Energy Saving

[xet]

This thread is for all things energy saving related.

Hopefully we will see as little of: "Just throw the seeds down by the river man ... " as possible.

Looking for real practical and novel solutions or possibilities.

To start, I read each one of these 1m x 0.5m clear panels lets in enough sun to be equivalent to a 1000W HPS.

Another interesting energy saving idea is to use 55gal barrels of water to slow temperature rise/drop indoors or outdoors in a greenhouse.

Another idea is to use a massive pile of hot compost in a greenhouse with people reportedly keeping their greenhouse at 92'F in the dead of winter. Plus it provides a tremendous amount of passive co2. I have heard about people using small buckets of hot compost in their indoor grow to achieve similar results.

Carry on with your ideas:

 

[CrushnYuba]

First, I'm sorry if this is long. I'm just excited. I like the idea of this thread. I live and grow off grid so efficiency is probably my main concern. I'm interested to see people's ideas. I have tried all the things you have mentioned so far. If you want to see the most efficient designs, check out the Chinese solar greenhouses. They are super cool. They are long. They use North walls built of clay or brick or something similar that absorb allot of heat. Stacked water barrels can also be used on the north wall. South wall is clear. At night they have blankets or straw matt that roll down over the southern wall to insulate them!. Some of them are heated, some aren't. Even without heat they grow tropical stuff in the snow. If you do some googling there are articles on them. They are essentially the earth ship of growing. As far as materials you can use for blankets, ideally it would double as a blackout curtain for light deprivation and waterproof. The blankets that use for curing concrete or the curtain that they use in industrial settings to make temporary refrigerated zones. Neither is cheap.

In a regular greenhouse like in the us. Barrels and compost don't really do much. Without insulation at night like the Chinese, it just couldn't retain much. A tiny temp bump to POSSIBLY prevent against frost damage is all. It didn't seem like a good use of resources in my zone. I have done and seen so many experiments with painted pickle barrels and they use up sooo much space for what they do. I have seen entire floors excavated and barrels half buried. We are talking a massive amount of barrels. I tried making benches. Barrels with fencing on top for a surface to grow on. The barrels really need to be getting sun to get warm is one of the problems. So u really can't bury them or cover them with plants. In the winter, days are short. There isn't enough time for them to store any energy. At the end of the day, i dip my fingers in and that water stays COLD. Even the ones that do get sun, you wouldn't want to shower with. And this is in California where the greenhouse always hits 70-80f mid day if it's not raining.
Compost does get HOT. But in a greenhouse oy vay. It needs to be piled pretty fat to keep it going in winter. It can't just be spread out on the floor. The larger the pile the more efficient. You would need heavy machinery to move it and a farm to generate the material needed to feed it. A pile that's like 3 yards (600 gallons), Sure the inside is so hot you will burn yourself if u put your hand in. But only because it's insulated with a fat layer to hold that heat in. The outside is cool too the touch. A 20+ yards pile, you see steam coming off it, but that's so much space and so hard to move.

The main factor that makes these things not that affective is insulation. The theories sound good at first but people just underestimate how poorly greenhouses are insulated. The pictures of that corrugated plastic you posted are around a .8 r value. That's why they don't use corrugated polycarbonate for greenhouses much anymore. They don't insulated any better then a cheap roll of plastic. It's air gaps that insulate. Look at coolers or home insulation. Foam and fiberglass sa ton off little separated air bubbles. To still allow light transmission, the best you can do is have a few players of plastic with gaps of air in between. Either multiwall polycarbonate or plastic sheeting with a blower inflating a gap. Every layer of plastic you u have with a gap is an extra r .8. if u have multiple layers just touching each other without a gap, it adds nothing. I have seen greenhouses with 2 layers of clear, 1 layer of blackout, 1 layer of thermal curtain. Adds up to about r4. That's 5x what a single piece of plastic is but it's still pathetic compared to any other type of insulation for anything. I think the roofs on homes are usually r30-49. A single glazed greenhouse is only 38 times less insulated then the worst insulated modern home.

Sorry to be long winded. Here's something that might actually be helpful if u don't know about it. Frost blanket row covers do work. They sell agribon everywhere. PrettY much the standard agriculture practice for frost protection. It's so cheap and easy.

 

[Three Berries]

I've always used some sort of water storage to moderate the temp. Usually just gallon jugs. They make 7 gallon square sackable water jugs. Had a couple of them when I had a bigger grow closet.

But just bought a couple of 5 gallon oil drain jugs and have them on the floor in my 2x4x6' tent.

Paying attention to your fans too as far a efficiency as they are quite varied.

And ventilation duct work. Bends and devices really cut down the efficiency of the system.

 

[cultivatorkid]

gpw is my favorite

 

[Jessicanelson]

Which energy drink is best for sportsman?

