I pull outside air in year round and don’t have any issues. never used an ac. just insulate you’re incoming vents.
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+1 on insulating the intake ducting and simply drawing outside air through a hepa into the room. It depends where you are, but my incoming air at -20c is drier than my room air. Cold air blown into your room will be fine unless your room is 80% humidity (which is a problem on its own). Your ducts will rain if they aren’t insulated.
I’m an advocate of heat exchangers though. Run a large exchanger outside that feeds multiple smaller units inside with glycol. It’s a very effective means of dehumidification as well!
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Only problem I see with this is your gonna get different cooling as the temp changes day/night and as you get closer to the spring. Though you could always hook up a fan on a variable speed controller. I’d make a big plenum or use a rubbermaid storage shed if I thought I could get it sealed no need to run ducting around the yard… Doable, w/ patients.
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I vote for heated driveway
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how many lights and what kind are you running? you could run a handful of car radiators inside and out with fans on each exchanger use a 40psi pressure pump to recirc glycol through the system you could even bury a slinky coil setup underground for heat exchange during the warmer months where an outside exchanger would only introduce heat.
something like this except using radiators inside and outside the room to exchange the heat
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You could use a food safe barrel outdoors filled with water and glycol and use a small submersible pump and some tubing that runs to an ice box radiator (like we use with chillers) that hooks to an in-line fan. You could run multiple units in parallel off of a manifold that’s ducted down to a large can fan.
https://growershouse.com/hydro-innovations-ice-box-8?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&adpos=1o4&scid=scplp1527&sc_intid=1527&gsacid=929713396&keyword=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlKnd5M_o5gIVEr7ACh0HfQiHEAQYBCABEgI_AfD_BwE#!
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Run lights at night so you get help from ol mother nature to cool your room.
Vent in air only if the humidity is right outside (low), use filtration, and a timer to only vent in and out for around 10 min every 2 hours or so, so you dont lose your co2.
If you want to constantly vent during lights on, could switch your co2 to nights only, or do c02 floods, but thats another post.
I’ve been looking for cheap ways to use the cold winter air to cool 15,000 watts.
Check out this video, I remember watching it years ago.
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You’d be better off with air to liquid heat exchangers, people have done external radiators in PC cooling for years. Chilled watercooling with radiators outside in the winter was fairly popular for overclocking
With the right radiators/fans you could move quite a bit of heat around. LEDs would be extremely easy to cool given the flat mounting surface
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I may be misunderstanding but why would you go to an open room vs sealed. If you already run sealed in the summer I’m guessing you have a/c. Why not just run the ac in the winter? You want more profit add 1-2 more lights and plants your ac will manage the load in the winter as long as temps are below 50 but not summer. Not sure the little money saved from not running a sealed room is worth the headache of bugs, pollen and most importantly the smell. Save 600 a month x 2 =$1200. add 1 light extra lb. add 2 now your at 2 lbs extra on average. Not sure your price per lb but That’s my 2 cents
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After running sealed I’ll never turn back. Especially in Rdwc, you never reach the full potential of the system without running the supplemental co2. The yields are worth it hands down
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Did you ever run any of there stuff, was pretty crazy with all water lines everywhere.
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Had a friend do a room with water cooled chilled leds. It worked for them they didn’t need a ac unit. the install was intense pex everywhere def made moving the lights a challenge. But it worked. I’m not sure if the cost after plumbing is worth it though. Considering you still run a water chiller and circ pumps. Vs a ac.
I had a massive server tower with a 3x120 and 2x120mm radiator, d5 pump, etc in it. At least up until the point I fried it priming the loop without all the power cables disconnected(12v atx in particular)
I do know that for chilled water you need insulation on the intake side, once it hits ambient you’re good to leave it off. If you use an Iwaki or something similar that has more head pressure you can just use a larger main with loops running in parallel and reduce the amount of plumbing necessary
There’s a lot of old threads that have useful info as far as consumer grade hardware. Static pressure as it relates to fin density/airflow/temperature, heat input/dissipation, all kinds of stuff
edit: I’m not necessarily talking about cooling the LEDs directly, it’s more about pumping heat out/cold in with consumer hardware just using liquid:air exchangers on both ends. If you have an old unused well you could probably set up a poor man’s geothermal liquid:liquid exchanger for more consistent temperatures
Compressorless chiller will get your water to within 5 degrees of ambient outside air temp. Pipe to a air handler and add anti freeze and a mixing valve and free (Almost) ac all winter. If you live in that climate. Works in the high Sierra
Only weed growers want cooling in the winter so this is not exactly mainstream stuff, but the topic makes me think of the diy solar water heaters on roofs. They circulate the water through black hose running through solar boxes. It is a great pool heater and can also be used to heat a house if you have a big water tank in the basement. A system like that, with the clear covering removed from the boxes and run at night, would function in the reverse as a radiator of heat instead of a collector.
Air-to-Water Heat Exchangers | ChillXChillers.com
I live in a cold winter climate, ive always been trying to figure out how best to use the free cooling.
For a sealed type room situation I have thought a good option would be to utilize a outdoor air to glycol hx which would loop indoor to chill either a reservoir or hx of water to maintain 4C, that water would then be looped to the grow rooms which would have the air to water heat exchangers.
The pumps, the manifolds, controllers, and different size and types of heat exchangers are all on the above linked site, goto the products drop down link and look under the accessories heading for the links.
There are some good calculators out there for sizing too.
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Those chillers are what I use most efficient cooling you can get. My first was from surna and that was ok but Chillx is way better imo
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Wouldn’t you’re existing a/c system run more efficiently during colder months anyway? Just keep running your current system and current controls. Optimize by running your hood vents to your living space like @Demontrich.
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