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Has going water cooled saved you any cash on your electricity bill?
- Thread starter rr14
- Start date
M
mrred
i wasnt aware they even could save electricity, youre just transfering the heat, and your adding anothing thing to plug into the wall
stoneroad
Member
go do some math and get back to us seriously. throw us some numbers to crunch i have no idea if you even have a plant going or forest so let me know what size room how many watts for lights and other junk think real careful then repost with some data for me.
thanks rr14 in advance
thanks rr14 in advance
Hey Stoneroad, I'm looking into water cooling with chillers and a heat exchanger as well, can you tell me what you think of this?
2HP chiller, outside in the shade
55 gallon reservoir, outside next to chiller, with submersible 1KGPH pump
Feeds to either an aluminum car radiator (30X19X3") with a Vortex in a box, OR
A commercial 3 fan/3 core heat exahcnger.
I figure the chiller pulls fewer amps than a 24K btu mini split, and in the winter the cold water will stay cold outside (it never snows here) so the chiller won't run for several months.
I use a 30X20 outbuilding, it rarely goes over 85* in there but on very hot days it has gotten to 90*, for a few hours anyway. I have two 12" vortex on exhaust and a motorized intake shutter that work pretty well, but extra cooling would be a big help, and with water cooled I don't need to have an HVAC guy come to my place at all. Oh, and I run 8KW but only at night, I don't aircool my hoods even because even with 8 lights on it stays under 75 at night, I just need daytime cooling.
2HP chiller, outside in the shade
55 gallon reservoir, outside next to chiller, with submersible 1KGPH pump
Feeds to either an aluminum car radiator (30X19X3") with a Vortex in a box, OR
A commercial 3 fan/3 core heat exahcnger.
I figure the chiller pulls fewer amps than a 24K btu mini split, and in the winter the cold water will stay cold outside (it never snows here) so the chiller won't run for several months.
I use a 30X20 outbuilding, it rarely goes over 85* in there but on very hot days it has gotten to 90*, for a few hours anyway. I have two 12" vortex on exhaust and a motorized intake shutter that work pretty well, but extra cooling would be a big help, and with water cooled I don't need to have an HVAC guy come to my place at all. Oh, and I run 8KW but only at night, I don't aircool my hoods even because even with 8 lights on it stays under 75 at night, I just need daytime cooling.
Yes. My bill has dropped approximately $35/mo in summer with a pretty crap setup. I use well water to cool it and the system runs to waste so it takes very VERY little energy to run.
MMAJAY
Member
I thought about setting a friends indoor up with chillers but i was thinking that it might drive the humidity up to high. The reason i say this is at work we have them and the humidity is very dificult to maintain. Correct me if i am wrong and i might reconsider useing one instead of A.C..
No, a chiller is different than a swamp cooler, a water chiller refrigerates the water, no evaporative cooling involved at all, so no humidity issues. You just have to pump the water through a heat exchanger to get the cold air off it, basically like the opposite of how cars/radiators work, cold instead of heat.)
Oh, or check out http://www.coolerado.com for a 6-ton AC that uses only 600 watts, and can run on solar panels! THAT one is a fancy evaporative cooler, but since its fancy it doesn't raise humidity.
I just emailed blue star air for a price, I doubt they'll give me one but you never know. I think the M50 will be a little cheaper, it's a 5-ton instead of the 6-ton C60. If they're super expensive I'll just make my own out of the chiller/radiator combo above I think.
apartmentblower
Member
from a quick review i dont think you can use the coolerados in a sealed room. they say they do not recirculate the air as one of their benefits but thats not good for growers. if the coolerado is exchanging inside and outside air you are back at the same problem of exhausting co2 and stink. if thats correct they are almost useless for growing applications.... i mean the whole point of A/c is to run a sealed room right? if you arent going sealed why wouldnt you just run lots of exhaust and intake, save money and electricity.
also some of you are calling water cooled heat exchangers aka chillers (ie. 3 fan chiller) swamp coolers. im not certain but i dont think they are the same thing.
I have a double layer Dynatron copper based heat exchanger that i run well water through at a fairly slow rate. The input water is around 38F, the water output is a few degrees higher. The unit is sized for two 120mm or 4" fans (two mounting hole sets). This has dropped the duration that my AC unit runs fairly dramatically.
One caveat, at the temperatures of my input water I get some pretty serious condensation. I keep a fairly deep drip pan under the unit and dump it once a week or so.
I wish I had 38* water to use run to waste! My water out of the faucet here is 60* at least.
In this months urban grower, they're starting to advertise water cooled packages up to 2 hp which is good for 6 1000's according to them.
Using the hydrogen to warm up your room is definately possible during lights on. The discharge water is hot. This would be true especially if you have a big room.
In this months urban grower, they're starting to advertise water cooled packages up to 2 hp which is good for 6 1000's according to them.
Using the hydrogen to warm up your room is definately possible during lights on. The discharge water is hot. This would be true especially if you have a big room.
I think the idea with the Coolerado would be to put it outside your room, like a chiller, and blow the cold air in. This will dilute the CO2 in the room a bit, but would still have no exhaust (or need for it.) Just pumping in cold air from outside, just takes a hole in the wall/window board etc and some creative camouflage. It would probably work well in my situation, but definitely not for everyone. The guy from Blue star emailed and asked where I live, but he's making me a quote! woot!
Yeah I saw that, using a bunch of Ice BOxes. I think I'd rather have one big heat exchanger instead of 6 small ones, lots less plumbing and hassle that way.
Geo, where did you find your exchangers and how do you size them for a specific application? Is there a calculator that shows water temp vs. BTU of an exchanger?
