Mini Split AC vs Watercooling

[flyer81]

Ive poked my head into a few threads and I havent seen a discussion of a particular thing. I am setup doing watercooling with an 8" icebox and a 1/2hp water chiller. It works well to keep my temperatures down. I am running this 24 hours a day and it gives me a desired temp drop at night when my lights are off and keeps temps under control when the lights are on. One of the things I have noticed though is that my dehumidifer is staying on constantly as well. Ive got to be using a significant amount of power more than I should be I feel.

So I am wondering... I read that there are a lot of benefits to doing watercooling but... wouldnt being able to have dehumidification and cooling in the same unit hanging on the wall ultimately end up using less power than would a dehumidifier and 1/2 hp water cooler would together? Am I missing something here?

 

[surfguitar]

You can catch the water off your icebox to get free distilled water and dehumidify your room if you aren't already.

How many watts you running? 1/2hp isn't that big of a chiller, the bigger the better for these setups so the chiller doesn't have to work so hard.

 

[Coconutz]

Ya water cooling is ridiculous!
Why would you want to run a dehumidifier during lights on?
Can you just run more lights that arent cooled?

 

[Asslover]

Down here in the 'dirty south we all use mini splits...

 

[flyer81]

I dont know but Im not getting any condensation on the icebox right now. I have my chiller set to 60 deg. Between my veg and flower space I am runnin 1x 1000w (closed loop cooling) and 12 bulbs of T5 lighting. The only other thing putting heat into the room are the fans. I have 2 circulation fans, 2 inline fans moving air between the rooms, and 1 x 10" elicent centrifugal fan moving the air for the closed loop cooling on my hoods. The ballasts are all outside of the room.

 

[the gnome]

Down here in the 'dirty south we all use mini splits...

 

[budleydoright]

If you bring your water temps on your chiller down below the dew point temp, your ice boxes will start to condense water and remove moisture from your room. Of course your hoses will also, be carefull not to have cold water dripping on your girls.

you could do this to your dehuey as well.

This is a heater core from auto zone tapped off a chilled rez.

But to your original question, yes watercooling does ad a layer of complexity that pretty much makes any increase in effeciency a wash.
I went from a full on WC to the exact opposite, all open hood so I could focus on the crop instead of the system.

 

[flyer81]

...so I could focus on the crop instead of the system.

And that right there is why I posted this. Ive been focusing so much on my system and I feel like I have a good system now but the main problem now is humidity. And now that I look at my system I realize I would have been better served with a mini-split. But I really want to be done with fiddling with my system, and as you said, focus on the crop .

Im 2 weeks in on my first crop with my new system that has been 3 months in the works . All RDWC buckets under 2000w. Everything is looking good but I realize now that I am using a massive amount of power. More than I should.

Running constantly 24 hours I have: dehumidifier, 1/2 hp water chiller, 1025 gph water pump for chiller, 8" can fan for icebox, 800gph pump to pump water to icebox, Ecoair 5 air pump for all systems, 2 6bulb T5s for veg system, 3x 18" circulation fans, 2x 8" incline fans moving air between my rooms. All of that is running 24 hours a day.

 

[Jnugg]

Minisplit for the win.

Watercooled lights are just as inefficient as aircooled lights when you're talking about lumen loss.

Aircooled hoods are said to have a 10%-15% lumen loss...I would imagine it's the same or worse with watercooled setups.


With that said (and I know you aren't doing vert,but) bare bulbs rule,all else drool.

 

[Coconutz]

Switch to coco
All that runs during lights on are lights,fans and AC
Dehuey kicks in after lights out

 

[barefootseeds]

go with mini splits.

i ran two 5 ton water cooled AC and my water bill was $4000.

never again, huge waste of clean water and money.

 

[Jnugg]

And maybe try coco hempy buckets fir hydro growth without all the cost of running chillers,pumps,etc.

 

[budleydoright]

Yup, it's easy to overcomplicate this shit. You should have seen my WC grow with fresca sols. Got to admit, it was sexy when it was all new and shiney. Very quite and stealthy. But the maintainence, redundant systems, safety checks. Always cleaning shit. I got tired of it all and went straight open hood, AC.

 

[flyer81]

I guess this is part of the learning curve. My room is staying in the ideal temperature range. But im using a lot of power to do it.