Air cooled hoods vs. wing reflectors

[Buddy Hemphill]

Truthfully, not a lot to go on about - it is what it is, a tankless hot water heater.

I bought an electric solenoid valve off of eBay for $30 that will control it - hook up the garden hose in my garage to my solenoid (hose will always be on, so the line will be constantly pressurized) and then run tubing from the solenoid to the unit. Run waste hose from the unit to outside.

My solenoid (pictured) will be hooked up to my Sentinel CHHC-1 and be controlled by its CO2 sensor.

The unit is activated by flowing water, so as soon as the solenoid receives power from the Sentinel and opens, water starts flowing through it, it starts heating the water and releasing CO2 as it burns natural gas.

The hot water then takes 86% of the heat produced from burning the natural gas and flows outside, drastically lessening the work my AC has to do.

Of course, this is all in theory as I've yet to hook the unit up - however, lotsa people use Hydrogens and they seem to have fixed the issues that people initially had with them.

I'll have lotsa details about the hookup when I do it in my construction journal sometime this week or early next week AT THE LATEST.

Clock is ticking.

Thats badass. Good thinking. My hot water heater is in my flower room. I've been thinking about how to steal CO2 from it forever.

I like the heat dispersal alot.

I've fooled around with intercoolers in race cars. Air flow/temp type stuff is interesting to me.

Thanks for the breakdown, I'll be watching for your results.....good luck

 

[Bobby Smith]

No worries about thread jacking, I love all the input and reading peoples different situations.

I'm still on the fence with wings or air cooled hoods. I live in Western Washington, so our temps are pretty mild. I would like to think that i could keep the temps below 85 in the peak of the summer without air-cooled hoods but even right now it can be difficult. If i added an air conditioner i think it would be doable though. So many things to consider. I got my new room halfway built last weekend. So pretty much i got the framework up. I still haven't popped holes in the ceiling yet because i'm still trying to decide which way to go with hoods.

Any insight from other PNW growers would be awesome. How easy is it to keep a room running 4 600W HPS's under 85 degrees without an AC in this climate?

I was looking at the Magnum XXL hoods and they look like a good way to go. I just hate having to run all the duct work if I'm going to have to use an AC anyways later on.

420King, if i may ask; what is your climate like? Your set-up seems very similar to mine right now just with another light. It seems that we both can get our lights to with-in about 8"s from the canopy but you have two lights running. I'm interested to know if you have an intake and exhaust running thru the room or just fans blowing the air around.

Back to designing.

Head, it comes down to how serious you wanna be about your grow - I'm in a *kinda* similar climate as you - gets a little warmer, but still pretty mild.

I also have access to 65F air year round in the crawlspace under my house, and was thinking of just doing intake/exhaust and saving the money/energy for an AC.

Basically, intake/exhaust would've let me dial in temps for all of the year, save for a month or two when temps would've gotten higher than optimal but still plenty fine.

Long story short (too late for that), I opted to go the AC route because I'm not just trying to grow weed; I'm trying to grow the best weed in a 1000 square mile radius and I need a perfectly dialed sealed room to do that.

But it's your call, and you need to figure out how committed you are and (prolly more importantly for most) what your budget is.

 

[420king-MASSES]

no worries about thread jacking, i love all the input and reading peoples different situations.

I'm still on the fence with wings or air cooled hoods. I live in western washington, so our temps are pretty mild. I would like to think that i could keep the temps below 85 in the peak of the summer without air-cooled hoods but even right now it can be difficult. If i added an air conditioner i think it would be doable though. So many things to consider. I got my new room halfway built last weekend. So pretty much i got the framework up. I still haven't popped holes in the ceiling yet because i'm still trying to decide which way to go with hoods.

Any insight from other pnw growers would be awesome. How easy is it to keep a room running 4 600w hps's under 85 degrees without an ac in this climate?

I was looking at the magnum xxl hoods and they look like a good way to go. I just hate having to run all the duct work if i'm going to have to use an ac anyways later on.

420king, if i may ask; what is your climate like? Your set-up seems very similar to mine right now just with another light. It seems that we both can get our lights to with-in about 8"s from the canopy but you have two lights running. I'm interested to know if you have an intake and exhaust running thru the room or just fans blowing the air around.

