Water Cooled Grow Rooms

Warlock1369 said:

Any idea how to cool the air befor the lights? That was a biggie for me I'm looking at 120 temps and 15% RH need to cool the intake formThat to under 99. To cool right. I was thinking a cooler on the intake of the lights exoust the attic. A heat exchanger for the dehumidifier. Then a cooler for hot air from flower to bottom of veg room. Veg room hot air dumped by the dehumidifier with a cooler on that. All set inline with a AC running. I'm in a sealed room so no I don't want the dry hot air from outside coming in. I have 3 months to figure this out.

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Sounds like you are buying a chiller anyway so why not size it correctly and use heat exhangers after your lights? Put a heat exchanger after every 1000w hood and use 1 fan to pull thaat air through the hoods. You won't need to exhaust it at all because the Ice Boxes will have cooled it back to ambient room temps. Then use your a/c to just cool the room and the dehumidifier. You can put a fan on a thermostat controller to pull air from your flower room to your veg room.

Not sure how the sounds but it's kinda hard for me to say without knowing how many watts of lighting and the room dimensions. If you want you can PM me and I can mock a floorplan up for you. If you don't want that info in the thread.

I'm going on a small budget.Need to save for a new place to live. House isn't worth saving. I got 1summer grow then it's over. Got a new house lined up that is cooled but not here do was thinking of useibg 1 or 2 55 drums with ice keeping it at 55. Cool everything 20. That keeps me in my 85-65 range. Renter temps I had I check just trying to find a cheep way to last my 126 temp summers.

I get kicked out turkey day. So no big buys like a chiller. If I can keep temps as is I'm fine.

If you need to know my room it's in my sig.

You got anywhere you can keep that reservoir that is not 125 degrees? Man, you will need to add Ice to that like 5 times a day. Hope you have a commercial ice maker cause if not I don't think that will work bro. With all that money you are gonna spend on heat exchangers, pumps, reservoirs, etc... you can easily get an adequate a/c to cool that room. Not sure what your setup is but you can get 24,000btu window a/c units for like $450.

Warlock1369 said:

If you need to know my room it's in my sig.

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Yea, now I remember. Great room man. Still think an a/c is the way to go bro. If you have one in there already or a portable one then you shouldn't need much more. Are you cooling your hoods with outside air?

I have almost everything. Just not the heat exchangers. I even have a extra AC. But if I don't need it do to my idea I don't want it. Will I add it if needed you bet you ass but trying to find a way not adding 30 bucks a week. And for the freezer yes I have a nice one that is used for food and can freeze a 1x2 block over night.

Your the water cooled guy. If you say I need to add my extra AC I will just trying to think of cheaper ways ATM.

I have 3 rooms going. The AC takes care of the veg rooms not the flower. Thinking of the money room.

Warlock1369 said:

I have almost everything. Just not the heat exchangers. I even have a extra AC. But if I don't need it do to my idea I don't want it. Will I add it if needed you bet you ass but trying to find a way not adding 30 bucks a week. And for the freezer yes I have a nice one that is used for food and can freeze a 1x2 block over night.

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Sounds like you are there bro. My suggestion would be to make your reservoir as small as possible. If you have no chiller then you really don't need that much antifreeze. Also, make sure it's pure Propylene Glycol and doesn't contain any coolants. Should only cost you $3-$4 a gallon. If it's more then that it has other chemicals in it. You'll only need about 15-20% in your reservoir. Try and get a 30 gallon reservoir if you can. Problems that I see are that you aren't going to be able to totally control reservoir temps and if you bring chilled water into your room and it is below dewpoint then you are going to end up with a shitload of condensation on those supply lines. As far as pushing that air through your hood I wouldn't recommend it. Especially if there is the possibility of condensation on your coils. You don't want to be splattering water all over your bulbs. I would say use the fans and heat exhangers as spot a/c units and try and keep the chiller lines out of the room for as long as you can. On my water cooled air handlers the supply lines from my chiller run outside of the building all the way to the air handler and then straight through the wall and into the back of the unit. That way you can run your reservoir at 40 degrees and cool the shit out of that room with those heat exchangers. Just make sure they aren't blowing directly on your plants or electronics just in case there is a condensation build up on the heat exchanger.

Well I have a 55 gallon tank well 5. But after talking thru this for 1 summer 4 months it will cost me 400 bucks to run. And water will cost 360 if it works. Guess I'll set up the AC then work on the water cooled. I do plan on going all water. But that's a later plan.
Thank you. I've go alot of growing under my belt but you know where I plan on going.

Warlock1369 said:

Well I have a 55 gallon tank well 5. But after talking thru this for 1 summer 4 months it will cost me 400 bucks to run. And water will cost 360 if it works. Guess I'll set up the AC then work on the water cooled. I do plan on going all water. But that's a later plan.
Thank you. I've go alot of growing under my belt but you know where I plan on going.

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I went to Arizona State University for my undergrad (really just to party and get hot chics) so I know the temps you are dealing with. When the day comes you wanna go water cooled you let me know and I'll help you dial in a NICE system.

phillipchristian said:

Any way you could put it in a window? Most of them are designed to be slide into windows and from the back they look like a window a/c. How are you cooling the lights? With Ice Boxes on the hoods or just using the chiller as a spot a/c with Ice Boxes around the room?

