AC Power Consumption / Waste

Hey all,

My power bill has been through the roof since it started warming up and I am curious how much of my AC I am wasting due to my setup.

Here is what I have.

1 room, approx 12x12 with two tents. The setup for each is as follows:

4x4 tent:
(1) 600w HPS Cooltube with a 6" Can Fan Max
Setup is Carbon filter, hose, light, fan, vented out

6x6 tent:
(4) 500w Blackstar LED lights with 6" inline fan
Setup is Carbon filter, fan, hose vented out

With the door to this room shut, I can feel quite a bit of air flow going into the room. So I am curious how much AC I am wasting and if it would just be better to start venting back to the room? Even if I had to lower my AC, it would be better than cooling my attic right?

Thanks for any help, I'm starting to grasp at straws.

Feel what your blowing out of the room from your cooltubes, i'd bet its not going to aid in further cooling the room. The air sucking under the door is actually a good thing (till you try and add co2) it means your grow room has a negative vacuum, and as long as your filter isn't being used over air flow specs no ones ever going to smell a thing. Exactly how i feel a grow room without co2 should be setup.

I have two 400's both in one long cooltubed, the tube is hooked to the homes HVAC, so this time of year its sucking AC'ed air right through the tubes and the hot air on the other side of the lights is exhausted into the attic, and that air is not something that would cool my 85F grow room.

What are your temps? How much is your bill? How big is your whole place in sq ft, live in SE, SW, NW, or NE? I paid $230 last mo in my 1250sf ft condo in the SW, homes AC set on 85F all the time, also have a dedicated 7000 BTU AC unit in the grow room keeping the ladies at 85F. I've calked my whole grow room cost to run, this time of year its highest, $100 of my total bill. A kill-a-watt meter is a great way to find energy whores living in your place.

DIYer said:

Feel what your blowing out of the room from your cooltubes, i'd bet its not going to aid in further cooling the room. The air sucking under the door is actually a good thing (till you try and add co2) it means your grow room has a negative vacuum, and as long as your filter isn't being used over air flow specs no ones ever going to smell a thing. Exactly how i feel a grow room without co2 should be setup.

I have two 400's both in one long cooltubed, the tube is hooked to the homes HVAC, so this time of year its sucking AC'ed air right through the tubes and the hot air on the other side of the lights is exhausted into the attic, and that air is not something that would cool my 85F grow room.

What are your temps? How much is your bill? How big is your whole place in sq ft, live in SE, SW, NW, or NE? What were your temps outside last mo? I paid $230 last mo in my 1250sf ft condo in the SW, homes AC set on 85F all the time, also have a dedicated 7000 BTU AC unit in the grow room keeping the ladies at 85F. I've calked my whole grow room cost to run, this time of year its highest, $100 of my total bill. A kill-a-watt meter is a great way to find energy whores.

Click to expand...

thats about right. i live in NE and i pay 220 a month for a 400w and a 10k btu ac which is 1000w in a 4 br house.. no clue how many feet but its big 3 storys. i guess i should add we dont got central air.. we use window units in all the bedrooms. one has a 10k due to the grow, the other has a 5k and one has a 15k because its 2 bedrooms put into one before we re did it so its a bigger bedroom. then the attic, we made into a bedroom but no air up there

Do you really need a carbon filter on your Veg tent?

On your cool tube is the air blowing out of the room?
I would consider setting it up so that the Air for the cool tube has both the intake and exhaust from a different room or outside.
The A/C unit wont have to work as hard(use as much power) to cool the room if you aren't exhausting out the cold air with the cool tube.

Edit:
You also may be able to save some money if you unhook the fan on the veg tent and just take some more hose and piggy back it on the Flower tent fan. I had 170CFM 4in fan doing both my tents.

If the air temp outside were cool enough to run through the tubes id have to agree thats a better way to go than using AC'ed air. I personally couldn't see using the 100F outside air to cool my tubes though, i know it'd raise my grow room temp too high. Sucking air he paid to AC from another room, isn't going to help lower his bill though.

The air coming out of the cool tube wasn't hot at all, same with the air venting out of the 6" inline.

With the AC on 76, temps range from 82-84 in the HPS tent and 81-82 in the LED tent. The last few bills were (in order) 185, 240, 325. We did have a huge heat wave recently but temps are back in the mid to low 80's. I'm tracking my kw used per hour and during the heat wave it was averaging 4.6 per hour and now it's right around 2.8 or so. My equipment wattage is right around 1600 total and I keep all indoor lights off and have no need for dehumidifier or other appliances. Oh yeah, I also factored out times I was using the dryer to not skew the numbers.

