Does anyone have any experience with using heat from lighting to replace heat from a gas heater during winter, integrating a thermostatically controlled duct to control venting the heat out vs venting the heat into the house?

How many watts of light for a 2ksf house if you're pulling through cooltubes? As in What would equal the btu's of the main heater or how would I calculate that?

And moisture issues...

Would I need to pull outside air or is there some dehumidifier that works centrally? Or would it be enough to pull from a central location in the house and recycle that while running a separate dehumidifier in the grow?

Or another option, how about those water filled cooltubes as the heat source for under tile water tube heating whatever that is called?

(new style heating, but it's already out there.)

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lots of people use ballast and lamp heat as a replacement for baseboard or space heaters. i do.... as for elaborate plans, i can't really help; i'm not a hvac tech, just a country bumpkin with a solving problems approach to doing things.

Interesting question O.M., I've been thinking lately along the same lines. Instead of exhausting that hot air out, why not use it to help heat the house? You'd need good filtering of course, wouldn't want your whole house to smell like a dead skunk.

Yea, I'm not sure filtering is possible with that fast of airflow though...

I think you'd have to pull through sealed cooltubes that intake from elsewhere in the house to keep the smell contained and use a typical fan/carbon filter for the grow completely separate.

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Bukkake Bud: It might taste like splooge but shoots smiles all over your face.
When you'll suck on just about anything~think Bukkake.

Interesting you bring this up. I am int he process of setting up my ventilation and have decided to pipe the heat into the ducting for our gas heater. We have it shut down to save money and the ducting is a great place to dissipate heat!

My lighting consists of two 400 watt HID's and two 96 watt T5 fixtures. It does not generate that much heat, but I figure it could heat maybe two room a little. My plan is to run a 6" high velocity fan and just force the duct end into the heater grill.

As for filtration, all tent air will be filtered through a 6" carbon can before moving to other areas of the house and it will only be piped to two rooms to start.

Interesting! I think the most sensible way of doing this would be to isolate the light cooling first, then duct it into the return loop of your hvac. That way you are kind of supplementing the existing hvac equipment without doing major design changes.

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Unless you were talking a really big OP in a really small house, I don't think you'd ever do more than supplement a heating system, and even then, I wouldn't bother trying to supplement to the whole house.

IMO, I'd isolate the intake and exhaust in a loop to an area/room of the house that tends to stay cooler (outer extremities).

Generally, humidifiers(not dehumidifiers) are installed in conjunction with heaters because relative humidity is generally too low during colder temps and heating air can further lower R.H.

Well going off of memory (which doesn't always serve me well) I think I recalled reading somewhere that even the most efficient lights still put out something like 90 percent plus of the actual power out as heat. HPS may be the most efficient, but even the most efficient is in that same category.

Anyone recall the stats? If that's the case, it might not be that bad to run 3kw 4kw or whatever if it can replace the central heating at least most of the time. In the dead of winter the furnace could still kick in.

I need to redo a lot of the heating ducts here anyway, figured I'd see if there's a better way than just wasting all that heat.

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Bukkake Bud: It might taste like splooge but shoots smiles all over your face.
When you'll suck on just about anything~think Bukkake.