Water Cooled Growers Unite!

[ajc0k]

i love water cooling yea it's pimp, but it's definitely not the most efficient way in general imho.it is the most efficient in a sealed room without a doubt, versus a/c.. but just major exhaust with passive intake is the way to go in terms of efficiency imho, if the temp in the area you live is in doesn't get above like 85 degrees on the daily. i'm cooling a 4000 watt bare bulb grow with 2 vortex's, thats around ~360 watts total, but running 24/7. when i run the lights at night it's around 75 degrees with all the lights on

 

[Marleyville]

the exhuast sounds alot more efficient. the idea of blasting the smell all over my yard scares me.

 

[stickykool]

Hey I'm just getting more involved with ICmag. Have been a long time researcher, but no posts. Done a few small grows, but am really looking forward to getting started with a sealed watercooled system so I figure this is a good spot to start posting.

Will get back with photos of setup I'm going to be starting and glad to be part of the community

 

[Marleyville]

i posted some pics of my watercooled setting up hase now on the end of the at what cost chiller thread. itds not letting me post pics. i posted yesterday? id be in for seeing some pics of your setup. its been fun learning lots of stuff.

 

[Marleyville]

got some pics

got some pics

my chiller is fifty foot under my house from the cave and pump and res and all

 

[jaspmf]

i love water cooling yea it's pimp, but it's definitely not the most efficient way in general imho.it is the most efficient in a sealed room without a doubt, versus a/c..

How did you possibly reach this conclusion? Without a doubt? What kinds of data are you extracting these doubtless facts from? I've seen absolutely none (actually, data that points the other direction).

 

[bogfan]

Marley,
Thats a very nice looking setup you have there.

I made a DIY window air conditioning chiller tonite out of a 9000 btu window AC, a 40 quart cooler, an 8" centrifugal fan with a speed controller and an 8" inline icebox exchanger from Hydro Innovations
.
I am not very impressed, it wont even cool the room with my 400 watt fluorescent fixture, even with the water temp at 61 degrees. I think it needs an exchanger with more surface area. The unit was much more effective when it was in the window.

Seems like small ac condensers might be the best way to fabricate a large exchanger for cooling.

 

[huntingbb]

out of curiosity - a rez chiller - it puts this heat back into the air cooling it? What i'm trying to get at is is it a bad idea to put the rez chiller in a room without proper ducting same as an A/C unit?

Marley,
Thats a very nice looking setup you have there.

I made a DIY window air conditioning chiller tonite out of a 9000 btu window AC, a 40 quart cooler, an 8" centrifugal fan with a speed controller and an 8" inline icebox exchanger from Hydro Innovations
.
I am not very impressed, it wont even cool the room with my 400 watt fluorescent fixture, even with the water temp at 61 degrees. I think it needs an exchanger with more surface area. The unit was much more effective when it was in the window.

Seems like small ac condensers might be the best way to fabricate a large exchanger for cooling.

Take the rez down to 20-25 deg f below your room's ambient temps - then see what is the temp of the air coming from the icebox.

 

[Rocky Mtn Squid]

Hydronic Cooled.......

Hydronic Cooled.......

OK.....here it is. I had a few skeptic's -myself included- question whether or not this was possible. I'm not really sure how many grower's have tried this.

During the summer, I encased over 500 feet of 1/2" Pex piping into a 7 inch thick concrete deck that I constructed in my back yard. I then had a guy that I know who specializes in hydronics at his regular day job custom build a manifold of copper piping that would give me enough cold intakes to chill 2 seperate nute reservoir's that each have a 12 foot 3/4" I.D. stainless steel coil, and 3 individual cooling rad's. The hydronic system is pressurized to 12 psi with the green tank. I use a 3 speed hydronic pump that's set on low, and its plugged into a perpertual timer set for 5 min on, 5 min off.

The system utilizes water mixed with a special food grade glycol so that it can never freeze up in the dead of winter. Since my scrubber fan is always on 24/7, I hooked up one of the cooling rad's to it. I also wrapped insulation around all of the copper manifold, as well as the intake and outake hose that carries the glycol.

Heat and cooling problem's are now distant memories. And, most important of all, I have no need for any ridiculously noisey and expensive chiller's that suck back power faster than Jenna Jamieson. The only power I require to run all of this is the small, super efficent german built Grundfos 110V hydronic pump. It's the little red thingy on the top row of the manifold.

Here is a pic of the entire system that I mounted on plywood and then nailed to the wall.

[/IMG]


I don't know what else to say....so far....it works like a charm.....

 

[61-50-7]

I'm actually considering burrying my res outside to keep the res the temp of the earth. approx 50F. Think that will work with a smaller chiller?

Burying a rez will do very little. It will just heat up the ground around it. Marginal benefit over keeping the rez above ground.

