New 5000 watt Room and in Need of Advice!

[TGT]

I am almost ready to set up a new grow room and wanted to pick a few brains on how I should best go about cooling. The last 4000 watt set up I did used the house's central air unit to succesfully cool the entire grow even during the hottest days of summer. With a little fooling around all went perfect. This time will be a little more challenging as the home does not have any air conditioning.

The grow will be situated in the basement of a house and the dimmensions are around 27 feet wide by 60 feet long. Obviously I won't be using the whole basement and will be building one wall at the back of the basement to seperate it into two halves. The grow room will be about 27 feet by 20 feet. Also, I might then make it smaller with a curtain if need be. I have included a diagram of the basement to give you all a better idea of what I have to work with.



There use to be a wood burning stove in the basement and it has since been removed. There is a vent that goes all the way to the roof that still exists, so hopefully I can use this to my advantage. I don't know if I should use it for the air cooled lights or for the carbon scrubbed air, or both?

I already own a 12,000 BTU portable air conditioner that is the two hose design. I know portables are not the best, but since I already own it I would like to try to incorporate it into the design if possible. Really I did not want to use air cooled hoods as my prefered style of grow is vertical and want to prevent having to run ducting all over the place. I understand without central air conditioning this might not be possible, but if I could make it work without I would be much more content as I can grow as I am most acustom too.

Idea Number 1

The idea I had in mind was to hang my lights hoodless like usual and have the Can-100 carbon scrubber exhausting into the second half of the basement. Then have a passive intake to pull the clean air back into the grow room. The portable air conditioner would be running in the grow room positioned farthest from the scrubber.

If this would not be sufficient cooling, I could then resort to adding my air cooled hoods and blowing the heat up through the vent and out the roof. This would remove a lot of the hot air and not make the air conditioner have to work quite as hard. I woud also be utilizing the wood burning stove's vent I was so lucky to have the previous owners leave behind.

So I would start by growing without the air cooled hoods and grow my regular vertical style. Then if that doesn't work it would just be a matter of hooking up the duct work and air cooled hoods and exhausting to the roof in a closed system so that no unscrubed air will leave the home. Does this sound like a feasible idea?

Any other idea's since I have only come up with one so far?

Sorry for the novel. There is a lot of things to take into consideration with a set up as large as this so I want to give as much information as possible. I really need some advice since I will start building the wall this Monday. The plants will be ready in two or three weeks, so it will have to be complete by then.

Thanks in advance!

TGT

 

[TGT]

No replies yet? I was hoping someone with experience in cooling larger grows would have chimed in by now. Please - I need some input by all you talented growers out there - anyone?

TGT

 

[sneakyninja]

Air cooled hoods for sure. Answer a few questions so I can tailor this answer to your system.

Do you already own the a/c hoods?
I'm assuming you plan on doing 5 x 1000w?
Any interest in doing CO2?
Whats the max kw you want to be using at any given time including all accessories?
You mentioned sealing the room, interested in doing a full sealed room setup?
How big is the fireplace type vent?

Answer those questions and I'll come up with a couple of ideas that could work for you.

 

[TGT]

Thanks for the response! I already have the air cooled hoods and yes, I am doing 5 - 1000 watt HPS. I don't plan on using Co2 because then I would have to have a closed system. Also I would rather not bother with it yet. May be in the future at another more permanent location. The max kw I will be using will be probably around 7000 watts. To answer your last question, the fireplace vent is an 8 inch vent straight up to the roof, could be 6 inch - i'll have to check to make sure. Thanks for taking the time to help me out.

TGT

 

[DIGITALHIPPY]

thats fucking sick.
put a scrubber on the cieling and have your pipeing to to the hoods scrubber->1->2->3->4->5->6or8->chimney

the scrubber will fix the smell, but since its going to the roof it shouldnt matter, but be safe use the scrubber.

im worried about the distance u might want to do
scrubber->fan->hoods1-5->fan->chimney

do you have seperate exhaust for that poortable maybe a basement window?
you could also do a 6"6"6" "Y" with hoods-> <-A/C
Y
vent

sounds like you got a good setup happening

 

[DiscoDuck]

do you have any shade around the perimeter of the house? your basement will suck in air if you're blowing air out an exhaust. you can positively influence the ambient temperature of the basement if the incoming air is shaded against sunlight.

 

[DIGITALHIPPY]

do you have any shade around the perimeter of the house? your basement will suck in air if you're blowing air out an exhaust. you can positively influence the ambient temperature of the basement if the incoming air is shaded against sunlight.

good point my friend, all that ventign will cause neg pressure.. kind of a good thing tho. like your saying air will come in, hopefully cool, and fresh with co2 because 5k rooms use Co2 fast.
not like a co2 machine/tank but atleast it wont drop below 100ppm...

was waiting to see what he says in his reply, weve/I got more ideas

 

[DB2004]

Hey TGT

For 5KVA, I can build you a nice little load center, hard-wire it to a main panel with a 50A or 60A double pole breaker. All your ballasts, ac, pumps, fans, etc, can run off this loadcenter, The bus is rated for 100A. It would be similar to this loadcenter.


