Trouble with keepin Temps in check

[Capfan]

Cap's goodness is much more concentrated. Getting what you pay for and stuff...

I wonder how you would compare it to a home brewed, if there is a difference , OR if one is better then the other..

Heisenberg Tea

1.) The parts required:
$6 - MycoGrow™ Soluble mycorrhizal fungi mix
Fungi Perfecti: MycoGrow™ mycorrhizal products

- Botanicare ZHO mycorrhizal fungi mix
Botanicare Zho Root Inoculant

- General Hydroponics Ancient Forest earthworm castings
General Hydroponics: Ancient Forest

 

[ttystikk]

I wonder how you would compare it to a home brewed, if there is a difference , OR if one is better then the other..

Heisenberg Tea

1.) The parts required:
$6 - MycoGrow™ Soluble mycorrhizal fungi mix
Fungi Perfecti: MycoGrow™ mycorrhizal products

- Botanicare ZHO mycorrhizal fungi mix
Botanicare Zho Root Inoculant

- General Hydroponics Ancient Forest earthworm castings
General Hydroponics: Ancient Forest

The best way to get this info would simply be to ask Capulator, he's on the Farm regularly and is our resident expert on microbiological flora & fauna and their activity relative to our hobby.

Yes, he's the guy who started OGBiowar .com- but I've never seen him knowingly give inaccurate info, even when it puts competitor's products in a better light than his own.

 

[Mr.Sputnik]

I run a dead res with 34% peroxide at 2ml a gallon. I can get away with water temps in the low 70's but once it breaks about 73 constant or peak above 75 degrees the whole thing will crash. I don't have a chiller but my buckets don't break 70 now that I got a big ass ac unit (24,500btu window unit for a 1500 cu ft room). My buckets sit right on an exposed concrete slab in a walk out basement. The night temps where I live never break 65 degrees and running my lights at night has kept it cool enough. I don't insulate as the ac helps cool the system off in the day when the plants are on the night cycle. Temps in the winter don't drop too low either as the water cooled jackets circulating on the night cycle (daytime for us) give off enough heat to keep the temps in the 60's. You would run into heat soak issues if you tried to run a system like mine in a real below ground level concrete basement.

Do you guys run humates like GH diamond nectar? I have noticed better growth from using humates. It works great in a cloner too.

 

[ttystikk]

I run a dead res with 34% peroxide at 2ml a gallon. I can get away with water temps in the low 70's but once it breaks about 73 constant or peak above 75 degrees the whole thing will crash. I don't have a chiller but my buckets don't break 70 now that I got a big ass ac unit (24,500btu window unit for a 1500 cu ft room). My buckets sit right on an exposed concrete slab in a walk out basement. The night temps where I live never break 65 degrees and running my lights at night has kept it cool enough. I don't insulate as the ac helps cool the system off in the day when the plants are on the night cycle. Temps in the winter don't drop too low either as the water cooled jackets circulating on the night cycle (daytime for us) give off enough heat to keep the temps in the 60's. You would run into heat soak issues if you tried to run a system like mine in a real below ground level concrete basement.

Do you guys run humates like GH diamond nectar? I have noticed better growth from using humates. It works great in a cloner too.

So the AC system runs 24/7? How many lights/watts does it keep cool? That's the same tonnage output as my chiller, also a window mount unit (in fact, ChillKing units are all based on similarly sized Frigidaire AC systems, fyi). My chiller cools 8kW of lights all day, and another 8kW at night, plus dehuey (AC does this TOO well, it seems), plus chilling all of my RDWC (multiple systems) all the time. The only time it fails to keep up is when daytime temps here exceed 85. 90+ forces me to shut off 2kW out of 8kW until the heat of the day passes.

In winter, not only does the unit keep up- but I drag it inside from my windowsill and pull all the air into the house through the same room. The chiller heats the air to 80+ and that air heats my full sized suburban house all winter, UNassisted, save for local low temp extremes. Last winter, after three days of temps never climbing above 20f and diving to -5f at night, we broke down and ran the furnace. For 30 minutes. The cold snap broke the next day and I never needed the furnace again...

 

[babyhughie586]

I run a dead res with 34% peroxide at 2ml a gallon. I can get away with water temps in the low 70's but once it breaks about 73 constant or peak above 75 degrees the whole thing will crash. I don't have a chiller but my buckets don't break 70 now that I got a big ass ac unit (24,500btu window unit for a 1500 cu ft room). My buckets sit right on an exposed concrete slab in a walk out basement. The night temps where I live never break 65 degrees and running my lights at night has kept it cool enough. I don't insulate as the ac helps cool the system off in the day when the plants are on the night cycle. Temps in the winter don't drop too low either as the water cooled jackets circulating on the night cycle (daytime for us) give off enough heat to keep the temps in the 60's. You would run into heat soak issues if you tried to run a system like mine in a real below ground level concrete basement.

