Can I help answer anyone's cooling questions?

[theTinker]

3. That's why I'm thinking more along the lines of a car radiator with a fan mounted to it and sucking cold air through the fins. This will certainly actively pull a lot more heat, and won't be an expensive proposition. If I find the right fan it would be pretty quiet, and I think I could even set up a thermal switch and have it run only when water temps exceed a given differential.

http://www.frozenboost.com/product_...=1034&osCsid=07445124688a150372b2c89bfc5c78a1

Do you mean like this?

Im very interested in using something like this to cool a tent. I have access to external so i could leave a can of water outside where it gets cold for most of the year!.
Do you think a fan on a scrap car radiator would do the trick? Im not sure what temperatur delta would be needed for the water/ambient air temp in tent to be useful. And if the trash can would over heat or if the can would never get warm due to the radiator not dissapating enough heat to water.

 

[Chillville]

http://www.frozenboost.com/product_...=1034&osCsid=07445124688a150372b2c89bfc5c78a1

Do you mean like this?

Im very interested in using something like this to cool a tent. I have access to external so i could leave a can of water outside where it gets cold for most of the year!.
Do you think a fan on a scrap car radiator would do the trick? Im not sure what temperatur delta would be needed for the water/ambient air temp in tent to be useful. And if the trash can would over heat or if the can would never get warm due to the radiator not dissapating enough heat to water.

You guys know you can use an Ice Box in reverse right? Just put the Ice Box outside with an inline fan blowing through it, the 8" should be able to give you about 8,000 BTU, or more depending on how much airflow and the temp outside. You might could get 12k BTU out of it when its below freezing out. You can even put the Ice Box and fan inside and just duct the outside air in and out, like people do for reflectors.

 

[theTinker]

You guys know you can use an Ice Box in reverse right? Just put the Ice Box outside with an inline fan blowing through it, the 8" should be able to give you about 8,000 BTU, or more depending on how much airflow and the temp outside. You might could get 12k BTU out of it when its below freezing out. You can even put the Ice Box and fan inside and just duct the outside air in and out, like people do for reflectors.

U mean place the ice box (this is the duct hole + flange + heat exchanger people are using for lights right?) outside the premises and duct into the grow room to fan?
I dont understand.

I thought they were run by cool water flowing through them which removed the heat?

Im hoping to use something like an ICE box for cooling ambient temperatures in the room.

 

[Chillville]

You can do it one of two ways.

1. Put the Ice Box heat exchanger outside, connect a fan to it, and pump water form your system through it. Pulling cold air across the heat exchanger will chill the water. The air entering the Ice Box will be colder than the exiting air temp having absorbed some heat from the water.

2. You can put the Ice Box heat exchanger inside your garden and chill the water if you duct it. You would have a fresh air duct coming in from outside connected to one side of the Ice Box, a fan connected to the other side, and then a duct from the fan back outside. The purpose would be to pull in cold air from outside, pass it through the Ice Box cooling the water, and then put the slightly warmed air back outside via ducting. This doesn't have to be in the garden, it could be inside anywhere you can pump water to. This will allow you to take advantage of the cold outside but still keep a sealed room.

 

[ttystikk]

You guys know you can use an Ice Box in reverse right? Just put the Ice Box outside with an inline fan blowing through it, the 8" should be able to give you about 8,000 BTU, or more depending on how much airflow and the temp outside. You might could get 12k BTU out of it when its below freezing out. You can even put the Ice Box and fan inside and just duct the outside air in and out, like people do for reflectors.

Yes I'm aware of that, and the reasons I didn't go with that plan initially are as follows:

1. I'm trying to remove heat generated by 8-12 x 1kW lights. Since the hoods and ballasts are already aircooled (though I might do the outside ducting thing for them, come to think of it), I'm down to cooling just the radiant heat into the sealed rooms. That's still on the order of 24,000-36,000BTU, much more than twice an Iceflow box's maximum potential.

2. A junkyard radiator that's 15" x 24" or so, a buddy to braze some smaller fittings onto it and a box fan (or an electric automotive fan and shroud, even better) all add up to substantially less than the $200 for just one 8" Iceflow box, even without the fan. No matter which way I go, I'm still on the hook for 25-30 gallons of glycol. Know where I can pick that up relatively cheaply? Also, I'm thinking I'll need two thermally activated interrupt switches. One for the water, to turn ON when the water temp rises above 55 degrees, and another that will turn it OFF if outside amibient temps are above 55 degrees.

3. The radiator will be big in terms of capacity, and should easily have the potential to remove enough heat that on cold nights with ambient temps below 40, I'm thinking the chiller might not need to run at all. That represents the savings I'd be doing all this to gain.

