aircooled lights exhausting into the room itself, will it work?

[stonedstoner]

so my current set up is six 1kw aircooled light fixtures with my fan sucking air from the attic through the hoods and out of the room. I'm going for a sealed room set up. I have two minisplits one is 24k btu and the other is 12k btu. so that's 3 tons of ac power. my fan that's aircooling the lights is 1700 cfm. so my problem is that no matter how hard I try to seal up the hoods with tape, there are still leaks and it is sucking all the co2 out of the room, it is also sucking out odors and making it smell in the attic and outside near the vents of the attic. and it also must be sucking out a bunch of the cold ac air.

during the winter I tried running the room without the ducting and fan and glass on the hoods but ended up having to dim my lights down from 1kw to 600 cause they couldn't handle the light intensity and my cwiling are only 10 ft high, so minus the height of my tables and the size of the hood, I don't have much vertical space to work with. buy my co2 lasted so long it was great. but I decided set up the aircooled lights again and now I'm having the same problems I've always had with aircooling lights: losing co2, stinky house, and losing ac air.

so I was thinking I could have the intake of the air cooled system in the room and also exhaust it in the room above the lights. so the air in the room will just be pushed through the light system and pumped above the lights. and I'll have the ducts directed close to the ac. would that work or is it a stupid idea? I haven't seen anything online set up like that.

well sorry about the long post. I hope it made sense, I know I didn't do a good job describing shit.

 

[diseasedmind]

I have a similar setup to yours, I tape everything up the best I can and push through a carbon filter at the end. I don't seem to lose much co2, tanks last for quite a while. I don't see any point to air cooling the lights if you are dumping the heat back into the same room. you will waste electricity on running the inline fan and also still have the cost of trying to cool 6k watts worth of heat.

small amount of co2 and a/c you are losing while air cooling < cost of cooling 6kw of heat being dumped back into the room

 

[carson]

Agreed, no point in running the aircooling if you aren't bringing the hot air out of the room.

You could try pushing through the lights instead of pulling, that might help with the losses but I think its less effective for cooling the lights.

10ft is quite a bit of headroom, so I'm surprised you had intensity problems when you weren't aircooling.

 

[dragunn]

been venting my air cooled lights back into the room for years.mainly to keep the light closer to the plant tops.the vortex is hooked up to a filter,that I switch out every year.as long as you have enough a/c you will be fine.

 

[Mikell]

I have a similar setup to yours, I tape everything up the best I can and push through a carbon filter at the end. I don't seem to lose much co2, tanks last for quite a while. I don't see any point to air cooling the lights if you are dumping the heat back into the same room. you will waste electricity on running the inline fan and also still have the cost of trying to cool 6k watts worth of heat.

small amount of co2 and a/c you are losing while air cooling < cost of cooling 6kw of heat being dumped back into the room

^That

 

[stonedstoner]

been venting my air cooled lights back into the room for years.mainly to keep the light closer to the plant tops.the vortex is hooked up to a filter,that I switch out every year.as long as you have enough a/c you will be fine.

cool, thanks man. I'm going go try it out.

 

[Granger2]

What concerns me is intake from the attic. Attic air is super hot. Net effect is your probably not cooling the lamps with it. It's not uncommon for attic air to be 140F on a 90F day. You'd be better off to intake ourside air, exhaust into the attic. Or just don't air cool your lamps.

If you intake air into the room you must exhaust air out of the room. It's gotta go somewhere.

If you want to air cool lamps and exhaust into room, just seal the room and run room air thru the lamps and exhaust it back into the room. Good luck. -granger

 

[stonedstoner]

What concerns me is intake from the attic. Attic air is super hot. Net effect is your probably not cooling the lamps with it. It's not uncommon for attic air to be 140F on a 90F day. You'd be better off to intake ourside air, exhaust into the attic. Or just don't air cool your lamps.

If you intake air into the room you must exhaust air out of the room. It's gotta go somewhere.

If you want to air cool lamps and exhaust into room, just seal the room and run room air thru the lamps and exhaust it back into the room. Good luck. -granger

thanks dude. yeah, that's what I am thinking. I want run room air through the lights and exhaust back into the room.

 

[DoubleTripleOG]

You could always use heat resistant silicone caulking on the lights to seal them up. Pain in the ass to clean the glass. But could be done in between crops. You could also filter the air before it goes into the the lights, and then filter it again in the attic.

 

[AirCanada Seeds]

try slowing down the fan and see how it effects heat. if you know someone handy with electronics you could rig up a relay to the co2 system which turns down the fan only during co2 cycles.

 

[the gnome]

if you have 34,000btu of AC capacity why would you even want to air cool the hoods???
5000btu per 1000w will cool lamps AND takes care of the equipment in the room.
plus you still have 4000btu overhead at your command... your good to go!

lose the 1700cfm fan and the elec needed to run it all day.
put it on a humidistat and use it to expel the humidity/Co2 from the plants nite time purge or use a dehuey.
and lose the glass in the hoods that's decreasing your lumens by 10% or more

 

[Granger2]

Seal your hoods with these:
http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/561339/Office-Depot-Brand-Binder-Clips-Medium/
http://www.lowes.com/pd_96073-1410-V443___?productId=3223867&pl=1&Ntt=adhesive+foam+strip+door