I'm thinking about developing a bank of lights located outside the grow room that is water cooled and then transmits the light into the room via fiber optics, which are pretty cheap if you find a good source. This way the entire room can be sealed and there doesn't need to be any fans making noise. It would seem that the fiber optics would also let you use the light more efficiently, because using multiple fibers means you can steer the light many places at once getting good even coverage instead of hotspots.
The lights themselves will be in a point-spot reflector assembly (to focus directly into the fiber optics) and will have a 12V silent PC fan blowing air across a heat sink, which has cooling pipes running through it. The fluid in the pipes will slowly circulate using a low power liquid pump and you can cool it in a number of ways, including geothermally if you bury a length of the pipe a few feet underground. If done properly there should be zero heat signature visible anywhere, since the heat is not in the air but being removed and transmitted into the ground. The grow room itself will have no heat because there's no heat source in the room at all - the fibers transmit the light but not the heat.
Has anyone heard of anything like this before? I'll be doing some tests soon I'll post pics when that happens.
Here's a link to a cheap fiber source, I haven't tried yet but I'll let you know if successful or not: http://thefiberopticstore.com/purchase/endglowfilament.htm
I'm looking at the 1.5mm filament, as you can see you can get 200ft for $70, which is good for ten 20ft. runs. I'm assuming five strands per 500W bulb, so this is 2 500W bulb's worth. My test will see how much light i'm actually able to get into and out of the fibers.
The lights themselves will be in a point-spot reflector assembly (to focus directly into the fiber optics) and will have a 12V silent PC fan blowing air across a heat sink, which has cooling pipes running through it. The fluid in the pipes will slowly circulate using a low power liquid pump and you can cool it in a number of ways, including geothermally if you bury a length of the pipe a few feet underground. If done properly there should be zero heat signature visible anywhere, since the heat is not in the air but being removed and transmitted into the ground. The grow room itself will have no heat because there's no heat source in the room at all - the fibers transmit the light but not the heat.
Has anyone heard of anything like this before? I'll be doing some tests soon I'll post pics when that happens.
Here's a link to a cheap fiber source, I haven't tried yet but I'll let you know if successful or not: http://thefiberopticstore.com/purchase/endglowfilament.htm
I'm looking at the 1.5mm filament, as you can see you can get 200ft for $70, which is good for ten 20ft. runs. I'm assuming five strands per 500W bulb, so this is 2 500W bulb's worth. My test will see how much light i'm actually able to get into and out of the fibers.