4. Pulling outside air inside in the winter in Colorado is risky business, since it can be far below freezing at night in deep winter- negative 25 degrees is a perfectly normal occasional scenario that needs to be planned for, and records around here indicate the possibility of minus 45. Condensation, freezing of unintended components and serious heat loss all come to mind...

I like how you think, Chill- let me know if I'm on the right track or barking up the wrong tree here.

 

[water wise guy]

If I'll be okay with the chiller in the window, do I need the heater at all? Anything I can do to skip the expense of the heater and just use house heat? It will get damned cold around here soon, and I don't want any nasty surprises. By the time it gets that cold though, I'm likely to be utilizing the full cooling capacity of the chiller. Will that make a difference? Maybe if I knew exactly what components were most vulnerable to low temps and why?



Shortly, I'm gonna be cranking up to full output; 8 x 1kW lights, dehuey and 54 sites worth of RDWC systems in bloom room, 2 x 1kW lights and 26 sites of RDWC in the veg room.

1. If the chiller never shuts off for more than 5 or 10 minutes, will I need a heater at all?

2. Also, this is gonna be waaaay more BTUs than even a metal trash can sitting outside will be able to dissipate. The surface area alone just won't suffice. And if it's full of water and that water freezes solid (as it would if my cooling system were to be shut off during a COLD night), my water line inside is toast, and so is my cooling system!

3. That's why I'm thinking more along the lines of a car radiator with a fan mounted to it and sucking cold air through the fins. This will certainly actively pull a lot more heat, and won't be an expensive proposition. If I find the right fan it would be pretty quiet, and I think I could even set up a thermal switch and have it run only when water temps exceed a given differential. This could then daisychain on the same waterline upstream of the chiller itself, allowing the chiller to work a lot less- or if it's cold enough out- not at all. Am I on the right track here? Would you think it would be better on its own circuit? Of course I'd build some sort of insulating box I could cover the whole thing with in the event of a warm day in January, which happens regularly. It's a given I'd be running glycol in the chiller system, I'd be a fool not to.

these are all good ideas and i realy like using the barrel outside when its cold. this will all work well in winter and as far as the compressor heater it is not to keep the water from freezing but to help the compressor to run. when it gets very cold the comp has a hard time kicking over to get started and can freeze up.

 

[water wise guy]

Yo anyone know how much heat a submersable pump in putting my my chiller res... it a 1/3 hp submersable... would an inline pump be better and put off less heat?

yes a inline will add less heat as its heat is dispursed into the air instead of the water. 1/3hp is a pretty large submersible this will definatly heat up your res. how much depends on how efficient the pump is. for ball park 1/4 hp pump will raise 20 gal. 1 degree every 7-10 minutes.

 

[water wise guy]

Yes I'm aware of that, and the reasons I didn't go with that plan initially are as follows:

1. I'm trying to remove heat generated by 8-12 x 1kW lights. Since the hoods and ballasts are already aircooled (though I might do the outside ducting thing for them, come to think of it), I'm down to cooling just the radiant heat into the sealed rooms. That's still on the order of 24,000-36,000BTU, much more than twice an Iceflow box's maximum potential.

2. A junkyard radiator that's 15" x 24" or so, a buddy to braze some smaller fittings onto it and a box fan (or an electric automotive fan and shroud, even better) all add up to substantially less than the $200 for just one 8" Iceflow box, even without the fan. No matter which way I go, I'm still on the hook for 25-30 gallons of glycol. Know where I can pick that up relatively cheaply? Also, I'm thinking I'll need two thermally activated interrupt switches. One for the water, to turn ON when the water temp rises above 55 degrees, and another that will turn it OFF if outside amibient temps are above 55 degrees.

3. The radiator will be big in terms of capacity, and should easily have the potential to remove enough heat that on cold nights with ambient temps below 40, I'm thinking the chiller might not need to run at all. That represents the savings I'd be doing all this to gain.

4. Pulling outside air inside in the winter in Colorado is risky business, since it can be far below freezing at night in deep winter- negative 25 degrees is a perfectly normal occasional scenario that needs to be planned for, and records around here indicate the possibility of minus 45. Condensation, freezing of unintended components and serious heat loss all come to mind...

I like how you think, Chill- let me know if I'm on the right track or barking up the wrong tree here.

there are a few ways to do this your way with the car radiator and fan is probably the cheapest. but could use ice boxes, heat-x-tractors or there are even compressorless chillers which do exactly what you are trying to accomplish but they definatly cost more than your idea but are alot easier. no fabricating or searching for all the correct parts, all of these other products are just plugged in and hoses conected running. one way saves money and the other save you time and work depends which is more important to you. in the summer you might need a bigger chiller to run that many watts in the warm months.

