a/c questions

[Grapefruitroop]

Hi to everyone!
I live in extremely hot area, where the temps in the summer are pretty much always over 105...
I would like to prepare my garage with 12 600w lights..
For what i read a 5 ton a/c should be fine, but some things are not clear to me...
like..if im going to replace the air every 5 or 10 min my a/c will never catch up to lower the temps if every 5 min ill blast hot air in it..... so my idea was to let the a/c be the only intake to the growroom...and let it on the whole day light period and on and off for the night...
Does this make sense? i was wondering also how other peeps set up their indoor in such crazy hot weather...
Thanks so much
have a great day

 

[mowood3479]

So grow rooms can either be sealed cooling with a/c (w/no air exchange) and supplemental co2
Or you can cool by exchanging air using active exhaust/intake

A 5 ton should cool ur room ok depending on the insulation in the garage and whatnot.
But Youll need a propane burner or bottled co2.

Also, sometimes people will cool a "lung room" and use that air to exchange in and out of the grow room..
but I just mount my mini splits in the grow room so I can't say how that works.. I've read u need a lung room that same sq footage as the grow room for it to work properly but idk?
There are tons of good ac threads in the grow room and equipment forum..
I went from knowing nothing about ac to installing my own minisplits just from reading all the ac threads,
Good luck

 

[Grapefruitroop]

Thanks so much...
When you say °Sealed room° you mean that the 5 ton a/c is installed directly In the growroom? Can otherwise the a/c be installed outside of the growroom pulling the hot air from outside and pushing the cooled air into the growroom ...in my idea in this way there will be always a fresh air exchange eliminating the need of co2.
I didn know that you could run a completely sealed room and grow plants in it....what about the oxygen?
sorry for my noob questions..
thanks again

 

[B4URTIME]

Thanks so much...
When you say °Sealed room° you mean that the 5 ton a/c is installed directly In the growroom? Can otherwise the a/c be installed outside of the growroom pulling the hot air from outside and pushing the cooled air into the growroom ...in my idea in this way there will be always a fresh air exchange eliminating the need of co2.
I didn know that you could run a completely sealed room and grow plants in it....what about the oxygen?
sorry for my noob questions..
thanks again

Plants use Co2 for photosynthesis during lights on they are taking in co2 and photosynthesizing and releasing oxygen during the process, at night they switch completely to respiration mode and thus they take in oxygen and release co2.

In a sealed room the plants will produce all the oxygen they will require for the respiration process during the photosynthesis process.

The amount of oxygen produced by the plants during photosynthesis far exceeds the amount of oxygen they consume during respiration process.

 

[Grapefruitroop]

Got it.... Thanks!
So a sealed room will eliminate the problem of puttin carbon filters to the exaust right?
So basically none has ever installed an a/c outside of the room?

 

[Granger2]

If it's a sealed room there will be no exhaust. There is an outside unit that will be outside the room, and an indoor unit inside the room. You can have a closed loop for cooling the lights if you want. This will be outside air vented thru you lights and back out of the room. This air never mixes with the indoor air. Good luck. -granger

 

[mowood3479]

Got it.... Thanks!
So a sealed room will eliminate the problem of puttin carbon filters to the exaust right?
So basically none has ever installed an a/c outside of the room?

What u r describing (ac cooling adjacent room to grow room and then using that air to cool grow room) is called a lung room... Yea people do it.. But u still need co2
No good way around that.

 

[queequeg152]

replacing air every 10 minutes?

who says to do that?

if anything u need to filter the air every 10 minutes... but even that. idk.


imho u should use demand based ventilation. like old school occupancy hvac setups.

u basically install one of those honeywell co2 sensors with the relays and wire it to power on a fan when the co2 drops below 300 ppm.

on top of that you could use an ERV unit... but the cheapest ones are only double digit cfms. idk if one could keep up with a large grow room, but if it could... it would recover like 80% of your cool air before its wasted as exhaust.