Diy Grow Tent: 12 Easy Yet Inexpensive DIY Grow Box Ideas You Can Build

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VIVOSUN S3018 30"x18"x36" Grow Tent, High Reflective Mylar with Observation Window and...
CoolGrows 2x2x4 Feet Small Indoor Mylar Grow Tent (24"x 24"x 48")
MELONFARM Grow Tent 36''x20''x60''Reflective 600D Mylar Hydroponic with Observation...
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EDITOR'S #1 CHOICE
Products
VIVOSUN S3018 30"x18"x36" Grow Tent, High Reflective Mylar with Observation Window and...Pin
Name
VIVOSUN S3018 30"x18"x36" Grow Tent, High Reflective Mylar with Observation Window and...
Prime
Amazon Prime
#2nd Best Choice
Products
CoolGrows 2x2x4 Feet Small Indoor Mylar Grow Tent (24"x 24"x 48")Pin
Name
CoolGrows 2x2x4 Feet Small Indoor Mylar Grow Tent (24"x 24"x 48")
Prime
-
#3rd Best Choice
Products
MELONFARM Grow Tent 36''x20''x60''Reflective 600D Mylar Hydroponic with Observation...Pin
Name
MELONFARM Grow Tent 36''x20''x60''Reflective 600D Mylar Hydroponic with Observation...
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Grow tents are available in different sizes – typical sizes are as small as 2×2 sq ft all the way up to 4×4 sq ft and 5×5 sq ft – and you can easily get these online or from shops along with gardening tools and other indoor growing equipment.

Tips For Gardening In DIY Grow Tents

Now, before I’ll tell you how to build a DIY grow tent, I’d like to share some reasons why making your own grow tent is actually a good idea and the key requirements to create a great grow tent.

I know that it may sound tedious and it’s true that doing this will require some effort, but it will be worth it.

Using a grow tent alone just gives you the control to let your plants thrive well but making your own grow tent can let you have the upper hand when it comes to making sure that you have adequate space for it.

You can create a grow tent based on the available space you have wherever it is in your house or even the basement or garage. This will also drive how many plants you can grow inside the grow tent, room, or box.

You also get to choose the materials you use that depend on your budget or your preferences.

When shopping for ready-to-set-up grow tents, you may find yourself wanting features that a certain brand does not have but others do.

This dilemma, you don’t have to face when you build a DIY grow tent. You basically can incorporate whatever feature you like that could work well with your crops or plants.

Key Requirements That Your Grow Tent Should Have

A grow tent should have functionalities that could help you grow your plants or crops. There are a few key requirements that should be considered to make a great grow tent. Here are some of them.

Shining A Grow Light On Reflective Materials

Reflective Materials For Indoor grow tentPin

Sure, you’ll get the lighting needs of your plants from any LED grow lights. However, your homemade grow tent should be able to reflect lights efficiently.

You’ll find that commercially made grow tents usually consist of walls made with reflective mylar so they can efficiently bounce light back to your plants.

Your grow tent should also be a hundred percent lightproof. The light leaks are not good for the proper growth of plants. You need to be able to control how much grow light you have in your grow space, so you wouldn’t want light from the outside to obstruct your lighting set-up.

Properly Sealing

It’s best to have a DIY grow tent that you can seal shut. An airtight grow tent allows you to have better control of your grow space’s atmosphere. It can also help you contain the smell of your plants.

Making your grow tent airtight can also help you avoid infestations that can be harmful to your plants.

Mylar and solid materials can help you create an airtight tent. You should always check for holes where air and light can escape from your grow tent.

Of course, you can always pick the size of the tent that you’ll need, but a great tent will maximize the available space that it can give you.

Some commercial grow tents have compartments or pockets where you can store your tools.

Making your own grow tent makes you maximize the size of what you have.

You can check where you can install pockets or compartments for not only your tools but also other grow tent essentials like dehumidifiers and vent systems that can consume some of your space.

12 Easy DIY Grow Tent Plans For Year Round Indoor Gardening And Seed Starting

A DIY project definitely makes your indoor growing hobby more personalized. Personally, I sometimes see DIY projects as great group activity.

This DIY grow box project is actually a good time to bond with family, friends, or partners too.

