thread.:thumbsup:

A lot of good information for a noob in this thread - thank you all !! I will probably go with HPS or LED then based on some of the posts here
Now I just need to read up more on ventilation and then soil/nutrients.
I didnt think growing was going to be so precise -- I always thought you could just throw seeds in the ground outside and they'd sprout and grow with no maintenance!!
thanks again

I use the grow lab 120 with a 3x3 ebb and flow 2 air cooled 600 watt hps with fantastic resaults. the windows are grate you do ndt have to unzip the tent to see the plants

Quote:

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Originally Posted by oldquack

And don't feel stupid about not knowing about "high heat spectral range" that was a new one to me, I feel stupid too.

Yo' irydyum,

You can't go questioning FreeDaTerd's experience, didn't you hear that he's a genius who's just here to help us all. Never mind what your observations are, how the heck could they be right, he's knows it all and then some.

I love this gem, "the higher the Kelvin, the "hotter" the light."-FreeDaTerd

Gentlemen we are truly in the company of greatness. He has the ability to turn color tempertures into thermal tempertures. I am humbled.

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Ok oldmac your first post in this thread.....clearly saying this is untrue.

NOW,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by oldcrack

The thing I really find really annoying about people like you is thier inability to accept when someone is actually agreeing with thier facts but try to point out there are other factors to consider before drawing conclusions.

At no time do I dispute the physics of light. Listen carefully; I beleive you are right about light energy, various wavelenghts have more energy then others.

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I don't think you even know what you post half the time, you have zero consistency my friend. I don't think you can remember maybe?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by oldman

In the case of MH vs HPS you are overlooking one very important item, MH coverts electrical energy into light energy less efficently then HPS. We see it when we compare lumens/watt of each. The "lost" lumens are not wasted in an inefficent ballast but in the inefficent bulb....as extra heat. Some of this extra heat is in the form of some "non-visable" light like IR and UV, but the MH bulb's glass envelope will be considerably hotter then the HPS.

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We all agree the spectrum of the MH light is hotter kelvin wise and photon energy wise. Now, the HPS bulb makes WAY more total light & IR light than the MH bulb and that is very hot because of it's wavelength and properties similiar to a microwave (the IR). I am no light expert by any means but I can do simple math and have ran both types before. My reference point has always been an HPS hortilux bulb and I will bet you money that a 1000 watt HPS hortilux produces more total heat than the 1000 watt MH bulb in equal conditions. Obviously, they are both hot as hell, and really for a specific answer as to which one is actually hotter (not that it matters really anymore) we would have to test specific bulbs in equal set-ups. Bottom line is HID is much hotter than other light sources no doubt. Your examples of fluoro tubes don't really fit into this equation anymore than LED lights do.

All that being said, I'm glad that NOW you understand different light spectrums carry different total energy amounts that account for the temperature differences. i.e. = "high heat spectral range" :thumbsup: :jointsmile:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rubberbubbler

I use the grow lab 120 with a 3x3 ebb and flow 2 air cooled 600 watt hps with fantastic resaults. the windows are grate you do ndt have to unzip the tent to see the plants

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Awesome dude, I think those Growlab tents are definitely the best on the market hands down and because of who actually makes them. IR blocking too! :thumbsup: :) :S3:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by oldmac

Hello anbesol,

First let me appologize for the hijacking of the thread, that was inadvertent.

On topic, I was setting up a small system for a cancer group a bunch of months ago and we decided to use a grow tent. I had seen a hydro-hut a few years back and suggested something like that. I had gone to a hydro store (I'm not a fan of them) and this guy had just gotten some Secret Jardin's in stock and was pushing it. I was leery but it was available right then so I bought it. I was very impressed in it's construction, ease of set-up, etc.

I have not seen the other two grow tents you looked at except in advertising, so I have no way of comparing like you did. But I must say your favorite (Secret Jardin) looked like a winner to me. Thanks again for the comparisons and thread.:thumbsup:

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I forgot all about this thread, woah man, and holy shit with the arguments...deffinitly didnt want to start that hahaha. Im glad everyone enjoyed the write up

my grandma still has an ol kelvinator fridge and that shits cold! :stoned: