Grow Mediums Reservoir on the rocks: Keeping your H20 cool
- Thread starter ballzbeard
- Start date
by epicenter he means his central control bucket, its the 1 bucket without a plant in it, Its where the water from the system returns to. Its also the central point to drain and refill the system as well as add in your nutrients and monitor PH, PPM's, and Temps
greenjeans
Hydroponic Heretic
I am about to address res temps with a cabinet upgrade, so I thought it might be helpful here.
I am running a single DWC bucket in a 24x36 cabinet. I already have an upper chamber for extracting the heat. I am switching to LEDs and need some more height in the growth chamber. I am going to install a lower chamber that will house the res. I noticed on my last grow that once the scrog filled in the bottom of my cab stayed nice and cool. My cab sits in a garage, so there is no AC. It is in the 90's now(In the garage), and will surely be 100+before the summer is over.The canopy temp is around 84 today with the current setup. I expect the LEDs to cool that down significantly.
I bring air into the cabinet from a closet inside the house via a passive air intake. Temps in there stay between 66 and 71.
The plan is to create an insulated lower area that is only semi-open at the top, which is at the level of the top of the bucket. The intake points at the floor, and the air pump sits right at the intake. There is a good fan in the lower chamber to get good air circulation. The top will be made so that it can serve to allow the fan to create circulation in the lower chamber while still releasing air upward into the growth chamber.
The goal is to maintain 70 or less in the bottom of the cabinet by using shade, air circulation, and a separation of different temperature zones inside the cabinet as well as possible.
Anyway, here is the design. It's crude, but I will be adding this cool chamber onto the cabinet sometime in the next couple of weeks.
I am running a single DWC bucket in a 24x36 cabinet. I already have an upper chamber for extracting the heat. I am switching to LEDs and need some more height in the growth chamber. I am going to install a lower chamber that will house the res. I noticed on my last grow that once the scrog filled in the bottom of my cab stayed nice and cool. My cab sits in a garage, so there is no AC. It is in the 90's now(In the garage), and will surely be 100+before the summer is over.The canopy temp is around 84 today with the current setup. I expect the LEDs to cool that down significantly.
I bring air into the cabinet from a closet inside the house via a passive air intake. Temps in there stay between 66 and 71.
The plan is to create an insulated lower area that is only semi-open at the top, which is at the level of the top of the bucket. The intake points at the floor, and the air pump sits right at the intake. There is a good fan in the lower chamber to get good air circulation. The top will be made so that it can serve to allow the fan to create circulation in the lower chamber while still releasing air upward into the growth chamber.
The goal is to maintain 70 or less in the bottom of the cabinet by using shade, air circulation, and a separation of different temperature zones inside the cabinet as well as possible.
Anyway, here is the design. It's crude, but I will be adding this cool chamber onto the cabinet sometime in the next couple of weeks.
I've been doing some brainstorming on ways to cool down my reservoirs. I'm doing a similar DWC with 5gal buckets for each plant. I like the idea of building a separator for the upper and lower sections of the closet to segregate heat, but don't know that it would be practical with my setup.
Anyhow, I came up with a thought to use a kind of ice wrap around the bucket and see if that would work. Unfortunately, I'd have to track down someone with a sewing machine to do it right as it would require some fabrication. The idea would be to use something like these Igloo Natural Ice sheets:
http://www.igloocoolers.com/Ice-Substitutes/Ice-Sheets/MaxCold-Natural-Ice-Sheet-1-Pound
Cut them to shape, and make something like a neoprene wrap that would go around the bottom part of a 5gal bucket. Velcro or something simple to hold in place with the ice sheets sewn in to the wrap facing inward against the bucket.
Anyone ever seen or heard of someone trying similar?
Anyhow, I came up with a thought to use a kind of ice wrap around the bucket and see if that would work. Unfortunately, I'd have to track down someone with a sewing machine to do it right as it would require some fabrication. The idea would be to use something like these Igloo Natural Ice sheets:
http://www.igloocoolers.com/Ice-Substitutes/Ice-Sheets/MaxCold-Natural-Ice-Sheet-1-Pound
Cut them to shape, and make something like a neoprene wrap that would go around the bottom part of a 5gal bucket. Velcro or something simple to hold in place with the ice sheets sewn in to the wrap facing inward against the bucket.
Anyone ever seen or heard of someone trying similar?
I have been using frozen 1 liter bottles. summer is behind us but by next summer ill have some kind of chiller. the bottles work but take up to much room in my freezer!
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