The Ice Box is a safe and effective way to water-cool the air leaving your reflectors without adding A/C or more fans. It uses an air-to-water heat exchanger to water-cool the hot air your reflectors produce. Water-cooling is much more effective and efficient than air-cooling, and here's some science to prove it: Water has a thermal conductivity of 0.6 W/ (m*K) which is much higher than the thermal conductivity of air which is only 0.03 W/(m*K). Water also has a much higher specific heat capacity than air. What that means is water can absorb and remove from your garden 4 times the heat nearly 20 times faster than air!
We aren't just talking about air cooling your reflectors, this goes for your air conditioning system too. Once heat is released into your room, the ability to efficiently remove that heat is lost. Air is only cooled with electricity whereas water can be cooled in dozens of ways with little or no energy. Furthermore, only 30% of the energy used in air conditioning is converted into usable cooling power—the rest is wasted. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that water-cooling will reduce your electric bill, making your grow room a much happier place for you and your plants. In addition to cooling the heat from all those miniature suns we have in our grow rooms, if the water running through the Ice Box is cold enough, it can actually add supplemental air conditioning to your room.
Features:
- Engineered for maximum efficiency
- Allows you to keep a sealed room which keeps your CO2 in and pests and pathogens out
- Water approximately 10 degrees cooler than the room temp will eliminate the bulb heat from a 1000 watt lamp
- Water approximately 20 degrees cooler than the room temp will reduce or even eliminate the need for A/C
- Can be connected directly to the reflector or can be wall mounted with optional wall mount kit
Recommendations/Equipment Needed:
- For proper function the Ice Box must be installed on the exiting air duct flange, not the incoming air!
- Air-cooled reflector and inline fan with approximately 250 CFM for maximum efficiency
- Reflectors can be daisy chained using one fan as long as each reflector gets a minimum airflow of 250 CFM
- Pump sized at 300-500 GPH with 8-10 feet of lift/head pressure
- Chiller size per 1000 watts: 1/4 HP minimum, 1/3 HP optimal
- With properly sized chiller, reservoir size of 25 gallons is sufficient for almost any set up
- For optimal performance use one Ice Box per reflector
- Designed to use with 1/2" tubing