2000w grow water chiller size

Hello, internet
I have been reading all sorts of grow forums and haven't gotten much useful information from searches.
Im planning on starting a small grow in a unused basement bedroom that will be a smaller scale version of commercial medical garden I worked for. Unfortunately they suck big time and I will not ask them for any info as they just poorly reproduced someone else's design and barely understand basic plant biology.

The system im making will be a 2x 1000w rdwc around 160-180 gal. Ill be doing scrog with big trees started in another room. The lights will be vented interdependently from the room, all ballasts and chiller will be out side the room as well. Temps here stay 40-60f all year and its in a basement.

My main question has to do with chiller size for this setup. I would like to keep this cost as low as possible.
the size im looking at is 1/4hp active aqua. would I be able to get away with a 1/10hp if i insulated the tanks

Any help would be appreciated

With a large volume of water and temps in the 40-60 range why would you need a chiller at all?

curious2garden said:

With a large volume of water and temps in the 40-60 range why would you need a chiller at all?

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+1 exactly.

Thanks for responding.
I meant to say that's the temperature out side. This room is still in the planing stage but I expect the temps from 2000 watts to heat up a 5x10 area pretty good. I will have a chiller and ac regardless, if I dont need to use them that would be great.
If I add reflective insulation on the tanks the will a 1/10 chiller keep it in 68-70 deg range?

blackandgreyrainbow said:

Thanks for responding.
I meant to say that's the temperature out side. This room is still in the planing stage but I expect the temps from 2000 watts to heat up a 5x10 area pretty good. I will have a chiller and ac regardless, if I dont need to use them that would be great.
If I add reflective insulation on the tanks the will a 1/10 chiller keep it in 68-70 deg range?

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Probably not. 1/10 hp chillers are really meant for aquariums in the 30-60 gallon range, and that is to keep temps at around 78 in a SW aquarium

If you have ac, and he room temp doesn't get too high, you're not gonna need to chill the water. Especially if you're air cooling your lights seperately(and not pulling the cool air out of your room through the hoods)

Meta gave you the best answer, seal and cool those lights. I'd use a fan and pull air straight through. With a sealed light my room ran so cool I had to go up from my 600 watt HPS to a 1000 watt HPS just to warm up my room because pulling air through my light cooled the room so much.

Remember too that large mass of water is going to resist it's temp changing. So as long as you remove the heat from the light if you can keep your surrounding area in the 40 to 60 range I just can't see you needing a chiller. Maybe come summer... then we could talk chiller. Get the grow going and you'll see what you need quickly.

I mean, he said its 40-60 outside year round. And he's got ac for the grow in addition to air cooling the lights. I think the chillers come in to play when you're running co2, and in turn running your grow at higher temps to correspond. Then a can see a chiller being useful or necessary, since the ambient temp n the room could be as high as the upper 80's with co2.

Will 1/4hp do it sorry to bug but this is my biggest cost and money is tight. I know the gallon temp ratings I just dont know how warm the water will be before the plants block out the tanks.

The last grow I worked at I noticed the air pumps were super hot at the 12 valve splitter feeding the air stones. I had a suspicion this added a lot of heat to the water, Ill have more smaller pumps ore run the line through the rez before bubbling the tanks. I'm hoping that will help at least a
little

Thanks a lot everyone this helps me out a ton
Ill be doing a start to finish journal in in a few weeks I'm sure ill have more questions to ask

Metasynth said:

I mean, he said its 40-60 outside year round. And he's got ac for the grow in addition to air cooling the lights. I think the chillers come in to play when you're running co2, and in turn running your grow at higher temps to correspond. Then a can see a chiller being useful or necessary, since the ambient temp n the room could be as high as the upper 80's with co2.

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EXACTLY! The other time they come into play is running NFT with low volume reservoir. With only 10 gallons (which was the size of my NFT res), I could have used a chiller. That is why I switched from NFT to soilless so I wouldn't have to deal with a chiller among other issues. I'm in the Mojave so if I could get by without a chiller on only a 10 gallon reservoir....

blackandgreyrainbow said:

Will 1/4hp do it sorry to bug but this is my biggest cost and money is tight. I know the gallon temp ratings I just dont know how warm the water will be before the plants block out the tanks....snip...

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I'm sorry I don't know what you mean by how warm the water will be before the plants block out the tanks?

Essentially my temps were up around 85 and I did not experience any root rot etc... But I didn't want them going much above that. As long as you can keep your water 75 and below you're going to be fine. Just start and monitor your water temps. If they do start getting up there then simply fill some 2 liter soda bottles with water and freeze. Then just rotate bottles in your reservoir. That will hold you until you get a chiller (if you need one and again I'm with Meta you don't need one).

Set up the system without a chiller, run the lights with no plants in it for a few days, check water temps and go from there.