A: Relying on air conditioning as the only source of cooling is going to run up your power bill unless you combine it with a few tactics to help keep the growing environment optimal indoors when it’s hot outside:
Isolate and remove the heat
Well-designed air-cooled grow lamp reflectors like the MelonHead (pictured) keep hot running lamps separate from the growing environment with a glass tube or lens. Connected duct work allows fans to transfer the heated air surrounding the lamp, significantly limiting grow room temperature increases related to lighting. By using AC shades, you only need about 1500 BTUs of cooling from your AC per 1KW of grow lighting (versus 4500+ BTU capacity without). The result? Needing only a third of the power draw from energy-intensive air conditioners
Cool Feet
A hydroponics system that doesn’t lose lots of water to evaporation and that runs with a good depth of solution, like an Under Current for example, provides a great buffer and insulator against warmer grow rooms. If you chill your plants directly at the roots (maintaining 65°F), your plants will still be able to flourish in slightly warmer-than-optimal air temperatures. Cooler solutions hold a lot more oxygen, helping to promote faster growth and curtail pathogens like root rot.
Spot-cool
Air-cooled reflectors are a great example of putting cooling power where it is needed. Some growers even use a small AC to blast very cold air through their air-cooled shades, in some cases negating the need for AC room cooling.
Water-cooled heat exchanges can also help to accomplish this. Use water-cooled CO2 generators (water cooling takes about 90% of the heat away that is associated with hot-running gas-fired CO2 generators). Keep your ballasts outside the growing area too, as they can generate lot of heat.
TIP:
High-quality digital ballasts run quite a bit cooler than their core-and-coil predecessors, so you can reduce the heat generated by the ballasts by around 50% here as well.
© Copyright RosebudMag.com, 2012

To create link towards this article on your website,
copy and paste the text below in your page.
Preview :
Tuesday, 03 July 2012