Sorry bro but in my situation, I have a sealed room. You run air cooled lights. I run a 5 ton AC with separate intake and exhaust. That thing when it is on sucks all the moisture out of the air. AC's are glorified dehueys.
9, 18" tall plants are no match for 9 1k's and the 5 ton. After 2-3 weeks they are, but I need the humidifier to ease the transition.
Maybe if I had to do it again I would do aircooled, but at this point I am locked in to what I have (like a lot of other people I am sure).
Aircooled lights are very compatible with a sealed room approach. For example; my lights are aircooled, but the air comes from outside the growroom, it's ducted in, pulled through sealed hoods, and then vented out again, all without ever mixing with room air. This doesn't get rid of ALL the heat a bulb generates, but it does get most of it. And it doesn't interfere with the sealed room environment.
To cool the air in the room, I use maxfans blowing through Ice Boxes, just like the ones in the hydro innovations website. In this way, I put the excess heat left over (from hoods, CO2 burner, hehuey, fans, etc) in the room into water, which then passes through my chiller. So does the water that's carrying excess heat from my RDWC systems. One cooling unit now cools everything, in several rooms. Best of all, that chiller unit can now be a long distance from where the cooling is needed, simplifying installation, improving use of space options, and helping keep things cool.
While it's certainly possible to install vertical cooltubes in a room like yours, it's a major pain and to get outside air to the bottom of each one involves some serious engineering if you're going to have any room left to walk in there! Definitely not a quick weekend project in the middle of a run. And of course you're losing the lighting efficiency of bare bulbs.
Agreed that an AC unit is basically a glorified dehuey. If you can, it may help your situation to blow more air through the AC chiller section, and run the AC itself at a lower cool setting. The idea is to push the air past the coils so fast the cooling coils warm up enough to quit condening so much water. Not all AC is tunable is such a way, but it's worth a look. Fortunately, your problem is temporary- once the plants get big enough, they'll do the job by themselves without intervention.
Believe me, I understand about running what you have, and there's no question your system is killin' it. I don't mean to criticize- it's all in the spirit of discussion. God knows I've learned plenty from you so far!
Just make certain you run RO or distilled water through your mister, or you'll end up with whitish calcium deposits all over everything in that room; plants, gear, the walls, everything! Another option is to use a 'swamp cooler', which keeps that from happening by only emitting fully evaporated water so the dissolved solids stay behind.