The past few days I was able to get by with keeping the unit off with the windows open in the morning and temps held fine and my kw ph was right around 1.8!! I did change out all weather stripping and sealed the attic and that made a huge difference over the last few days as well.

On the last bill, my unit crapped out and ran for a long fucking time non stop until it died...so that's the culprit for the last large spike. Didn't notice it until it was dead of course, the item that failed was the dual starter assembly (so supposedly the unit was working harder to keep up). Oh yeah, I also sprayed the condenser coils to free up lots of dirt that was in the grates, made sure to not bend any and saw lots of dirt and debris falling out.

DIYer said:

Feel what your blowing out of the room from your cooltubes, i'd bet its not going to aid in further cooling the room. The air sucking under the door is actually a good thing (till you try and add co2) it means your grow room has a negative vacuum, and as long as your filter isn't being used over air flow specs no ones ever going to smell a thing. Exactly how i feel a grow room without co2 should be setup.

I have two 400's both in one long cooltubed, the tube is hooked to the homes HVAC, so this time of year its sucking AC'ed air right through the tubes and the hot air on the other side of the lights is exhausted into the attic, and that air is not something that would cool my 85F grow room.

What are your temps? How much is your bill? How big is your whole place in sq ft, live in SE, SW, NW, or NE? What were your temps outside last mo? I paid $230 last mo in my 1250sf ft condo in the SW, homes AC set on 85F all the time, also have a dedicated 7000 BTU AC unit in the grow room keeping the ladies at 85F. I've calked my whole grow room cost to run, this time of year its highest, $100 of my total bill. A kill-a-watt meter is a great way to find energy whores.

Click to expand...

Well hopefully all that brings your bill down, but if you ever really wanted to lower it, crank the homes AC up to 85, and figure out how to get the 8F heat spike out of your tent when lights are on. Plants eat CO2 best at 85 btw, so you're paying to cool your ladies a bit more than you need to also. It might not have been hot, but i goth assume what your blowing out of the cool tubes would warm your tent if you didn't blow it out of the room.

I also try and watch the temp outside, soon as it drops to 84 i shut the homes AC off, open all the windows, and crank up the fans. Wish i could automate that, ha

Well, when I started checking shit out I saw the weather stripping was wrecked and then found the MAJOR leak through the attic door.

I don't know why I didn't think of this, but I am going to change out the thermostat so I can give a little cooling at certain times if need be and raise the temp during off hours.

DIYer said:

Well hopefully all that brings your bill down, but if you ever really wanted to lower it, crank the homes AC up to 85, and figure out how to get the 8F heat spike out of your tent when lights are on. Plants eat CO2 best at 85 btw, so you're paying to cool your ladies a bit more than you need to also. It might not have been hot, but i goth assume what your blowing out of the cool tubes would warm your tent if you didn't blow it out of the room.

I also try and watch the temp outside, soon as it drops to 84 i shut the homes AC off, open all the windows, and crank up the fans. Wish i could automate that, ha

Click to expand...

420Jakers said:

The air coming out of the cool tube wasn't hot at all, same with the air venting out of the 6" inline.

With the AC on 76, temps range from 82-84 in the HPS tent and 81-82 in the LED tent. The last few bills were (in order) 185, 240, 325. We did have a huge heat wave recently but temps are back in the mid to low 80's. I'm tracking my kw used per hour and during the heat wave it was averaging 4.6 per hour and now it's right around 2.8 or so. My equipment wattage is right around 1600 total and I keep all indoor lights off and have no need for dehumidifier or other appliances. Oh yeah, I also factored out times I was using the dryer to not skew the numbers.

The past few days I was able to get by with keeping the unit off with the windows open in the morning and temps held fine and my kw ph was right around 1.8!! I did change out all weather stripping and sealed the attic and that made a huge difference over the last few days as well.

On the last bill, my unit crapped out and ran for a long fucking time non stop until it died...so that's the culprit for the last large spike. Didn't notice it until it was dead of course, the item that failed was the dual starter assembly (so supposedly the unit was working harder to keep up). Oh yeah, I also sprayed the condenser coils to free up lots of dirt that was in the grates, made sure to not bend any and saw lots of dirt and debris falling out.

Click to expand...

my bill when i lived in florida was 400 a month. it was terrible to pay but i did it. good luck keeping temps down.

My bill for 4200 watts with a 1.5 ton central air and a 12,000btu window ac. My bill is $600 a month. In the basemebt, my room stays at 80-82. Sealed with co2.