chilLED: water cooled, ducted, or active led fixture

Growmau5 said:

@PurpleBuz @BOBBY_G do you guys like his design with the copper pipe, or do you think a water block would be better.

I am imagining and brainstorming some designs for my new garden on my property. I feel like chillers that use 350-700 watts is counter productive to the LED philosophy. But what about earth loops? What do you guys think about using copper only to interface with the heatsinks, then coupling into PEX line which is dirt ass cheap, then running a pig tail loop through the earth to remove the heat.
-this is the concept behind geothermal HVAC units.

@DISTRESS0R well, I like to keep an open mind about new products. Lumileds are not really impressive on paper, especially when some cxb3590 users are getting 2.6-2.7 µmol/J .

If all of these smaller diodes are inferior to the COBs we love and use, why are most of the manufacturers moving to these small diode package light engines.
Examples:
-Spectrum King : closet case & mother's little helper, possibly their new SK600+
-Fluence Bioengineering's : Razr, Vypr, SpydrX
-NextLight
Is this just a cost of manufacturing choice?

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No reason ground loops wouldn't work, the only issue I see is upfront cost of getting the loops below the frost line. Some areas of Colorado are pretty rocky and it would be a big PITA. Also have to insulate where it enters the structure or drill through the foundation beneath frost line, not terribly difficult but depending upon where you live could be necessary. After subtracting the pump draw from the chiller draw and adding in the labor needed I'm not sure it would be worth the effort from a cost standpoint. As an off-the-grid application where you are dependent upon solar this could be a great solution, however.

And man o man do I love this guys grow room! That 8' sink is freakin awesome (THAT wasn't cheap!) the entire room is so well thought out. Lot of light spill due to the table spacing/walkways but pure efficiency doesn't appear to be a priority for the room, more about convenience and easy access. Nice!

This chiLED guy seems very smart and very nice. I wish he would come here and teach!

tstick said:

This chiLED guy seems very smart and very nice. I wish he would come here and teach!

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leave a comment on his latest youtube video where he introduces himself, asking to chime in here. I'm sure he will be glad to

welight said:

August 18 last year so probably have a newer model out now, maybe, Cree MKR nice leds but not cutting edge.
If you guys are interested in sending a unit to Cree
questions
how to fund it, Tempo is around USD1500 for the test, crowd fund it?
what results do you want, LER, QER, PPFD???
what kind of base unit to test. A 4 up module with 1400 ma driver?
I can arrange it just a question of what generic light setup will deliver the best results, data wise for everyone
Cheers
Mark

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I will put some $ to the cause, talk to me when you are ready guys

welight said:

August 18 last year so probably have a newer model out now, maybe, Cree MKR nice leds but not cutting edge.
If you guys are interested in sending a unit to Cree
questions
how to fund it, Tempo is around USD1500 for the test, crowd fund it?
what results do you want, LER, QER, PPFD???
what kind of base unit to test. A 4 up module with 1400 ma driver?
I can arrange it just a question of what generic light setup will deliver the best results, data wise for everyone
Cheers
Mark

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I hehe a light that I'd like to put in an ulbricht integrating sphere, if this is that let me know and I'll cover my bit. Please PM me!

Growmau5 said:

IF you check out his website, he is already offering the light engine as a "DIY part" which demonstrates a certain open source mentality. I am getting some good vibes from the way this guy makes videos and answers comments with hard answers.
-although his light engine does not interest me that much, his cases do!
-perhaps if we embarrassed him and his efforts, he would offer the case and heatsink platform to us DIY guys?!

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embraced!!! or support. this fcking forum and its editing rules.

Why not simply use a solid block of aluminum and drill holes length wise about a half inch apart and insert 3/16 to 1/4 inch copper tubing @.020 wall thickness maybe less as you could braise u-tubes on ends to connect just like a radiator..then utilize a pc fan in between each cob and coil the tubing in a 6 inch circle like an top oven coil and try to cool down the water before going to next cob, the header idea the guy has in video doesn't address that the water gets hotter with each cob.. Or you could use small copper tubing and shape it to fit in between the fins like a radiator somehow I'm sure.

Krippled said:

Why not simply use a solid block of aluminum and drill holes length wise about a half inch apart and insert 3/16 to 1/4 inch copper tubing @.020 wall thickness maybe less as you could braise u-tubes on ends to connect just like a radiator..then utilize a pc fan in between each cob and coil the tubing in a 6 inch circle like an top oven coil and try to cool down the water before going to next cob, the header idea the guy has in video doesn't address that the water gets hotter with each cob.. Or you could use small copper tubing and shape it to fit in between the fins like a radiator somehow I'm sure.

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Water has much more heat density than a cooling fan can handle. Besides, if your idea is simply to cool with ambient air, why bother with water?

The point of water cooling is to actively chill the chips to BELOW ambient temperatures. Only then is the full potential of water cooling- 5-10% efficiency gains vs active and passively cooled ambient plus designs- actually realized.

ttystikk said:

The point of water cooling is to actively chill the chips to BELOW ambient temperatures. Only then is the full potential of water cooling- 5-10% efficiency gains vs active and passively cooled ambient plus designs- actually realized.

