How to size a cooling system for your garden

[SodaLicious]

Can you help me design a system with what I already have?

I have as follows:

6' wide by 10' long by 8' high
1/4 hp chiller
2 600 hps
1 1000w hps
2 250gph water pumps
2 C.A.P. Xtreme 16" Wall Mount Fan
1 C.A.P. Xtreme Water Pump 650gph
2 18 inch oscillating fans
8 " vortex exhaust fan
can 100 carbon filter
8" elicient inline fan
6" elicient inline fan
30 gal res
2 10 gallon rdwc containers with 10 inch net pots
1 Sunleaves O2 Easy High Output Air Pump 600 gph
2 GENERAL HYDROPONICS DUAL DIAPHRAM AIR PUMP


The room is built but nothing is in it yet. I will be running one round with soilless mix while I research for the next round with hydro. Any suggestions would be great. I also have 2 6 " cool tubes, and 1 parabolic shade that are available to use.

 

[ttystikk]

Thanks TTS - though you're adding costs to my gig ;-} I am in the damp part - the Capital. I'm drawing air from a lightly wooded area so it's always cooler than urban air but I'll plan on adding a/c.

Here's a crazy thought. I got unused space behind the shop where I build the grow room. The ground is a constant 52 degrees or so. The thought is to dig a trench and bury some pipe, then draw air through that pipe. Maybe a group of 2" ridged electrical conduit ganged into an 8" pvc or something. In theory this would cool my intake air. I have no idea how to figure how well it would work though. If it did I could just run a dehumidifier and control temp via fan speed. Ever hear of anything like this?

The trouble with these ideas is they don't go deep enough. Geothermal goes down much further, and most use water as the working fluid. Water carries heat- or cold- much better than air does. If you want to upgrade your cooling beyond ac, look into a heat pump.

Meanwhile, get the basics built. Get the thing going and learn as much as you can.

 

[Swany]

The trouble with these ideas is they don't go deep enough. Geothermal goes down much further, and most use water as the working fluid. Water carries heat- or cold- much better than air does. If you want to upgrade your cooling beyond ac, look into a heat pump.

Meanwhile, get the basics built. Get the thing going and learn as much as you can.

"Think not - Build! Or build not. This is enough thinking." - to paraphrase the little guy with the light stick ;-}

I read here somewhere about coils of copper on fans and running chillers through old car radiators. My local mentor said dig a hole, fill it with rocks and draw air from the bottom of that (here I'd be sucking water if I did that). I put the two thoughts together to come up with underground intakes. I know they would have to be semi deep and I would also loose cfm with greater pipe length. Setting up a 'heat dump' instead of a heat pump loop might do something... 500 to 1000' feet of coolant filled tubing underground pumped through a radiator on my room intakes? Opps - still thinking. I'll leave all this for Phase II and work on getting the room running first ;-} Or I will when I'm done here at work. Thx -

 

[Swany]

Meanwhile, get the basics built. Get the thing going and learn as much as you can.

I just went back and read your bullets on setting up chilling. Thanks for all you share here ttystikk. I hope to get so tricky in the future, though my room is in the shop which is detached from the house. In the future I will have a toasty shop to work in over the winter however!

 

[aSilvrHaze]

Thanks TTS - though you're adding costs to my gig ;-} I am in the damp part - the Capital. I'm drawing air from a lightly wooded area so it's always cooler than urban air but I'll plan on adding a/c.

Here's a crazy thought. I got unused space behind the shop where I build the grow room. The ground is a constant 52 degrees or so. The thought is to dig a trench and bury some pipe, then draw air through that pipe. Maybe a group of 2" ridged electrical conduit ganged into an 8" pvc or something. In theory this would cool my intake air. I have no idea how to figure how well it would work though. If it did I could just run a dehumidifier and control temp via fan speed. Ever hear of anything like this?

