Portable A/C question

Hey quentin.

I got a sealed, dual hose a/c unit, (I think it's like 9,000 btu's), a CO2 burner, 1000watts, and I tried my damn best to get the room sealed as best as possible with insulation mostly.

The way I can primarily gauge how well I did, is by considering how often the burner has to kick on, to bring the room up from 1000 to 1500 ppms CO2,

and i'm amazed how rarely it has to burn, I think like on average, over every fifteen minutes... I think thats pretty good. I can go almost a month on a tank of propane in my 6 by 8 by 7 room.

About the a/c... I like it, because it also dehumidifies... my room is often at 30% rh. I love it.

*But yes, the unit does put a slight negative pressure on the room, and the hot warm air it puts out into a crawl space, some comes back into the house and pools at a stairwell, and smells of the CO2 and other byproducts from the burner, so yeah, a little, but negligible amount of pull out of the room. Most air stays recirculated. I'm happy with the equilibrium. enough truly "fresh" air i suppose, which is not much i hope...

I wanna find some of that iodine purple gas stuff that you can use to find leaks to see everywhere i'm leaking beyond just the door frame...

oh, and fuck packet loss...

Treeth said:

Hey quentin.

I got a sealed, dual hose a/c unit, (I think it's like 9,000 btu's), a CO2 burner, 1000watts, and I tried my damn best to get the room sealed as best as possible with insulation mostly.

The way I can primarily gauge how well I did, is by considering how often the burner has to kick on, to bring the room up from 1000 to 1500 ppms CO2,

and i'm amazed how rarely it has to burn, I think like on average, over every fifteen minutes... I think thats pretty good. I can go almost a month on a tank of propane in my 6 by 8 by 7 room.

About the a/c... I like it, because it also dehumidifies... my room is often at 30% rh. I love it.

*But yes, the unit does put a slight negative pressure on the room, and the hot warm air it puts out into a crawl space, some comes back into the house and pools at a stairwell, and smells of the CO2 and other byproducts from the burner, so yeah, a little, but negligible amount of pull out of the room. Most air stays recirculated. I'm happy with the equilibrium. enough truly "fresh" air i suppose, which is not much i hope...

I wanna find some of that iodine purple gas stuff that you can use to find leaks to see everywhere i'm leaking beyond just the door frame...

oh, and fuck packet loss...

Click to expand...

May I ask what size your propane tank is? How much does it cost to have it filled also? I am going to use CO2 my second grow, but I can't decide if I want a natural gas CO2 generator or a propane generator. The natural gas would be a lot cheaper, but it would be suspicious as hell to have a gas line installled in the discrete area I plan on growing in. Maybe I can install it myself, I am doing the electrical work.

I thought about the natural gas line too...

Its like 20 bucks to fill up, and 60 bucks to buy into the exchange program, for a regular sized propane tank used for grills and such. I have no idea what the metric even is for that kind of propane... I know for my house tank its done in gallons... I will reiterate - this tank lasted for nearly a month. three and a half weeks, + maybe a day or two.

I think it makes sense to have a line in. And I don't see how the tank is any more fail safe either.

but if I had the choice, i would like to never have to think about refilling it, if my room was more permanent and productive than it is or probably ever will be. You will save money on the first grow by putting in a line.

nice einstein quote btw- one should choose to live in between these two seperate worlds- as it is impossible to always live in the what is, and therefore you must try incessantly to reconcile what you think reality "should be" with a most critical 'experience' of that with the real. My avatar dude is all about that... he calls it, Transcritique -
the doubting subject appears in between systems.

"The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is the self consciousness and self esteem of man who has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being, encamped outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion, an inverted world consciousness, because they are an inverted world."

guess who wrote that -lol- yeah that guy.

oh, inverted world...
fucking james mercer!

That guy is way too metaphysical for me, lol. Einstein was more about finding objective truth(s) that cannot be altered by our subjective realities. That's the stuff I love. I sometimes even hate thinking about how humans construct reality. We try to analyze our thought process and how it affects our perceptions, but the only thing we have to do that with is thoughts. How do you think about thought(s) without using more thoughts?

Do you think it would be too difficult to install a gas line myself? My gas is off right now anyways.

Ok, well it's that season where the ACs are all going on sale, so I think i'm gonna buy one and try this out. In fact, i'm gonna buy one that heats AND cools, so I can have tight environmental control year-round, and have this room sealed up.

it really is the way to go. you got your ventilation for the dual hose worked out in your mind yet? and hopefully for your tubed hid also...

cause optimally, its pointless to burn watts and have the ac fight it, but I do wonder what the actual math works out to, how many watts the ac burns to fight the watts putt out by the light...

anyways, yeah, you're gonna love it. I'm there, and now I'm forced to look at true high pressure aeroponics as the next way to dramatically improve my grow.

I personally don't think it matters if you get a burner for CO2 or if you get a regulator and tanks, as the heat put out by the burner is really negligible if it doesn't have to run constantly, oh, and ppm control meters that you need for a burner, they are like 400 bucks if you didn't know.

good luck

Thanks Treeth, glad to hear I'm on the right track.

The dual hose will be hooked up to the window, it's an apartment bldg, 5th floor, so hopefully not a lot of "snooping". I'm going to try and put it up high, maybe build a platform for it or something... CO2 drops right?

True HP-aero info here and here.

Yes my HID are cooltubed, I agree doesn't make sense to have the AC fighting the thermal heat from the light, when a 6" centrifugal fan does the job for less electricity.