Do you guys run humates like GH diamond nectar? I have noticed better growth from using humates. It works great in a cloner too.

i personally just run capulators bennie tea at 1 cup tea per 5 gallons of water... I will never go back to a sterile system, i feel much more comfortable especially in summer when temps get a little warm.. check out my thread in caps forum (mis titled) for my current run using his bennies in my UC...

 

[ttystikk]

Here is a totally different way to approach the same problem; aquaponics. These systems typically run at their best in the low to mid 70s F, which is as much as 20 degrees warmer than many people target for their RDWC. Being a hybrid between classic hydroponics and fishkeeping, where the effluent of one system is a prime input for the other, the ultimate source of nutrients for the plants becomes... high quality fish food, processed by both the fish themselves and an active living biofiltration system. The water recycles continuously, only needing replacement should salinity climb (so top off with RO to maximize this interval).

I'm thinking very hard about using a system much like this to not only feed my plants and grow fish, but also as a temperature management system for both my op AND my home. Almost a kind of fishy/planty/grow op-py heat pump, to reduce or replace the need for either external source heating (gas for house, electric tank heater for fish) or compressor based cooling (AC) for house and growrooms.

If it's possible, it would replace expensive hydro store nutes with fish food. It would keep all of the water for both plants, biobeds and fish temperature managed without the need for chiller- except perhaps in extreme circumstances- and because I plan to dump as much heat from the bloom rooms into the water as I can, I will reduce (and during favorable weather conditions, eliminate) the need for water chilling/actively cooling the op and eliminate the need to heat an outdoor fish tank throughout a Colorado winter. Save money on cooling, save money on heating, save money on nutrients... and free fish.

 

[Mr.Sputnik]

ttystikk, 12kw of vertical light for a 9 plant system. They're water cooled with fresca sol water jackets, I'm not running bare bulbs and that's the only way I'm getting away with it. So you can make a chiller from an AC unit? Are there any DIY threads on that? I would be very interested in doing that. I just looked at my water temps and it hit 73 today as the recirculating pump stopped from a clogged screen. I just restocked everything for my next run and particulates of hydroton clogged up my screen filter, this always happens for the first couple of days as the system is settling in. Even if I clean the crap out of my hydroton just moving it around to transplant will create enough dust to clog a filter. I'm thinking I need a chiller now, even after dropping the AC down to 60 I don't think it's quite going to cut it. It's about 71 now after fixing the clog and giving a few hours but it's too close for comfort. The lights are run into a 550 gallon reservoir which is two IBC totes plumbed together. I installed passive heating with PEX pipe in my guest room and living room that uses the warm water from the lights to heat the house up in the winter. I hear ya with the furnace. My neighbor burns 8 cords for the winter and I burn maybe one cord. It will hit -30 up here though. I would love to hit my place with a thermal cam. My neighbor ask me if my pipes froze and I smiled and said "Nope!".

hughie, I hear you with the live res. I could never get it to work correctly though and after 2 years of trying I have thrown in the towel. I'm sticking with what I can do well and my plants are MUCH happier with the dead res. The plants always took a crap about 2 weeks from finishing due to root issues with the live res. I attributed some of the problem to using purple max with an aerator but that wasn't all of the issue. I tried everything under the sun and could never fix the problem. I don't push the ppm's real hard in my dead res, I keep them under 800 and it all seems to come together nicely. I use a pretty simple recipe of GH maxi powder fert, pro-tect silica, maxi crop seaweed, GH diamond nectar, cal-mag, and I'll finish with snow storm, kool bloom powder, and molasses (I know it's not supposed to do a damn thing with dead res but it does somehow).

 

[ttystikk]

WOW! Now I see why you chose your nickname... I'm impressed as all get out!

Sounds to me like you need more passive cooling. I'm surprised you couldn't make a live system with. Was it a true RDWC?

More details, please- I'm planning my aquaponics system now, every data point helps!

 

[Mr.Sputnik]

Yes it's true RDWC. It's a home made system utilizing 27 gallon tuff boxes from home depot. Each plant gets a 27 gallon container and my control box is 27 gallons as well (I think the undercurrent guys call it an epicenter but it's the same thing). All plumbed together using 3" uniseals and 3" pvc piping. A danner 1800 gph mag drive pump, commercial air 7 air pump, 8" air stone discs, 10" net pots, and a riser made from a cut down bucket. a float valve hooked up to my house plumbing as well.

