uncle-al

hi gang this is my little bit about beating the infra red detection

these are some tips i have for anyone worried about infra red or FLIR,I am bringing you some industrial experience i have on the subject First off insulation is your best friend, make sure your home is properly insulated in the attic and exterior walls, In fact going overboard on insulation is best you cant have too much.

Infra red can only see the heat that escapes in differential to its surroundings

i have used a few different types of ir equiptment in one type a thermal imager used to detect hot spots in electrical cuircuitry would detect the heat presence of a 400w mh light that was mounted on the celing behind the cabinet of the device we were imaging, in order to get good imaging we had to hide the lights that was accomplished with a ceramic mat stapled to a piece of plywood the first prototype for this produced a halo of light as the edges allowed the radiant heat energy to escape and be detected by the imager i had the boss get more mat and after that the light was hidden compltely to the imager allowing the completion of the task

now to produce an I-R proof room we need to produce a room within a room

choose a place lowest to the ground in the building because helicopters fly and look down the further into the building the imager must look the harder it is to discern the source of heat
a bigarse 1000watter in an attic is like a redlight on a whorehouse to FLIR, but if it's in the basement they cant tell if it's a waterheater or a furnace/boiler

now that you are as low as you can get move the grow as central to the house as you can, and perhaps close to a chimney but if not ok, again we are hiding the light by getting it confused with say a television, I know a tv dont put out like a HPS or MH but we have a little more construction to do

the primary cieling for this grow now needs insulation be it up in the floor joists or some blow in insulation thru the floor above
so now we got exterior walls and cieling and attic insulated next insulate the interior walls of the room you in tend to grow,and again if youre in a closet insulate the closet walls too.i know it cost money but youll recoup on utility bills for sure and i think homeowners can write it off as capital improvements on their taxes

now we need the inner grow room it can be a box or cabinet but you will need to double wall and insulate it i reccomend at leas to use four inches of fibergass foilbacked insulation Make one wall a hinged door or build an actual door,also insulated

this is where the real construction skills begin you have to vent the heat of the bulbs somehow or we all know what happens
you will need some insulated flexible ducting and an air conditioner 5,000btu or better

now this a/c unit may be mounted in a window innocently blowing out heat that's what theyre supposed to do or it can be on the floor of the basement we need to build some duct work now
run the cold air from out of the a/c into the bottom of the grow box and duct out the hot air directly into the air intake side
put the ac on vent not recirc duct the rear outlet air to the chimney if it's on the floor ,just let it vent outside if it's in the window

this insulation business is exactly the technology in the F-117 stealth fighter uses to keep the ifra red guided missles from seeing the heat of the engines or keeping ground troops from seeing the heat trail from it using night vision goggles another I-R application

the use of crude fiberglass insulation will sucsessfully reduce the I-R emissions in you home grow setup to make it no worse than a tv or some other device that belongs there like plain light bulbs but if you can locate the ceramic mat that is best

I guess that the whole point of this is jus use enough insulation and you will reduce the heat signature problem I hope someone will benefit from it

__________________
I once thought that I was wrong,
but I was mistaken. Uncle-Al

choader

how about under a stairway (3' x 6' x 4' tall), on the first floor, vented into an enclosed garage. it would vent right next to the hot water heater. Above the closet is stairs with vaulted ceilings above. I can use foil backed insulation too (I like that, the foil will also reflect). I would like to do about 3-4 plants.

Your input would be helpful. I'm an engineer so I understand physics.

Thanks.

The Choader

uncle-al

what I-R "sees" is escaping heat it sees a difference in heat in it's surroundings a plant sticks out in the desert beacuse it is colder than the sand which is radiating the heat it absorbed all day and appears as a dark spot heat sources are bright and ambient temps and below are darker

the purpose of the stealth tactic is to reduce the detectable heat of a light , typically a light will raise a growroom temperature 20 degrees f or more

so we are keeping the heat insulated from the exposed environment moving heat exaust to where it belongs or from an I-R stand point looks like it belongs like coming out of an air conditioner or exiting a chimney the best way i can think of is to use what i call box inside a box a heavy insulation layer is like an lead shield to an x-ray, insulate the non insulated areas of the home double or triple it if it is insulated,thats the first box. Now you need the inner box a doublewall insulated structure,

think of an ice cube in a cooler ,it melts overnight , but if you put the first cooler inside a second cooler it might not melt for days,because there is almost no heat transfer from outside to in,think of a thermos bottle ,a double wall insulated glass beaker inside an insulated outer container, does the coffee stay hot? yes it does all day . can you detect the heat inside,no because it is not escaping

you want to contain the heat loss of the light and exaust it to where an appropriate exaust of heat would be

I would like to add at this point that Law Enforcement and the Military are not the only ones using I-R detection equiptment, Routinely the power company inspects it's power lines for current losses, and high line resistance and other line and distribution faults those transformers on telephone poles are routinely inspected this way

__________________
I once thought that I was wrong,
but I was mistaken. Uncle-Al

choader

The same principle as dual pane windows? Also, isn't air a good insulator?