Now, if you’re excited to know how to build a grow tent, here are the DIY grow box setup guides that I found and would love to share with you. If you are looking for a cheap grow box DIY, then this guide will help you even if you are on a budget.

Discover more DIY grow tent plans below:

1: DIY Grow Tent Using A Rack Build Under $100

1: DIY Grow Tent Using A Rack Build Under $100Pin

If you have a rack sitting in your basement and you want to make sure that your tent can disperse light efficiently, this is a great idea for you!

This option is probably cost you no more than $100 dollars. The most expensive part will be for the rack itself.

You won’t need many carpentry skills for this. You’ll need a rack obviously, but the only other thing you’ll need is strong adhesives like gorilla glues or wide duct tape.

You’ll also need to properly plan how your wirings will be arranged. For doing so, you’ll need some Velcro strips or cable stripes too.

For the wall of this grow tent, you’ll need a black and white poly. The white side of the poly is what will reflect the light inside the grow space.

2: Assemble Your Own DIY Grow Tent Using Panda Film

Assemble Your Own DIY Grow Tent Using Panda FilmPin

Using only a few materials for this method, you’ll need panda film as the primary material.

Just like the first method of using a rack, you’ll also only need a stainless steel adjustable rack for this. The good news is that means that you don’t need to use heavy tools for this.

If you don’t know what panda film is, it is a waterproof, light-reflective, tough polyethylene film that is primarily used for lining the walls and floors of greenhouses and grow rooms. Because it also reflects light it is very suitable to be used as the walls of your DIY grow tent.

VIVOSUN Black and White Panda Film, 10' x 10' 5.5 Mil Poly Film, Blackout Tarp for Warm...
  • Reflective Cover: Our black and white polyester film blocks all light and...
  • Ultra-durable: Made from a high-strength virgin poly material, it is 5.5...
  • Black and White Side: The black side creates a dark space that prevents...

You’ll also need some Velcro or cable wires to make sure that you manage your wirings well since the skeleton of this grow tent is a rack. One downside is that you won’t be able to grow tall plants in this setup.

3: Grow Tent Made Of Canvas Build Under $32

Grow Tent Made Of Canvas Build Under $32Pin

Instead of the adjustable rack, this DIY grow tent project makes you transform a canvas wardrobe into a grow tent.

This is a great guide for people who are on a budget as this can only cost you as much as £25 or somewhere around $32.

You’ll need a double-sized canvas wardrobe for this. To make the inside walls reflective, you will be using a mylar reflective sheet that is around 3m long.

Overall, this is still an easy and creative guide. You’ll also only need strong adhesives to assemble this grow tent.

The skeleton of a canvas wardrobe may not really be that strong so what you do is to support its base by adding strips of wood.

4: Cheap And Easy DIY Grow Box With PVC Pipe

This DIY box tent tutorial is found on YouTube, so if you’re someone who needs to see how it’s done, then this is for you.  

This is great if you want a grow tent that you can completely customize. You can follow what’s on the video, but you can even change the measurements and make a bigger up to a 5×5 sq ft size.

The skeleton of this tent is made of PVC pipes, so make sure that you have a PVC cutter ready in case you need to cut any of your PVC pipes to size. The walls of this tent are made of Reflectix.

This is a material that can reflect light and can serve as an insulation sheet. This basically looks like the material used in insulated lunch boxes.

You’ll only need some glue and double-sided tape for this. It’s not as sturdy as a DIY grow cabinet made of an adjustable rack, but the PVC pipe can handle some weight too. Just make sure that you use strong adhesives for this.

5: Cheap DIY $2 Grow Tent

This sounds too good to be true, right?

This tutorial on YouTube will only require you to get two main materials for your tent.

You’ll only need a mylar sheet that only costs $1 and a couple of hula hoops. There are still other materials that you’ll need to use to build a grow tent, but those other materials are probably just lying around your place.

What you really need to do is to hang the mylar sheet around the hoop and have the grow light placed in the middle of your hoop.

It basically looks like a mobile that you can hang wherever you choose. Surprisingly, this can actually improve your lighting system.

6: DIY Wooden Grow Cabinet Build Under $50

DIY Wooden Grow Cabinet Build Under $50Pin

This is one of those DIY grow box projects that could only cost you less than $100. In fact, the one who made this guide only had to spend around $50 for this.

