Is air conditioning an air-cooled reflector possible?

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sunnyday808

Active Member
Hi all,

Just curious, but is it possible to connect an air-cooled reflector to an air conditioning unit? This way you could cool the light and provide temp/humidity control for the grow space. Simply put, an air conditioner ducted to the reflector would blow cold air over the light and into the grow space.
 
P@ssw0rd

P@ssw0rd

New Member
Good question +1 rep for you. I to would like to know. I wonder if it could cause problems and break the bulb? Seems to me like if it was on 24/7 it would be ok but a cold wind on an already hot bulb and????

P@ssw0rd
 
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sunnyday808

Active Member
thats what i was affraid of password. but i have seen setups that blow ac directly at lamps so if what i'm proposing is possible you could have a light/ac combo. no more burned leaves and temp/humidity control in 1 unit. 2 birds with 1 STONE!
 
panhead

panhead

Well-Known Member
hornedfrog2000 said:
People have used portable ac units in their rooms, but they are kind of pricey.
Click to expand...
You mean like this,they are not that expensive to run considering you have 100% temp & humidity control at your fingertips at all times,having the room at a constant temp/humidity pays off big time & more than makes up for the cost of electrodes.

 
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sunnyday808

Active Member
i was thinking that if you ducted the air conditioner into the intake of an air-cooled light (i.e. cooltube or other) and left the exhaust port on the reflector open you'd have cold air blowing over your light and into the grow space (grow tent). how does that sound?
 
hornedfrog2000

hornedfrog2000

Well-Known Member
Pan head, actually I was thinking more like the ones where you stick directly into the room, and then they have an exhaust tube you put out of the room. I looked on ebay, and about the cheapest I could see was like 350$.
 
murtymaker

murtymaker

Well-Known Member
Be careful though. I bought one of these and thought all my problems were over. But soon as flowering came the A/C unit pulls the air in to cool and exhaust the hot air it makes in the process. Well the smell was being sucked in to the A/C unit and being spit out the window all over the neighborhood... about shit myself when I came home and knew that the smell was coming from my house.
 
panhead

panhead

Well-Known Member
hornedfrog2000 said:
Pan head, actually I was thinking more like the ones where you stick directly into the room, and then they have an exhaust tube you put out of the room. I looked on ebay, and about the cheapest I could see was like 350$.
Click to expand...

You can get an 11,000 btu portable exactly like you described right now at home depot for $299,i just looked at them yesterday while i was waiting on the manager to come see me so i could cuss his ass out.
 
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sunnyday808

Active Member
hey check out the windchaser sc7. i included some links but my posts haven't been approved yet. this could be ducted directly to the air-cooled reflector while positioned outside the grow tent. leaving the exhaust open would allow cool air to blow through the light and into the tent. there's one on ebay!
 
Al B. Fuct

Al B. Fuct

once had a dog named
The most effective way to go is a cooltube or enclosed hood with a separate, closed air circuit. This is to say that the light gets its cooling air from outside the grow room and dumps warmed air back outside the room as well. This prevents air used for light cooling from mixing with the grow room airmass.

Use aircon if you must, but a closed air cooling circuit will prevent the aircon unit from having to shift heat from the lights out of the room's airmass. You'll find that if you have cooltubes and the ambient air you have available to draw into the room is at or under 23C, you probably won't need aircon.

Air-cooled lighting requires a constant air supply during lights-on. Chances are you won't need your aircon unit to run constantly. It is much less expensive on the old power bill to run a 150mm blower for the cooltubes (35W constantly during lights on) and another blower to exhaust the room (perhaps 200W, runs a few mins an hour). Will be much less costly than any aircon unit. No, cool air from an aircon system won't shatter an HPS lamp tube, but you don't want to connect the aircon unit to the lamp unless the aircon unit runs all the time that the lamp is on.

There are some grow setups where you just can't get air in sufficient quantity or low enough temp for cooling or have no way to get rid of it so it is not sucked right back into the grow. In those cases, aircon may be your only solution.

However, cooltubes where possible will cut the cost of using aircon- dramatically. The aircon unit will run only about 20% of the time it usually needs if it has to shift the lighting heat by itself.
 
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Al B. Fuct

Al B. Fuct

once had a dog named
Worth 1000, even if it's kindygarten artwork:



The basic point to take from this is that cooltubes which have an air path independent of the airmass in the grow room will remove the vast majority of heat from the lights (upwards of 90%) before it ever comes in contact with the room's airmass.

There's no aircon unit depicted in this (alleged) drawing, but if you find you need it, the only change to make to this arrangement is to run the exhaust blower on a timer so it draws in CO2 laden air for a few minutes an hour. The aircon unit will control the air temp. Without aircon, the exhaust (and intake) blower is run on a thermostat.

A separate blower for the cooltubes is required since the lights must have airflow at all times during lights-on. If you attempt to use the same blower to cool the lights as you use to exhaust the room air (or try to use aircon piped into the cooltubes), you will have no control over air temp, since the blower will have to run constantly- a thermostat can not be used.

The cooltubes don't really care about the temp of the air drawn into them. It would be a bit of a waste to use air from an aircon unit for the lights.
 
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DaSmokester

Active Member
Al - I hope you are still around. Your picture describes what i am trying to do. I already have a 6" fantech inline cent. fan for exhaust with a sentinal digital thermostat (awesome BTW, I can keep my temps to within 1 degree F in an insulated grow box in the attic. Fan cycles 30 seconds or so every 5-10 minutes). These temps are maintained easily, however I am only running a 6 bank 2' T5 lamp.

I WILL be setting up an independent circuit for a cooltube or aircooled hood - for now I am thinking 400 watt hps. The question is, what size fan do I need for the "cool tube" circuit? It seems to me a 100-150 cfm cent. fan would be perhaps overkill. I was hoping to was one of those cheap a$$ HD axial fans, maybe a 6" model?

What do you guys think?
 
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