My portable ac is taking over 1000 watts!

[rr14]

Hi guys. My damn ac is taking more power to run than my 600 watt ballast. I have a 3 by 3 hydro hut with a 600. The light is air cooled and I also have a 2 by 4 foot cab with a 400 watt. I have them going 12/12 and alternating. The 400 is on during the day.

Anyhow, the lung room is cooled via portable ac. This thing is sucking up a ton of juice. Unless I make a box, a window ac is out of the question due to hoa. Are all of your portable ac's sucking up this much juice? I just measured on my kill a watt meter.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

Are you venting the portable unit now?
If not, that could be sucking up your cold air and your KW's.
Is it constantly cooling?

 

[DIGITALHIPPY]

yea my portable is actualy 1500W... there energy munchers, its the extra fans etc.
i was cooling a 600W/my portable on a un-air-cooled hood and the one portable COULDNT keep EVEN a 600 cool... not below 85 anyway...

 

[G33k Speak]

IIRC, the rule of thumb is that portable units are about hals af effective/efficient as a window unit.

If you have a lung room, just vent the window AC to the lung room, and use a box fan to push it out of the lung room. (not uberstealthy- you need to have the lung room door open, or use an inline fan and a vent.

 

[maryj315]

i have a 12000 btu i used for over a year now sitting in my closet i used it for my vegg room which is 6 by 10 with 14 bulbs of t5 it would not keep it below 80 without venting air in from another room so i got me 2 465 daytons 1 to draw air in and to draw air out i did not need but 20 percent for intake but they were on sale my intake is from my flowering room and it stays cooler than running the ac and it is cheaper to run 1 more 1000 watt light than the ac but some in here swear by them so i all i can say is they did not work for me i also made sure all heat sources lights etc are vented outside i used to vent all my hot air into a hall that was closed off well alot of hot air still got through made a huge differince taking out that hot spot

 

[clowntown]

IIRC, the rule of thumb is that portable units are about hals af effective/efficient as a window unit.

Is that still the case when comparing, say, two comparable units with a comparable BTU and EER rating? For example, a 10,000 BTU window unit @ 9.7 EER vs a 10,000 BTU portable unit. Will the portable unit have a lower EER printed on the box? Or similar EER rating, yet produces only half the results? If the latter, these numbers sure are misleading ...

I'm completely clueless to the A/C game and just trying to understand...

 

[rr14]

the temps outside are in the mid 80's with night temps about 70. So, during the day I definately need the ac and at night I could use a little window fan to cut down on the ac usage. I'm thinking of using a temp activated window fan to turn on when the temps outside get below 70. I'll probably try to set the ac at about 74 or 75 depending on how great the temp differential is between the lung room and the hut. The light is air cooled and I use a 4" ecoplus pulling air through a scrubber and out the hut. It pulls from the top of the hut.

My portable ac has the duct going out the window. The air is scrubbed prior to venting out of the hydro hut. The 600 watt in the hydro hut is air cooled. I"M sucking air from outside and after tonight will be venting it outside.

 

[Habibi]

my portable ac is running in a room with 4 600 watt lights all air cooled and it keeps the room at 76 degrees all day long. the thing runs a max of 1430 watts. i can make it colder but the fucking things thermostat is auto only down to 76 so its either 76 or it runs until the room freezes (or the unit fills up with water)

you have to vent the air from the portable ac out for it to work....

alot of people here told me dont run a portable ac that they dont work, well i found they work fine if you are not able to put a window unit like myself, use a portable ac.

 

[clowntown]

What's the BTU/EER rating?

 

[hippie hill]

just got a window a/c to cool my bedroom down from 105f to what i hope to be 72 so i think that inside my 3 cfl cabs it will be 75 i just moved everyone from a 4' shop light grow in the frount entry were it was about 80-83 to cfl cabs in my bed room were at times it is over 100 and i had all my plants die the very first day i set the timer did my stuff for the day and came home to brown wilted plants the temp was 102f with rh26% will post after the test is over

 

[G33k Speak]

Is that still the case when comparing, say, two comparable units with a comparable BTU and EER rating? For example, a 10,000 BTU window unit @ 9.7 EER vs a 10,000 BTU portable unit. Will the portable unit have a lower EER printed on the box? Or similar EER rating, yet produces only half the results? If the latter, these numbers sure are misleading ...

