Hydrolab - The past, present and future.
Humble Beginnings – March 2008
Hydrolab was established in October 2007 but it wasn’t until March 2008 that our first grow tent had rolled off the production line and was available for sale. As you can see from the images above they were quite basic, featuring white piping and plastic zips (which we later discovered were prone to leaking light), a white PVC interior, vent ports with string ties instead of locking pull cords, and passive vent windows with flaps that didn’t seal unless you taped them up. Admittedly our first tents were far from perfect.
Armed with customer feedback, a bunch of new ideas and a list of issues we headed back to the drawing board.
Fast forward a few months…
Goodbye PVC, hello Mylar! (plus other stuff) – May 2009
As part of the newly revised tent (pictured above) we opted to drop the PVC interior in favour of a hammered silver Mylar finish. Not only did it offer better reflectivity but PVC was getting a lot of bad press at the time with some tent manufacturers having to recall tents due to off gassing. Other improvements included, black piping and zips all round to help minimise light leaks, larger vent ports with locking pull chords, Velcro sealable passive vent windows and the introduction of an internal utility pocket.
We continued to develop this style of grow tent with the introduction of more vent ports and other small tweaks, but despite our best efforts to tackle production issues with light proofing and zip reliability it soon became apparent that we needed to find a more capable production company.
Turning Point – September 2010
After months of talking to different companies and obtaining samples, we had finally found a new partner that was able to manufacture to the standard that we were looking for. So we set to work completely redesigning a new range of tents, taking everything we had learned from the past and applying it to the new design. The finished product (pictured above) ended up costing a lot more to produce than the previous tents, but we felt it was necessary to obtain the finish we were after. The tent offered far superior fabrics and zips, a vast improvement in light proofing, had heavy duty hanging bars that you could move into any position, more intake, extraction and cable entry ports, and depending on which model you opted for came with additional side or rear doors for better access to your plants.
September 2010 saw the launch of the new design and the discontinuation of the old style tent. The feedback from the new tents was extremely positive. In fact, we didn’t have a single return since its launch which was very encouraging. However, we did get reports from a couple of customers about fractured plastic corner connectors, so it was agreed for the next revision to replace them with steel ones.
Present Day
The grow tent range available today is a million miles from where we started out and we fully admit that the Hydrolab journey so far has had its challenges. The new range of tents (pictured above) builds on the 2010 model but now offers strong steel corner connectors, even thicker 3-ply fabrics, colour coded logos, pull strings and zips for a great new look, and is backed by a full 1 year no quibble guarantee.
We urge anyone in the market for a new grow tent to pop into their local Hydrolab stockist to have a look at our latest offering. We’re pretty sure you’ll like what you see.
The Future
January 2012 will see the arrival of 6 new and exciting sizes. Up until now we’ve specialised in the more obscure footprints but our stockists have expressed great interest in being able to also offer the Hydrolab brand in the more traditional sizes.
Aside from the additional new sizes, we are exploring new and innovative products and hope to bring you something exciting in the New Year. Watch this space!