This is still cheap considering that you’ll be using wood as the base and body of your tent.

There are quite a few materials that you’ll need for this and since wood is involved, you’ll need to use some carpentry tools for this.

You can customize the size of the wood that you’ll use, but what is typically used is at least one sheet of common plywood.

7: Complete Budget Grow Tent Build Under $300 

This complete grow tent tutorial on YouTube is a complete guide on how you can set up a fully functional grow tent. 

Although $300 sounds like a lot compared to the other guides, this budget already includes all the equipment you’ll need in your grow tent.

This guide includes how you can set up your grow tent’s duct and lighting system. This includes the ventilation, exhaust fan, and LED grow lights.

8: DIY Cloning Tents For Propagation Of Cuttings

DIY Cloning Tents For Propagation Of CuttingsPin

However, if you don’t have one, you can make use of any rack or shelf that you have. Just make sure that you’ll have enough space for your lighting setup. Alternatively, you can use COB LED grow lights which are relatively compact in size. 

What stands out in this guide is the use of aluminum foil as the main cover or walls of the grow space.

The aluminum foil used is the same kind that you can find in your kitchen. If you have a shelf or rack with multiple levels, you can use the bottom part as storage, just like what’s shown in this guide.

9: Building A Grow Tent With PVC

You can even build the main structure using PVC pipes.

It’s a simple project that only takes about 20 minutes to finish. PVC pipes are less expensive to purchase compared to wood, so this is great if you want something inexpensive.

You can also customize the size of your grow tent DIY with this. If you want a bigger grow tent, then be prepared to purchase more PVC pipes, including the corners, Ts, and crosses.

Overall, using PVC pipes is a smart choice. It’s lightweight and you can easily expand what you have by adding more pipes.

10: $100 DIY Grow Tent Made With An Adjustable Shelving Unit

$100 DIY Grow Tent Made With An Adjustable Shelving UnitPin

An adjustable shelving unit is more heavy-duty compared to PVC pipes. It’s also a smart choice if you don’t want to spend time on assembling PVC pipes.

When you use a shelving unit, all you need to work on is the walls and your grow light setup.

There are some indoor growers that just use black and white poly as grow tent walls. There’s no carpentry involved. You just need a strong adhesive like duct tape to make this work.

11: Best DIY Grow Tent Ever Build Using Wood And Tarps

Another method to build the grow tent structure is to use wood. You’ll need nine pieces of 8 x 2 x 1 wood that will cost you around $15 dollars. 

A strong suggestion is that you use heavy-duty tarps for the walls.

12: Simple And Cheap Grow Tent

Another DIY grow tent project that makes use of a reflective sheet. For this, a window shield covering was used to reflect the lights back to the plant. It kind of has the same idea and methods as how the ‘$2 DIY grow tent’ was assembled.

You just really need to hang the window shields around the plants you placed in this setup. Depending on how many reflective sheets do you have is the size of this grow tent?

The main challenge here is how you can keep the window shield fall straight, but it works great.

However, just like the hula hoop setup, you won’t be able to seal the grow tent in this tutorial. It means that it’s best to have this placed in a room where you can control the temperature.

I find this guide very creative. All the materials you need are listed, and you’ll only need a few tools. Your budget for this setup will be less than $100.

Conclusions

Before you go off and start your DIY grow tent, don’t forget about the most important things when you are indoor growing – lighting, temperature, and humidity.

Lighting – Simple solution to this, is LED grow lights. LED grow lights don’t require a ballast and are easy to set up.

Temperature – If you need to cool down the grow tent, use a small air conditioner. For the opposite, if you need to warm up your grow area, use a heater.

Humidity – This is also easy to solve as you can keep the humidity down by buying a dehumidifier or making sure you give proper ventilation to the environment.

Harvesting – You’ll have to have some tools when you finally get to the harvesting phase. One of the best tools to harvest is trimming scissors because of how delicate your plants can be.

Ventilation and Smells – You’ll have some pretty strong odors coming out of your grow tent. You will have a choice to make your own DIY carbon filter or you could buy a carbon filter that will fit your DIY grow tent.

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