Air Handling and Nute Chilling W/ the Same Chiller Question

[UCHQ]

Recently had a couple growers that had been running an air handler and chilling their UC's with the same chiller. Which in theory is really cool and seems the only way to go in terms of efficiency.

Problem was they had their chillers fail (not Chillking's in either case) which caused their room and nutrient temps to spike above 95F for a prolonged period. In both cases it ended up cooking the roots and causing crop failure.

Do you have a strategy for someone doing this (chilling and air handling with the same chiller) to avoid catostrophic crop loss? I noticed a temp override you mentioned, how would a grower employ this in their grow for protection against this type of scenario?

 

[Texas Kid]

High heat shut off on your main panel or timer input...at least if it goes tits up your lights wont come on sit there and cook them..



Tex

 

[Chillville]

I'm sorry to hear that. Tex is right, a high heat shut off would have saved the garden. This device montiors room temperature and will turn off anything plugged in to it. You would plug in your ballast or trigger cord. Wether its a chiller or a/c system you could have the same results. Everyone out there needs to have all safety devices in place because unfortunately every piece of equipment will eventually fail, even the best stuff out there.

People using a chiller for the UC with a separate cooling system for the room have to be more careful. If the chiller for the UC goes out it will not trip a standard overheat sensor, you would need to have an overheat sensor in the UC that can cut off the lights if the water temperature starts to rise. None of the standard overheat sensors are designed to be used in water. You can seal the probe end or buy one designed to be submerged.

 

[Texas Kid]

I reently blew a fuse in my Artica chiller but fortunately I am like a hawk on shit like that and I think it was down for lees than 15 minutes before I noticed. I was mid way thru haevest so i didn't sweat it.

Replaced a fuse and off to the races

Tex

 

[ttystikk]

here's a related question; if I'm running a lot of water in my rdwc setup, will it act as a temperature stabilizer to some degree? I have 2 separate 24 site rdwc setups with 5 gallon buckets, something like 75 gallons each total. one is in veg, the other in bloom, so in theory, one gets to cool off for 12 hours a day, and the other will be on a 18/6 cycle. Would it make any difference? My chiller is a 2 ton chillking window unit...

 

[Chillville]

I reently blew a fuse in my Artica chiller but fortunately I am like a hawk on shit like that and I think it was down for lees than 15 minutes before I noticed. I was mid way thru haevest so i didn't sweat it.

Replaced a fuse and off to the races

Tex

Close call, have you considered putting in on overheat sensor to monitor the UC? I was changing out my chiller res yesterday which caused my sensor to trip and tunred out the lights. I didn't need at that moment but its nice to know that it works like it should. As soon as my chiller kicked on the lights came back on.

 

[Chillville]

here's a related question; if I'm running a lot of water in my rdwc setup, will it act as a temperature stabilizer to some degree? I have 2 separate 24 site rdwc setups with 5 gallon buckets, something like 75 gallons each total. one is in veg, the other in bloom, so in theory, one gets to cool off for 12 hours a day, and the other will be on a 18/6 cycle. Would it make any difference? My chiller is a 2 ton chillking window unit...

Nice, you have plenty of chiller no doubt. Yes your water volume will certainly effect the cooling of the room, I have experienced this for myself. When you say "one cools off for 12 hrs" that's not really how it works. With the chiller that you have your water temperature in your rdwc system should barely fluctuate. Let say you keep your water at 68 degrees and your rooms at 78 degrees. This is of course a differential of 10 degrees which means that your rdwc, if uninsulated, will be absorbing heat from your room. If your chiller is undersized then this could be a bad thing, but you should have plenty of cooling power to keep your system chilled and to pull some heat out of the room as well. I'm assuming that it isn't installed yet, if you wouldn't mind starting a new thread showing your install of the chiller would probably help a few people out.

I had a couple of questions for you about your system.
Where are you installing the chiller? Indoor, outdoor, window mount?
What size res?
What size pump?
Are you using stainless steel coils?

