Can I help answer anyone's cooling questions?

[water wise guy]

Hello to all I have been an installer specializing in water-cooled systems for over 8 years now. I just wanted to introduce myself and offer my help with any questions that I can help answer. I am familiar with the fish bowl style, the cool tube spiral, the water jacket and the fresca sol units so I can help with all. Throughout the years I have also done alot of hvac and chiller installs so I can help with these also. I see that chillville has a good grasp on things here and I am glad to see a forum that is specific for cooling your garden as keeping that temp as steady and constant as possible is the key to the best garden you can have.

 

[Chillville]

Hi WWG, good to see you here. Fish bowls, water jackets??? You are showing your age if you've used those peices of equipment :). Wow I started 10 years ago with with 11 water jackets in an attic.....can you even buy them anymore??? They worked great but I couldn't keep them clean, for a water-cooled light I do like the fresca sol since you can take it apart for cleaning.

Got any pics of some water-cooled grows?

 

[water wise guy]

i don't personally have any pics on my computer but i will see what i can scrounge up.

any body else on here use fresca sols in their gardens?

 

[water wise guy]

Got any pics of some water-cooled grows?

here are a few i found here on some other threads and i will get some of my aqua culture set-up this week to show you.




This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1944x1452 and weights 927KB.

 

[BCrocker]

I am looking for a water chiller for 300gallon hydroponics use, can you recommend one?

 

[SweetTooth]

Call these guys if your in BC. They will hook you up

glycold heat transfer systems aldergrove

 

[Chillville]

I am looking for a water chiller for 300gallon hydroponics use, can you recommend one?

I would recommend a ChillKing 2hp unit for that much water. It may be overkill depending on the setup but you will always have plenty of cooling power on hand in case you upgrade. Sunlight Supply keeps them in stock in Vancouver WA, not to far away if you are in BC. These can be put outdoors which I highly recommend doing. If you want to give me more details about it, mainly if the reservoirs are insulated or not, the water temp you want to be at, and the air temp around the reservoir I could give you a more accurate guess, you may need only a 1 hp.

 

[GanjaAL]

Was wondering what size chiller in about 90 deg weather will chill 100 gal without to much of a load on the chiller itself.

Thanks for the help. Right now I have a 1/3 hp JBJ Titanium chiller which I think will do the job.

Just want to be sure I am right.

 

[water wise guy]

I am looking for a water chiller for 300gallon hydroponics use, can you recommend one?

is this just to cool you nute res or is this to cool your lights and room also?

 

[water wise guy]

Was wondering what size chiller in about 90 deg weather will chill 100 gal without to much of a load on the chiller itself.

Thanks for the help. Right now I have a 1/3 hp JBJ Titanium chiller which I think will do the job.

Just want to be sure I am right.

this depends on how well the res is insulated and what heat sources you have going into it. i.e. air stone, submersible pumps and ambient room temp. i would say atleast 1/2 hp but would be better off with 1hp so the chiller doesn'e work that hard and has time to turn off and cool down which will make the system more efficient.

 

[GanjaAL]

Room temp will be 75 degree's as most plants seem to love this. Co2 of course via 50lb tank. Air stones yes as I am running the UC system and most everything else will be outside the room. Room if fully enclosed. Thanks for the help.

 

[Chillville]

Room temp will be 75 degree's as most plants seem to love this. Co2 of course via 50lb tank. Air stones yes as I am running the UC system and most everything else will be outside the room. Room if fully enclosed. Thanks for the help.

I'm starting a thread, how to size chillers for hydroponic systems...you guys should check it out.

 

[fondiz]

would i be able to run 2k lights with Liquid Lumen hydroreflectors with a 1/2hp chiller and an insulated 105gal rez efficiently? the chiller is going to be outside and the rez is going to be in another room. chiller is a tru 6k btu cooling with titanium heat exchanger.
I have a 12kbtu split ac to cool the room. is the 1/2hp chiller enough for 2k watts of lights?

 

[Chillville]

would i be able to run 2k lights with Liquid Lumen hydroreflectors with a 1/2hp chiller and an insulated 105gal rez efficiently? the chiller is going to be outside and the rez is going to be in another room. chiller is a tru 6k btu cooling with titanium heat exchanger.
I have a 12kbtu split ac to cool the room. is the 1/2hp chiller enough for 2k watts of lights?

Borderline. At best you will be maxing out your chillers capacity trying to keep the water cold. What brand of chiller do you have? Total you will be producing about 8k-10k BTU total so overall you should be ok. The a/c by itself would almost be enough so you are in good shape. If you set your chiller temp higher this will put less load on it moving some of the heat load over to the a/c. If the chiller runs constantly you can keep bumping up the water temp until you get it to cycle properly.

