HELP make air-cooling light more efficient!!!!

[RamCTD1027]

What up ICMag??? I'm trying to make the air-cooling of my lights a little more efficient for the second run so I am looking for a little help. Right now, the room is 6'6" wide x 10'6" long x 7' high. I have 3-600w lamps in SS2 hoods over 3x3 tables in a row being cooled by one 6"vortex, which is definitely not enough. I am about to add another light to the room over another 3x3 just as the picture shows.

Right now, air is pulled into the manifold via 6" vortex and runs through the 3 hoods in a row and exits the room. Once I add the 4th light, I will need to change up the whole manifold design so I am open to allllllll opinions. My current "rough" idea is in the picture below. Should I use two fans....one pushing and one pulling?? I have an extra vortex, so I can have one at either end. I can also upgrade the fans to a larget fan, possibly 8" or 10". I am going to enlarge the manifold to either 8" or 10" circular with 2-6" take-offs for the lights.


http://www.icmag.com/ic/album.php?albumid=3289


I'm looking for any help on what people think would work. Thanks for the help.

Ram

 

[Observer Tom]

So air comes into the room at the fan and is pushed through the yellow lines, right?

If your current fan isn't enough with 3 lights, then I would suggest adding a second fan and having two separate lines. Try to keep them straight if you can, the more bends the slower the air will go.

If you do 4 lights in a row, no matter how fast air travels the lights on the end will be a lot hotter than those at the beginning.

I used to use 6" vented hoods and my setup had an 6" vortex fan pushing through a row of 6, 1k lights. I pulled air from under my house through a bug filter then through the hoods and back under the house, it seemed to work pretty well. All my hoods were in a row and I pulled the ducting as tight as was reasonable to avoid any corners.

If you pull air it will be a little more heat efficient, but then you risk smelly exhaust. I pushed air so no smell would escape, and just taped over all the hood corners and places where I could detect air leaks.

 

[I2KanGrow]

Yeah, I agree with Observer, having the lights in series (for cooling, that is) is problematic - you're pre-heating the cooling air whenever you pass thru a hood that's ahead of it - looks like you have the air being heated 3X before it hits the last light in the end of the series, is this correct?

Increasing volume would help a bit, I guess - but if you can divide-and-conquer those in series, you'd get a cooler situation overall, me thinks.

 

[RamCTD1027]

If I knew how to post pictures in the thread, I would. I put a link up there to a quick sketch of how the room is set up.

Right now, 3-600s are in series being cooled by a 6" vortex. I understand that the air reaching the final light should be 3X as hot, but when I put my hand over the exhaust end, its not really hot at all. Could this be from an inefficient fan/set-up? There are a few 90-degree bends in the duct work but those are made out of rigid duct. All ducting right now is 6" so with the bends, I assume there isnt enough cfm.

When I add the 4th light, should I....

1. Add the 4th light into the series over the existing 3'x9' footprint and upgrade all the duct to larger ducting and a larger fan???

2. Add the 4th light over an additional 3'x3' table and set up the lights as shown in the picture (L-shaped). I will have to enlarge all the duct here as well and increase fan size also.

Should I have two fans...one pushing and one pulling?? Just one fan pushing or pulling???

Please, any help would be great. The last table will be done in about 5 days and I will re-work the room and get it back up and running ASAP so I can get another crop in there.

 

[Observer Tom]

Posting images is kinda tricky, I put mine up on a free photobucket account, click the image and say "View image" then copy the link and paste it here. It seems to work great.

Anyway, if your exhaust isn't very hot you could always try putting all 4 on one fan and if it becomes too hot you could always re-rig it. If you do end up using 2 fans I would put 2 lights on each fan and push air through instead of pulling.

Maybe something like this? Just a suggestion, not sure what your room height is and if you would even need 2 fans, but this would give you very few bends in the line. I based the room dimensions on your pic, but my artwork isn't as good.