Around the Water-Cooler Discussion Blog

New Video on Ducted Water-Cooled Air Handler “All-In-One” System

admin — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:14:12 +0000

2 Part Cooling System – ducted WCAH

Size Matters – How to Properly Size a Chiller

admin — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:02:24 +0000

Ok, so you are interested in water-cooling but just need to know a few more things about chillers to help you make a decision on which one to buy for your garden. Well, you came to the right place. Today we will discuss a few things about sizing chillers to help you understand more as well as guide you in purchasing the right one for your garden.

First off, properly sizing your chiller is VERY important. Get one too small, and it will run constantly and won’t be able to cool your lights and your room. The idea is to plan ahead and get the RIGHT one. We always tell people to think of what your ultimate garden size will be… in other words, if you could design it and fill it with lights, CO2 generators, reservoir chillers, etc… what would that be? Today you may just want 6000w, but in 2 months you might be able to afford 10,000w. Or you may want to introduce water-cooled CO2, or maybe that new UnderCurrent system needs some CoolCoils in it to keep the nutrient water at 68 degrees. Whatever the case may be, the idea is to buy the right chiller the first time – so you don’t end up exceeding its capacity and not being able to cool all the things you want to.

Before we start – let’s make sure we understand what all the ratings mean in terms of how to determine size and output. A 2hp chiller is equivalent to 2 tons, or 24,000 btu of cooling. So 1hp = 1 ton = 12,000 btu. Heat is measured in btu (british thermal units) and is a way to measure how much heat is produced, and thus needed to be cooled. HOWEVER: In some cases, a chiller may not put out a true 12,000 btu per 1hp of compressor. Many aquarium chillers are labeled “1hp Chiller”, which means yes, the chiller has a 1hp compressor – but MAY NOT GENERATE A TRUE 1 TON OF COOLING. This is very important, and a reason why we recommend ChillKing chillers over many other ones including aquarium chillers. For example – we just got our hands on a new EcoPlus “Commercial 1hp Chiller”. We thought – great! A better EcoPlus that is more affordable for smaller gardeners than a ChillKing – we’ll carry these too. And right on the side of the box, it says Output: 8500 btu!!!   So a 1hp aquarium chiller only puts out 8500 btu! Nowhere NEAR 1 ton of cooling that you would expect from a 1hp chiller. So if you bought this thinking you would be able to cool say, 2 1000w lights with some extra left over – the chiller would most likely barely be able to keep up because 2 1000w lights = 8000 btu and it would run constantly!   This is why we recommend ChillKing chillers. They cost more, but they put out the maximum btu of cooling. In fact, we have seen 2hp ChillKing chillers perform at 28 – 30,000 btu when tested before being shipped – a full 1/4hp more cooling than what they are rated for!

To properly size a chiller – you have to add up all the heat sources you are trying to cool. 1000w lights produce about 4,000 btu of heat EACH (3500btu of bulb heat, and about 500btu of radiant heat). So add up all of your lights, and multiply by 4,000. For example, let’s say you have 4 1000w lights in your garden, and you want to “AC” the room, and run water-cooled CO2. In this case, you are using 16,000 btu just on the 1000w bulbs alone. That leaves you with 8,000 btu left to cool the room, AND run the CO2. Depending on the size of your room and how often the CO2 generator will run (please use the calculator and graphs on the HydroGEN product page at the Hydro Innovations website - CO2 Calculator ) this will determine how much chiller capacity you will need. If the chart tells you it needs 1/4hp – that is 4000btu. 1/2hp – 6000 btu. So lets say it needs 4000btu. Now, combined with your lights (16,000 as we calculated) – we only have 4000 btu left of chiller capacity to cool the room. That’s not very much, and if you had to run a dehumidifier (we generally recommend 50-55% for our plants and to avoid condensation on the water-cooled equipment that has cold water running through it), you will very quickly exceed the amount of chiller capacity to eliminate all the heat and cool the room.