I'm just gonna go with a tank/regulator/solenoid rather than a burner, I'm sure the extra heat is negligible but it's still heat that needs to then be cooled. Now what would be great is if you could actually USE the heat, for heating your room in the winter.

oh yeah we were talking about TAG!

- I like smelling the burned CO2 when it kick on and fills the room, it becomes musky and hot like a jungle... and the rh is at 30%. At first I had a hard time staying inside!

So quentin,

I am "paying it foward" and moving up to aero after this first grow in dwc. I'm stoked for it. There is the kind of growth i'm looking for, and finishing a week earlier is crazy... I'm gonna get some cindy (99) beans, 50 day flowering period... knocked down by 7 days, for a crazy mother fucking sativa high... led, ac, co2. No one grows like that! i just gotta do it the best way possible.

I have questions for you.

The set up I am imagining is:

A 4 x 4 x 1.5 table, standing vertically against a wall.

My res, with the mandatory chiller, will sit outside the room. (or should i just have the ac fight it to simplify piping?)

- I want to know what you bought. What kind of nozzles did you choose, and did you find a diaphram pump you liked?

how many nozzles in your aero tank, and the area that each is responsible for?

finally,

how could I have a pump set up to return the water to the res? (and is 5 gallons big enough?)

thanks buddy,

peace

yes CO2 sinks to the floor, if not agitated!

you see that dirt/hydro poll thread?

i can't believe that many more people believe in soil, i mean, how the hell can it beat tag, even in taste, with all the awesome nutrient products available? ya know?

yak yak yak yak yak

Treeth said:

- I like smelling the burned CO2 when it kick on and fills the room, it becomes musky and hot like a jungle... and the rh is at 30%. At first I had a hard time staying inside!

Click to expand...

Ever heard of keeping the humidity higher on purpose, to keep stomata open or something? When I get the fully sealed room going, I'm going to try higher temps (with res chiller) and higher humidity. Sulfur burner should keep mold/mildew in check.

Treeth said:

So quentin,

I am "paying it foward" and moving up to aero after this first grow in dwc.

Click to expand...

Funny, same here! Although I have the luxury of keeping my DWC while I get the TAG set up somewhere else.

Treeth said:

I'm stoked for it. There is the kind of growth i'm looking for,

Click to expand...

Yup i'm pretty excited too! My hope is this will be the maximum yielding type of setup possible. You get that in place. Then complete environmental control. Then mess with nutes till you get them perfect. And then your only limitation is genetics baby!

Treeth said:

and finishing a week earlier is crazy... I'm gonna get some cindy (99) beans, 50 day flowering period... knocked down by 7 days,

Click to expand...

I have no idea whether that is true or not, but I guess we'll find out! I got my 20x loupe ready!

Treeth said:

led,

Click to expand...

Seriously?

Treeth said:

ac, co2. No one grows like that! i just gotta do it the best way possible.

Click to expand...

LOL I couldn't agree more, that's my principle too.

Treeth said:

I have questions for you.

The set up I am imagining is:

A 4 x 4 x 1.5 table, standing vertically against a wall.

Click to expand...

You're going vertical eh? Any particular reason?

Treeth said:

My res, with the mandatory chiller, will sit outside the room. (or should i just have the ac fight it to simplify piping?)

Click to expand...

Now that is a luxury I do NOT have. My room needs to be self contained, can't look anything but perfectly normal from outside.

Treeth said:

- I want to know what you bought. What kind of nozzles did you choose, and did you find a diaphram pump you liked?

Click to expand...

I decided on the Tefen plastic 1/8" nozzles, the non-drip ones. Here's the model numbers:

22211078006
22211078011
22211078012

They are all the same, just different colors.

As far as pump goes, I really wanted to do this without an accumulator and solenoid, so I was gonna use a bypass pump (Shurflo 8000-812-280).

BUT, a fellow from RIU with a successful HP-aero setup has kinda talked me out of it.

Accumulator + solenoid seems to be a superior setup:
1. Closer to instant high pressure. With a pump direct to the nozzles, you have to deal with the "climb" in pressure from when the pump cycles on, to full pressure. With an accumulator, it starts at full pressure as soon as the solenoid opens.
2. You're not power cycling the pump 500x per day (not exaggerating - do the math!). The pumps aren't THAT expensive, but they are the pricey component of the system, and they are subject to failure, in which case you're screwed.

See the other two threads I linked earlier for LOTS more details!

Treeth said:

how many nozzles in your aero tank, and the area that each is responsible for?

Click to expand...

My aero chamber doesn't exist except on paper . I'm pretty slow to build stuff, I tend to analyze things to death, going over and over successive iterations making improvements, sourcing parts, talking to manufacturers, vendors, etc. Until I'm sure I've got everything covered. Because we all know that no matter how much you plan, there's still going to be a serious of disasters once you build!

6ft x 5ft x 2.5ft, 75 cubic feet. 120 plant sites (every 6 inches), 30 nozzles (1 per 4 plants). That's the plan.

Treeth said:

finally,

how could I have a pump set up to return the water to the res? (and is 5 gallons big enough?)

Click to expand...

Ugh. I'm using gravity. Bottom of chamber level needs to be above top of res water line. Couldn't figure out any other way to do this.

Treeth said:

thanks buddy,

peace

yes CO2 sinks to the floor, if not agitated!

Click to expand...

You're welcome, and thanks right back to ya!