phillipchristian
New Member
Not sure I am understanding you but 1hp = 1 ton = 12,000btu. Depending on how you cool the lights will determine which equation you use to factor the chiller size. If you cool each light with an Ice Box it is different then if you vent the lights directly back to your air handler. When you duct it back to the air handler it's actually more efficient so you factor less tonnage of chiller.
It's not a closed system. Say you had 4 rows of 4 lights. You would put a fan on the furthest one in that row (4 fans) to pull air from the room and then push it through the 4 lights in that row. At the end of the rows you would have 2 "Y" duct connectors to reduce the ducting lines from 4 to 2 and from 8" lines to 10" lines. Then you would reduce it from 2 to 1 and from 10" to 12" lines. Then you would connect it to the plenum on the air handler. The fans at the beginning of the rows are to help push air through the lights; you don't want to rely on the air handler to pull air through more than 2-3 lights in a row. Then you can duct your air handler how you see fit. I split my ducting so that about 75% of the airflow is ducted to vents that are right overtop of my plants and then the rest of the air goes into a workspace area I have and into the electrical room. Since you can't control the temp in these other rooms without installing electric dampers and a second thermostat (totally an option) I just put them into rooms that it does not matter what the temperature is. You can also control it fairly well with lever vents.
I don't think you understand the theory totally yet. If you were to put Fresca Sol's or Ice Box on each light you would have to actually buy a larger chiller than just using an air handler becuase it is a less efficient system than the one I just described. If you were to put an Ice Box on each light you would need 4,000btu of chiller for each Ice Box (16 lights x 4,000btu = 64,000btu or 5.5tons of chiller). Now, that being said you would still have to cool the ambient air in the room, the ballasts, dehumidifiers, pumps, etc... So you would either have to get an a/c or you would have to size your chiller bigger and add an air handler. The Ice Box and the Fresca Sol only cool your lights back to ambient room temperature. You could use the Ice Box as spot a/c units but you would need about 6 of them to cool a room that size which means you would need a 7.5hp chiller to run 22 Ice Box. It would cost you $2800 just in Ice Box to put on the lights if you went that route; plus another $1000 to $1500 in Ice Box to cool the room (plus fans, manifold lines, tubing, etc..) and you would need dehumidifiers as well. You can get a 5 ton air handler for around $2,000 and you wouldn't need all the extra fans, tubing, manifold lines, etc... You could get 2 3ton air handlers and a 7.5hp chiller for cheaper than all those Ice Box, fans, etc...Then it would just be a questions as to whether you are going to use the chiller to cool Co2 generators, reservoirs and dehumidifiers in the other rooms (veg, drying, etc..). Either way you go the chiller would have enough capacity to cool those other items.
I would STRONGLY recommend against the Fresca Sol for an application like this. That system is so inefficient when trying to handle large light arrays that you would need to add 25% to your chiller. The water has no diffuser so it is not even near as efficient. Think of it this way...if it was really hot outside and you went out to your driveway with 2 buckets of water. Say you dumped one of them out on the driveway and left the other one in the bucket. Which pool of water would heat up faster? The one you dumber out because you have essentially diffused the water and given it a greater surface are with which to conduct heat. Think of the Fresca Sol as the full bucket of water. It is harder for your lights to transfer heat from the bulb to a full bucket of water.
Check this thread out. It is a much smaller application than yours. This is a friend of mine who I helped setup a system. He has 2 8x8 tents and 3 1000w lights (2 in 1 and 1 in the other). He lives in a VERY warm climate year round. His tents are inside of a tin roof building with no ventilation that is barely big enough to fit the two tents and let someone walk in. On top of that the roof is only about 9' tall and sits in the dead sun for 10 hours a day. He is using 1 Ice Box per hood (3 total) and 1 Ice Box as a spot a/c per tent (2 total) with a 2hp chiller that also cools his nutrient reservoir and 2 Co2 generators. His chiller runs about 20 minutes per hour on average. Check his journal out. He's got TONS of pictures. Trust me, the technology is efficient.
https://www.rollitup.org/general-marijuana-growing/513182-newb-grow-journal.html
