Old Grow Gone, Planning New Grow Glycol Cooling System.

[riverrat]

Well, after a successful 1.5 year run, I’ve had to shut down my walk-in closet grow. My worthless roommate took off on me with about 9 Z and a few hundred in cash. It was a sweet grow too, I had just got it on a 3 week harvest schedule and I was pulling about an avg. of 8 z on each harvest. On one 400 W and 1 600W lights. Oh well, no more roommates for me.

So I’m moving to a new house with a one car garage and I’m planning my new grow. I’ll upload some Google sketch-up shots of it once I have them complete. I have been thinking about cooling issues and this grow has to be as stealthy as possible. I can’t use a AC unit in the garage so I had the idea that I could pick up a chest type freezer, put a tank in it with about 20 gal or so of glycol and pipe that cold glycol/water mixture into the grow chamber and use a automotive ac evaporator as a heat exchanger to pass my filtered air through it to provide cooling. The freezer will get the glycol mixture down to about -10 F and will look completely normal sitting in the garage.

Whata you guys think? Has anyone tried it? Will it work?

RR

 

[Haps]

Sounds like a ten dollar solution forr a two dollar problem. You might get it to work, but either way, you will benefit from studying existing cooling solutions. Oval wheels man.
H

 

[riverrat]

Actually it's not, I can pick up a old freezer for about 100.00, I have the tank, pumps & glycol, the evaporator is about 35.00 on Ebay. Bet I could put it together for under 200.00

 

[ben ttech]

back when i persued attempts to use food refrigeration for room cooling...
i ran into the realization that the amount of BTU's that will be drawn out of your cooled liquid by a moving column of air is vastly greater than what a refrigerator or freezers is able to draw out of a small closed enviroment...


its like leaving the freezer lid up or the refrigerator door open...
you wont make a dent in cooling a room...

you need much greater mass...
mabe buying an above ground pool and using its mass as the draw for your heat...
run a loop of its pump through the room...

 

[kaljukajakas]

It should work if the freezer is in another room with a separate ventilation system so the heat that is pumped out of the grow is dissipated elsewhere. Just another way to make an air conditioner. The only problem I see is that if the freezer has insufficient cooling capacity it might overheat. Of course that problem can be solved, for example the external radiator of the fridge could be further cooled by a fan blowing on it and another fan extracting more heat from the room, fiddling with the thermostat or even adding another fridge.