I just found the link to this site here at the Farm a few days ago and I've been thinking about it ever since. Look through the links on the left side of the page, "Geothermal Energy", & "Geoair Energy". Talks about exactly what you're talking about.... link

 

[ttystikk]

I just found the link to this site here at the Farm a few days ago and I've been thinking about it ever since. Look through the links on the left side of the page, "Geothermal Energy", & "Geoair Energy". Talks about exactly what you're talking about.... link

Wow, great link! Loads of good geothermal info here-

Changes my outlook on Geo-air, which I think was something the OP was considering. I guess it could work, as long as he could bury his pipe between 4 and 10ft below grade.

 

[Swany]

Have backhoe, will dig! My neighbor had a big John Deer and I think he would be willing to dig me a big trench. First though I'm going to run lights at night and hope to make it through the summer with reasonable temps.

Thanks for the post Haze!

 

[Swany]

Swamp Cooler vs. AC...

A friend just added two lights in his flower 'room' (more like a tent made out of panda film in an old shop). This makes 6 lights and gets close to maxing power for the shop. The 6 lights certainly max heat for the room, he's getting up to 90 degrees and it's not even hot here yet in WA.

I don't think there is enough juice left to add a medium sized window style AC system to the intake on the room, which was my first thought. I then thought about adding a swamp cooler. At Burning Man we put a swamp cooler on a 30' geodesic dome and in the desert that knocked the dome down 10 to 15 degrees, but western WA is no desert. Our weather here is humid, one article I read puts us as the 2nd most humid city in the states, average around 75%.

I know from info at the start of this thread that each light generates about 400o btu so he's added 8000 to the room (mag ballasts outside the tent but still in the shop), and a medium window unit AC at around 10,000 btu would cover that, but I have no idea how to transfer those numbers to a swamp cooler. Providing a swamp cooler would make a difference.

Is a swamp cooler going to make a difference in this climate? Since the air in the room is much warmer and a bit more dry would it make sense to suck air out of the room, run it through a swamp cooler and then send it back? Is it silly to even think of swamp coolers out here?

thx -

 

[ttystikk]

The only way a swamp cooler will help is when humidity its firmly below 60%; the further below, the better. If the shop warms up enough to bring the rh down to that range a swamper will help, but really all you're doing is raising the dewpoint in an enclosed space, a dead end.

You might try venting along with the swamp cooler; push air into the shop through the swamper and then suck the hot air out the top of the shop, someplace along the roofline.

In a high humidity climate like yours, choose either ac or heat pump; a chiller would make things too damp.

 

[fishwhistle]

Check this out swany,they told this dude it couldnt be done and he showed them!
http://www.citrusinthesnow.com/index.html

 

[Swany]

Thx TTY. If we can find a cheap used unit we might try playing it in conjunction with venting the building. What I realized in reading your comments is I have really not checked out the whole space and what's around it. The shop is at the back corner of a large parking lot/building complex so there is pavement all around, but I think there may be trees or large bushes behind it. If we could pull air from the back through the building (I don't think it's done that way) that may be cooler. I'll take a closer look at the whole arrangement tonight.

I checked out that site FW - way cool (pun intended ;-). Silver Haze posted it earlier in this thread. At my buddies place he can't go digging around, nor is he willing to put that much effort and money into a rental space (though he's got 30 plants in there...) On the other hand, i'm going to dig a deep trench before I make an addition to my room and run intake pipes through the nice cool earth. I even have a fair size creek running close to my room. I've thought of pumping cold water from that through heat exchangers of some sort. The creek is about 30 feet down a slop however, gotta look at power required to lift it along with pumping it through exchangers or coils.

Nice to reach out and have a hand so readily available!

 

[ttystikk]

Thx TTY. If we can find a cheap used unit we might try playing it in conjunction with venting the building. What I realized in reading your comments is I have really not checked out the whole space and what's around it. The shop is at the back corner of a large parking lot/building complex so there is pavement all around, but I think there may be trees or large bushes behind it. If we could pull air from the back through the building (I don't think it's done that way) that may be cooler. I'll take a closer look at the whole arrangement tonight.