Back to designing.

i live in new england mass to be exact so we have similar weather minus all your rain and the show is in a cellar that never gets above 75 in summer and drops to 49 50 in dead of winter i use 2 fans placed strategicly 1 oscillating fan is trained on the air zone between the hood and canopy and the other oscillating fan is under the canopy i have passive venting at the top and i leave my room closer wall a jar at top and bottom 24/7

 

[PuFFnNugg]

Get a light meter one of each hood and some diffusers and let us know, lol. For serious tho I wonder the same thing about the glass how much lumens it robs. I clean them real well, on hoods that allow or need it I seal glass with clear tape, and cover the inlet w/ active carbon filter pad. They also make cone filters now but there expensive, $100 is cheapest I've seen. That will at least keep any dust from affecting your lumens.

You could also leave glass off and block inlet on other side, basically the hood is the inlet. You'd need some splitters and maybe a bigger fan, but this is the most lumens you'll get. I have the first light ( the inlet of the run of lights)running like that right now and it's not that much warmer. If your room temp is steady, and you run glassless with diffuser with wide hoods you could get like 12"-14" from plant with no ill effect, and good coverage CRAZY LUMENS! Lumens decrease by 75% for every ft traveled from source, ruffly. So if your hood is 8"-12" closer makes a huge difference. This is what I would do if I had the option.

Is anyone using hot spot diffusers? I'm getting them as soon as I figure which to buy. Wanna start a forum on diffusers if I can. Here in a few months I'm going to run 600's in Magnum 6" with no glass n diffuser, If I have any $$ left I;ll get a light meter n post the comparisons.

f your doing that big of a space with 4 x 600's I would also reflective film your walls. Panda film is good for your money. It only needs to go two ft above max canopy height tops with 600's, this makes a huge difference, I'm covering 4.5 x 4.5's w/ 600's with great results with film. It's like having cross coverage.

 

[HeadGrow]

PuffnNugg, i like how you think because i had the same idea. haha. I am going to run my 2 600's per room in hydrofarm's radiant reflectors without the glass and using the heat diffuser. if i see any bending toward the light i'm putting the lights on tracks. right now i have 1 600 on a track in a wing with a diffuser and the light is 8 inches from the top with zero signs of burning or heat issues. they are actually the best i've ever seen them for my little set up. Finally!! I give credit to this site. I've been growing for years and have in the last two learned more than the first 15.

Now just a couple weeks till the next experiment is up and running.

I've always used the black and white reflective plastic i get from the grow shop. it seems to have good reflection capabilities.

 

[antimatter]

Vented hoods for small setups but imho if you can run big noisy maxfans for exhaust or cool with an ac your better off, I sure as hell don't want to be paying for a whole bunch of expensive heavy vented hoods and then running all that ducting. Depends on the scenario though, in some cases it makes sense to add vented hoods but for my setups I just up the exhaust fan and pull out more heat.

Funny thing is most of the larger sized grow ops that get busted are running batwings, I saw a couple running cool tubes but those are not as good as a nice vented hood.

f*ck cleaning glass lol

 

[halitzor]

Don't listen to the guys telling you that you cannot get a wing close to the plants.

Put it on a light mover and you can skim the tops.

 

[Seamaiden]

I ditched my Daystar AC on a rail for a pair of vertizontals. Adding ventilation, not just circulation, along with fans pointed directly at the bulbs, is making it very easy to keep temps in control right now. However, this is a room, not a tent, and it's in a basement, not in the main living area. Basement tends to get rather cool during winter. At this very moment it's a perfect 78F with 60%RH, just before lights-off.

Before I got the vertizontals I ditched the Daystar for vertical bare bulbs. Had I better understood how to use them I probably would have gotten better results (1.75+lbs good bud w/two 600W units, 1 400W MH overdriven@600W, 1 600W HPS). During the real heat of summer it was a bitch to keep temps down, I felt fortunate to have it at 85F or below, but I use no supplemental cooling outside of the basement air.

A friend on another site and Dynamite have served as my inspiration for this set-up. Right now, with the vertizontals, fans pointing directly at them and my EcoPlus on a timer temps are very stable and aren't rising much above 80F.

Btw, I'm in the Sierra foothills, so you have an idea of my overall climate. USDA zone 8, Sunset West zone 7a (or is it 7b?).

 

[HeadGrow]

Seamaiden, you aren't the first person I've talked to that has sworn by the vertizontals.

Hopefully I don't regret my Radiant AC's I just bought and end up changing them out, once again, to vertizontals. I always have liked to learn the hard way. haha. I'll be setting up the 2 600's in the ac reflectors on tracks with diffusers this and next week. Hopefully I'll have it up and running by the end of the month. Then the real experiments begin. But in the mean time i get to pull down the last crop from my current set-up. :)