What does work is running geothermal 3/4 or 1 in line underground in a coil pattern.

Say you are putting in a paver patio or retaining wall and have the utilities mark the wires and pipes underground so you don't hit them. Then rent a trencher...cheap and effective. A trencher that does a 8 in wide 6 ft deep trench is ideal. Run it slow so the soil is broken up fine so it can be repacked tightly. You'll need about a 30 foot trench per light. Depends on if you have an off cycle or are running a flipbox. If you have an off cycle you can get away with less since the total water volume takes a long time to really heat up and easily cools during the night cycle. If you run a flip box you must carefully calculate how many tons of ac you need and translate it into feet of geothermal line since it must work continuously.

Geothermal line is very cheap relative to buying a chiller and the electricity that goes along with using it. All you need is a big pump and water cooled lights. Don't run more than 4 lights on a string, i.e have two small rez one to pull water from into the lights and the other to drop it back in to the geo system. So use multiply strings between rez's if using more than 4 lights.

If you have a pond or stream nearby a copper heat exchanger is even more efficient since it requires less line to pump through.

Once installed these set ups are about as green as it gets. Just power the pump and put the extra energy into more lights!! You can even bury the main pump outside. Silence

Never seen it done but in theory if you live in a winter climate the heat from your lights would be easily used to heat one's house. Basically the heat exchanger for your home's heat pump is placed in the hot water coming off the lights. It is incredibly efficient for a heat pump to heat a house starting with hot water. So if that were set up a person in a cold climate could heat their house with the grow lights through the coupling of water cooled lights to an existing heat pump. And even more power available to run more lights

 

[toohighmf]

I grow near the ocean in 65f days 38-50F night air temps. I can dig about 5' to hit water, or I can put a couple intake fans and use dustshrooms to filter any pathogens, pollen, mold, mildew bacteria, fungals down to .1 micron with virtually no cfm loss. I use a thermostat to turn those on/off and I still don't exhaust but in the room. I do aircool, so I mounted another dustshroom it the intake of my first hood. Since the addition of the dustshrooms, I don't need to clean my glass, and I have no dust. I ordered my 1k ballasts from the same mfg as quantum and galaxy ballasts, as well as vortex fans from their Chinese mfg. Built my timer from a CAP dummy display gcc-1 and adding a 30 amp relay wired to the trigger cable & outlets. It is a lot cheaper to cool using a couple inline fans than water cooling or AC. RMS put a shroom on the end of that rad!

 

[Marleyville]

Wow, looks like your in for a lifetime of actual efficient watercooling, well done bro. I'm commenting on rocky mountain squids concrete pex watercooling action

 

[TriWingGirl]

My cooling system

My cooling system

I use 2 ice cube chillers one on top of a filter with a blower. The other on the end of my light tube.

Works way better than AC

Check out my thread in the womens forum titles my cooling system here a pic

 

[+Vibes]

thought i would raze this thread rather than filling others with my scribbles
what is the consensus on this here diagram:

for a sealed setup rad2 could be hooked up to the scrubber or placed in a lung. maybe the chiller isn't necessary with a big enough res and low wattage or the ol' icepack shuffle....

what ya water people think?

 

[huntingbb]

thought i would raze this thread rather than filling others with my scribbles
what is the consensus on this here diagram:

for a sealed setup rad2 could be hooked up to the scrubber or placed in a lung. maybe the chiller isn't necessary with a big enough res and low wattage or the ol' icepack shuffle....

what ya water people think?

imho - you have one rad too many

1. chiller+pump -> rez (cools rez - this should likely be pure water due to the temps you'll likely want - 15-25 or 30deg f below ambient)
2. pump+rad+air -> hood+rez (cools hood)
3. pump+rad+rez->nute-rez (cools nute rez)

might get double duty with two rads per pump, but the first one should cool the nutes rez, the second the light, as the light will likely inject more heat into the system than the first rez. Icebox guys recommend 1 item / pump if possible.

3. seems to be superfluous when ambient temps are strictly controlled and around 68-72 or something, as water should eventually equalize with air if not artificially cooled.

 

[RedRain]

These are super popular all over BC, Fraser Valley Green House, Jons Plant Factory sell em.

simple and effective.

2.1 amps draw per fan motor@ 120v

large double, quintuple, triple core radiator = more surface area to dissipate heat

solenoid to only open when there is a call for cooling, so no water is wasted

thermostat with temperate probe for accurately maintaining temps, and controls solenoid.

1 Fan 2 Coils thick = 7000 BTU's
1 Fan 4 Coils thick = 14,000 BTU
2 Fans 3 Coils thick = 24,500 BTU
3 Fans 3 Coils thick = 35,000 BTU
4 Fans 3 Coils thick = 45,000 BTU

these numbers are with 55F input water (tap water from city), the colder your water the greater the BTUs. Its all about surface area and a large rad to pull the heat from the air and transfer it into water. Not to mention they pull moisture from the air, since the water supply is a closed loop system.

you can use a chiller to chill a res of water and feed it to this heat exchanger, but it really defeats the whole purpose of water cooling, efficiency. When you have to deal with the heat and power consumption of a chiller, you are better off using an air-to-air split. Keep it simple!!



water cooling rocks!!!

