-----Original Message-----
From: Bob
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 9:40 PM
To: Brandy Keen
Subject: RE: Chiller and Ice Box Questions
All right Brandy, I went back to the drawing board and have a new gameplan, if you'd care to critique.
Firstly, I have a question for you - why does the reservoir need to be located outside of the grow area to cool the HydroGen and Ice Boxes? I was thinking of using an insulated cooler as my reservoir, similar to this:
http://www.cooler-store.com/igloo_maxcold_cooler_120qt_13021_11_prd1.htm
Would I not be able to keep that reservoir in the grow room? The chiller would be outside the grow tent (getting an 18K BTU mini-split AC to keep the garage steady at 70F); only the reservoir would be in the grow room (tent)).
If you can put the A/C outside is there any particular reason you'd prefer not to put the chiller outside? It looks just like a small air conditioner (in fact, it uses housings from a frigidaire window mount a/c). Your set up should work fine but you'll save a LOT of cooling energy just putting the chiller outside.
Anyways, so that'd be about a 25 gallon reservoir, and I'd have a 1/2 horsepower chiller outside the tent to keep that water as cold as needed, somewhere in the 55F range.
FYI, there's going to be 4 600HPS lights in the tent in addition to a 25 pint dehumidifier, to give an idea of the cooling needs - each pair of lights will be cooled by a 425CFM inline fan.
You'll need a 1 HP chiller. Your lights are generating about 9600 BTU of heat. Most 1/2 HP chillers only have about 4000 BTU of cooling output (ours has 8000 BTU but it's still out paced). Most 1 HP chillers have about 8-10K BTU of cooling output. Our 1 HP chiller has about 14K BTU of cooling output, so you'll have plenty of power to cool the lights and air condition the whole garden. It's not a big jump in price to go with the 1 HP over the 1/2 HP.
So, the million dollar questions:
1) Can I keep that reservoir in the tent without too many problems? I'd much prefer to just have two tubes leaving the tent as opposed to 6-8 tubes leaving the tent.
You can keep the reservoir in the garden when you're using a chiller. We recommend that the reservoir be kept outside of the garden when all you're running is a HydroGEN or when you're relying on ambient cooling to cool the res (ie, no chiller). Also, you shouldn't be having one tube per Ice Box coming out of your reservoir. You should just have one pump and supply manifold coming out of the res, with the tubing split off at the Ice Boxes, and then back to a return manifold. So one tube in, one tube out, split up and then coming back together before re-entering the res.
2) Would that reservoir and chiller combination be sufficient to keep a HydroGen cool in an 8x8x8 tent, as well as to use one or two ice boxes for air conditioning?
With the 1 HP, definitely. The 1/2 HP won't do it.
3) Using that rez/chiller setup, would I be better off having two ice boxes at the end of each pair of lights (with a 6" 425CFM fan per two lights), and using the Ice Boxes in that fashion (hopefully to cool the tent), or would I be better off air-cooling the lights (outside air------>through lights-------->back to outside), and only having one Ice Box attached to a fan to be "purely" for cooling the tent?
Can you put the Ice Boxes between the lights? This is the most efficient way to do it. If you can't do that, the two IB's at the end of the 2 light pair is the best idea.
Sorry for the amount of questions and for being such a pain, but I'd love to support your company and just wanna make sure that it's feasible for me to do so.
Thanks,
Bob
--- On
Mon, 2/1/10, Brandy Keen <brandy@hydroinnovations.com> wrote:
From: Brandy Keen <brandy@hydroinnovations.com>
Subject: RE: Chiller and Ice Box Questions
To: Bob
Date: Monday, February 1, 2010, 3:40 PM
Not at all! 
Let me know if there's more I can help with.
Brandy
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob
Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 2:35 PM
To: Brandy Keen
Subject: RE: Chiller and Ice Box Questions
Brandy, I apologize again - I didn't see your answers in my initial email.