 

[ttystikk]

A rose by any other name...

there are a few ways to do this your way with the car radiator and fan is probably the cheapest. but could use ice boxes, heat-x-tractors or there are even compressorless chillers which do exactly what you are trying to accomplish but they definatly cost more than your idea but are alot easier. no fabricating or searching for all the correct parts, all of these other products are just plugged in and hoses conected running. one way saves money and the other save you time and work depends which is more important to you. in the summer you might need a bigger chiller to run that many watts in the warm months.

Noted on the list of options you've provided. As far as I can tell, the single most significant different between a heat-x-tractor and an Iceflow box- other than the all important color!- is that the x-tractor comes with better mounting brackets. I need all that I have inside...

The compressorless chiller is merely a VERY expensive version of the idea I had; it's got cooling manifolds on 3 or four sides, and a built in fan to pull air thru and exhaust it out the top. Nice device... but for my $2800.00, I'm gonna call some HVAC people and ask where old compressor sections go to die, on the off chance I might scrounge one up!

Really, I don't think the radiator/shrouded fan route will be all that labor intensive. Put it on a crate to keep it off the ground, bolt your shrouded fan to it (maybe from the same junkyard car the radiator came from, guaranteed to fit!), plumb it up, and Bam!- instant 'compressorless chiller', a.k.a. convective cooling device with a large surface area to cost ratio. I'm smart enough to let my radiator repair professional braze the fittings I need onto the radiator, so that will be easy for me! Shoot, the toughest part of the whole process will be to find the proper thermal switches to do what I need.

Now, I obviously don't want to run this thing when it's warm out, so I'm wondering if it would be enough to simply turn the fan off and have a shade cover over it, or if I should go one step further and actually have a thermally activated switch to shut the flow of water off to this outside unit completely when it's too warm to use it? Thinking like the reverse of a go/no go switch for water cooled CO2 burners?

Besides, the process of engineering this stuff is actually a blast to me- I get a heck of a kick out of showing off all the gear I've 'McGuyvered up' out of spare parts and thrift store finds! Even the staff at the local hydro store calls me 'The Mad Scientist' because of all my projects!

 

[ttystikk]

Some more installation notes... the 8" Iceflow chiller box with an 8"Maxfan pushing through it is an extremely effective means of managing temperature in the growroom. The thing all but effortlessly keeps up with the residual heat from 4 x 1kW lights in magnum xxxl "ocho" hoods. At one point, I was concerned about whether I'd need 3 or 4 or more of these to have the cooling capacity to transfer the heat in the room to the water. Now, I think I might do fine with just two.

By 'residual heat' above, I mean that I'm aircooling the hoods with air pulled from outside the sealed room, and vented outside of it as well. Also, the ballasts are not in the room (in my case, they're in the same closet I pull air from for the aircooled hoods, killing two heat birds with one airflow stone). So, the residual heat I'm referring to is only that portion left over from these other heat management strategies.

By the way, I got a high efficiency 8" Y connector duct, and it acts as a plenum for the 8"Maxfan pulling air thru my ochos. It's so efficient it got at least 5-8 dB quieter, and flows enough air for 2 circuits of 4 ochos each! Sooo, get a Y connector with a sizeable plenum, and whatever you do, don't try to make the T connector work. It kills your airflow...

 

[Chillville]

Keep us posted for sure.

To control of water flow you can get an HI watergate valve and heating thermostat of some kind. You can use a ranco temp controller (my favorite but requires a little wiring) or there are many other heating thermostats to use with 120v plugs built in, I think that CAP makes one. When it gets warm outside the water valve will close.

 

[ttystikk]

Current project, less ambitious but more important to the success of my cloning op; I've beenn reading up on how people get their ezcloners to work for them, and one big issue was temperature management. They said to keep the water temp around 70 for best results, and I've had trouble getting mine to stay at that temp. I can't go adding ice every few hours, or a bottle full of ice from the freezer. Sooo... I did this:

The problem now is that even with the coil, the temps are still 5 degrees too high. My theory is that there isn't enough surface area of contact between the copper coil and the hard plastic bottom of my ezcloner 30. I could use a wet towel, but that would quickly mold and become a nasty mess. Any ideas?

 

[water wise guy]

Current project, less ambitious but more important to the success of my cloning op; I've beenn reading up on how people get their ezcloners to work for them, and one big issue was temperature management. They said to keep the water temp around 70 for best results, and I've had trouble getting mine to stay at that temp. I can't go adding ice every few hours, or a bottle full of ice from the freezer. Sooo... I did this:

The problem now is that even with the coil, the temps are still 5 degrees too high. My theory is that there isn't enough surface area of contact between the copper coil and the hard plastic bottom of my ezcloner 30. I could use a wet towel, but that would quickly mold and become a nasty mess. Any ideas?

you either need more surface area or colder water thru the coil. also if this is in your nutes the copper can be a problem. i suggest stainless instead of copper so there is no leaching into the nute water from the copper.

