Water Cooled Growers Unite!

[Rocky Mtn Squid]

You want to maintain at least a 10-15*F temp differential, so a 75*F room should get roughly 60*F water.

My advice would be to bury the tubing in a trench to keep it underground (rent a trencher to get it a few feet deep at least) and then backfill it. Tubing sitting on the surface would indeed get too warm and would be prone to more damage. If you have gophers make sure your lines are chew-proof, I think they make an aluminum-sleeved- PEX line now that oughtta work but I'd do some homework on it to be safe.

The piping you're talking is called Kitec. It's not made anymore because of all the lawsuits and problem's it caused after end user's installed it.

You can buy triple lined pex piping @ Home Depot. It's red in color, and has some special anti-corrosive lining in it. It's specifically made for hydronic applications.

To have any kind of cooling effect, you're water has to be 20F colder than your ambient room temp.

 

[Lazyman]

Well that sucks, i doubt the lining would be much good if a critter has to gnaw through the pex to get to it. I've had success wrapping hoses in tinfoil before burying too, but it's a pain in the ass. Stupid gophers.

 

[Rednick]

Put a bunch of radiators in circuit?
Then you would only have to protect the feed/drain lines?

 

[Lazyman]

Ah maybe a hybrid system, bury a 55g drum, and drop in as big an aluminum radiator as you can fit into each one, daisy-chain them together so the water in each doesn't move, but pass the water through radiator after radiator. SUmmitracing.com sells some pretty cheap universal aluminum radiators, I bet a few of them with a few barrels of cold water would go a long way.

 

[watercooled@]

My head hurts,
I just had an idea.

RE Geothermal backyard:
What if instead of running a coil you ran the tubes into plate heat exchangers or radiators. I am assuming the conentration of surface area would be one obstacle to overcome, but could it be a way to use less material (and perhaps cheaper material) to achieve the same Btu capacity?

Okay, maybe cheaper material.
I guess surface area is surface area regardless of shape.

Drop Geo thermal, it's too expensive period. Sorry, that's reality.

whats up guys im in the final process of planning my 4k vertical open bulb garage grow. im wondering if a 1 hp chiller with a 8" icebox on a recirculating 532 cfm fan/scrubber, acting as a/c would be sufficient cooling? thanks

No.

How cold do we think the river needs to be. I know the bottom is cooler if I had to guess maybe 58 degrees at the bottom. I'm afraid it would warm up traveling the 75 feet. How warm would be acceptable? Anybody have a clue?

What hs says down here is what most people agree on.

You want to maintain at least a 10-15*F temp differential, so a 75*F room should get roughly 60*F water.
...

...
To have any kind of cooling effect, you're water has to be 20F colder than your ambient room temp.

Rocky Mtn is closer to my experience. I would venture to say 20-25F colder.

 

[FireOrchid]

Yea in the near future I'll be burying the res Killer thread toohigh

 

[bipotato]

Uhoh, now reality & experience strikes.

Don't worry, I'll be waiting with the "I told you so".

If you don't have access to very cheap cold water, you're just wasting your time and money.

 

[toohighmf]

watercooled@ if the answer is just "No." there must be a right one. if a 1hp chillking wont cool 4kw w 1 icebox, what will? does he need a bigger chiller or more iceboxes?

 

[toohighmf]

Uhoh, now reality & experience strikes.

Don't worry, I'll be waiting with the "I told you so".

If you don't have access to very cheap cold water, you're just wasting your time and money.

here we go...

and we were getting along so well. tisk tisk.

why must you naysay w/o proof?

please, man. I asked nicely. if you are not speaking from experience and want to debate the economics, efficiency, performance, etc of watercooling, start a thread! otherwise, please don't clutter the thread. thanks.

 

[Rednick]

Almost tooo civil, TooHigh.

If you price out the increases in electricity costs over time, the costs of replacements chillers every so many years, and the added benefit of having extra electricy for more lighting...at some point there will be a breakeven with geothermal and chillers.

It is just a matter of what are the values or combination of values for the drivers in the equation to get there.

Also, geothermal is most interesting for the STEALTH factor...
Should I ever end up in Pennsylvannia or England or Florida or Kentucky then I would definately go with the extra expense to save on electricity. (propane tank to run, stove, waterheater, dryer, ect.)

Sometimes the cost is not just in $$$.

 

[LoudBlunts]

watercooled@ if the answer is just "No." there must be a right one. if a 1hp chillking wont cool 4kw w 1 icebox, what will? does he need a bigger chiller or more iceboxes?

while i have seen some fresca sol done vertically, i really dont think iceboxes and vertical should mingle/ go together imho.... however i think with a step up in chiller size and an air handler plumbed from chiller.... that would be better in his case

 

[bipotato]

...STEALTH factor...
Sometimes the cost is not just in $$$.

I agree, that's why I concealed my split units indoors. You can't tell there's shit going on inside, from the outside. It's close to silent. And while you guys are spinning your tires just talking about it, I'm already there. Time to market / deployment time is important, too.

