I have 55 gal rez. I did slow the flow to the chiller witch helped. but not solved.
Well I have been pondering the cheapest moving of heat and where I want it.
The lights seams more efficient to move the mass of heat with a fan. It isn't making sense to push all heat in water if I need it for the rest of the house. I have to transfer it back to air. So 10.5 amps for the chiller and 1 to 2 amps for fans. If there is radiant heat with air or water cooling and I want the heat elsewhere in air of the house so what's cheaper? The chiller and fresca sol looks to do double the work to move the heat for my design. Now if I didn't want the heat and had room for a separate rez for lights outside and not look weird or heat a pool,hot tub,well ; that would make sense to me. After my testing, that chiller will never work in summer if working hard in winter.
The big problem I had with air cooling in summer was hoods being heaters on lights out because daytime air was heating them. Winter I think the hoods would be like ice boxes and too cold lights out. I am going to use a
electric back draft damper @ .25 amps for lights with it's own intake and duct it to the chiller room (4'x4'x8' with 2 inch foam walls) that duct it to rest of house for heat.
I am not ditching water cooling but is the fresca sols really right for a chiller? Heck bare bulb it if the chiller is taking all the load right? Then none of the lumen is blocked by glass and water. They say water helps boost the spectrum's but glass is 7 to 14% lumen loss (2 layers).
I run sealed rooms for total control of room. Bare bulb looks to be pricy to run, like fresca sols on chillers. If I have to run more iceboxes then that's more fans too. The air cooling lights it should remove maybe 75% of heat. That would be cutting the load on the chiller to handle the summer ambient temps. This is Not a large scale grow just medical.
Cost of power is the largest drain of my cash each month. Just trying to find the best bang for the buck.
Please school me more master!! I will be a master soon too I hope. I learned lots.
Thanks
I have been watching your experience with fresca sol with interest. To cool an 8x1000W sealed room, I run air from the house through 8" ducting and ocho hoods. The air is pulled through the system by one 8" maxfan, which blows the hot air outside. I do not watercool any of the lights, to me it seemed very wasteful to do that. Thus, the only air to be cooled is the ambient air in the sealed room, and to do this I have two 8" maxfans blowing through 2 iceboxes. Not only is this plenty of capacity, but I get a lot of condensation building up on the iceboxes. If I can properly channel this condensate away I may be able to do without my dehumidifier- and the expense of running it- altogether.
The water is in its own circuit, and I run separate cooling circuits through the iceboxes and also through cooling coils in the RDWC hydro systems in the same room. This way I only need one chiller to cool everything, in this case a 2 ton chillking. It sits on the windowsill outside in the summer, and inside providing most of the heat to the house in the winter... The January gas bill was $40!
With this setup, the chiller still runs less than half the time and keeps up with the 8x1000w room without breaking a sweat.
If what you're cooling is a tent and you want to use some of the heat to warm your house, why not just run air through the hood and back out into the house? That would cool the tent, heat the house and should create minimal smell because if it's properly set up there's no air mixing between the light venting and the ambient air in the tent.
