Growing plants outdoors is never easy because you are always at the mercy of the elements. While planting your favourite crops indoors allow greater control, it is essential that you use the right products, including extraction fans.

If you would ask our hydroponics wholesale specialist, he will tell you that extraction fans are essential in ensuring adequate carbon dioxide levels for your plants. It works like the exhaust fan you may have in your kitchen or bathroom, pushing out stale indoor air and replenishing it with fresh outdoor air.

Essentially, extraction fans cycle out carbon dioxide-depleted grow room air and bring in carbon dioxide-rich environmental air.

Ideally, extraction fans perform a complete cycle every minute. However, our hydroponics distribution specialists say once every three to five minutes cycling is sufficient.

Adding extraction fans to your basic grow tent setup maximises your plants productivity. They grow faster and stronger because of the sufficient carbon dioxide levels in the grow tent.

Extraction fans come in different designs. However, the most important attribute you should look for is the devices fan strength, expressed in cubic feet per minute (CFM).

Recall what we said about how extraction fans should cycle your grow rooms ambient air every minute or every three to five minutes. It can only achieve this if it has the right size relative to your grow rooms dimensions.

Calculating fan strength requires measuring your grow tents interior dimensions to come up with its volume. For example, a grow tent that measures 7 feet wide, 8 feet tall, and 6 feet long will have a volume of 336 cubic feet.

Next, you will have to estimate your extraction fans efficiency drop. Two of the most crucial factors affecting exhaust efficiency are the exhaust-filter ducting length and filter age and make. If the ducting between the filter and your extraction fan is long, you can use a factor of 3:2 if short.

To choose the correct extraction fan size, multiply the grow room volume by the efficiency factor. In our example above, multiplying 336 cubic feet by 2 (short duct length between filter and exhaust) or 3 (long ducting) will give us a value of 672 or 1,008, respectively.

Always choose an extraction fan with a higher CFM value than your computed CFM. In our example, we computed 672 CFM for a short-length ducting between the filter and the exhaust (1,008 CFM for a long duct). Hence, you should pick an extraction fan with either a 700 CFM or a 1,100 CFM rating, respectively.

You may also want to look at an extraction fans other features before buying.

It would be best to choose an extraction fan with an integrated variable controller, such as the Onyx S-Max Fan. The built-in controller allows you to modify airflow and improve your grow rooms ventilation without buying a separate controller.

Hydroponics UK experts say that plants thrive best in white noise, improving germination and plant growth rate by as much as 10%.

In general, exhaust fans are noisy, which can hamper your plants growth. That is why you should pick an extraction fan with excellent noise-reduction technology.

Browse this page for a wide range of extraction fans available at different specifications and with useful features.