Sorry I'm an idiot,
Bob
--- On
Mon, 2/1/10, Brandy Keen <brandy@hydroinnovations.com> wrote:
From: Brandy Keen <brandy@hydroinnovations.com>
Subject: RE: Chiller and Ice Box Questions
To:Bob
Date: Monday, February 1, 2010, 3:25 PM
Hi Bob,
Your theories are completely correct, and you'll absolutely be able to do what you want to do using our system, but your approach needs a tiny bit of tweaking. I have a guy doing something very similar on a smaller scale in his LED garden and he's getting really great results. Please see below for more details, and let us know as you have more questions.
Best regards,
Brandy Keen
Customer Service
brandy@hydroinnovations...com
-----Original Message-----
Hello, I'm emailing to ask for some clarity regarding the usage and effectiveness of your Ice Boxes and Chillers. Long story short, I have a 20x10 fully sealed room with no access to outside air, and that is not chilled at all (summer temps can get up to 100F+).
As air conditioning is not an option, I was looking into cooling my room and the 3000 watts of HID lighting in there solely off of water chillers and Ice Box heat exchangers - is this a feasible idea? I was planning on a 2HP chiller and a 200 gallon reservoir, which I would hope could be kept at ~45F without too much effort.
Then I'd use 4 Ice Boxes attached to ducting and inline fans to blow the cooled air (hopefully about 55F at this point) around the room - that'd (in theory) be 1500 cubic feet of 55F air being "created" every minute in a 2500 cubic foot space - I'm pretty sure this will work, but would love for you to confirm that for me.
Another big question is how much heat is generated from the chiller - since I have no access to the outside, the chiller would have to be located in the garage, so would the heat produced nullify the cooling effects? If necessary, I could build a room for the chiller, but that would get very hot, very quickly - would temps of 120F materially impact the chiller's effectiveness?
I guess my questions are as follows:
1) Would I be able to overcome the heat produced by the HID lighting and the water chiller itself and be able to keep the room at 70F, in your professional opinion?
Yes and no. You can completely cool your garden with the chiller, this is an absolute yes. However, the chiller isn't actually creating heat--all it's doing is taking it out of the garden via the water and exhausting it somewhere else. So if you keep your chiller in the garden, you're defeating the purpose, as all of the heat being taken out is just exhausting right back in. You must keep the chiller separate from the garden, or you must build an insulated plenum on the back of the chiller and add insulated ducting with a 12" max fan on the end to draw the heat out and into another location.
The other (and much preferred) option would be to keep the chiller outside (they are made to go outside and can withstand the elements). The only things that would be entering/exiting the garden would be 3/4" water lines.
You could build another room for it, but you'd need to have some way of ventilating it. They don't need to be kept in a cool location, but they do need a source of fresh air.
2) What size reservoir would you recommend for this application?
You don't need a large reservoir, 75 gallons would be sufficient.
3) How cold could a 2HP chiller keep a 200 gallon reservoir?
See above, but the 2 HP chiller can more than keep up with your 3000 watts of LED's and supplemental cooling requirements. 45 degrees f is doable, but will most likely not be necessary.
4) What is the maximum number of Ice Boxes that can be run off of a 2HP chiller with a 200 gallon reservoir?
There really isn't a limit to the number of Ice Boxes, it's more related to the number of BTU's it can handle (about 28,000 BTU per hour is what it can remove). Really though, instead of doing 4 Ice Boxes with individual fans, I would go with our 2 HP air handler. It's a relatively new product that we're not advertising heavily yet, but it's essentially a giant Ice Box with its own thermostat, humidistat, and fan built in. The fan comes on and off as cooling needs change. It's matched exactly to the cooling power of the chiller for really great efficiency, and cost is very comparable to doing the multiple ice box approach once the fans & thermostats are taken into account.
5) What is the maximum effective operating temperature for a 2HP chiller?
The chillers run most efficiently when the ambient temperature is around 80-90 degrees, but they can be used in a wide range of temps, from below 0 (with a compressor heater installed at the factory prior to shipping) to over 100 degrees.
Thanks so much for your time, and apologies for the long-winded email - I really hope this idea is feasible and that I can do some business with you guys.
Regards,
Bob
ok not funny....
