12k - Water and Air cooled (marine water cooled A/C units), Sealed room, C02, Lumatek

FileError404 said:

Wow, that is a thing of beauty. I just don't really understand it... looks like you have the Can Max fans mounted right onto the lamps? I guess I have to look up the ice boxes to comprehend

Subbed & Repped! Can't wait to see it finished and in flower.

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You can search youtube for Hydro innovations. There are many good DIY ideas as well.

This picture is not of the final room setup, I promise to post it. I ran the fan there as a temp solution to keep the room cool while I worked and tested lights, cooling and controllers.

Basically the air that comes out of the reflectors is cold and not hot. Add the 2 "small" water cooled A/C's and the room can freeze some purple out of buds...

Thanks waytercooled@!

Just watched all their videos, I get it now A bit pricey with the big chiller etc. but looks like a perfect solution... until the plasma lights are on the market. Hoping for fall

Looking forward for updates. Best of luck!

You should try to do something GREEN with the heated water. Nice job, and thanks for spending time to post something that can make me so jealous.

Can you say that someone 20 years ago would think your talking about a Half Baked 3000 movie with blankets for water cooled hoods and plasma lights. I just can't wait for the day we have bowl sized TRICHROMES.

watercooled@ said:

They can't "see" your lights. FLIR (forward looking infra red) is not x-ray vision. If you have no windows and have your temps under control, you are good. If you are venting to your attic and/or outside, I would consider looking into and studing infrared detection... but your legal, so it's all good

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Yeah I use FLIR cameras for work and I have to say that as powerful as they are, they can easily be fooled.
All you need is to use a thick layer of Mylar (double stacking works fine for this purpose) against the outer most surfaces of the grow room and insulate behind them. As long as the whole ceiling is an even temperature then the IR camera will see it as just that, a warm flat spot.
Now using the images of consistent fly overs of the warm spot appearing and dissipating around the same times, all in "growing" intervals... you get the picture

SeanIzen said:

Yeah I use FLIR cameras for work and I have to say that as powerful as they are, they can easily be fooled.
All you need is to use a thick layer of Mylar (double stacking works fine for this purpose) against the outer most surfaces of the grow room and insulate behind them. As long as the whole ceiling is an even temperature then the IR camera will see it as just that, a warm flat spot.
Now using the images of consistent fly overs of the warm spot appearing and dissipating around the same times, all in "growing" intervals... you get the picture

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that is why you split you flower on 2 opposite cycles so there is never a lull and it puts less stress on you cooling equipment, the down side you have to light proof down the middle of your grow. It is then only 6k of light at any given time.

The advantage of the water cooled grow is that water is able to transfer energy about 30 times that of air so if you got an old hot tub and made that your water cooled res it wouldn't look too weird, or a pool... hell an el cheapo aboveground pool would work just fine. Also you could build a cooling tower for your water, used to build those for water cooled computers all the time.

and always remember you dont really have to fool the flir you have to fool the human looking at it. so vent out of a 6 inch b vent pipe (the type used for many gas appliances) out the roof match your 12 hour heating cycles with say a noon to mid night when people would be likely to run the heater. or depending on the summertime you could run the lights durning the day say 8 to 8 so that the existing heat in your roof would look just a wee bit hotter, or try to balance your over all heat by running at night in the summer. The summer sun is the equivilant of 10k watts of light per square foot. you cant tell me that isnt going to make your roof glow like Chernobyl to the flir.


also when it comes to water cooling you could look into geothermal heating and cooling. Basically you drill a deep fucking hole run a loop of tubing in the hole and circulate water thru it and a heat exchanger, In your case the iceboxes.

ive been on a few projects where geo-thermal heating/cooling was used. that shit is not cheap, but cool as hell. cuts your water heater and heat pump usuage in half in the winter and 75-90% in the summer

IAm5toned... your avatar is tripping me out!

Sweet setup man, what size chiller are you running? im sure its a monster. Ive been growing soilless mixes for a while and pro mix is my favorite, but my recent grow I did 25% of the girls in coco for a test and my next one I think I am goin to do 100% coco. It drains awesome and doesnt stay as wet as long so Ive been able to up the total volume of water I feed, which means more nutes, which means bigger girls. Its also cheaper than pro mix, but it doesnt seem like money is a huge issue here

KeegoSmalls said:

You should try to do something GREEN with the heated water. Nice job, and thanks for spending time to post something that can make me so jealous.
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We've tried a couple things this weekend. "real" Geothermal is a LOT of work and we won't be doing it. As for going green... this property has a well, so we tried bypassing the chiller and feeding the well water to the cooling with drain to waste, it works!

