Maer's 540W Advanced LED — G13/Haze - DIY 4" PVC Revised StevehmaNFT Grow

Bassman59 said:
Picking up my 1/10hp chiller in a cpl hours. Got do a couple macgyver moves on my tubs but very soon I'll basically be running RDWC with no more water temp problems and I can get my freezer back for storing actual food instead of ice jugs! and more room in my tent! So many nice +'s.

I'm only cooling 12 gals and next grow no more than 25 gal so 1/10 should be fine.
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My quarter HP barely kept my ezclone at 65... it ran A LOT. I blame the 750GPH submersible in there... but I still think I need more power. I iced down the res to 54 or so to give the chiller a rest before lights on. It was 57 at lights on (set point is 56) and now one hour later it is 60, so it doesn't seem to be able to keep up.
 
Re: Maer's 540W Advanced LED – G13/Haze - DIY 4" PVC Revised StevehmaNFT Grow

Here is the last 12 hours:

temp16.jpg


The cliff around 12:45 is when I added the ice to the coolant res. Maybe that heater core is bleeding too much heat?
 
SteveHman said:
Not sure of the issue. My 1/10hp keeps my system at a constant 67 deg, and doesn't work very hard to do it. Very perplexing.
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What is your ambient temp? Mine maxes at about 84 right now. Monday I will have a 6 inch centrifugal blowing air out my stealth window box, should help. I have only 2.5 times more cooling power but I am running room ac essentially off it, that in turn cools the DH and lights.

When I picked the chiller I was basing it on watts dissipated by the equipment. The real issue is the lack of data on water chillers and what 1/4hp really means, if this were room A/C it would not be as hard to calculate because 1hp = 728BTU? whatever it is there is an exact conversion that applies to A/C that I could not find for chillers.
 
Re: Maer's 540W Advanced LED – G13/Haze - DIY 4" PVC Revised StevehmaNFT Grow

Based on the feedback from Stevehman and OG13 I used my spare manifold ports to create a bypass. This allows me to bleed off excess flow rate so I can adjust all of the other ports as slow as possible and see what happens.

So I open the bypass fully, adjust everything to low, and then feather back the bypass until the pump makes noise then up just until it doesn't.. this restores pressure to the manifold so the far end will still get flow.

I put another hundred or so pounds of ice in and brought the temp down to 51 to give the chiller a break, as of now about 2 hours later the coolant temp is 57 (set temp 56).

TempHIDGraph.jpg
 
Re: Maer's 540W Advanced LED – G13/Haze - DIY 4" PVC Revised StevehmaNFT Grow

Even though "today" is day 4 here are some numbers for day 3:

6.4 pH
70.9 nute res temp
1.98 EC
1448 ppm

I added 2 teaspoons of pH down today, didn't re test.
 
Maer said:
What is your ambient temp? Mine maxes at about 84 right now. Monday I will have a 6 inch centrifugal blowing air out my stealth window box, should help. I have only 2.5 times more cooling power but I am running room ac essentially off it, that in turn cools the DH and lights.

When I picked the chiller I was basing it on watts dissipated by the equipment. The real issue is the lack of data on water chillers and what 1/4hp really means, if this were room A/C it would not be as hard to calculate because 1hp = 728BTU? whatever it is there is an exact conversion that applies to A/C that I could not find for chillers.
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My ambient temp in the space surrounding the chiller and grow box (attic) gets into the 90s. The res is an uninsulated 27 gallon tote, the flow rate on the chiller side is about 350gph (guesstimate).

I also had a thought on the burning. I should have said to go 20 inches once in bloom. I start my clones off at about 36 inches until they start to get some growth. Also, you could switch 1/2 of the DS off, turn off the red side until they are a little bigger. The blue switch has plenty of red in it as well. Once they are acclimated to the light go full power. I totally spaced out on the fact you can go half-power on the DS series lights.

As a side note, I keep my lights at the 36 inches above the clones and then let them stretch and they tend to finish up in the right range for bloom. 6 inch clone, 2~3x stretch and I end up with 18-24 inches of height above canopy. I don't really adjust my lights, mostly because of height restrictions.
 
Re: Maer's 540W Advanced LED – G13/Haze - DIY 4" PVC Revised StevehmaNFT Grow

It seems things may be solved, I iced down the res one more time to 56, then removed the chiller from the loop and opened the valve just enough that it dripped, seriously just a drip and I reconnected it. Lights came on an hour and a half ago and the chiller is still cycling on and off on at about 59 and off at 56. My only fear is the res as a whole is not 56, just the gallon or so in the chiller.

TempHIDGraph1.jpg
TempHIDGraph2.jpg


We will see as the night goes on what happens.
 
SteveHman said:
My ambient temp in the space surrounding the chiller and grow box (attic) gets into the 90s. The res is an uninsulated 27 gallon tote, the flow rate on the chiller side is about 350gph (guesstimate).
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I am leaning now toward a coolant problem, it is probably low. What I feared was happening before was confirmed when i dropped a second thermometer in to the coolant res. The chiller was only chilling a small amount of water that was trickling through.
 
Following is probably of no help but this what I've seen so far with my new chiller:

I'm cooling about 12 gals total "in tubs", plus whatever the chiller & tubing volume is, I suspect another 1.5 gal roughly.

I have a 396 gph pump. My tubing is all 5/8" i.d. The pump is external, sucking out of tubs and pumping to chiller. The tubs have 1/2" drain valves as stock and are being used to feed to pump intake. The chiller is a sunleaves 132, rated for 132 gal res with minimum suggested pump 245 gph. The hydro store had sold out the same day on 245 gph pumps so I bought the 396.