This is why you often see estimates for how many lights can be cooled using various chillers, and not exact numbers. For example, Hydro Innovations has a package that they list as being a “5-8k watt package” using a 2hp chiller. This can be a bit confusing, because as described above – that may be possible but ONLY to remove the bulb heat of the lights. Six 1000w lights = 24,000 btu which is the capacity of a 2hp chiller. Now, they list “5-8k watt system” which is true – because this also takes into consideration that the ChillKing chillers rate out at 28,000btu , and assumes that you have secondary cooling sources (say, you have an AC to cool the room). The chiller in this case will only remove the bulb heat – NOT cool the room. NOT let you add CO2, NOT cool a dehumidifier. So it is important to add up the btus as we did above to make sure you are sizing properly.   Also, what type of water-cooling has an impact on these estimates also – if you are using Fresca Sols from Best Coast Growers – you can get closer to the “8k watts” on the estimate above because Fresca Sols ONLY remove the heat from the bulb, they cannot cool the room using water. IceBox systems, however, can cool the room as airflow is blowing through the heat exchanger out into the room. So you actually can cool the room using IceBoxes, ASSUMING YOU HAVE ENOUGH CHILLER CAPACITY.

A rule of thumb is to estimate 20% above your heat sources to cool the room. So if you were to add up everything like we did above, and say you had 4 1000w lights, running a HydroGEN water-cooled CO2 generator, and lets say a water-cooled dehumidifier (which uses approximately 2000 btu) – we would be just about at 2tons/2hp/24,000 btu to handle all of the heat sources. (16,000btu + 6000 btu estimate for HydroGEN + 2,000 btu = 24,000btu. )   Applying the 20% rule on top of this would put us around 30,800 btu which then would be closer to a 3hp chiller (36,000btu). So in this case, you would need a 3hp chiller to run this setup and would still have a little extra capacity above this.

Sizing for Air Handlers

Finally, one more thing to understand in larger setups is the use of air handlers in conjunction with chillers for “water-cooled AC”. By pairing a Water Cooled Air Handler (WCAH) http://www.watercooledgardens.com/home.php?cat=274 with a chiller, you can efficiently cool your garden and dehumidify at the same time – even when the lights are off – when humidity traditionally spikes with traditional AC systems (Conventional AC dehumidifies when the AC is running and the lights are on, but when the lights go off at night, the AC turns off and humidity rises). With water-cooled air handlers, dehumidification can be controlled independently of cooling- so your humidity can be managed during both lights on and lights off.   Air handlers need to be matched to the chiller size. For example, if you have a 2 ton chiller, you need a 2 ton air handler. For a 8hp chiller, you would want to use two 4-ton Air Handlers to match up to the 8tons of chiller capacity. A bigger air handler will NOT cool more than the chiller it is mated with. For example, a 3ton air handler matched with a 2ton chiller will only output 2 tons of cooling – because the chiller only produces 2 tons of cooling. The extra capacity of the air handler would not be used.

Air handlers need VERY cold water in order to work properly. We commonly suggest 45 degree water when running air handlers. This is so that condensation is produced when the cold water running through the coils of the air handler interacts with the air in your garden and thus enables the moisture in the room to be removed efficiently. The more condensation produced, the more it can be removed from the air inside the garden. This is very important if you are running an air handler AND IceBoxes in your garden – because using the same cold water with iceboxes as you do an WCAH will cause excess condensation on the iceboxes and water lines in the room which can cause issues. For this reason, water running through IceBoxes and other water-cooled equipment should be at a HIGHER temperature than the water running through the Air Handler. The only way to do this is to have separate reservoirs and pumps to pump different temperature water through each type of device. In this case, a Dual-Tank Chiller modification is made to the chiller when a hybrid type of cooling solution is used. For example, for one customer that has a 16,000w garden we built a dual-tank 8hp chiller – one tank fed a 4 ton WCAH running at 45 degrees, and the other tank fed IceBoxes on every other light (8 total) and a HydroGEN with 60 degree water. This enabled efficient cooling and minimized condensation on the IceBoxes and HydroGEN while providing the Air Handlers with nice cold water to enable dehumidification. The customer actually commented that it often felt TOO COLD because the chiller cooled the room so well, running 16,000 watts!

On a related subject – at the recent Grow2010 show in Los Angeles, Hydro Innovations displayed a new method of water-cooling lights using only an Air Handler and no IceBoxes – ducting the lights to the return air inlet of the air handler so that the warm air from the reflectors enters the WCAH and then blows out cold and cools the room – a much simpler and elegant solution that only uses one water connection between the air handler and chlller and no complex water manifold system – and does not require a dual-tank customization on a chilller (which saves $1500).