 

[Call_me_breeze]

I'm planning on adding air to water heat exchangers to cash in on the long cold winters where I live. I went sealed room in my 10' x 10' room and so far I haven't found the upper limit on plant production or environmental controls. I started with a cheap 70ppd dehu, but knew that wasn't going to cut it, went to a 135ppd and I should have known that wasn't going to cut it and it was already taxing my cooling system. I'm upgrading again, this time to a 205ppd and it produces more BTUs than my AC can remove. Fortunately it's extremely cold where I live pretty much 9 months a year. I'm hoping I can add the exchangers to the ouputs of the Quest 205. So far I have determined that a 12" x 12" heat exchanger can cool 12,000BTU using water that is 30 degrees cooler using only a water pump, so I'm hoping that I can neutralize and added heat from the dehu, possibly even remove more heat than the dehu produces, taking load off AC. This type of system can also be used by burying water lines in trenches to harness geothermal heating/cooling. The only drawback is that I'm not recapturing the heat to use in my home. I actually use a 1 ton window AC and can divert the hot airflow outdoors or into my home and am playing around with turning a window AC into a window water chiller that could potentially cool the dehu in the shoulder months, or could be deployed indoors in winter, where no BTU will go unused. I'm also trying a v-fan instead of the 6-8 wall and floor fans I typically employ. I'm adding ventilation back into the sealed room as well. I was already struggling to lower temps during lights out and often they would be higher as the humidity is constant. I never guessed how much more energy could be pumped into this system and continue getting increased output

 

[Call_me_breeze]

I've always used some sort of water storage to moderate the temp. Usually just gallon jugs. They make 7 gallon square sackable water jugs. Had a couple of them when I had a bigger grow closet.

But just bought a couple of 5 gallon oil drain jugs and have them on the floor in my 2x4x6' tent.

Paying attention to your fans too as far a efficiency as they are quite varied.

And ventilation duct work. Bends and devices really cut down the efficiency of the system.

Just wanted to ad that AC fans require a variAC if you want to control the speed and actually save any energy, those cheap fan speed controllers still use full power of the fan and release the extra energy in the form of heat. DC powered fans can be speed controlled. Also, the dual inverter tech in ACs are only worth buying if your AC system is oversized for your needs. It's fairly easy to calculate your cooling requirements for your equipment, I suppose ambient air temps can change that some but your load should be pretty constant. You'll only save money using dual inverter if it rarely requires full load.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

I found very cold outside temps quite useful for growing. I used an 8" fan to bring cold air (down to -50F at times) into a spare bedroom. A lux-100 thermostat outlet turned it on when the temps went above 68F.

This provided plenty of fresh air for a filtered 4x4 tent and 1k HPS, while eliminating the need for a window a/c for most of the year.

Loving the chinese greenhouse idea, thanks

 

[Ca++]

I read each one of these 1m x 0.5m clear panels lets in enough sun to be equivalent to a 1000W HPS.



View attachment 18731798

Can't be so. A 600 lights a meter to a very sunny day. So half a meter of sun can't be like a 1000. A 1000 is more like 1.5 meters of sun. You can't get that 1000 through 1.5 meters of sheet though. A greenhouse reflects a third of the light upon it, so we need near 2.5m2 of glass to allow 1000w of light through. That's glass though, which we use. This is sheeting we don't. We can see how clear it is, and how it's reflecting light. This is a scam.



24h light in veg is wasteful. it's 20% more than you need, and that extra light may actually lower yield. I need to give myself a good talking to about this.

 

[Three Berries]

The AC Infinity inline axial fans are all EC motors and barely draw any watts at low power. Maybe 1w per 1nch of fan size to 10w at full speed. Some come with a manual controller and some it's programmable but they all are step driven.

 

[CrushnYuba]

Can't be so. A 600 lights a meter to a very sunny day. So half a meter of sun can't be like a 1000. A 1000 is more like 1.5 meters of sun. You can't get that 1000 through 1.5 meters of sheet though. A greenhouse reflects a third of the light upon it, so we need near 2.5m2 of glass to allow 1000w of light through. That's glass though, which we use. This is sheeting we don't. We can see how clear it is, and how it's reflecting light. This is a scam.



24h light in veg is wasteful. it's 20% more than you need, and that extra light may actually lower yield. I need to give myself a good talking to about this.

I don't think that's true exactly. I think so much depends on the time of year and location that advertising as being equivalent to any light is silly. Definitely 1m x .5m is a huge stretch but i can't say it's not possible in a desert in August. Maybe it is close. I can say i don't think it's nearly as bad as you think it is. And plastic greenhouse glazing doesn't reflect 1/3 of the light. It's more like 1/10th. We use feet here but a garden here in the summer sun will get significantly more par then a room with the old school 1k hps every 4ft2. I think it would easily be more then every 1m2. And a grow light certainly doesn't throw light as far. Maybe that's how they manipulate the numbers to 1 x .5 being equivalent to hps. Maybe if it's way high up at the height of a street lamp. by the time it reaches the ground they aren't lying.
I do know that the sun in summer is brighter by far then any indoor room i have ever seen setup