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No, the point of water cooling is to get the heat out so you can then either reuse it or get rid of it outside of the grow area.

Chilling to gain efficiency does not work. You will spend more than 5% in electricity to gain that extra 5% in efficiency (and 5% is th
e max not 10).

wietefras said:

No, the point of water cooling is to get the heat out so you can then either reuse it or get rid of it outside of the grow area.

Chilling to gain efficiency does not work. You will spend more than 5% in electricity to gain that extra 5% in efficiency (and 5% is th
e max not 10).

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Unless you have a freezing cold stream you can pump from! ; )

Airwalker16 said:

Unless you have a freezing cold stream you can pump from! ; )

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Home brewers do exactly that with water from the tap. They basically run DTW watercooling. Starting at the tap your water is pumped through a loop to cool the liquid fermenting and then warm water goes down the drain. Very wasteful but they do it! Typically they only need to cool for a relatively short period of time. Not really viable to cool a grow room that way though, the waste would be enormous!

Google "brewing cooling coil"

wietefras said:

No, the point of water cooling is to get the heat out so you can then either reuse it or get rid of it outside of the grow area.

Chilling to gain efficiency does not work. You will spend more than 5% in electricity to gain that extra 5% in efficiency (and 5% is th
e max not 10).

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First your math is wrong; it is ten percent more efficient than hotter passive setups, which certainly can run as high as 80C at Tj. Five points better than actively cooled ambient plus approaches, TO INCLUDE water cooled CPU pads because they're ambient plus, too.

Second, you've conceptually failed to grasp the essential fact that it's all the same heat; I can wait until it's in the air to remove it OR I can remove it from directly behind the chip. If I do the latter, I gain the additional benefits of temperature droop. Therefore, the argument that I'm wasting power to cool the chips is false because I have to remove that heat no matter what.

This isn't the first time I've explained this to you; follow the heat. It can't stay in the room.

What I've done is called 'free lunch' in engineering circles; the chiller isn't working any harder to remove the heat than it would of every chip was on a air cooled heat sink and it was removed via the water cooled air handler.

I have guys with advanced degrees in HVAC technology looking very carefully indeed at what I'm doing, they tell me it's straight genius. So just maybe you're missing something?

It's really simple, how much electricity is your chiller using and how much is 5% of your lights?

Shouldn't be too hard to answer really.

wietefras said:

It's really simple, how much electricity is your chiller using and how much is 5% of your lights?

Shouldn't be too hard to answer really.

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WRONG QUESTION.

Stop trying to tell me how wrong I am and think, man.

@wietefras What he is trying to say is his lighting system is accentually acting as his climate control system now. So, if you want to add up COB cooling requirements, you also need to subtract room cooling costs.

@nevergoodenuf, I know he likes to pretend that, but of course we all know that it takes electricity to cool that water. There is no "free lunch" especially not if you paid what $10000 or $12000 for it? Seems more like the HVAC guys had a boat load of "free lunches"on his expense.

What room cooling costs though? If you extract the heat from the COBs there is almost nothing left. You need to heat that room to 27C/80F or something against the cooling of the plants. So that goes only for very hot area's. Nothing like the general advice he keeps giving about how this is the best setup period.

Simple water cooling with a radiator can get the heat out of the grow room the same way.

So if he can't explain how much power his chiller uses to cool that water then how can he say that it's the most efficient way? We need to see a figure and it needs to be less than "5% of what his lights use" more than a pump and a radiator fan.

nevergoodenuf said:

@wietefras What he is trying to say is his lighting system is accentually acting as his climate control system now. So, if you want to add up COB cooling requirements, you also need to subtract room cooling costs.

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Yes! You get the cheese! Lol

wietefras said:

@nevergoodenuf, I know he likes to pretend that, but of course we all know that it takes electricity to cool that water. There is no "free lunch" especially not if you paid what $10000 or $12000 for it? Seems more like the HVAC guys had a boat load of "free lunches"on his expense.

What room cooling costs though? If you extract the heat from the COBs there is almost nothing left. You need to heat that room to 27C/80F or something against the cooling of the plants. So that goes only for very hot area's. Nothing like the general advice he keeps giving about how this is the best setup period.

Simple water cooling with a radiator can get the heat out of the grow room the same way.

So if he can't explain how much power his chiller uses to cool that water then how can he say that it's the most efficient way? We need to see a figure and it needs to be less than "5% of what his lights use" more than a pump and a radiator fan.

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This is ignorance talking. You need to educate yourself about HVAC in general and water chilling in particular. I'm not going to be your teacher because you aren't paying me enough.

Other people got it. Time to bone up. On your own time.

Water cooling is overkill imo.
Unless you're running 500 watt cobs at 500 watt.

Ducted air is the nicest that's not overkill.

wietefras said:

how much power his chiller uses

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Maybe like as much as using 6-8 hps lamps. So like 50 amps. Im probably wrong though, i was just trying to guess.