 

[toohighmf]

you can make your own air handler from a fan, duct, iceboxes, manifolds, & pump to your chiller/res.

 

[watercooled@]

watercooled@ if the answer is just "No." there must be a right one. if a 1hp chillking wont cool 4kw w 1 icebox, what will? does he need a bigger chiller or more iceboxes?

Here was his question:

whats up guys im in the final process of planning my 4k vertical open bulb garage grow. im wondering if a 1 hp chiller with a 8" icebox on a recirculating 532 cfm fan/scrubber, acting as a/c would be sufficient cooling? thanks

You basically want to make an airhandler with 532 CFM and an 8" IB on a 1 HP chiller. You are not saying you want to cool each light with an icebox. I assume you want to put the scrubber with a fan on top of it and an IB on top of that with VERY cold water going through it.

I'm not 100% sure on how much you would need to make this work, but if I was going to do something like that I would look at a full blown air handler rated at 1.5 - 2 tons for 4k + supporting equipment.

If you don't have access to very cheap cold water, you're just wasting your time and money.

Ground water for the watercooled setup I did was around 68-70 degree, so I don't think you need VERY cold water.

while i have seen some fresca sol done vertically, i really dont think iceboxes and vertical should mingle/ go together imho.... however i think with a step up in chiller size and an air handler plumbed from chiller.... that would be better in his case

I'm not sure it wouldn't work with IB on cool tubes or even HTG's 8" cool tubes, but I would try it. I can't pin point why, just doesn't jive to me. I agree with a bigger chiller and an air handler with the cooling coils fed from the *bigger chiller*

 

[Lazyman]

Watercooled@, since it's the internet and folks have a wide variety of backgrounds, I'll ask the following without trying to sound impertinent, but you could be anything from a chiller manufacturer to someone who knows nothing, or anything in between.

Can you tell us about some of the watercooling setups you've done? Chillers, geo, exchangers, pumps.

No disrespect intended, but I find a bit of credentials help lend weight to suggested solutions, or direct someone to look elsewhere for details.

Thanks,
LM

 

[Rednick]

Drop Geo thermal, it's too expensive period. Sorry, that's reality.

'Splain yourself fool!

I am with the Grow Nazi on this one.

Make me a believer!
Otherwise, scram.

 

[Lazyman]

Just to explain how to do geo on the cheap:

Horizontal trenches 100' long, 10' deep and 3' wide ea
Flat slinkies of PEX down each

Will give roughly 12000 BTU of cooling per trench.

Do two of them and connect to a few buried 55g reservoirs, daisy-chained to a 3HP chiller (for supplemental cooling.)

I'd put that at roughly 65000BTU of chilling, counting the reservoirs as adding a few K btu themselves.

I have free access to a backhoe and 2 acres of land (in the shade even) do to with as I please. So my shopping list would be:

A few k feet of pex
3 hp chiller
2 pumps
3 reservoirs
1-2 heat exchangers (1 per room)

I put that right around $10K. I've done the math on the energy savings and it looks like a 3-5 year payoff, due to a couple unpredictable variables.

With that said, I don't ever grow in one place that long, and geo doesn't move. I can get a 5-ton AC for half that and take it with me from spot to spot. Sucks about the energy use, but that's the price for going green and saving energy. Kinda like solar.

Now a swimming pool, pond, lake or river would be nice. Anything that doesn't have to run a compressor in the winter months is a plus in my book.

 

[watercooled@]

I'm currently making a living designing and building medical grow rooms.

I have designed several water cooled rooms. MY preference is ALWAYS stealth. I like water cooled, self contained A/C's with bare bulbs and rock and roll.

I use FULL automation with remote controls in any room which that I'm expected to help manage and have used simple systems like the agrowtek, to more adjustable systems like growtronix and a custom PITA X10 system

A customer recently cut me loose and said he wanted to go back to having fun and let me try doing a full on 12k water cooled room. The result was several months of playing with chillers, cooling towers and the final and MOST efficient configuration a well fed water cooled 12k watt room. We have 2 16k BTU A/C's in the room. Only 1 A/C is needed to keep the room at 81 and both A/C's keep the room as low as 74 with lights on. No A/C's keep the room at 84-85 with full grown ladies.

So... I have designed a room that used NO Chiller, NO A/C and keeps temps under 85 with CO2 and dehumidifiers.

Next post will have a couple pics of construction and construction in progress of rooms I've done. I'll see if I can post up a coule sketches of designs... you can find a couple posts with more pics on RIU.

Mind you... I was asked to join this thread by name in an earlier post by the OP.

 

[Lazyman]

It's cool, have you done any rooms with an air handler/heat exchanger besides iceboxes? Not remotely interested in all the plumbing and condensation problems from multiple small units, when a big one is far simpler.

Do you usually provide double the chilling BTU's to the exchanger BTU's?

 

[watercooled@]

test

test

My watercooled room... 12,000 watts, no A/C, no Chiller with CO2 and dehumidifiers... maintanes 85.