How To Setup A Grow Tent Kit: Complete Guide With Video

Hey everyone, Nate from Growers House here. In this guide I’m going to walk you through how to set up a complete grow tent kit from start to finish. This is the same process we use for the kits our team designs, and it works whether you’re growing in soil or running a hydroponic grow tent.

If you’re looking to put together a new grow tent package, you can either choose from our staff-designed pre-made kits or use a customization builder to match your preferred tent size, lighting, and grow style.

Staff designed grow tent packages for beginner to advanced indoor growers.

Grow tent kit builder to customize size, lighting, and grow style.

Who This Grow Tent Kit Setup Guide Is For

If you landed here, there’s a good chance you already bought a grow tent kit and want help putting it together, or you’re thinking about getting one and want to understand how everything fits. Either way, this walkthrough will help you visualize the whole process so you can dial in your indoor or hydroponic grow tent from day one.

The example tent in this guide uses components we regularly include in GrowersHouse.com kits. These grow tent kits are designed by our staff, but the setup principles apply to most quality tents, fans, carbon filters, and lighting systems on the market.

Step 1 – Assemble the Grow Tent Frame

First up is assembling the grow tent itself using the included instructions. The Plant House tents shown in the video are rugged, built to last, and can be put together in about 15 minutes. I personally run a 3' x 3' at home, and it’s been working flawlessly for over a year.

Once the frame and fabric are together, pay close attention to the cross bars along the ceiling. These bars support most of your equipment: grow lights, inline fans, and carbon filters. How you use them determines how stable and safe your grow tent kit setup will be.

Using Ceiling Cross Bars Correctly

Some cross beams are designed to sit lower so they can criss-cross in an “X” or perpendicular pattern. When arranged correctly, you’ll have a lattice on the roof of the tent. The highest bar is the best place to hang your heaviest equipment because its weight is shared across one or two intersecting bars.

You can still hang lighter items on the lower bars—just think of those as being able to safely support about half as much weight. Distributing load this way keeps your indoor or hydroponic grow tent stable and avoids sagging or stress on the frame.

Step 2 – Fan, Carbon Filter & Ventilation Setup in a Grow Tent Kit

After your grow tent is fully assembled, the next step is setting up your inline fan, carbon filter, and ventilation system. Do this before hanging your light—that’s a really common rookie mistake and just makes everything harder to reach.

Common Grow Tent Ventilation Layouts

There isn’t one “perfect” way to set up a fan and carbon filter. The diagram below shows four popular ventilation configurations, all of which can work well for indoor and hydroponic grow tents. The best layout for you depends on a few key factors:

• The size of your grow tent: In smaller tents, you may need to mount the fan outside while keeping the carbon filter inside to save space.
• The height of your grow tent: Taller tents often allow both the fan and carbon filter to sit inside, either above or to the side of the grow light.
• Fan inside or outside the tent: Keeping the fan inside can help muffle noise slightly, which is nice if you’re growing in a bedroom, closet, or small apartment.
• Air-cooled vs. non–air-cooled lights: Air-cooled fixtures require air-cooled hoods and ducting connected directly to the hood. In that case, ducting, fan, light, and carbon filter all need to be aligned so air flows smoothly through the system.

Four common ventilation setup configurations for different grow tent sizes and layouts.

Using the Carbon Filter Dust Sock

Every carbon filter comes with a dust sock. Its job is to keep dust and larger particulates from clogging the carbon inside the filter. To maintain airflow and odor control, plan on changing the dust sock about every 12 months. Replacement socks are inexpensive and pair well with fresh carbon filter refills when it’s time to refresh your system.

Hanging the Fan and Carbon Filter

Next, grab the straps that came with your grow tent kit. We’ll use these to hang the carbon filter and inline fan. Your exact layout may vary depending on the fan + carbon filter configuration you choose, but the goal is always the same: secure mounting, minimal ducting bends, and smooth airflow out of the grow tent.

If you don’t have enough straps, I highly recommend using adjustable ratchet light hangers. They make positioning heavy equipment in your indoor or hydroponic grow tent a lot easier.

Cutting and Fitting Ducting

In our printed instruction guide we recommend having wire cutters on hand. They’re extremely useful for cutting through the wire ribs inside flexible ducting so you can shape it and fit it more easily over the flange of your fan, carbon filter, or grow light.

Fan connected to carbon filter with dust sock for effective odor control in your grow tent.

Once you’ve sized your ducting, fit it over the flange and secure it. We usually include hose clamps, which work great with a simple flathead screwdriver. Personally, after setting up a lot of tents, I like using foil tape because it seals well and reduces air leaks. If you want to be extra secure, you can tape the ducting and then tighten a hose clamp over the taped section.

Inline fan securely mounted with straps to reduce vibration and noise.

Step 3 – Grow Tent Kit Light Hanging Guide

Hanging your light is pretty straightforward. Use ratchet light hangers to suspend your fixture from the tent’s roof bars, centered so the light spreads evenly across the entire canopy. Whether you’re using traditional HID or modern LED grow lights, even coverage is crucial for strong, uniform growth.

We always include adjustable pulleys with our grow tent kits so you can easily raise and lower your light as plants move from seedlings or clones to fully flowering plants. Being able to quickly adjust light height helps prevent stress, burning, and stretching while maximizing yields in both soil and hydroponic systems.

Step 4 – Fan Placement & Relative Humidity Management

Once your lighting, fan, and carbon filter are in place—and any power cords or ducting are routed through tent ports—take a minute to cinch up all the portholes. Closing ports tightly helps keep your grow environment stable by controlling smell, temperature, and relative humidity inside the tent instead of letting conditions drift with the room outside.

Why Air Movement Is Critical for Plant Health

We include a clip fan with all of our grow tent kits to move air across the plant canopy. This constant, gentle airflow is one of the simplest ways to reduce the risk of powdery mildew, pests, and insects taking hold.

It may sound like a weird comparison, but think of calluses on your feet. When a plant is never exposed to moving air, its stalk stays weak and flimsy. When you regularly push air across your plants, making them sway slightly, they respond by building thicker, stronger stems. That makes them more resilient and better able to support heavy flowers later in the cycle.

I recommend hanging the clip fan from any convenient cross bar in your grow tent, angling it so it blows gently across the tops of your plants rather than directly blasting a single spot.

Final Checks & Next Steps for Your Grow Tent Kit

At this point, your grow tent kit should be fully set up: tent assembled, ventilation and carbon filter mounted, ducting sealed, and lighting and circulation fans in place. From here, you’re ready to choose pots, soil, and either soil mixes or a full hydroponic system—topics that deserve their own deep dive.

The real payoff comes when you start growing and get the satisfaction of harvesting plants you’ve raised yourself. A well-set-up grow tent kit gives you control, repeatability, and a stable environment, which is especially valuable for hydroponic growers who rely heavily on consistent conditions.

Once everything is dialed in, your indoor garden can routinely outperform what you’d find anywhere else because you’re in charge of every variable—from light intensity and airflow to temperature and relative humidity.

That's about everything for getting your tent setup together. We haven't covered pots, soil, or hydroponics systems in this post because they deserve a post of their own. Now it's time for you to get the statisfaction of growing your own plants, which will always be more fulfilling then anything you'll buy. Happy growing :)