Apoplast
Carnivorous Plant Addict
Hello everyone - So, I undertook a large reorganization and rebuild of my both of my growrooms this summer. Essentially, I physically swapped my seasonal growroom (day/night: winter 15/5, summer 30/20) and my highland growroom (day/night 26/16) spaces. It ended up being a ton of work and took longer than I had planned. I did this for a couple reasons. The first is that my highland space was larger than my seasonal, and I needed more seasonal space. The second is a structural issue where I was having condensation problems in my highland space that I could better control in the other location.
But I took this opportunity to upgrade my highland grow space climate control by changing the cooling from a dual exhaust portable A/C unit, to a water cooled growspace. Doing so I am using 1/20th of the power and I am now getting much better temperature control.
Here is a little run down of what this looks like.
This is the heart of the operation, it is a 1/4 HP aquarium chiller. I have the temp set to 9C and it clicks on at 10C.
The warm water comes into the unit via a submersible pump, is cooled, and then travels back to reservoir. The reservoir is the largest marine cooler I could fir int there. It is highly insulated and located in the room with the plants, which means I don't have to worry about the heat load from the room impacting the reservoir, and that heat which does leak in comes from the room anyhow.
A second set of (not yet insulated) tubing comes out of the cooler to feed the heat exchanger. The water moves via a second submersible pump in the cooler. The heat exchanger is attached to a can fan, and both the fan and pump are plugged into a programmable thermostat (I know if I knew how to, or had time to, program Arduino this could all be done through that with the lights, etc.). Here is the fan and exchanger.
I don't have the water temp in the cooler set lower because then I end up with a lot of condensation come out of the exchanger. Were I to do this again, I would use a larger chiller, maybe 1/2 HP. But for now it seems to be working. Next I need to get my mist system setup in there to keep the humidity higher and water the plants better. But for now they look like the are surviving.
Thanks for looking!
But I took this opportunity to upgrade my highland grow space climate control by changing the cooling from a dual exhaust portable A/C unit, to a water cooled growspace. Doing so I am using 1/20th of the power and I am now getting much better temperature control.
Here is a little run down of what this looks like.
This is the heart of the operation, it is a 1/4 HP aquarium chiller. I have the temp set to 9C and it clicks on at 10C.
The warm water comes into the unit via a submersible pump, is cooled, and then travels back to reservoir. The reservoir is the largest marine cooler I could fir int there. It is highly insulated and located in the room with the plants, which means I don't have to worry about the heat load from the room impacting the reservoir, and that heat which does leak in comes from the room anyhow.
A second set of (not yet insulated) tubing comes out of the cooler to feed the heat exchanger. The water moves via a second submersible pump in the cooler. The heat exchanger is attached to a can fan, and both the fan and pump are plugged into a programmable thermostat (I know if I knew how to, or had time to, program Arduino this could all be done through that with the lights, etc.). Here is the fan and exchanger.
I don't have the water temp in the cooler set lower because then I end up with a lot of condensation come out of the exchanger. Were I to do this again, I would use a larger chiller, maybe 1/2 HP. But for now it seems to be working. Next I need to get my mist system setup in there to keep the humidity higher and water the plants better. But for now they look like the are surviving.
Thanks for looking!