mebesideme
Active Member
So, my friend is at about 2 weeks of veg, and is using a t5 8 lamp with 6 6500k bulbs and 2 3000k's. This light is officially the ish for vegging. Anyways, he needs to hook up his 600w hps soon, but the old open reflector is getting the boot because of the heat it generates. Currently, with his house ac on and both fans, the room itself stays about 86 f. It will cool to about 76 in a few minutes after the 600 turns off and it is just the t5. The problem though, is the weather outside won't warrant the ac running much longer.
He was looking at a 6 inch ducted air cooled reflector, but the actual dimensions are so small for these that it seems his light may not cover quite the same square footage as the old one, especially if it can sit closer than it did before. Using a second light is not an option, and the 600w is nearly brand new and digital. He wanted to know more about water cooled. Willl it solve these problems?
Water cooled lights seem to need less energy per hour to keep cool. I know that the pumps he is using for his rez pull about a quarter the amps of what his biggest blower does, and that one big blower doesn't do anything to keep the room cooler without a/c on. He is currently relying on one little blower (155 cfm inline) hooked up to the 600's reflector very basically; the big 500cfm only pulls air from the very top of the room, through a carbon filter then out the top to a vacant area. This leads me to...
The noise! Pumps are virtually silent compared to even "silent" low cfm inline fans. The two fans above aren't very noticeable once they are on, but they can be heard very distinctly when first turning on. They also have to exhaust into an area that can casue some heat to return to the room by radiating on a wall.
Also, will it be efficient running the water line TO the light un-insulated? It seems it might heat up a bit from the cooling rez through the room into the light. He has all the room he needs to put the resovoir into an adjacent room where it would stay very cool. It would be this one water cooler for the light and then only one of the two fans for exhausting old air from the top of the room, hopefully the little one if it can draw through the filter. Any thoughts? Just wondering which would move more heat out of the room itself, the air cooled or water cooled?
He was looking at a 6 inch ducted air cooled reflector, but the actual dimensions are so small for these that it seems his light may not cover quite the same square footage as the old one, especially if it can sit closer than it did before. Using a second light is not an option, and the 600w is nearly brand new and digital. He wanted to know more about water cooled. Willl it solve these problems?
Water cooled lights seem to need less energy per hour to keep cool. I know that the pumps he is using for his rez pull about a quarter the amps of what his biggest blower does, and that one big blower doesn't do anything to keep the room cooler without a/c on. He is currently relying on one little blower (155 cfm inline) hooked up to the 600's reflector very basically; the big 500cfm only pulls air from the very top of the room, through a carbon filter then out the top to a vacant area. This leads me to...
The noise! Pumps are virtually silent compared to even "silent" low cfm inline fans. The two fans above aren't very noticeable once they are on, but they can be heard very distinctly when first turning on. They also have to exhaust into an area that can casue some heat to return to the room by radiating on a wall.
Also, will it be efficient running the water line TO the light un-insulated? It seems it might heat up a bit from the cooling rez through the room into the light. He has all the room he needs to put the resovoir into an adjacent room where it would stay very cool. It would be this one water cooler for the light and then only one of the two fans for exhausting old air from the top of the room, hopefully the little one if it can draw through the filter. Any thoughts? Just wondering which would move more heat out of the room itself, the air cooled or water cooled?
