Power and Cooling design for new growspace.

[BlackMagic66]

Heya IC folks, I am currently building out my first (legal) indoor grow space in a garage space. Right now I just have a "room" of foam insulation panels built around a 4x4 tent with intake and ventilation ducts out the ceiling.



My question is about running this room in the summer with a mini-split. Has anyone run a minisplit with the condenser in a garage space? How inefficient would it be compared to running 25 feet of copper to the back yard to have the compressor in a fully outdoors space?


Secondly, does anyone have any experience using online battery backups and/or power-line filtering/QC? I am looking for a cheapish solution (sub 1k) to run my LEDs for a short outage as well as filter my power in case of surges or brownouts.


Appreciate any help... lmk if anything i was asking was not clear...

 

[packerfan79]

Heya IC folks, I am currently building out my first (legal) indoor grow space in a garage space. Right now I just have a "room" of foam insulation panels built around a 4x4 tent with intake and ventilation ducts out the ceiling.



My question is about running this room in the summer with a mini-split. Has anyone run a minisplit with the condenser in a garage space? How inefficient would it be compared to running 25 feet of copper to the back yard to have the compressor in a fully outdoors space?


Secondly, does anyone have any experience using online battery backups and/or power-line filtering/QC? I am looking for a cheapish solution (sub 1k) to run my LEDs for a short outage as well as filter my power in case of surges or brownouts.


Appreciate any help... lmk if anything i was asking was not clear...

You can put the condenser in the garage, but it will move likely bite you in the ass later. If you are legal and own the house, no real reason to keep the condenser in the garage.

 

[BlackMagic66]

You can put the condenser in the garage, but it will move likely bite you in the ass later. If you are legal and own the house, no real reason to keep the condenser in the garage.

Well stealth and security are a huge issue for my grow since I live in a low-rent slum and tweakers will rip out any AC unit not caged. Also, if folks get the idea that I am doing more than just smoking weed at this location then I open my unsecured hovel up to potential break ins too...



Now im not saying I wont run a unit and try to hide or cage it on my patio, but if it would still cool a 30 sqft area with the "outside" unit in my garage I think I would totally do it.

 

[packerfan79]

Well stealth and security are a huge issue for my grow since I live in a low-rent slum and tweakers will rip out any AC unit not caged. Also, if folks get the idea that I am doing more than just smoking weed at this location then I open my unsecured hovel up to potential break ins too...



Now im not saying I wont run a unit and try to hide or cage it on my patio, but if it would still cool a 30 sqft area with the "outside" unit in my garage I think I would totally do it.

It is doable, mabey add a gable fan to keep fresh air coming into the garage, or a charcoal filter/ fan cleaning the air and pushing the hot air out of the garage. Or both. Anything to keep the garage from getting crazy hot. I used to grow in a room in a garage, every summer I would wind up with a shitty summer crop. Eventually I just expanded my grow, and stopped growing in the summer.

It took 3 portable ac's going out before I realized it wasn't going to be profitable to grow during the summer. It's nice to have a break from the work load also.

I hope you get it figured out.

 

[BlackMagic66]

Well the space I am trying to heat is really just the area between the tent and the insulation panels that make up the walls. The space is probably 400 cubic feet, but the tent takes up 100 of that, so I am really just cooling 300 cubic feet... maybe I will just take a gamble on one of those $300 Chinese units and if it to loud or hot I can just take the money I saved and buy 200 dollars worth of insulated copper and run it outside

 

[Chunkypigs]

Just use a window banger in the room with hot/wet end dripping in your garage, pick one up on CL cheap.

 

[packerfan79]

Yeah, I got a windowbanger sitting in my garage right. It worked for my 10x12 room. In a garage.

I was wondering why you were going to run a tent inside of a room? I would just forget the tent.

 

[f-e]

Your in&out vents are both at the top?
It seems customary, from looking at the design of most tents, that air comes in the bottom. Mine does, no matter what my space is.

A lot of the things we buy, are not really tested that well. Most low cost UPS boxes, use square wave inverters. This can cause havoc with poorly thought out equipment. I had a fan screaming like a peizo watch, when an SMS controller was run on a home office UPS. I can't say how your led drivers will take to a cheap UPS. You might have to run a proper sine wave one.

 

[St. Phatty]

Your in&out vents are both at the top?
It seems customary, from looking at the design of most tents, that air comes in the bottom. Mine does, no matter what my space is.

A lot of the things we buy, are not really tested that well. Most low cost UPS boxes, use square wave inverters. This can cause havoc with poorly thought out equipment. I had a fan screaming like a peizo watch, when an SMS controller was run on a home office UPS. I can't say how your led drivers will take to a cheap UPS. You might have to run a proper sine wave one.

It's also not too hard to install a 60 Hz (or 120 Hz in some countries) pass-band filter.

Which is basically a BIG steel tape core with 100's of wire turns.

You could make one yourself using the steel tape at the hardware store (that they use to tie up pallets).

To make a true 60 Hz filter you might also need a big capacitor. (non-electrolytic)