Tips for Silencing Your Grow Room

The noise caused by exhausts, extracting tube vents, air pumps and other electric components from an indoor grow, is at times, a lot more than just an inconvenient nuisance. Even in such a case, where you might say that you’d be “all ok” with the roaring, whooshing, and vibrating going on in your house, your nosy neighbours may not be as understanding. It wouldn’t be the first time that noise gave away (and then led to the end of) an indoor hobby grow.

The good news is that you can easily silence your grow room and you can do this without needing to spend a lot of money. Here are some tips to show you how you can significantly reduce your grow room noises, reduce the risk of discovery, and get some peace back in your home!

SUSPEND FANS IN AN ENCLOSURE

Lots of noise is created when vibrations from your fans go through the ground, ceiling and walls. You should isolate your fans from any surface by mounting them in an enclosure, such as a simple wooden box. Use some bungee cord and suspend these boxes from the ceiling. You should also suspend your air ducts in the same way. For maximum noise reduction, isolate as many fans and ducts as you can. The boxes will absorb a lot of the noise, and suspending them will prevent vibrations going through walls.

PUT PUMPS ON VIBRATION ABSORBING RUBBER MATS

Most growers that use air and water pumps will simply put them on the floor, a shelf or a table. This will amplify the vibrations and transmit a lot of noise far beyond your grow room. The solution here is rather simple. Take some high-density or rubber foam and place it between the ground and your pumps. If you don’t want to spend money on special sound-proofing material for this purpose, a yoga mat might do the trick. You should never put a pump in an enclosure! Not only can this increase the risk of damaging your pump, but it is also a big fire hazard!

USE INSULATED DUCTING

Metallic ducting, especially when rigid, is likely to cause vibrations and noise. Ducting that contains fibreglass insulation is a superb compromise, and can vastly reduce the noise created by air movement. This will greatly add to the “stealth factor” of your grow room! Likewise, know that bends and turns in your ducting can increase vibrations. When you plan out your grow room ducting, try to minimise the bends if you can.

SOUNDPROOF THE ROOM

There are some things you can do to soundproof your grow room without the need for major structural rework in your house. One option would be to hang up several heavy vinyl curtains. If you want to block more noise and vibrations, you will have to look into heavy sound-damping materials, like rubber. If you’re still in the planning stages of your grow room, and it is an option, you can also consider laying soundproofing underlay on your floor.

ADD A MUFFLER TO YOUR EXHAUST DUCT

One of the biggest sources of noise from your grow-op can be the main exhaust duct. To combat this, it is possible to make a very effective DIY muffler for little money. Growers have built this muffler from commonly available parts and it can completely silence airflow! It is easy to make and takes very little time.

MAKING YOUR OWN MUFFLER

You will need:

• A large, 200L plastic trash bin with lid
• Some metal netting (aka “Chicken Wire”, “Hex Netting” etc.)
• A silicone gun
• Duct tape
• Insulation (such as fibreglass or quilt batting)

The parts for the muffler should cost you less than €60. The idea is to feed the end of your duct through the garbage can and isolate the duct with silicone and insulation; this absorbs the sound. Such a DIY muffler will greatly help to silence your grow!

Instructions:

1. Check the exact diameter of your exhaust tube.
2. With the chicken wire, make a wire mesh tube the same diameter as your exhaust tube. The wire mesh tube should be slightly longer than the height of your garbage can. (If you have trouble with rolling the net, you can make several shorter pieces and connect them with duct tape.)
3. Cut two openings in your plastic garbage can, one on top, in the lid, and one in the bottom – directly in line with each other. The diameter of the holes should be so you can barely put your wire mesh tube through it. If there are sharp edges around the holes, you can use tape to smoothen these out.
4. Feed your wire mesh tube straight through the garbage can, including the lid with the top hole, so that about 5-10cm of the mesh tube stands out at each end.
5. Inside the garbage can, use silicone and duct tape to fix the mesh tube to the bottom where it goes through the opening.
6. If you are using fibreglass insulation, put on protective gloves and a breathing mask! Use plenty of your chosen insulation and stuff it into the can between the can and the mesh tube in the middle. Do not stuff the insulation too tight, but also not too loose. The goal is to insulate the entire space between the tube and the sides of the can.
7. Close the can's lid and use silicone and tape to fix the lid on the garbage can.
8. From the outside of the can, use silicone around the top opening, where the mesh goes into the hole. Your garbage can DIY muffler should be entirely airtight, so use as much silicone and tape as it takes.
9. Use duct tape to wrap and insulate both protruding ends of the wire tube outside the muffler. Everything needs to be air-tight!
10. Use some more duct tape and finally connect the end of your grow room exhaust to the piece of tube at the bottom of your DIY muffler.

If you did everything right, your new DIY muffler should be able to greatly reduce the sound of your exhaust!

You don’t need to spend a lot of time and money if you want to silence your grow room. Sometimes it is the simple but ingenious things that can make a big difference. Never underestimate the sounds of your grow-op! Keep it quiet, keep it low-risk, and silence it!