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Having anything outside is not an option for me. With summer coming I need work out heat issues which I didn't have to deal with in winter time. Was looking into getting a portable ac when I discovered this thread. I have a couple 6" inline fans cooling each set of 2 hoods, exhausting outside the house. So was thinking an ice box for each set of lights instead of ac. But I need to be able to run the chiller inside. Probably not possible but I thought I would see what you have to say about it.

deew said:

Having anything outside is not an option for me. With summer coming I need work out heat issues which I didn't have to deal with in winter time. Was looking into getting a portable ac when I discovered this thread. I have a couple 6" inline fans cooling each set of 2 hoods, exhausting outside the house. So was thinking an ice box for each set of lights instead of ac. But I need to be able to run the chiller inside. Probably not possible but I thought I would see what you have to say about it.

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Essentially chillers are heat pumps just like a/c units. They need to exhaust their hot air somewhere out of the room they are cooling or getting their air from or else they just won't work. This is why you see portable a/c units with at least 1 hose usually. Do you have 2 or 4 lights? Couldn't tell if you were saying you had a set of 2 or 2 sets of two. Doesn't really matter. The only way I could see you running a chiller that size in your house is if you put it in another room and then used either an a/c or an exhaust fan in the window to suck out the hot air exhaust from the chiller. If you put a chiller in a sealed room or one with poor ventilation and cold air intake then basically the chiller will heat the air to a point that it makes the chiller work twice as hard to cool the water. Your chiller will slowly start to work more and more over the course of a couple hours until it is running non stop because the air it is pushing over its coils is too hot to cool the refrigerant inside of it.

ASU is only 3 hours from me. I'm still in the Mojave so temps are bad.

Warlock1369 said:

ASU is only 3 hours from me. I'm still in the Mojave so temps are bad.

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I've got a pretty good idea of where you are then. I see you!!!

I'm not afraded to say it. I'm in victimville.

hey great info here and you sure seem to know what your talking about so i was hoping pick your brain about some cooling info, I have a 4x8 tent with two 600 watt air cooled lights in a 15x15 room in my basement, the lights are on their own cooling circuit drawing and returning air from the other part of my basement keeping my lights cool, with this setup it will run three to four hours before venting and drawing from the 15x15 air conditioned room to cool down, at this point my controller turns off the CO2 and turns on the exhaust fans and in about 10 minutes it's back to normal, so here's my new problem, I recently switched from soil to flood tables and my humidity is out of control, just so everyone knows I have covered my tables in panda film and pruned my plants back and all that but they are just growing at such a rate my exhaust fans run almost continuously to keep the humidity down so as a fix I put a 70 pint per day dehumidifier with easily keeps the humidity in check but now vents on high heat because of the heat from the dehumidifier. I believe if I can remove the heat produced from the dehumidifier it will all go back to normal, can you tell me what I can do other than a mini split to cool this dehumidifier? I'm hoping a 6" ice box and small chiller will do the trick, thanks for your time and effort, great thread.

lobsta said:

hey great info here and you sure seem to know what your talking about so i was hoping pick your brain about some cooling info, I have a 4x8 tent with two 600 watt air cooled lights in a 15x15 room in my basement, the lights are on their own cooling circuit drawing and returning air from the other part of my basement keeping my lights cool, with this setup it will run three to four hours before venting and drawing from the 15x15 air conditioned room to cool down, at this point my controller turns off the CO2 and turns on the exhaust fans and in about 10 minutes it's back to normal, so here's my new problem, I recently switched from soil to flood tables and my humidity is out of control, just so everyone knows I have covered my tables in panda film and pruned my plants back and all that but they are just growing at such a rate my exhaust fans run almost continuously to keep the humidity down so as a fix I put a 70 pint per day dehumidifier with easily keeps the humidity in check but now vents on high heat because of the heat from the dehumidifier. I believe if I can remove the heat produced from the dehumidifier it will all go back to normal, can you tell me what I can do other than a mini split to cool this dehumidifier? I'm hoping a 6" ice box and small chiller will do the trick, thanks for your time and effort, great thread.

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Jey bud, thanks for stopping by. I think the problem is the size of your dehumidifier. A 70 pint unit for a room that small seems like a lot. Before you go purchasing an Ice Box, chiller, pump, reservoir, etc... I would look into a 30pint dehumidifier. I have a friend that uses one in his 8x8 tent and it really produces no heat at all. The other option would be to rig your dehumidifier exhaust to blow out of the tent. This would require some ducting, foil tape, and a vent to fit over the exhaust on your dehumidifier. The problem is that your dehumidifier creates so much heat (about 5,000btu when running) that it heats the tent air which in turn forces the intake fans to kick on which bring in humid air from the basement which then forces your dehumidifier to work even more. It's just an inefficient cycle.

What about in a place where your average temp in summer is like 60 degrees? It can get up into the 80's sometimes but not often. I am going to have 6k watts going this summer and Im trying to figure out how big a res I would need and what kind of $ it would cost me to water cool my room. Here are a few things to help you wrap your head around my room, I have a nice big crawl space that basically stays around the temp it is outside. I am also going to be growing vertically in soil most likely bare bulb. I have 2 ac units that are 20k btu total for the hottest days. My ballasts will be in another crawl space so they will not heat up the room and I plan to get a CO2 generator. My plan for right now is to run my lights at night pull in fresh air from outside and use the ac units to cool it down the rest of the way if/when needed. But I would like to have a closed room setup eventually so I trying to figure out everything I need. I have a friend who is going to go to water cooled and what he is going to do is rent a backhoe for a day and drop a 250gal res below the frost line right next to his house outside but unfortunately I cannot do that as I share a driveway. Also would these heat exchangers work for cooling my room if I put a fan behind them? https://www.pexuniverse.com/brazetek-water-to-air-heat-exchangers