Cooling six 600w hps lights

[batrgrower]

Alright guys, I'm looking for some ideas on the best and most efficient way to cool six 600w hps lights.

My room is 12'x6' and I have three growing systems running the 12' length.

My idea is I want to run two lights on each system and the lights will be running parallel to the 12' length.

Right now I have one light on each system but I think I can increase yield by adding one more to each.

Currently I have the three lights ducted in a series like this "intake fan(small - 240cfm)-->light-->light-->light-->exhaust fan(also small - 240cfm). Everything uses 6" ducting.

The lights get a little warm, not quite too hot to touch but close.

My thoughts are that if I add 3 more the same way that the room will get too hot and my ac won't be able to keep up once summer really hits.

I can't decide if I should upgrade all the ducting to 8" or if all I need is to increase the fan cfm. Hoping someone can give me some ideas on what they'd do.

 

[Dutchieman420]

I would try increase in the fan pressure before switching out all my ducting six lights is a big setup if you have the money change it. In the long run it would probably be better might even save you on a little bit of electricity God knows you need to

 

[Dudemankidson]

Alright.. So your three light's are running hot at 240cfm at each end. Why not replace those fans w more than double the cfm and run a y ducting connector from them to split and reconnect them after the intake and before the exhaust? With the added heat produced with the addition of more lighting I'd try to double up on your a/c's btu's by purchasing I bigger model. 2 cents, maybe a reasonable avenue of approach?

 

[ssj4jonathan]

why not buy six cooltubes, tubing, 3 real big sureflow pumps and a big reservoir to store all that water you'll need to keep the temps down. Light output will be diminished slightly but it should bring down temps considerably. This should be cheaper than buying an industrial cooling system.

 

[mjinc]

What AC are you currently running?

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

run 3 lights in a row, with them being 600s, i'd recommend at least a 550 cfm fan on each row of three. not sure where you live, but if smell is an issue i'd go with a 6x24 550 cfm phresh filter on each row as well.

 

[Swims_GD]

as stated, double up on your fans.

i use an 8'' 350cfm to cool 1x600w cool tube and filter, filter and tube are 6''

 

[batrgrower]

Increasing all of my fan's cfm was pretty much what I was thinking would be the easiest approach.

After thinking more on the situation with as much wattage as I'd be drawing with all 6 lights I decided I wanted to try some moderately cheap LEDs to run alongside my hps lights.

I ended up buying 3 600w viparspectra LEDs. So I'll run those with my 3 current hps lights. I'm hoping I can do a kind of comparison and see how much difference they make.

If they can produce enough yield I may just do away with the hps completely. It sure would save me a lot of money on the electric plus all the hassle of all the ductwork.

We'll see. Thanks for everyone's input. I'll post back with my results.

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

vipar is crap. not trying to be a dick, but they are notorious under-performers. go to horticulture lighting group, or timber, or northern growlights, or any of the advertisers/members in the lighting forums and look at their d.i.y. lights, you can get a WAY better product for close to the same money

 

[batrgrower]

vipar is crap. not trying to be a dick, but they are notorious under-performers. go to horticulture lighting group, or timber, or northern growlights, or any of the advertisers/members in the lighting forums and look at their d.i.y. lights, you can get a WAY better product for close to the same money

I had thought about finding a reasonably priced diy led setup but I seemed to get information overload when looking through all that stuff.

I had my reservations about the vipar lights but after quite a bit of research and reading through other user's reviews they seemed to be reasonable performers for a reasonable price. I'm sure they're not the best I could buy but they are pretty cheap.

Have you owned any of the vipar lights? Can you give us some examples of why you think they are crap?

The 600w version alone on Amazon has 255 reviews, 75% of which are 5 stars.

 

[ssj4jonathan]

LEDs FTW! Good idea, just scrap the HPS all together.

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

to be honest, i'm basing that opinion on the information i've gathered from watching others use them, never owned one myself. i know one person who owns one, and i'm not impressed with his results. i've seen several peoples journals on this and other websites where they get ok results, nothing to write home about. and i've seen two separate comparative grows, where people have used the vipars against the same wattage cobs. the cobs kicked the vipaes ass

 

[Dutchieman420]

to be honest, i'm basing that opinion on the information i've gathered from watching others use them, never owned one myself. i know one person who owns one, and i'm not impressed with his results. i've seen several peoples journals on this and other websites where they get ok results, nothing to write home about. and i've seen two separate comparative grows, where people have used the vipars against the same wattage cobs. the cobs kicked the vipaes ass

Is LED less expensive to run or something? When I was last buying lights it really didn't even cross my mind to look that direction if you know people with both maybe u know a couple pros n cons?

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

the price is dropping a lot over what is was just a year ago. i'm not going to tell you they're as cheap to buy as h.i.d. or amazon l.e.d.s, but they're cheaper than they were, and also better quality than they were a year ago...look into the quantum board kits from horticulture lighting group

as far as the cost to run, yes, they're definitely cheaper, you get more lumens per watt, so less watts used, = less heat produced, so add in less cooling costs as well.

 

[Dutchieman420]

the price is dropping a lot over what is was just a year ago. i'm not going to tell you they're as cheap to buy as h.i.d. or amazon l.e.d.s, but they're cheaper than they were, and also better quality than they were a year ago...look into the quantum board kits from horticulture lighting group

as far as the cost to run, yes, they're definitely cheaper, you get more lumens per watt, so less watts used, = less heat produced, so add in less cooling costs as well.

That sounds cool I'm lucky my utilities are included in the rent. I'm putting in a greenhouse one huge long one possibly two I want to do possibly suplight out there would they still keep a greenhouse warm enough in winter? Itdosnt get much colder than freezing here

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

probably not, a lot of people will use h.i.d. lighting in the winter then switch over when it warms up. the other alternative is to run heaters, which kind of takes away some of the benefits.

 

[Dudemankidson]

HID rules during winter. My tent sits right at optimum temps with only an inline and a booster removing heat from the hood.

 

[Lighter404]

That sounds cool I'm lucky my utilities are included in the rent. I'm putting in a greenhouse one huge long one possibly two I want to do possibly suplight out there would they still keep a greenhouse warm enough in winter? Itdosnt get much colder than freezing here

Your landlord must love you . I definitely recommend trying out COB lighting. If you like the results you can always expand. It's pretty handy to just be able to disassemble/rearrange your lights to best suit the scenario. Or yeah use HID in the winter because I don't think the LEDs alone will heat it up enough. Then again if you used a burner for heat you'd get that extra CO2 right?