What do you think of the setup I described, from an IR standpoint? Wouldn't the house be the outer box and the closet an inner box? The only "outside" wall for the closet is to the garage, and like I said, I plan to vent right next to the hot water heater. Next to that is a water softener and an old fridge which I use to store wine. And as I vent the hot air, cool air from the house will be sucked in under the door.

Your input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

The Choader

uncle-al

the well to over insulated house is the outer box the outer only hides the glow of the inner to reduce the heat of the inner it must be vented you have to manage the grow temps to between 80-90 degrees F and often ambient air temp will not cool an enclosed grow in my grow room the heat is removed by an a/c unit cold air in at the bottom hot out the top it is possible that you wont need to use ac to moderate temps i live in a warm climate my grow room will exceed 90 degrees in the dark period easily as it is on the sunny side of the house.

venting into the garage as dump space is not so good the garage will show warmer to ir i reccomend pllumbing the heat to the chimney or ducting the air thru an air conditioner removing the grow heat and placing it in a place where heat belongs exiting an air conditioner or the chimney

there are five sides to the inner box four sides and top, I think that the stairs may function as both a wall and a ceiling but it will insulating and enclosing the insulation, the inside of the inner box, then you have to build the inner box walls and door

__________________
I once thought that I was wrong,
but I was mistaken. Uncle-Al

choader

Here is the diagram.

uncle-al

thats not so bad , I am concerned about ventilation tho.

be sure to insulate the growroom walls and cover the insulation with ply wood or sheet rock,

open holes for venting are I-R portals , but the objective is to hide the signature of a heat source in a part of a house it dont belong, people typically do not have second floor water heaters,
so heat sources off the first floor are immediately subject to scruitiny venting behind the water heater will mask it's presense,

another fact of I-R detection by aircraft is its useless during daytime due to radiated heat from the sun the visual image from the device would be blinding light you could perhaps keep the lights on primarily in daytime

so you potentially have two out of three stealth components covered

1) getting grow out of attics and second floors, moving to a low central prt of the house

2) the insulated box within a insulated box

3) venting and cooling of bulb heat and fresh air ventilation into grow, my A/C is on vent setting not recirculate i bring in outside air this way, the plants will use up the availible Co2 in a day simply opening the hatch will not refresh the grow air

__________________
I once thought that I was wrong,
but I was mistaken. Uncle-Al

choader

This is all on the first floor so that's good. The only exterior wall is the one to the garage, where the vent would be. The wall adjacent to the grow space would be about 4' x 4' and is insulated. Hopefully this is clear within the context of the drawing.

I'd hoped to pull in fresh air from the house, thru the usable closet. Would like to leave cracks around the fake wall for air intake, although I guess that is an IR leak too. Might have to think about that more........although the leak is into the closet itself so there is some buffering there. My thinking was to get fresh air from the usable closet, similar to a bathroom exhaust setup where the new air simply comes in under the door.

The interior of this space is already sheetrock painted white. I have access to power thru the wall and can add an outlet on the inside.

I am hoping to mask the IR by venting within 1 ft of the WH. My concern now is smell & noise from inside the garage. I've pretty well convinced myself that this is a workable solution. I only want to have 3-4 plants in that space.

Man, I appreciate your expertise. I'm in the planning stages. How does this sound? Anything else to consider?

Thanks.

The Choader

uncle-al

as long as it's not skunk #1 you should be okay for smell but we are edging into territory that should be in the construction topics

__________________
I once thought that I was wrong,
but I was mistaken. Uncle-Al

nobody

When you were talking about foilbacked insulation were you talking about the stuff used to block IR? Does this foil realy block IR and what about ceramic, where do you find enough mats to insulate a grow room?

The IR detection decive you talked about, how much does it cost, where do you get one and how well do they work. Sorry about all questions, but you seem to know about this stuff.