How many of you use chillers?

[Bennyweed1]

With this being my first attempt at hydro I am lucky I started in winter because water temps are perfect.

But with summer on the way and knowing how hot it gets I am trying to decide what to do. I cant run a chiller and a separate a/c for the room, thats to much draw for me.

If you had to choose, cool the room, or cool the reserv, which would you do?

The problem I see with cooling the room is it will then have to be a sealed room so no fresh air exchange can happen. You can inject co2 but then the temps need to be raised which will lead to problems with the water temps.

I dont know which to do.

 

[krunchbubble]

With this being my first attempt at hydro I am lucky I started in winter because water temps are perfect.

But with summer on the way and knowing how hot it gets I am trying to decide what to do. I cant run a chiller and a separate a/c for the room, thats to much draw for me.

If you had to choose, cool the room, or cool the reserv, which would you do?

The problem I see with cooling the room is it will then have to be a sealed room so no fresh air exchange can happen. You can inject co2 but then the temps need to be raised which will lead to problems with the water temps.

I dont know which to do.

Room environment is paramount above all other factors...

I run a sealed room, 80 degrees, no problems with my water temps...

 

[zamzia]

I'm considering a chiller for this summer. Rez temps are usually around 20 Celsius at the moment, but it's winter and fairly cool outside. My flower room has two passive intakes from another room, which in turn draws air from outside, so this can fluctuate. Temps in the rez didn't get crazy last year during summer, but still went up to 23 Celsius. I was putting freezer blocks in morning and evening to try and keep it down, but this soon gets tedious and means I'm tied to getting in and out at particular times around lights on/off which isn't always possible.

 

[stoned-trout]

cool the room ,,,, then hope your freezer can hold lots of 2 liter bottles if it gets too hot.....if room temp is ok res shouldn't be far off IMHO

 

[St3ve]

Room environment is paramount above all other factors...

+1

you gotta get that room dialed in. If you have the room perfect, you can always switch out from DWC into rockwool or coco. If you get the water temp perfect and have a bad environment you will most likely have a bad time.

That said.. high heat doesn't always mean bad product. I have friends who swear by 90F all the time. The highest average temps I have ever ran successfully would be around 87-88F and it was fine.

So I guess. YMMV good luck

 

[overbudjet]

Cooler water carry more O2 inho so i keep mine between 65~67 i do not have a chiller but i have acces to cold water so i use a beer draft cooler( a 75 feet 1/4 ss tube coil )drain to waste (return to river)immerge in bucket in 1 system and a titanium coil(from a dead dehu)in this one.Having ideal environment condition control is also needed if you want to acheive better efficiency.Imho in a sealed room all these factor run thogether water temp-Rh-Co2-room temp-ventilation-etc.I am still in the search of this perfect room LOL!!!

 

[Snype]

I don't run chillers at all in RDWC and have 0 problems. It is a much better idea to get an AC in the room. I like my sealed rooms to be 75 degrees with 600-900 PPM of CO2 up to the last 2-3 weeks then I drop the AC to 60 degrees till finish while lowering the rH at the same time.