One of my tubs still has the internal feed pump running, one does not.

No matter what temp I set chiller too, res temps are higher. Obviously this is due to many other factors such as room ambient "heating" lines, light on tubs, etc. That being said, I've set chiller temp to 63f and am getting pretty consistent tub water temps of 68-69f.

I may drop chiller down another 1-2 degrees and see if I can dial in at 66-67f

My ambient in the room (not the tent) can hit 90f with the chiller and the door closed and household ac set to 79. Yet the chiller still does fine on the water.

What does confuse me about your setup is when I look at post #184, pic #9, you have teed off the feed and return line to your chiller. I would think you want to draw from one source and push to another. I don't know if it's feasible but if you draw from main res to chiller, and feed to your NFT, in my eyes your plants would be getting the coolest water possible.

I could certainly be missing something here. But just wanted to post some thoughts so maybe it sparks something and you get it figured out. I tend to think it isnt your brand new chiller, but something in the routing. Possibly even too big of a pump as well?
 
Bassman59 said:
What does confuse me about your setup is when I look at post #184, pic #9, you have teed off the feed and return line to your chiller. I would think you want to draw from one source and push to another. I don't know if it's feasible but if you draw from main res to chiller, and feed to your NFT, in my eyes your plants would be getting the coolest water possible.

I could certainly be missing something here. But just wanted to post some thoughts so maybe it sparks something and you get it figured out. I tend to think it isnt your brand new chiller, but something in the routing. Possibly even too big of a pump as well?
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P10200692.JPG


The pump feeds a 3/4 inch line each device has a T, and valve the water goes through the device then goes in to the drain manifold which is 1" to facilitate a pressure drop from the feed manifold to the drain manifold. I "borrowed" most of this design from Hydro Innovations setups.

I installed a bypass to bleed off extra pump flow a couple days ago. I took the feed to the chiller and timed out and marked settings. 1gpm, 5 gpm ect. The chiller is rater for a pump size from 652gph-1150gph. Even at 5gpm (300gph) it does not chill, at 60gph it chills and cycles on and off but the res is at about 74 with a set temp of 56.

I think I have a bum chiller, when I google ecoplus I see a lot of similar complaints. I also checked the JBJ Arctica site, they have a chiller size calculator and with all my specs it says I need 0.21HP so 0.25 is what is recommends.

I bought the freon and looked for a port but it seems there is not one. So if it is low on freon there is no way to fill it.
 
Re: Maer's 540W Advanced LED – G13/Haze - DIY 4" PVC Revised StevehmaNFT Grow

ahh.

I t'd off my tubs drain to the pump. The pump sends water to chiller, then back to a T to fill both tubs.

If you decide to change chiller brands, I found one of my hydro stores priced about 22% below suggested retail tax incl. This came out to maybe $20 more than the best internet price I could find with shipping incl. Naturally worth it to me as I get better customer service and if there is an issue warranty wise better support. Hopefully you can do as well or better.
 
Re: Maer's 540W Advanced LED – G13/Haze - DIY 4" PVC Revised StevehmaNFT Grow

Try this out. Run the return from the chiller straight into the coolant res. Don't hook it into your return line. You may be getting enough back pressure on the line to reduce the chiller flow. Give that a try for a few hours and see if you notice a difference.
 
SteveHman said:
Try this out. Run the return from the chiller straight into the coolant res. Don't hook it into your return line. You may be getting enough back pressure on the line to reduce the chiller flow. Give that a try for a few hours and see if you notice a difference.
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Good idea
 
Re: Maer's 540W Advanced LED – G13/Haze - DIY 4" PVC Revised StevehmaNFT Grow

I tried that a couple days ago. There should be no pressure on the drain side, all of the valves are clamped down to almost nothing. I had to put in a bypass to bleed off extra flow. I took the sides off today and took the filter out of the front and have a box fan in front and back in a push pull type setup. I iced down to 52 degrees and 2.5 hours after lights on the chiller has not kicked in. Currently at 57 degrees in the coolant res chiller is about to kick in.
 
Because of the timer screw up on the 27th I am calling the 28th as day 1 of 12/12 and today as day 7.

Day 7 12/12

1268 PPM
4.4 pH
66 Reservoir temp
61 Coolant sump temp

Here is the last 12 hours of temp / humidity data:

TempHIDGraph3.jpg


And since I haven't posted an update in a couple days:

2days.jpg


Things have been OK the last couple days only because of a break in the weather, I took the sides and front filter off the chiller and have a fan blowing on it from the front.

Things in the closet are not looking good, I have a bad case of chlorosis. I have a couple problems I know of. First some light is penetrating the tubes, I plan to wrap them in mylar. Second the res temp has been varying, and possibly got too low during the times I was icing the cooling system. For the first few days my temps were too high so I added some "clean res" that came with my ezclone. I think this was the start of my problems, the nute solution changed from red to brown overnight.. The ph kept rising to 6.4 day after day even when I added 2 teaspoons citric acid per day.

The last possibility is Iron lockout due to Copper toxicity from the copper coil in the res. I don't see any corrosion or staining on the coil. When I touched it I saw some dark colored liquid but possibly that was dust from my hands. It could also be Magnesium exchanging from the nute solution. In my job I don't deal much with chelating agents so I am not 100% familiar with their chemistry... I don't think this is the problem but with the research I have done I am keeping an open mind.
 
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