 

[ttystikk]

Nice, you have plenty of chiller no doubt. Yes your water volume will certainly effect the cooling of the room, I have experienced this for myself. When you say "one cools off for 12 hrs" that's not really how it works. With the chiller that you have your water temperature in your rdwc system should barely fluctuate. Let say you keep your water at 68 degrees and your rooms at 78 degrees. This is of course a differential of 10 degrees which means that your rdwc, if uninsulated, will be absorbing heat from your room. If your chiller is undersized then this could be a bad thing, but you should have plenty of cooling power to keep your system chilled and to pull some heat out of the room as well. I'm assuming that it isn't installed yet, if you wouldn't mind starting a new thread showing your install of the chiller would probably help a few people out.

I had a couple of questions for you about your system.
Where are you installing the chiller? Indoor, outdoor, window mount?
What size res?
What size pump?
Are you using stainless steel coils?

I've responded in depth in another of your threads, but I think I left some stuff out.
1. The chiller is window mount on the main floor of the building.
2. The res is a 55 gallon food grade drum. I set it up so I can run it full, or as low as 1/4. What do you think is best? The water cooled website suggests running less capacity...
3. pump is a 1/2 hp flojet, heavy bastard!
4. Copper coils for AC, 1/2" o.d. they sit in the control bucket of each rdwc, getting lots of waterflow over them.

I need to mention that the chiller is doing double duty; it's cooling the hydro systems, but it's also cooling the veg room and the bloom room. The bloom room has 8 x 1000w 'ocho' hoods, air cooled with air coming from outtside the sealed room, and the hot air is pushed outside. This air, I emphasize, is NOT mixing with the air in the sealed room, its just passes thru to remove heat.

 

[Chillville]

I've responded in depth in another of your threads, but I think I left some stuff out.
1. The chiller is window mount on the main floor of the building.
2. The res is a 55 gallon food grade drum. I set it up so I can run it full, or as low as 1/4. What do you think is best? The water cooled website suggests running less capacity...
3. pump is a 1/2 hp flojet, heavy bastard!
4. Copper coils for AC, 1/2" o.d. they sit in the control bucket of each rdwc, getting lots of waterflow over them.

I need to mention that the chiller is doing double duty; it's cooling the hydro systems, but it's also cooling the veg room and the bloom room. The bloom room has 8 x 1000w 'ocho' hoods, air cooled with air coming from outtside the sealed room, and the hot air is pushed outside. This air, I emphasize, is NOT mixing with the air in the sealed room, its just passes thru to remove heat.

Ok cool, I'll do most of my answering in the other thread.

1. Window mount, perfect
2. Fill it up, all 55 gallons. You can certainly run as little as 15 gallons but the extra water volume will slow down the on/off cycling of the chiller. The less water the faster the on/off cycles happens. Remember too that the larger the reservoir the better of a heat sink it becomes. So if this reservoir is anywhere besides in your grow room then make sure to insulate it with at least some double bubble foil wrap and some large zipties. Regular house insulation is good too, I buy the stuff from lowes that fiberglass is wrapped in plastic.
3. Do you mean flotec? I looked up flojet and couldn’t find anything.
4. Nutrient water will corrode copper and it will leach in to the system. I’m 100% positive, I have tested this personally out of curiosity. Nutrients contains copper so it’s not a death sentence for the plant but I have no idea how much copper is too much so I would never recommend using it. I checked the nutrient water after 3 days with an aquarium copper test kit and I don’t remember the ppm but it was surprisingly high. You can buy stainless steel coils that will do the same for you, it’s only a little more expensive than copper.

You chiller won’t actually be doing double duty if using it for a/c too. You would naturally think that you need “x” btu to cool the rdwc and “x” to cool the room but that’s not the way it works. You really only have to size what the room needs for a/c because the rdwc doesn’t add any heat to the room, so it isn’t necessary to add any cooling btu’s for it. Because of the differential in temperature between the room and the water the rdwc turns in to a heat exchanger and actually helps cool the room. Heat from the room is absorbed in the water just like with the Ice Boxes that you have, its just a different path. I’ve seen grow rooms being cooled at night with just the chilled water in UC systems.

