Indoor cooling

[Lemon Chips]

My apartment does not have central cooling. It has a swamp cooler that is out-dated. It freezes in about 25min after being turned on low. It also, wastes a lot of electricity. I have two 600 watt lights and have a tent. I had bought a 12,000 btu A/C unit but it barely maintains the room with one light on and it takes for ever to cool the room if it ever warms up a couple of degrees. Do you have any ideas on how to keep the room cool?

 

[montanaorganics]

Mmm... the 12k AC should have enough power, is it installed thru the window? Even within the room it should have enough power but youll want to blow that xtra heat out still. Also consider running remote ballasts, if your not.

 

[intotheunknown]

are you air cooling your lights down? if not, that will help a significant amount. what type of hoods do you have? how is you tent setup?
need more info please.

 

[BedBug]

12k btu is more than enough to cool all your stuff. I would put the AC in a window in a spare bedroom with the tent inside. I would also want about a 6 inch fan exhausting the air from the tent, and pulling the cool air from the surrounding room into the tent. With an AC that strong, there is no need to cool your lights. I run 2kW HPS and a dehui and my 12k btu keeps everything nice and chill.

You should be fine.

 

[Lemon Chips]

That's what I thought. I am currently cooling my lights with a 6" fan inside the tent and venting it out into the room. I connected the A/C venting into my swamp cooler outlet and closed it off. The A/C creates a lot of heat but I was able to get that under control. For instance, last night i turned the A/C unit to 62 degrees (the current degrees 75 F.) and left it on. When I woke up in the morning it was at 72 F. And that's just with one light on.

 

[Lemon Chips]

O ya and the room is small it's approximately 10'-6" x 12' and the tent is 8' Length x 4' Width x 7' Heigth.

 

[intotheunknown]

the way window a/c units work is there is a hot side and a cold side.
they cannot combine, or else they wont work properly. so the hot side needs to be completely outside of the room youre trying to cool. is that how you have it set up?
oh yeah sorry not sure if it is a window unit or not...
because with the setup you have, you should have no problem at all cooling it down

 

[Lemon Chips]

I have a portable A/C unit

 

[Lemon Chips]

It's a Sunpentown 12,000 BTU Portable Air Conditioner to be exact

 

[intotheunknown]

ohhhh well nevermind ill shut the hell up now.
never used a portable. but in some way im sure they are similar in the way they work.

 

[montanaorganics]

Both the fins on the back and the louvres on the edges must be located outside of the room you want to cool. I suggest just sticking it thru the window but if thats not possible there are some good write ups on here about enclosing the backs with foam board.
hoosierdaddy has some of the best in my opinion. Step on over to his ventilation threads, he has alot to teach.

 

[Lemon Chips]

Both the fins on the back and the louvres on the edges must be located outside of the room you want to cool. I suggest just sticking it thru the window but if thats not possible there are some good write ups on here about enclosing the backs with foam board.
hoosierdaddy has some of the best in my opinion. Step on over to his ventilation threads, he has alot to teach.

I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about, but i'm pretty sure I can't put my portable A/C unit half way out the window because it has wheels and I live on the second level. It's also about 75lbs.

 

[intotheunknown]

get a window unit, cool the ambient temps in the room your tent is in and be done with it. that portable things seems like a huge hassle if you ask me.

 

[Lemon Chips]

get a window unit, cool the ambient temps in the room your tent is in and be done with it. that portable things seems like a huge hassle if you ask me.

I am considering it, but since I live in an apt it would cause complications because I would have to remove the old one and if I notified the front office (which is what I am supposed to do) they would want their handyman to do it and inspect it. Than they would see the op and if I don't notify them and just do it anyways I risk them seeing it when they walk by (it'll be really noticeable) and being evicted in the middle of my op. I am doing it legally so it doesn't really matter, but I would rather not go down that road. I don't trust anybody.

 

[intotheunknown]

ahhh i see. honestly, youre crazy as hell running 2 600s, etc in an apartment! maybe you should look into moving out of there instead lol.

 

[redbudduckfoot]

okay... ive got a 7500btu portable ac that i bought at lowes. it cools the two sixes i have in a 5x9 closed off room. more than enough. all you have to do is make an enclosure around the cooling vent on the ac. it is rectangle, right? get 2 - 4inch ducting and mount them to the enclosure. a womens high heel shoebox works if you are in a pinch. the air is now directed through the two ducts. now you can hook up one to the intake on the bottom of your tent, and the other to the top intake if you still wanna cool yer light.
just make sure the hot air from the ac is exhausted properly.
hope this helps.

 

[Lemon Chips]

ok I believe I found the problem. The A/C unit is a 120 watts/volts. Around 12 today my breaker blew. I believe it's not cooling the room like it is supposed to because the A/C is not getting enough power. So now I'm thinking a voltage converter tranformer will fix it. Does anybody have any comments with my theory?? or any other idea's??