I checked out that site FW - way cool (pun intended ;-). Silver Haze posted it earlier in this thread. At my buddies place he can't go digging around, nor is he willing to put that much effort and money into a rental space (though he's got 30 plants in there...) On the other hand, i'm going to dig a deep trench before I make an addition to my room and run intake pipes through the nice cool earth. I even have a fair size creek running close to my room. I've thought of pumping cold water from that through heat exchangers of some sort. The creek is about 30 feet down a slop however, gotta look at power required to lift it along with pumping it through exchangers or coils.

Nice to reach out and have a hand so readily available!

Use the creek! The 30 foot rise is easily doable, and additional power to push through exchangers won't be needed. The creek will provide far more cooling than anything else, all but unlimited capacity. Shit, now you tell me!

 

[Swany]

Ha! I guess I use the creek then ;-} I dream of using the creek to produce power but have not taken the time to research the right gear to generate without harming the creek or the area right around it. Last year I watched salmon swim up, right through my back yard!

My clones are about a week away from needing a better home, all the gear is on the way (though horticulturalsource.com is scaring me - bought ballasts there and now the website is down...). I'm in a mad dash to get everything ready and will soon know if I need supplemental cooling or not...

 

[ttystikk]

Ha! I guess I use the creek then ;-} I dream of using the creek to produce power but have not taken the time to research the right gear to generate without harming the creek or the area right around it. Last year I watched salmon swim up, right through my back yard!

My clones are about a week away from needing a better home, all the gear is on the way (though horticulturalsource.com is scaring me - bought ballasts there and now the website is down...). I'm in a mad dash to get everything ready and will soon know if I need supplemental cooling or not...

Now is your chance to draw useful energy from your creek, and even better, to draw it in the form you need without the need for conversion! As long as your creek temp stays below 70 f, you'll be able to use it to cool everything from rooms to rdwc systems.

Use a closed loop water based heat exchange system; pump the warm water through a heat exchanger positioned underwater and across the current, and then run the cold water through air to water exchangers in each room. In addition, you can cool your rdwc systems with a cooling coil and even dehumidify.

 

[ftwendy]

Anybody ever used a Therminator to cool any of their equipment? I have one laying around from my brewing exploits... it was amazing how fast it cooled the 160 degree wort down to 70 with just cool tap water flowing in the opposite direction. Kind of magic.

 

[ttystikk]

Anybody ever used a Therminator to cool any of their equipment? I have one laying around from my brewing exploits... it was amazing how fast it cooled the 160 degree wort down to 70 with just cool tap water flowing in the opposite direction. Kind of magic.

If your tap water remains below 65 f, you should still be able to use it.

 

[ftwendy]

If your tap water remains below 65 f, you should still be able to use it.

What about using it in conjunction with a chiller? I've never used an active chiller -- is the therminator redundant if it was used with one?

 

[ttystikk]

What about using it in conjunction with a chiller? I've never used an active chiller -- is the therminator redundant if it was used with one?

I've never used a therminator, but from context it sounds potentially wasteful; it passes tapwater past the target fluid, aka wort in brewing... and that tapwater then just goes down the drain? Also, this unit is really designed for a different application than ours, as it's made to cool a small amount of liquid very quickly. By contrast, we're just trying to maintain a given temp of a comparatively large volume of water.

If you really want to capture and use the cold temp of the water entering your house, you would need a water chilling system with a reservoir. You would then place a cold coil inside that res tank and pass all incoming water through it. This way, anytime a member of the house uses water for anything, it passes through the reservoir and cools your water first.

This is also the best setup for a chiller; a completely separate water system that goes through the chiller to a res tank and then is passed through Icebox heat exchangers in the rooms where you need cooling. This way, no water gets wasted. In addition, you're not passing nutrient solution through your chiller, something I never recommend.

 

[ftwendy]

Bueno. I get it Tty... thanks man!

I guess the therminator gets relegated to the zymurgy box, to wait for another brew day. :)

 

[ftwendy]

Do you know anybody that's actually using their gray water to chill their cooling res?