Please help with using a water chiller + heat exchanger to cool lights/room :)

Hello there .

tl;dr: Can I use a 1/2 hp water chiller with an inline heat exchanger to cool 1600w of HID light? Or do I need 1hp? Also, any other info about chillers cooling lights would be much appreciated.



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So I'm going to use a water chiller, plus a reservoir , plus an ice box (heat exchanger) to cool my lights, and hopefully also the 13x10room. I have one 1000w HPS in a 5x5 tent, and one 600w MH in a 4x4 tent (one for flower, one for veg). I'm using 8" air cooled hoods, with a 675cfm max fan, and 8" ice box on each hood.


I'm thinking I'm going to get an ecoplus water chiller. I can't figure out if I can use a 1/2hp, or a 1hp. I have a 30 amp circuit into the room (2x 120v 15amp), so using a 1/2 hp would be preferable, but I'm wondering if 1/2hp is enough?





So does anyone have experience using water chillers, and if so would you be so nice as to help me? I can so far only find people who have heard about people using them, no first hand experience.

you need to talk to the op of that thread guy jedi mentioned above, I tried cooling a 1kw light with a 1/2 horse chiller and was hoping for a little left over to cool the room a bit but not a chance of that. it did however cool the light for MOST of the 12 hour on cycle.

redi jedi said:

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-room-design-setup/511767-water-cooled-grow-rooms.html

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Sweet! Subbed, I couldn't find that link with my google fu. Thanks .

dbkick said:

you need to talk to the op of that thread guy jedi mentioned above, I tried cooling a 1kw light with a 1/2 horse chiller and was hoping for a little left over to cool the room a bit but not a chance of that. it did however cool the light for MOST of the 12 hour on cycle.

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Man 1/2 hardly cooled 100w? That's not so good to hear.

dbkick said:

you need to talk to the op of that thread guy jedi mentioned above, I tried cooling a 1kw light with a 1/2 horse chiller and was hoping for a little left over to cool the room a bit but not a chance of that. it did however cool the light for MOST of the 12 hour on cycle.

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What brand was the chiller?

hell I can't even remember, the one made by hydrofarm . I'd have to go look but I thought it started with something like "eco". I never really got into the details of it all but ran a igloo cooler down to like 39, by the time the twelve hour cycle was up my water had exceeded 70 degrees if I remember right. like I said I just went with what I thought would work and MAYBE more or less water would have helped . since I ran a pretty big cooler (110 liter) almost topped off. I was told that was a little too much water for the task, never tried it with less but less water seemed to make less sense to me. get with scoobydoo .....oh having popped over to that thread I see you have! the dude seems to know his shit on the subject. good luck.

dbkick said:

hell I can't even remember, the one made by hydrofarm . I'd have to go look but I thought it started with something like "eco". I never really got into the details of it all but ran a igloo cooler down to like 39, by the time the twelve hour cycle was up my water had exceeded 70 degrees if I remember right. like I said I just went with what I thought would work and MAYBE more or less water would have helped . since I ran a pretty big cooler (110 liter) almost topped off. I was told that was a little too much water for the task, never tried it with less but less water seemed to make less sense to me. get with scoobydoo .....oh having popped over to that thread I see you have! the dude seems to know his shit on the subject. good luck.

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Thanks for the info, you probably got an EcoPlus model. I am glad I haven't bought my chiller yet because I was going to go with one of those but Scooby talked me into getting a ChillKing. It's a little more expensive but should last me years. I plan on getting a 2HP model for (2) 5x5 tents. I am going to put an icebox on the reflector, another one paired with a max fan as a spot chiller, and will be using a beer wort chiller for my reservoir coil. I hope this can bring my temps down from 88-90 to 80-83. I run CO2 and I also think the tank will last longer when I run a completely sealed tent.

I am debating whether or not I want to exchange the air in the tent every hour or two or if I am just going to seal that fucker up and let it be. For some reason sealing it up completely worries me. I have heard that the CO2 is all they need to be in a sealed room but don't plants use oxygen too? Anyone have any thoughts on this please let know. Thanks.

you will need at least 1hp, at least, and at least 2-3 ice boxes.