Best Regards

DB

 

[TGT]

DigitalHippy, I was thinking of doing just that, but I am worried if I take air from the room through the scrubber and then cool the lights with it and exaust to the roof vent, I will have negative pressure. This negative pressure will cause warm air from up stairs to be pulled down stairs and into the basement. I don't think this will work well with my air conditioner.

What I was thinking of doing close to what you suggested is to take the air from an outside source to cool the lights and then eject that up through the vent to the roof. That way I will remove the heat from the lights and the air conditioner can do it's thing. Also there would be no negative pressure to pull hot air from up stairs. I would then have a carbon scrubber exausting air to the next room, circulating the cold air only in the basement and returing it through a passive intake. I would have all cold air return vents plugged so the cool air all will stay contained and not travel throughout the house.

I just read the rest of the threads and DiscoDuck and DigitalHippy pointed out already what I wrote above. It would probably help to read the whole thread and then respond. Opps!

DB2004, nice! I would love to build one but I am not that good at electrical. I know the basics but building something like that would scare me. I have a friend that does this all for me. If you got instructions I would be interested in seeing them. I would love to make one for this grow in particular. Thanks!

Thanks again for all the response. So it seems my idea will probably work? Any other suggestions, or alterations to my original plan to make it work better?

TGT

 

[wafflehouselove]

i didn't read through your whole post but i did see that you own a 12kbtu, that won't be enough for 5k grow. I have a 17k btu window unit cooling 4k lights and its almost bearly keeping it under 90, i have to relay on the vent of the central unit, but this was in the summertime here and its really hot here, your in the basement that may be cooler.

 

[Mr Celsius]

Krusty always used an AC unit, but I think if you creatively implement cooltubes, you might be able to actually vent a lot of the heat out and then let the 12k portable deal with the ambients.

For the price of 5 cooltubes, you could probably buy an additional AC unit... I mean your 12k + another 12k "window" unit would easily handle 5k and allow Co2... should you want to down the road.

 

[TGT]

Wafflehouselove, I think you are correct in saying that the 12,000 BTU air conditioner won't sufficiently cool the room without air cooled hoods being utilized. I think it might work well with them, what do you think?

Mr.Celcius, that is what I think I want to try. To use the air cooled hoods and let the air conditioner deal with the ambient room temperature. With using outside air to cool the lights and exhausting through the vent in the roof I will not be creating a vaccum. This will be a closed system so it will not allow any outside air to enter the room. Also without the vacuum no hot air from up stairs will be pulled downstairs. I will use the carbon scrubber to clean the air and also exchange the cool air in the adjacent room with the grow rooms air. I figure the 12,000 BTU air conditioner can handle the temperature as long as it does not have to deal with the lights heat, especially with the basements air being totally contained in the basement. I hope that makes sense lol!

I guess with this setup I could use Co2 down the road if I decide it nessisary. With the cooled lights being a closed system and the carbon scrubber only exhausting into the next room it sounds totally feasible. I think I would have to use quite a large amount of Co2 initially as it will have to fill the whole basement. Never thought about that before, but seems promising. Thanks Mr. Celcius!

If I need to get another air conditioner to cool properly I will, but I am hoping it will work with the air cooled hoods/closed system/air conditioner combo.

Many thanks for all the great input lately. Keep it coming. The more I talk about it the clearer this is becomming. I will make sure I log the whole process of the room set up to final grow in the coming months. Should be an interesting thread - I hope others think so too.

TGT

 

[DIGITALHIPPY]

your portable will need its exhaust vents going somewhere. creating negative air.

if you dont creat negative air, your plants might not get enough co2.....

in the basement, ill assume you mid-east coast so the ground the air is rushing past might not be as warm at the house....cooling the air on the way down.

 

[wafflehouselove]

If you air cool your lights then most likely that 12kbtu air con will work to control your whole grow. Just make sure you got good intake and exaust of hot air and y our good.

 

[TGT]

DigitalHippy, I am not too concerned with the negative air the AC will give me, it is more so from the exahust fan if I were to eject the carbon scrubbed air outside, but I am not planning on doing that, just out to the next room. Also, I don't think I want to use Co2, but may be in the future I could alter some things and give it a try. It's not important for me right now.

Wafflehouselove, I think you are correct. I believe with the air cooled hoods and the 12,000 BTU air conditioner going it should cool sufficiently, especially since I am in a cool basement to begin with.

Thank you all for the excellent help. Now the next step is to put this to the test. This Monday we start building the wall, so I will log the grow to let you all know how it goes. Hopefully I can get through this without too many headaches.

I have done many grow rooms in the past and am very familiar with large operations, just I have never done one without central air as my coling method. Where I live most homes have AC so this one is a challenge for me, especially when trying to use equipment I already had and the summer just around the corner.

TGT

 

[wafflehouselove]

tgt, supply your cool tube with a cool air source from outside of the grow