Hopefully this discussion helped you understand the importance of properly sizing a chiller for your garden so that you remove all the heat you need to, and have enough chiller capacity to cool your room as well. With a properly sized chiller – you can dial in the exact temperature that you want for your garden using water-cooling and ensure your plant’s environment is optimal for maximum growth!

Grow 2010 Los Angeles

admin — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 18:01:14 +0000

So we exhibited along with Hydro Innovations, Best Coast Growers, and Current Culture at the recent Grow 2010 Los Angeles show put on by Urban Garden. Really nice show, seemed to be more of a serious show as opposed to a “grab all the free schwag you can” show like some of the other ones.. They charged around $50 a person for entry, so it seemed that we saw more serious gardeners not just people looking for samples to sell on eBay…

The team at Hydro Innovations updated the water-cooled demo trailer with new setup that is just another example of the many options available for setting up a water-cooled garden. In the pictures that follow, you can see how instead of complex water manifolds and IceBoxes, the IceBoxes were removed and the lights were simply ducted to the return air inlet of a 3ton Water Cooled Air Handler (WCAH). This way, the bulb heat is removed by blowing it into the Air Handler, which it then passes over the heat exchanger inside and is blown back into the garden as cold air.. Much more of an elegant solution, and very easy to setup – just 2 1/2″ water lines running from the chiller to the air handler, and ducting between the lights and air handler. That’s it!

Lights ducted to intake of Air Handler

Close-up of Air Handler

Custom dual-tank 3hp chiller

Close-up of dual tanks and pumps inside 3hp chiller

viagra

Look Ma, no Compressor!

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:57:19 +0000

So the wizards at ChillKing have come up with another REALLY cool product that came out of discussions with indoor gardeners in colder climates – the ChillKing 3 hp Compressorless Chiller. So what animal is this you say?

It’s a chiller without a compressor! Ok, ok, so what does this mean? It means that this chiller is arguably the MOST efficient, MOST effective means of cooling for those in colder climates. By removing the compressor, you not only save energy costs – it only pulls 2 AMPS at 220v – but also weight and cost. The chiller is used outdoors to take advantage of cold air that is passed through its coils with a thermostatically controlled fan to chill water to within 5 degrees of ambient temperature. So what does this mean? Say you are in Colorado, Michigan, Canada, Washington, heck – anywhere where it gets cold… if the air temperature is 55 degrees, the water in your water-cooled system can be cooled to approximately 60 degrees. Likewise, the colder the outside air, the colder the chiller can cool your water.

This idea came out of discussions with some customers in cold climates that wanted to use the outside air blown through a “big Ice Box” attached to a fan to cool their water-cooled system during the winter. Instead of hacking something together, Chillking decided to remove the compressor from a 3hp chiller and use the insanely large heat exchanger and fan to accomplish the same task with a fraction of the energy usage!

This chiller can be paired with a Water-Cooled Air Handler for the most affordable air conditioner you can buy! It can be used to cool anything of course, including up to 8 1000 watt HID lights, HydroGEN water-cooled CO2 Generators , Ice Box heat exchangers, or reservoir coolers .

NOTE: As stated, this chiller is ONLY USEFUL in climates below 55 degrees F for optimum water cooling. Higher temperatures will decrease its cooling capabilities and thus raise your water temperature too high to be useful.

Sounds cool to us!

6 light water-cooled garden setup (Photos)