Water from the well is about 60 degrees. The outgoing water is warm or hot to the touch. Definately removing a lot of heat from the room. We did this by attaching a water hose to the intake manifold and draining the exhaust to the septic tank.

The hose (coming from a 1/2" copper pipe) is not supplying enough water flow. Air is not coming out cold at the end of the light chain and the A/C's are having to make up for it. We plan on taping directly into the well pumps water outlet (maybe 1" or 1.5") and feeding the room. The drain will go to septic for now.

If it works I will not have to use a chiller and can claim some "geothermal" cooling is going on in this room. I would also consider digging a second well and have the drain return through it instead of the septic tank - in essence making the project much greener... (well pump uses less electricity then chiller and pump to feed it and water is being returned to its source)

It may be cheaper to have a well dug then buying and using a chiller for water cooled rooms... depending on the size of the room.

I'm off to learn DIY well digging. Thank God for youtube!

pinkgrows said:

Sweet setup man, what size chiller are you running? im sure its a monster. Ive been growing soilless mixes for a while and pro mix is my favorite, but my recent grow I did 25% of the girls in coco for a test and my next one I think I am goin to do 100% coco. It drains awesome and doesnt stay as wet as long so Ive been able to up the total volume of water I feed, which means more nutes, which means bigger girls. Its also cheaper than pro mix, but it doesnt seem like money is a huge issue here

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A 3HP chiller is working for us (except it broke and is the real reason we tried the well while we wait on warranty information) I believe the two water cooled A/C's make a pretty big difference.

We have the promix already, but may still put one in coco. We would only do that if we do not put the Aero manifold in. That'll be decided on impulse when we are ready.

watercooled@ said:

I would also consider digging a second well and have the drain return through it instead of the septic tank - in essence making the project much greener... (well pump uses less electricity then chiller and pump to feed it and water is being returned to its source)

It may be cheaper to have a well dug then buying and using a chiller for water cooled rooms... depending on the size of the room.

I'm off to learn DIY well digging. Thank God for youtube!

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Dam digging another well would be perfect just circulate that water, but pricey.

I was going to say i hope you have a big septic tank and do not really use any other water in the house, dont want that to over fill. The clean up of the mess would not be something you would want to put money into, plus it sucks when it happens.

Come on everyone grab a shovel and a hole digger were going to go help out water cooled, let the digging begin!

I have a couple of suggestions, ive been doing alot of research on installing ib in my next room.I think your chiller is to small each HP of the chiller gives you about 12000 btus of cooling power. Each 1000w bulb gives off about 4000 btus of heat, so with a 3HP chiller you have 36,000 Btus of chilling power, and you are putting out 48,000 btus of heat with the bulbs.I also think from looking at your pics that your ballasts are inside the room, if they are get them outside, each 1000w digital ballast is equal to 2400 btus of heat, thats another 28800 btus of heat. I know that in Hydro innovations video they have their ballasts in the room, but they had an industrial chiller, they dont say how big it is, I think because they dont want people to know how much they will really have to spend on a chiller. If you are trying to use the ib for a/c you need at least a 4 HP chiller, I would run a 5 so that if you want to cool your rez if you set up aero or if you get a water cooled CO2 generator it will be able to handle it. Pick up a copy of the Jan/Feb Urban Gardener Magazine, there is a really good tech article on water cooled gardens.

I would not use your well as your primary cooling source, I dont even want to think about how many gallons you are pulling out a day, it WILL fry your pump very fast, and then you are in alot of trouble, in the hydro innovations they have well water for a backup only until the chiller can be fixed, if you keep using your well you WILL need to replace your pump and you will probably have to get your septic system pumped, not cheap and very inconvenient.

Keep up the good work im definitely subscribed, like I said ive been doin alot of research on ib and it will be nice to actually see them in use

Wow, lots of points. Good stuff...

pinkgrows said:

...your chiller is to small

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It's not. I am not using the Iceboxes to cool my room, but rather keep the lights *heat nuetral* I also have the two A/C which seem to put out more BTU's into the air then they do heat into the water.

I know my chiller isn't too small because I ran the lights on (11 of the 12) without water until the room was 100 degrees. I had the reservoir sitting at 70 degree water. I turned on the water flow, turned the chiller down to 40 and the A/C's to see if I can bring the temp in the room down as well as keep the water cool. The room temp dropped to 80 VERY quickly and kept dropping till about 65. After 12 hours my reservoir seemed to be holding at 45 degrees.

