Dehumidifier water chiller conversion diy water cooled

Hello everyone. after doing months of research on water cooling a grow space , it's finally to for a first post. This will be long winded.

My grow space:
9.5 by 7 feet with 8 foot ceiling.
2 open hood Nanolux 630 watt CMH lights on light rails covering 1 3.5 foot by 4 foot space a piece.
6 five gallon buckets under each light on there own 15 gallon res'.
1 8k btu window ac mounted through the wall and ducted out to crawlspace.
Panda film.
2 wall mounted circulating fans.
Sealed room with 20lb co2 tank.
Sentinel CCh4 controller.
RDWC soiless using only hydroton in net-pots. Air stones in buckets and res'.
Lighting schedule for veg is GLR witch is the Gas Lantern Routine. This means lights on for 12, off for 5.5, on for 1 and then off for 5.5 again. Been using this schedule for 3 cycles now. Works great (no hermies). Lately been contemplating going 18 on, 6 off.

For starters. The room stayed at 78 - 80 degree with a/c running constantly. RH stayed between 45 and 50%. Res temps 70-74 degrees. Purchased a 6" Icebox (Hydro Innovations) from Amazon for 127$ in hopes of cycling the ac less. The Icebox is a radiator core or " heat exchanger ". You run water, cooler than your ambient room temperature into an inlet and out of an outlet of the radiator ( Icebox ) with a fan pulling air from the room ( so it can be mounted basically anywhere. Mine is up high ) through the fins on the Icebox while the cold water cools the warm air passing across the fins. The idea is awesome however, some DIY Iceboxe ideas are dwarfing the said Icebox. The Icebox didn't do much for my room. At most, it saved the ac from running 5 or ten minutes per hour.
I set the Icebox to run with cooled water from a 30 gallon res' setup outside the room.

The setup was as such:

30 gallon res' outside the grow environment.
1/2 hp water chiller ( freshly recharged ). Honestly, Bought a 1/2 , a 1/4 and a 1/5 but we'll get to that.
1/2 HP water pump.
1/2" line from the pump.
3/4" line return to the res'
Built a manifold. 1/2" pvc out to the room and 3/4" pvc return to res'. Both lines had 4 valves for running water to and from deceives such as Stainless steel coils ( wort chillers ) to cool the 2 nutrient reservoirs and heat exchangers. One main res' with a chiller and manifold can now chill as many sources as needed.

I tried using only the 1/2 hp chiller. Couldn't cool enough. Added the 1/4 hp.. Not enough. Then, added the 1/5. By now the cooling power should have been close to 3/4 hp of chilling. The main res' temps never got below 70 degree and that even took about 3 hours. A couple other things to note: I wasn't only cooling the 6" Icebox. I was cooling the Icebox, 2 reservoirs with stainless steel coils and a DIY Icebox made from a 12 by 14 heat exchanger mounted to a 12 by 12 duct register box and 6" inline fan. It's the same as the Hydro Innovations idea in the sense but no lie, 10 times better at 1/2 the price.

Here's some pictures of the diy exchanger ( ac ) and 1 of the Icebox's as well along with the manifold in the background. Again. This post is to state that my support and belief in diy produced units have worked many times better than the pre-fab units purchased for companies. This statement only applies to the heat exchanger and not yet mentioned water chiller built from dehumidifier.

The DIY water chiller;
I took a 50 pint dehumidifier. Once opened from the front side, you'll see two heat exchangers. The one closest to the fan is hot and the other one, which should be directly visible lying in front of the hot one is the cold one. Carefully bent the cold heat exhanger out and down + away from the hot one. While still connected, propped the dehumidifier close up to the res and placed the bent out exchanger into the res'. The water chillers I removed. Now the res' has only the heat exchanger sitting in it from the dehumidifier. The dehumidifier was a 100$ purchase from craigslist. From what i've read from other knowledgeable people posting on the subject, 30 pint dehu' equates to 1/2 hp chiller and a 70 pint one equals 1 hp. I turned on the dehu', turned on the 1/2 hp pump ( which also sits in the 30 gallon res' ) to the manifold and let it run. The temps' dropped almost 14 degrees within the hour. Mind blowing! Literally! I checked the temps all night. Couldn't freaking believe it! It was working so well in the sense that for the next few days, I was left pondering. What is this all about? Life and stars type disbelief. Spending hundreds of dollars on water chillers, then ripping apart an old dehumidifier only to find how much better things worked with a piece of equipment manufactured for something totally different than the purpose of what it could be used for. I still am left speechless and in wonder on why water chillers aren't simply modeled after dehumidifiers.

........With that said. The ac does not cycle anymore as my dehu' chiller and diy icebox maintains ambient temps of 76 -78 degrees on there own.

Last thing to address is condensation. Soon as something is done about that, I will post again. Just wanted to share my experience with you all. I am eagerly willing to assist in helping anyone make a chiller or water cooled a/c at this point.

Have a good grow. Peace.

dude....are you using sonotube as ducting? thats pretty mc gyver.

Lol. They are diy duct mufflers ( silencer ). Built with sonitube, r19 wrapped on the inside and chicken wire wrapped inside to hold the r19 in place. They work just as good and if not, better then pre-fab duct silencers. The cost to build 4 of them was around 80-90$. One pre-fab silencer cost 60$.

Pros:
The amp draw is about 8 total amps to cool 2 reservoir's and 2 heat exchangers. This is great compared to running an ac that draws 7 amps and runs constantly.

Cons:
Condensation. A simple fix is in the works.

Quick update:
Running a 70 dehu' and getting even better results.

Verse some pics of the diy duct silencer and stainless steel wort chiller in a res'.

Ac running that only cools air versus water cooling that cools air and reservoir's.

Oh. Here's a PIC of the girls.
Strain: The White aka Triangle.
Grown using GML topping technique which is too legit.

Pics

Pics of the dehu and the girls.

excellent diy skills my friend

Thank you!