I'm completely clueless to the A/C game and just trying to understand...

In all honesty, I'm, not sure how to accurately measure the BTU's/output.... but I may be like a lot of manufacturers' spec's- they quote from a lab test under ideal conditions.

For example- I have yet to get 480 Mb transfer rate from a USB thumb drive, but the 'spec' is 480Mb transfer rate. Same with a SATA drive.... I'm not getting the full speed out of it in real world use. Still fast as hell, but it's not 1.5 gig's a second.

Oh yeah - a lot of the portable and digital window units DO NOT restart after a power outage.. so the light will reset and turn on, but the AC doesn't. You room can hit 130F real quickly without the AC.

 

[DIGITALHIPPY]

portables work, just not as efficiantly. if u cant use a window unit, portables will fill the need nicely, they just dont cool asmuch and need air-cooled hoods. but should cool a small-watt grow real nice.

 

[Guest]

this is a 4 by 4 box i made for 60 bucks with the ac right in the wall

i have portable ac that paid 500 hundred for that's just sitting doing nothing now

 

[G33k Speak]

and lest we forget, the portables will also suck out a lot of smell and CO2 and vent it outside for you.

 

[clowntown]

and lest we forget, the portables will also suck out a lot of smell and CO2 and vent it outside for you.

Does this apply only to the single-hose models, or both the single- and dual-hose?

 

[clowntown]

In all honesty, I'm, not sure how to accurately measure the BTU's/output.... but I may be like a lot of manufacturers' spec's- they quote from a lab test under ideal conditions.

For example- I have yet to get 480 Mb transfer rate from a USB thumb drive, but the 'spec' is 480Mb transfer rate. Same with a SATA drive.... I'm not getting the full speed out of it in real world use. Still fast as hell, but it's not 1.5 gig's a second.

Yeah, those are theoretical / technical limits for the bus, and not necessarily what you're going to get per-device in real-world performance since you not only have the filesystem / OS / etc. overhead, but also bottlenecks on the memory / system bus, device, and so on and so forth.

What I meant was... if you go to the store and pick up two units, one a portable, one a window-mount... and both claim (for example) 10,000 BTU @ 9.7 EER... will either model perform similarly, or will the portable model with the similar specs under-perform the window model? If so, these numbers are truly misleading.

 

[humble1]

The two hose portable system should be comparable to the window unit.
The difference will lay with the fact that a window unit effectively seals (installed properly) and exchanges heat on the spot whereas a portable is moving the air of differing temperatures both to and from the unit.

That said, i'm still getting a new dual hose portable so I can take my night temps down below 70 and/or maintain my momma room during the day.

peace, love & coco

 

[G33k Speak]

Yeah, those are theoretical / technical limits for the bus, and not necessarily what you're going to get per-device in real-world performance since you not only have the filesystem / OS / etc. overhead, but also bottlenecks on the memory / system bus, device, and so on and so forth.

...

That's exactly my point. it's easy to clock transfer rates, not so easy with BTU's.

Do you think that MPG ratings have any relation to real world conditions???

Portables have too many short comings in my humble opinion, window units aren't that hard to install in an interior location. The portables I've seen, pumped out skunk smell for everyone outside to enjoy.
And also took CO2 with it.

I was looking for an inline duct fan with a built in thermostat to exaust an AC box, but couldn't find one. and the thermostats I did find wouldn't work above 130F, and the AC unit put out 140F air. Simple ducting did it in the end.

 

[G33k Speak]

Does this apply only to the single-hose models, or both the single- and dual-hose?

I've only used the single hose.
And come to think of it, it was a 10,000 BTU, and it has some trouble with a single 1000W- esp depending on outside/ambient temps.

 

[00420]

the double hose probly work better but i bet they use more power then the single's