As far as the lighting is concerned, if you're thinking of going water cooled I can help talk you through a "no-flow, no-go" setup that shuts your lights off if your cooling pump fails. Mine is a 1hp spa pump plumbed into 2" PVC that breaks down into 1/2" PEX at a manifold and then back into 2" to dump into the system.

I have had pressurization issues with my two IBC totes being plumbed together. If I could do it over again I would get a bigger reservoir that was not daisy chained. Just one big ass 800 gallon reservoir. 50 gallons per light is what the manufacturer recommends to adequately cool the lights but that's really cutting it close. 75 gallons per light is more like it.

I dunno what else you want to know about the system but just ask me specifics and I'll get back at you. I can post up more info on my grow in a separate thread, I feel like I'm getting off topic and I don't want to hijack this thread.

 

[ttystikk]

Not off topic if we're talking cooling. How do you chill your RDWC and water cooling circuits? Do you run chillers?

 

[Mr.Sputnik]

I don't run a chiller. My temps have not gone out of range until today when my pump clogged. I used to have an issue with hydroton finding it's way into the mag-drive recirculation pump so I built in a filter with a shutoff valve and screw off access cap. It's basically a PVC tee threaded in the middle with a sink screen inside of it and an access cap so I can shut off the water and clean it as it would otherwise start dumping the system since the filter is below water line.I usually suck it out with a wet-dry vac. If you don't have a wet-dry vac, go buy one. I think it's a necessary grow tool. It makes it really easy to clean up a hydroton spill in a flood table.

I had to buy an AC about 2 months ago but before that I had no AC, it was all air cooling. From what I have read in grow books they recommend enough air flow to dump your room of air in 2 minutes. This is wrong, you want it to dump all the air in less than a minute. For example, my room is 14x16x7=1568 cubic feet. You'll want a minimum of 1600 cfm pulling through your room and you can get away without an AC if you have ventilated hoods and your outside night temps are staying in the 60's or low 70's. It was cool enough when I had ventilated hoods to keep my water temps under 70. The concrete slab would stay cool through the day and my water temps never fluctuated too much. I had to run two 400 watt aquarium heaters in the winter to keep the temps up. The heaters won't go below 68 so water temp was typically kept right around 68-70.

Now since I switched to liquid cooled lights the room and the slab gets heat soaked from the light cooling water. I don't need a heater in the winter anymore but now I need an AC in the summer to keep the reservoir water temps in check. I set the AC to 60 and it helps cool off the light cooling reservoir when the water is circulating through the jackets on the night cycle (the manufacturer recommends running the cooling pump for the lights continuously but I give it a break for a few hours on the night cycle to let the motor cool down). The light cooling water hits about 90-92 degrees. You can grab the jacket and it won't burn you, kinda weird to do it for the first time. I have had plants so close to the lights that they bleached and didn't burn. I do have a strange situation where the water temp is warmer than the room temp now but it all stays in the 60's as long as the water is circulating.

I did find that my cooling fans (2 8" HO can fans with carbon filters) were running almost continuously with the water cooled lighting setup. When the outside temps started to get above 40 degrees the cooling fans were on all the time.

If I can make it through to September without the RDWC water temps busting the low 70's then I'll be good to go without a RDWC water chiller for my reservoir but I'm not holding my breath on that.

I do not have a chiller for my water cooling reservoir for my lights. It is "supposedly" a large enough volume of water that it doesn't need a chiller but I think the volume of cooling water I have is definitely on the small side. I built an addition on the house around the containers so it's going to be a real bitch to swap them out for something larger and whatever container I replace it with will have to fit inside. Ugh..maybe I can just get a big ass JBJ chiller and not have to deal with it because it's fine for 9 out of 12 months.

 

[ttystikk]

Fabulous... try either a water fountain in your light reservoir, or blasting air into it hot tub jet pump style. Either of these will drastically increase heat transfer between air and water, and warm water like yours will readily support evaporative cooling. I bet a good system will knock at least ten degrees off that res temp. I would run said fountain outside. Run the AC unit directly in the bloom room, I feel it's effectiveness is diminished anywhere else... unless I didn't follow you.

 

[Mr.Sputnik]

ttystikk, thanks for the idea. I'll be hooking up a few troughs on top of my shed to dissipate some of the heat from the light reservoir. I need a chiller too, AC isn't cutting it in the rdwc reservoir.