admin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:53:30 +0000

This garden was put together by one of our first customers and showcases many of the products offered at watercooledgardens.com. This is a 6 light setup, using 6 1000w HPS lights and 6″ Magnum XXXL reflectors covered with Hydro Innovations Reflector Heat Shields and using 6″ Hydro Innovations Ice Boxes and a ChillKing 2 HP Chiller to water-cool the lights. The lights and trays are mounted using No Holes Bar Complete light/tray stands from Best Coast Growers. These stands are perfect for this setup, as they are heavy duty constuction and hold the lights/fans/Ice Boxes very well and also allow each tray to have independent raising or lowering of the entire light configuration. High CFM fans are mounted on the end of each light chain, pushing the hot air from the bulbs across the Ice Boxes. Custom water manifolds were built for this system with sub-manifolds on each No Holes Bar light stand so that they can be raised and lowered independently of each other. The sub-manifolds are connected to the main water manifold by water hose, so that they can be raised or lowered with ease. A 75 Gallon reservoir holds the water for the system, and is wrapped with insulation to keep the water colder. The water flow is handled by a 1/2 HP Flotec Cast Iron Pump for maximum water flow through the various manifolds. CO2 is added to the garden using a Hydro Innovations HydroGEN Pro water-cooled CO2 generator. The entire garden is controlled by an AgrowTek GC-C Climate Controller that controls all aspects of the garden including lighting, humidity, fans, CO2 output, nutrient timer, and is managed by a computer with even iPhone remote access! Truly a state of the art water-cooled indoor garden.

This same water-cooled system for 6 lights can be purchased from www.watercooledgardens.com as a package deal by clicking on this link: 6 Light Water-Cooled System (no lighting), and a 15% discount is given for package deal purchases as well as free shipping for this package!

View of 6 1000w lights, 2 per 4×8 tray mounted on No Holes Bar stands

Aerial view showing Magnum XXXL and Ice Boxes as well as sub-manifolds on each No Holes Bar stands that connect to the main water manifold. Hydro Innovations Reflector Heat Shields are also on each reflector

Side view of reflectors with Ice Boxes mounted and ducting between reflectors

Another view of the room with reservoir and HydroGEN in the back, and fans mounted to reflectors in foreground

End of the light chains, showing sub-manifold connection to main water manifold via hose connection

Close-up of sub-manifold connection to main water manifold, with hose connection wrapped with insulating hose wrap

Reservoir and pump photo, with insulated wrap on 75gal reservoir and Flotec 1/2hp pump. Main pump output goes to water manifold on wall, with direct connection to chiller (red line), and HydroGEN (blue line) coming off of pump face

Close-up of Flotec cast iron pump direct ports for connecting to HydroGEN and chiller. By connecting directly to these ports, maximum water pressure from the pump is delivered to the chiller and HydroGEN, which require sufficient pressure to operate

HydroGEN Pro water-cooled CO2 generator mounted above reservoir. Blue input line comes from Flotec Pump, red line empties into reservoir.

ChillKing 2 hp chiller. 11 amps @ 220, enough to cool 6 1000w HID lights. Sealed from the elements, with temperature control on outside and hot/cold lines

The brains behind the operation… AgrowTek GrowControl GC-C Environment controller. Runs lights, fans, humidity, cooling, timer, CO2, and all managed and accessible by a computer interface and even iPhone access!!!

Some Cool Videos from Hydro Innovations…

admin — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:04:22 +0000

The last one is great!!!! The Grow Freezer in action – make sure to watch it for sure!!

watercooledgardens.com at SF Indoor Gardening Expo

admin — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 03:40:04 +0000

So we just got back from the Indoor Gardening Expo in San Francisco this past weekend where watercooledgardens.com made its official debut. The show was GREAT! At the Hydro Innovations booth – we were all swamped with attention for our one-of-a-kind Grow Freezer which Hydro Innovations and Chillking created – a completely self-contained, 600 watt, all water-cooled grow freezer. In the main booth, 6 1000k lights were kept completely cool and the tent hovered around 60 degrees or so in there, all via the big chiller sitting outside the tent. All things told, it was a GREAT show, with a lot of great visitors and interest in water-cooling and all the products on display.

For more information on the Grow Freezer and of course all the other water-cooled products, make sure to browse our product pages and Package Deals for converting to a water-cooled system

Looking into the Hydro Innovations booth

Inside the Hydro Innovations booth looking left – notice the drop-in res chiller run off the system. This setup is pulling air across the lights and exiting via the 8″ ice box pictured in the top left

Another view of the inside of the Hydro Innovations booth – this one pictures the 8″ ice box as well as the MiniGEN water-cooled CO2 generator. The water is delivered via the PVC manifold above with the cold water flowing into the blue lines on the ice boxes, and the warmed water returning via the red lines.

View of the inside of the Grow Freezer – if you weren’t prepared – it would literally blind you! We got a lot of good video of customers opening up the freezer and jumping back from the burst of light. Look for the YouTube video coming soon and that will be posted here!