Wow I thought liquid lumens was out of business, I didn't even know you could still get those.

 

[fondiz]

thanks alot. bought them from a tester for Liquid Lumens a couple yrs ago. they work great. dont know why they went out of business. I guess i will step up to a 1hp chiller. do you view fresca sol reflectors as a better product then LL? I thought the idea of using water to displace heat was a sound idea. Should i get rid of the LLs and get some cool tubes with icebox heat exchangers would that be more efficient? i'm trying to get the most efficient use of components and keep electricity bill as low as possible.

 

[Chillville]

I really like the fresca sol product better than the liquid lumens. Liquid lumens is heavier, larger, and the ends are made of plastic (I'm sure you already know that :) ). The fresca sols are made from aluminum and have really good gaskets, plus their customer service is awesome. I strongly recommend that you have a flow switch to turn the lights off if the water flow stops, especially with the LL since it will eventually meltdown. Also make sure to use heavy duty tubing so you won't get any kinked lines which can cause major problems. With only two fixtures I would suggest to plumb them inline, or daisy chain them with the water flow sensor inline with the lights. Putting them inline works great up to 3 fixtures in a row. Please don't use a "T" to split water flow between them, if you must split the water then you need a proper manifold with an upsized return. If you don't do this then you can get more flow going to one unit and actually boil the water in the other....I have personally had this problem in the past.

In your situation I would stick with the water-cooleds since you already have them, assuming that the LL don't leak they will operate fine for you with the a/c that you have. If you do have any problems with the LL I would suggest replacing with the fresca sol.

You can run water-cooled lights and ice boxes together, which you may want to do since you are getting a 1hp chiller. Use the LL to cool the lights and use the Ice Boxes to cool the room off some. This will take more of the load off your a/c which is much less energy efficient. I would leave the a/c because it will do a good job dehumidifying you garden having it run occasionally. Just play with the chiller temps to get the cycle time between the a/c and the chiller where you want it.

 

[fondiz]

Thanks chillville i really appreciate the information. this gives me a direction to go in.

 

[Chillville]

No problem at all brotha, good luck with everything! I think you'll be really happy with water-cooling and it sounds like you are going at it right. BTW what pump and reservoir you going with?

 

[seebobsled]

hmmm take a look please

Hi
Well building a window ac with separate in and out. I used metal ducting and thought I could double my dehumidifying by making a insulated chamber on the outside of the hot exhaust duct. Put a fan on 1 side and damper on other side. Then hook fan on a rheostat. Set relative humidity %.
Blow some colder air from ac-ed room and take more moisture out of room with ac running a little longer but not having to run a dehumidifier just a booster fan. to make a pressure change and temp difference; will it ring out more moisture? Also not exchanging inside air with out. Dose this sound right or am I thinking to much. Your thought are greatly respected.
Thank Bob

 

[Chillville]

Hi
Well building a window ac with separate in and out. I used metal ducting and thought I could double my dehumidifying by making a insulated chamber on the outside of the hot exhaust duct. Put a fan on 1 side and damper on other side. Then hook fan on a rheostat. Set relative humidity %.
Blow some colder air from ac-ed room and take more moisture out of room with ac running a little longer but not having to run a dehumidifier just a booster fan. to make a pressure change and temp difference; will it ring out more moisture? Also not exchanging inside air with out. Dose this sound right or am I thinking to much. Your thought are greatly respected.
Thank Bob

Hi Bob

Have you built already? Do you have a pic or a drawing? I just want to make sure I understand exactly what you are doing. I'm pretty sure I got it and I like it, basically you are ducting some of the heat back in the room with an electric dampner hooked to a humidistat on the condenser side of the unit? Very good idea I have to say, I never thought of doing that. with diverting some of the heat you can dehumidify 24 hrs a day.....assuming after diverting heat you are still making enough cooling btu's for the room. One problem might be if your humidity stays too high and there is too much heat diverted back in to the room you may not cool enough. Also ducting the window a/c alone will reduces it's btu because you won't be flowing as much air across the evaporator or condenser as it was designed for. That's ok, I would just get a larger unit than what you actually need since it will dehumidify more, this way if you need lots of dehumnidification you will still have lots of cooling btus to battle the heat needed to offset humidity. Just use the largest ducting that makes sense, and build your plenums so that they extend away from the a/c at least 4-6", this will allow for more even airflow over the coils.

Potential problem would be freezing up the evaporator because of lack of air flow, if this happens you may need a booster fan in line to stop that from happening, I wouldn't worry about it unless its a problem, the slower airflow will actually help dehumidify.

Again great idea, we actually have put propane furnaces in grow rooms controlled by humidistats which works really well, and the heat of course doesn't raise the electricity bills. Room heats up, a/c kicks on and dehumidifys, pretty simple.

Show us some pics please :)