DIY | Are your tent walls sucking in? Need more poles?

[MrPNW]

Does it drive you crazy when your tent walls start sucking in?

There are high CFM (Cubic Feet Per Minute) kits to help prevent your indoor grow tent walls from sucking in due to high amounts of negative pressure from exhaust systems. Gorilla Grow Tent sells such kits, and I bought 2 kits for my 5x5 GGT.
One issue I’m having is with the half round c-clips, they pop off. I’ve also noticed they creep downwards over time. So I just set them down onto the pole connection “button” release thingy where two poles come together. You can see this button facing right on the vertical pole in the second image. But this isn’t always the spot I want some of them.



Do you wish you had a pole in a spot where there isn’t one, to hang equipment?

I also found myself wishing I had more contact points to hang things or for the poles to wrap around a door.

Making Custom Length Tent Poles

Having a shop full of left over electrical parts I noticed my 3/4” electrical conduit was a close match to the 22mm poles on my tent. These come in 10 foot length for about $11 (USD) at the home improvement stores. So I went online and Googled tent pole c-clips. Wow there’s a lot of them.

After searching and ordering a few different ones I settled on this one. The c-clip end fits very snug onto both the tent poles and to the conduit. The insert end is just a hair slightly smaller than the inside diameter of the conduit (22mm vs 23mm). I’m going to use a little bondo or 2-part epoxy to glue them in. But to show you an idea of the fit, here are some photos I took.



#784 C-Clips 22x22mm Other sizes available

A fairly easy way to cut this steel conduit is to use a heavy duty hand-screw EMT pipe cutter.



If you plan on doing a lot you might consider the Rigid package, cutter, reamer and spare blades.
https://www.amazon.com/RIDGID-29963-.../dp/B001P81OK6
https://www.amazon.com/RIDGID-29993-.../dp/B001P81OKQ
https://www.amazon.com/RIDGID-29973-.../dp/B003T0FVLG



Now to get to work on reinforcing my tent!

 

[PLreef]

Maybe we have different ones because they went on tight as hell, never slipped down or popped off. Maybe your kit was made on a Friday? Idk, that's weird.
souls you wrap 2 zip ties around them. That might stop them from moving whatsoever.

 

[MrPNW]

It was a from a complete restock after covid depleted their stock PLreef. They were out of all but a couple larger length pole kits. I got an Email when supplies were stocked up and order the 2 kits same time.

Regardless I wanted to be able add poles of any length wherever.

 

[PLreef]

We might have bought the kits around the same time. I keep watching their site waiting for them to get back in stock. Like you said they only had a few larger sizes available.

 

[Tedtheclown]

I think neg pressure helps with humidity and temps, kinda like a help line when hard to control your environment at some point. I crack the bottom of my tent and it still sucks in about 2 inch. Good airflow, less problems with mold.

 

[MrPNW]

My T8 ac infinity can suck the sides in even on the lowest #1 setting and I too have one of my Velcro cover air inlet windows open halfway. That thing is powerful.

 

[Tedtheclown]

I have a 90cfm fan pulling and it works great

 

[Ace1973]

never had any problems with negative pressure and I only use duct fans, 4 and 6 inch respectively, but it does seem like a good idea if you have that plant that is unruly.

 

[MagicMike66]

A budget way to fix this is just put some canes in and tie them to the tent frame. It’s what I’m doing this time and works perfect

 

[HobbitGDF]

This is great. I really dont like the sucked in walls. So I was just about to order some for my 4x4 but then thought about using PVC and drilling holes and ziptying them to the existing poles. Should be strong enough. I made a 2x4 pvc scrog frame and it really help with the pressure.