 

[+Vibes]

thanks for the words team. bb you're right i will probably only need one rad, i am thinking on the larger side of things to be safe. a 16 x 12" 10-pass replacement radiator is about $50 or ~10 at the scrap yard, and a copper coil in the rez for another $10. with a large, well insulated res i can't imagine how hard .25hp chiller would have to work, i don't think very much??? this is all relative to me also, trying to efficiently cool 2-5 600w HID lights.

red when we're talking about efficiency, lets not forget how efficient it already is to heat/cool water, especially vs air. if i had some more money, and wasn't working in a suburban basement, i would definitely invest in a more legit setup, but alas. i'm ok with this dtw tradeoff.... factoring a decent chiller in (score a second hand one on craigs!) this could be setup for 500 or less. maybe a bit more than some rubbish window banger, when summer rolls around it think this wins.

can anyone point me to a place for good heat transfer formulas for air-> h20...

 

[RedRain]

hey vibes

i have done the math with chillers and I have found that using a chiller + a heat exchanger like I posted is not efficient. The chiller draws more power than a comparable air to air split system. The air to air split uses less power, more air flow, roughly same cost per setup. I found that my air to air splits run for less time than a chiller with a water cooled heat exchanger.

I have recently started to play around with chill king chillers. I havent done any bench testing, but I will definitely play around.

They use full AC condenser coils, so they become more efficient at heat transfer. They also sell chillers, that sit in your windows and look like a window shaker, to push all the heat outside. Thats one thing that I didnt not like about using a chiller with a heat exchanger, is that a chiller sucks a ton of power and generates a lot of heat. So you are cooling, but creating a ton of heat at the same time. Also the temperature of the air where the chiller is will greatly effect the BTU its putting out. And chillers create heat, you now have to deal with more heat.

I have played around with water cooling for a bit, but I am always open to new ideas. A great scenario is if you have free water, or you have an artesian well ( a well that is fed from a naturally flowing underground river), or you have a mountain stream. City water will normally be 55f and that is perfect, you will just be using a ton of water. The colder the input water and the larger the rad the more cooling BTU you will have.

+Vibes, you dont need another rad in your rez. You can just dump the water into your rez and let it mix and be chilled with your rez. As long as your rez is sealed like a big cooler, your are jamming! You can also use water wetter with the water to increase the heat transferability a little bit? I think this is what it does..really stoned right now. Collect the condensate and reuse it, its gonna be distilled and really good for your plants!!

 

[+Vibes]

hey red.. the chiller will definitely go out of the room! the water pump on 24/7, chiller when it needs to be, and the fan on always too? maybe the chiller will be working hard.... i need to find some formulas.

 

[g33kdro]

after a few months worth of tweaking (ea not ee) my room is pretty much set up completely sealed. i have a 30pt dehumidifier and a 70pt dehuey to control the rh to a 40-50% range. i have 2800 total light watts. 4 x 600 hps(possibly soon a digilux 600mh?!? thoughts) and one 400 mh for the first week or 2 of my perpetual flower.
i have a JBJ 1.5HP Chiller that gets the job done pretty well. i have it in my attic along with my ballasts... only heat being produced in my room is lights and dehueys.(does anyone have a good link to the same type of radiator used in the iceboxes????) i need to vent my attic a bit better before the summer. because the heat builds up, up there pretty crazy right now. the max fan 8" that i had as my blower fan did not play well with the icebox thermostat because of the difference in motors?! idk... so i changed it out for my old 1500 cfm chicago electric fan from harbor freight... this thing kills the max fan 8 hands down. seems more quiet too and is controllable by my icebox thermostat! wewt! I have a Hydrogen Pro Propane burner and a sentinel chhc-1 controller for ppm and day/night temp and hygro monitoring (anyone successfully retrieved active info from the chhc-1's serial cable output?) i use a manifold for my 6 iceboxes and have a separate closed loop system for my wort chillers that i use as individual res chillers. (stainless steel wort chiller on ebay for 45-50 shipped... for 50 ft of stainless steel..i made 3 of what some companies are selling for 150+ and had a custom height so my tubing doesnt have to go into the water....
i am using a deep freezer for a large res that holds a 55*-59* water... thinking about glycol... but it seems expensive. il take some pics to put this into perspective...
done with my rant for now. back to the room.
Edit: i would like to point out i run my water heater dtw... aka i run the hydrogen pro in a drain to waste form because theheat that it produces can get crazy.