 

[Chillville]

You could try cutting a piece off about 15", coating it with something like plasitkote (lowes), and putting it directly in the res. Plastikote should be fine after its had time to fully dry, it putts a rubberized thin coating on the surface. This should block the copper from being leached in to the system, this is all speculation on my part.

 

[ttystikk]

This coil sits UNDER the cloner and not in the nute water, not only because its copper but also because if it was inside it would immediately make the water waaay too cold!

In the world of personal computers, an important part of building your own high performance machine is stacking the finned aluminum heat sink and heat extracting fan on top of the CPU chip. Amateurs either skip or don't know about the step of applying thermally conductive paste between the chip and the heat sink. If it's not in there, heat won't travel to the heat sink, often ruining the chip as soon as initial start up.

Is there something like this out there for creating a 'thermal highway' for heat to travel from the base of the chiler to the cooling coil? I could use the paste but it would be an awful mess and a pain in the ass every time I have to clean the cloner. I'd prefer some sort of thermally conducting pad that doesn't need to be wet. Place it under the cloner and on top of the coils and I'd be set!

 

[ttystikk]

You could try cutting a piece off about 15", coating it with something like plasitkote (lowes), and putting it directly in the res. Plastikote should be fine after its had time to fully dry, it putts a rubberized thin coating on the surface. This should block the copper from being leached in to the system, this is all speculation on my part.

If I can't get the circuit under the cloner to work, this looks like the next logical step. Or maybe just get a 12" long piece of 1/2" diameter stainless steel tube and plumbing that in as you suggest. Skips the plastikote step...

 

[seebobsled]

You could try cutting a piece off about 15", coating it with something like plasitkote (lowes), and putting it directly in the res. Plastikote should be fine after its had time to fully dry, it putts a rubberized thin coating on the surface. This should block the copper from being leached in to the system, this is all speculation on my part.

Hey Ttstikk I had a idea just use the 1/2" hose over the copper.(I see you have some in the pic) It should put the most thermal transfer @ the point of the copper and save the clones from copper death. Also like the teachers have said SS tube. Here is a place that blows H.I.'s cool coil is out in the COLD for SS tube 1/2" .020 wall 25' $45.00 3/8"s is cheaper
http://www.nybrewsupply.com/products/tubing-steel.php

good luck I'm building anything I can DIY as well pm if you want a sound wall to throw ideas back and forth. or anyone handy and like minded.
currently diy

1/2hp chiller
temp shut down
flow shut down
flood shut down
outdoor chill circuit

 

[seebobsled]

diy idea

Hey Ttstikk I had a idea just use the 1/2" hose over the copper.(I see you have some in the pic)]
also soak hose in hot tap water 10 to 15 mins will help getting the hose over copper and at the end just hose clamp another hose to like 1" of the copper that is outside the cloner to not effect it. Maybe couple sheets aluminum foil to transfer over the whole bottom of the cloner. the aluminum will multiply transfer area very well. Go your fiber ins.- board, copper coil, aluminum foil then cloner on that.You can go up the sides as well as insulate the sides. (should have foil in kitchen). I am all about getting around corners by rounding them out cheap but right!!

 

[ttystikk]

Maybe couple sheets aluminum foil to transfer over the whole bottom of the cloner. the aluminum will multiply transfer area very well. Go your fiber ins.- board, copper coil, aluminum foil then cloner on that.You can go up the sides as well as insulate the sides. (should have foil in kitchen). I am all about getting around corners by rounding them out cheap but right!!

I like this idea, will try it immediately. The coil does work; it dropped cloner temps from upper 70s to 74. Hope this is enough to get over the hump. If not, I'll try a short length of stainless tubing inside the cloner... It wouldn't need to be very long, because my chiller is set quite cool to keep the big RDWC systems cold.

Yes, saw that link from NY Brewing, have it in my favs already; gonna buy several of those as soon as I have extra capital- reason being that I want to raise the cold setpoint on my chiller as I'm beginning to encounter condensation issues now; as I raise my humidity levels, I'm sure it will get worse. Having a big cooling coil will help heat transfer. Currently, I'm running 10' of 3/8" copper and while it works, it isn't transferring heat quite fast enough to keep temps stable; the RDWC water temps fluctuate a few degrees every day.

 

[sourkush91]

Hey i know there is a few thing on putting a large chiller indoors but im lazy and really didnt wanna look... i was wondering what problems i can run into putting a 2hp chillking inside a garage where it will be in a pretty open area... this area in the garage will not be heated... and thoughts???