I too was worried because of the research I did. I found no one running the A/C's and the IB's off the same circuits and using a chiller.

If you are worried about going to small, go HUGE... Check this: it'll be cheaper then buying a "chill king" and comes with better warranty as well. I called Jandy and spoke with there tech; that was my backup plan if my chiller wasn't enough.

pinkgrows said:

... I also think from looking at your pics that your ballasts are inside the room, if they are get them outside, each 1000w digital ballast is equal to 2400 btus of heat, thats another 28800 btus of heat.

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I had to put them in the room. I agree putting as many of the heat sources outside the room as possible would be best. Did I mention I would be surprised if these Lumatek's were actually 2400 BTU's of heat. They don't even get warm, much less hot.

pinkgrows said:

If you are trying to use the ib for a/c you need at least a 4 HP chiller, I would run a 5 so that if you want to cool your rez if you set up aero or if you get a water cooled CO2 generator it will be able to handle it.

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Agreed. Using IB's as your only cooling source would require a larger chiller (and I believe make the room more difficult to dial in)

pinkgrows said:

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I would not use your well as your primary cooling source, I dont even want to think about how many gallons you are pulling out a day, it WILL fry your pump very fast, and then you are in alot of trouble, in the hydro innovations they have well water for a backup only until the chiller can be fixed, if you keep using your well you WILL need to replace your pump and you will probably have to get your septic system pumped, not cheap and very inconvenient.
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This I am worried about. I am looking into wells and septic tanks now and trying to learn what I can. I do not know enough on the subject to provide any input. I do know I can cool everything with my pool using my pool pump (if I there was one at this location) because I've run my pool pump on 12 hour cycles for 5 years now. Can I keep the water cold enough - not sure - maybe with one of those Jandy's or commercial chillers.


sorry for the long post, but you had some good points to discuss since there is a lot of marketing material out there but not enough real world rooms (at least not public ones)

Dude that is fucking SICK setup

Were you the guy at my hydro shop buying 30 bags of FF soil?

Great thread, I'm really interested in the diy ideas. I'm trying to figure out how I can avoid dropping a lot of money on a chiller while cooling 2-3k watts. What do you guys suggest? Can I convert a window a/c like I'm seeing some of these computer guys do? How big would i need to go with the a/c? What about the pool heater you posted? how would I go about using one of those? or any other ideas?? Also how will the res size effect things? is bigger better? I'm going to go with diy heat exchangers in the room but I've got to figure out how to keep the water cool and I cant spend 1,000+ on a chiller right now.

i was glad to read your reply to my suggestions, I thought you were trying to use the chiller to cool the room and have the a/c as a backup. my setup is much smaller, only 1.6k so I dont have experience with this scale so please dont take offense to my input, I only know how much of a pain it is when a pump goes because mine went at my house, because it was 30 years old. do you have a pool at your locale? it would be primo to use that since even if the pump went it would be a much easier fix then if the well pump went. what nutes are you planning on using? ive had real good success with botanicare with promix

itching for a update, how things going over there?????

roorsmoke said:

Great thread, I'm really interested in the diy ideas. I'm trying to figure out how I can avoid dropping a lot of money on a chiller while cooling 2-3k watts. What do you guys suggest? Can I convert a window a/c like I'm seeing some of these computer guys do? How big would i need to go with the a/c? What about the pool heater you posted? how would I go about using one of those? or any other ideas?? Also how will the res size effect things? is bigger better? I'm going to go with diy heat exchangers in the room but I've got to figure out how to keep the water cool and I cant spend 1,000+ on a chiller right now.

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No problem man.

pinkgrows said:

i... do you have a pool at your locale? ...

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No worries man. I started this thread to put a room like this out in the public. Be careful what you read (especially in commercial publications)... we have all bosses and advertising dollars to protect. very few proven systems out there in public view using this stuff and just a lot of marketing material and theory.

No, we changed locale, somewhat last minute and do not have a pool. A possible *3rd in line back up* (way at the bottom of contingency plans) is the possibility of adding an above ground pool to this property.

pinkgrows said:

What nutes are you planning on using? ive had real good success with botanicare with promix

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We decided to help Big Mike pay his mortgage on this one. We'll run the full AN schedule in the Sensi program.

Hulk Nugs said:

itching for a update, how things going over there?????

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It'll really be a couple weeks before I give a *real* update. I can tell you that the chiller is still being by-passed and more testing / experimenting is being done with the well. I promise an update on March 2 or 3.

lovin this

can't wait to see what your gonna pull!

WoW! very nice brother. Deffinately watching this one.