 

[ttystikk]

2. the res. is sitting next to a new, well insulated hot water heater, even so I'll get some insulation. Wondering what if anything changes if I run glycol in the system? 3. Yes, Flowtec, sorry. 4. Then it looks like I'll need to upgrade soon! 5. Thanks for confirming my suspicions re. the water in the hydro systems. Now, will the large amount of water in those hydro systems act like something of a buffer or thermal reservoir relative to the water flowing through the rest of the system?

 

[Chillville]

2. the res. is sitting next to a new, well insulated hot water heater, even so I'll get some insulation. Wondering what if anything changes if I run glycol in the system? 3. Yes, Flowtec, sorry. 4. Then it looks like I'll need to upgrade soon! 5. Thanks for confirming my suspicions re. the water in the hydro systems. Now, will the large amount of water in those hydro systems act like something of a buffer or thermal reservoir relative to the water flowing through the rest of the system?

2a. I'm glad that you are going to insulate. I wasn't even considering the water heater, I would insulate no matter what unless that room iteself is always cold. Lets say your water is 65 degrees and your storage room is 75 degrees. If you were to meausre the outside sq ft of the barrel you are looking roughly 18 sq ft of cooling surface area. Since water is an awesome conductor you would be absorbing heat from that storage room across all 18 sq ft of the outside of your barrel. You could be absorbing quite a bit of heat.

2b. Glycol will keep your chiller evaporator from corroding which can lower the btu output.

3. Good, flotec pumps are nearly bulletproof.

4. Ok great

5. Yes it will, it almost acts as more water in your chiller reservoir. If your chiller were to turn off for some reason the water in the chiller res will rise slower having the coils submerged in the large bodies of water. It will tranfer heat from the chiller reservoir to the nutrient reservoirs via the coils.

 

[smokie]

I'm sorry to hear that. Tex is right, a high heat shut off would have saved the garden. This device montiors room temperature and will turn off anything plugged in to it. You would plug in your ballast or trigger cord. Wether its a chiller or a/c system you could have the same results. Everyone out there needs to have all safety devices in place because unfortunately every piece of equipment will eventually fail, even the best stuff out there.

People using a chiller for the UC with a separate cooling system for the room have to be more careful. If the chiller for the UC goes out it will not trip a standard overheat sensor, you would need to have an overheat sensor in the UC that can cut off the lights if the water temperature starts to rise. None of the standard overheat sensors are designed to be used in water. You can seal the probe end or buy one designed to be submerged.

This one would do a good job for being submerged for high temp shut down in water unless someone knows of a cheaper one.


Does anyone know where to buy just this type of water proof temperature probe that aqua logic has fitted onto the Ranco if I was doing my own Ranco or White-Rodgers temp control for high heat shut down for water temps.

Emerson White-Rodgers
http://www.amazon.com/White-Rodgers-16e09-101-Universal-Electronic-Temperature/dp/B0036BHXQ4
Ranco
http://www.amazon.com/RANCO-ETC-111000-Digital-Temperature-Control/dp/B0015NV5BE/ref=pd_sbs_indust_3

 

[Chillville]

You can seal the probe that comes with the ranco, we do it all the time. You need a 2" long piece of stainless steel tubing and some silicone cualking. Slip the probe in to the tube and seal it on each end with the silicone. As long as you seal it properly it will work fine. You can make almost any probe water proof this way.

 

[smokie]

Any specific type of silicone or poly that is plant safe.

Thanks for the help Chillville

 

[Chillville]

No problem at all

I use 100% silicone, the good stuff from GE. There are a couple different kinds, any of them will work. Home depot and lowes has it, about $5 per tube....good shit! Give it 12 hrs to dry and you are ready to go.