Hydro Innovations 904490 Ice Box

Hydro Innovation's 6" Ice Box heat exchanger is very effective at removing heat from a sealed room.However, to remove the heat produced by a single 600W - 1000W bulb, you will need to either daisy-chain 2 of them together or purchase an 8" Ice Box instead. Also, keep your reservoir below 50F. (The colder the better.)Once you've configured your system properly, connect the blower and the circulation pump to a thermostat. (It will blow too cold to leave on continuously.)To avoid freezing your reservoir into a solid block of ice, add propylene glycol (available on Amazon). DO NOT us car antifreeze. Ethylene glycol will DESTROY your pumps!Another problem you will encounter is surface condensation. The cold, moist air produced by the Ice Box will deposit copious amount of water on any surface which is colder than the air with which it comes into contact. Unless you enjoy mopping up standing water, insulate ALL exposed surfaces.Finally, you'll need to address the condensate produced by the heat exchanger's fins. Basically, the Ice Box spits water. One solution is to periodically stop and start your system (i.e. cycling) long enough to allow the condensate to drain into in a drip pan for removal or reuse. (It's clean water. Why not reuse it?) Alternatively, you could configure your ducting to remove the condensate without cycling your system.Have fun!

I doubt the individuals giving poor performance reviews are using this to its full potential. To get the absolute best performance out of this, you Must have a water chiller (I'm using a 1/4HP aquarium chiller) And reservoir to store the thermally depleted liquid (i.e., cold water. I suggest a 150-160 qt marine cooler. Bigger is better!) with at MINIMUM of 600 gpm pump circulating. The thermal transfer rate on this is better for gardening purposes and for low volume air turnover, compared to any automotive heater cores, IMO. Automotive cores are designed for large volume air transfer and should be diffused throughout the area, to not create cold spots and plant damage (i.e. think of one foot really hot in a car and the other ice cold when the heaters is on). Let me just say, it will work but I'd rather save the hour or two of fabrication time for other purposes. I also suggest air diffusion for more extreme cold temps (50 deg F water temp and below, my res sits at 60F). I use this as an air chiller for my recirculation system and it's amazing dropped my temps to 72-74/66 with an ambient temp 74-75. I run a 250w in a 2x2x5. I could imagine under full load, this would be able to nullify a 1000w but the water chiller would cycle MUCH more frequently.

So right off the bat you going to need to understand that the water source you circulate water from is going to have to be large I used about a 3-gallon container of water and custom made a mini fridge mounting the radiator on top of it with lines going into the water that's refrigerated and even with that after hours of use the ability to cool off the air decreases warming the water source I have considered buying a 55 gallon drum and filling it with water with the thought process that the water could not be heated enough to decrease the temperature more than a few degrees. I feel like this way of cooling would only be plausible in Spring and fall

I'm happy with my ice boxes, they do help bring down the temperature in my room a lot.There is a lot of air that bypasses the coil so its not as effective as I first expected.You need about 1/3 HP water chiller per ice box to get good results. I use a 1 HP water chiller with 2 ice boxes and a 160 gallon water reservoir, it keeps my temperature perfect!I manage the temperature using Zoo Med HygroTherm Humidity and Temperature Controller, it turns on my pump whenever the temperature gets too high in my room.

i rigged one of these up as a little air conditioner for a small a/v / computer room in a basement. for reasons too long to discuss, regular air conditioning methods were not practical but i did have a whole bunch of unused aquarium tanks, pumps, hoses, etc. Works good. I probably get about 3k-4k btu of cooling with my setup (it works almost as well as my 5k btu window air conditioner that i had setup at my old house)

Not the most solidly built piece of equipment, but it does get the job done to cool a small closed environment space with a true 360watt LED panel using a 1/10hp chiller. For a more powerful light you will need a larger chiller/reservoir.

Next time I'll be fabricating a shroud around an automotive heater core & spendin more time & less money, but this one does reduce the heat in the grow tent during summer with a 6" tube lamp to pull the air through. Just a lower volume pump is needed to circulate the cool H2O through it

I am not very pleased with this so far. I ordered it last year and just installed it a few weeks ago. I connected it to a chiller and 15 gal reservoir outside the room, and the hot air in the room , 4x7x8 sealed room, is pulled out through a carbon filter and then forced back in through this ice box. It does not keep the room cool enough. the chiller keeps the reservoir about 65 degrees, but regardless of fan speed or flow rate the room gets well over 80 degrees with just a 450 watt LED and some air pumps running in the room. Very disappointed!