Just when I thought I was out...

They pull me back in.



Room was high 90's.

I shut off a bunch of lights. Turned AC off. In 15 minutes the ice melted. I tuned it back on again, it cooled the room. I turned on a few lights and let it run all night.

This morning more of the same only thicker. I turned it off. It melted again, and I turned it back on.

I looked at if from outside. It was making a rattling sound. Water was pouring out the back over the edge. I had noticed the lack of a drain in the sleeve when I installed it. On a hunch, I got my drill and drilled a few small holes in the drain pan. Water poured out. The thing stopped rattling. I think I installed it at too shallow an angle and the designed drain system wasn't working, causing water to pool in the tray deep enough to catch the tips of the fan blades, which was causing the rattling sound.

I think the ice is because of too much humidity. First it was raining outside when this happened. Second, I had transferred plants and the floor was soaked. Third, I misted the shit out of the plants with the hose (which I rarely use) because of the heat. To top it off one of the reservoirs had overfilled and spilled about 3 gallons of water on the floor. I didn't think to check the RH but it is routinely in the 90's at night and 60's during the day.

 

The ice was most likely caused by the slower fan speed over the coil. Classic sign of reduced airflow. That or your filter is 100% clogged. But I'm going with the first thing I said.

 

Does the water hitting the fan blades cause that? I also had turned the temp way down.

Another crazy thing - when I turned it off the first time, let it melt and turned it on again chunks of ice flew out. It blew water drops an little bits of ice halfway across the room.

I seem to be back in business today. No ice. Temps at the canopy are high 80's. All lights on.

 

Anything that restricts the airflow over the indoor coil (evaporator coil) will cause it. If you had water sitting in the pan and it was slowing down the fan... but under normal circumstances the fan should not be hitting standing water. If water is dripping on it and then being slung off by design then that's ok. If you turned it way down and it never went off that will for sure cause it too but it has to run literally 24 x 7 for at least a day before it will freeze like that.

As an aside, it's 105 plus for a week now and not going down till Saturday....And I'm retired suckers!

What's really hard sometimes is getting a homeowner to believe you when they see the compressor outside and the refrigerant lines are a giant ball of ice and it's literally 110 outside and you tell them that the problem is inside. On a split system it starts at the evap coil, which is usually in the attic around here, and then progresses down the lines and outside to the compressor. I'm so fucking glad I'm retired.

 

LOL I bet you are! guys like me crying and rolling around on the ground in a pool of sweat

Good to know about the 24/7 thing. I have to figure out how to shut the thing off during lights off. I started to put a timer on it but it's 220 and all my timers are 110. It has a timer function built into it. I need to google the manual and figure that shit out.

 

What's the model number?

 

You had to go an ask, didn't ya?

It's a Frigidaire FRA256SV2 but an older model. Like 5 years old. The guy had the actual model number in the CL ad, but I can't find that.

I'm sure it's on the unit itself somewhere.

 

Found it. Google saved my search when I bought it!

Its a fas257r2a.

 

Use the delayed timer feature that is on the system correctly and you won't need a timer. That's a pretty sophisticated unit for a window banger. Rtfm.

 

ftp://ftp.electrolux-na.com/ProdInfo_PDF/Edison/66121616en.pdf

I stand corrected, I rtfm and you will need a timer. Or a 240v close on rise line voltage thermostat.

 

yeah it looks like the delay timer feature only works once, then you have to reset it? I dunno looks like a 220 timer is on my dePot list. I can't make sense of the manual. Tho that could be the booger of wax I just huffed.

Holy shit I never looked at AC as such an essential tool, but if the thing goes down I'm dead in the water. Without it on an 85 degree day I can't run even 25% of the lights. Forget the HPS stuff

Funny but for the first 8 years of growing I was determined to NOT use AC.
Also funny to arrive at the house on a 70 degree perfect spring morning with the sun glinting off droplets of dew, and listen to my AC run. I'm spending money to create indoors what is 100% free and available for all in abundance outdoors. First I spend money to create the light I need, then spend more to cool it down. Insanity.

 

Not to get too far afield, but also funny we have created plants that are best suited to indoor growing, where you can control the environment somewhat. I have grown some of them outdoors over the years and they always succumbed to bugs, or this or that. Never thrived.

So we created plants that can't grow outdoors. LOL for some reason that strikes me as hilarious.

The big advantage to indoors to me is that I'm not subject to the whims of the weather. The corn fields around here look like rice paddies and the farmers are all shitting their pants.

 

Yeah, that delayed timer thing only works once then you have to reset it. What's the point of that I wonder?

I don't grow inside in the summer because of precisely what you said, I refuse to pay that big fat bill, and I get the bugs inside real bad, not so much outside for some reason.

If your system can't cool the room then it's obviously too small. That's a 25000 btu which is two tons. Whenever I do grow rooms I start at 3500 btu per 1kw light and then do a heat load calc based on that and a bunch of other stuff, but if you just use 3500 btu per light as a starting point you can get close.

 

With the outside growing here it's always the heat that messes things up. When fall comes it's always hot as hell and the whole terpine profile suffers because of it. They grow big and yield well but the same plant inside always has a better terp profile imo.

 

"Also funny to arrive at the house on a 70 degree perfect spring morning with the sun glinting off droplets of dew, and listen to my AC run. I'm spending money to create indoors what is 100% free and available for all in abundance outdoors. First I spend money to create the light I need, then spend more to cool it down. Insanity."

You ain't kidding.

Nothing like the sound of an AC compressor running mid-winter to make the neighbors think we have a screw loose. I figured if anyone asked, I'd tell them it's a heat pump.

But you've left out the dehumidifier; it costs to run it and then it costs to cool it down. I'd love to see someone make a mini-split dehumidifier, something that dehumidifies without affecting the room temperature much. Seems feasible.

 

I've been thinking about that - the stupid thing running all winter. I have a shitty fan in an 8" hard duct from outside, that helped last winter but I'll need to hook up a can fan and maybe we could just use the cold ass winter air instead of running the AC?

holy shit I am way off. I have 5800 watts of hps and 15 LED lights that all are about 250W lights each in terms of heat. That's 9,550 in one room. So I need 33,000 BTU's at least. I'm 8000 btus light.

DAMN YOU BTUS!

 

Yeah about a dehumidifier. I've got a giant one that lives in the drying room at the moment. It's good for when you want dry heat. It sounds like it's fucking a buffalo when it kicks in.

At times especially at night my RH is way high like 90. At those times I have thought about bringing the dehum down. Maybe I need to. But the heat (and the weight) has made me hesitate.

I know for sure that the AC will dry things out. When it cools the air it also takes the moisture out of it so it does both. That's what was condensing on my grill (and freezing) all the moisture in the air. The air blowing out of the AC is dry - it's moisture was pulled out by going through the cold fins. But what to do when you just want dry air, not dry warm or dry cold?

There have to be mini split dehumidifiers. Or some such thing. We can't be the first people to want this.

 

My ACs don't seem to be anywhere near as capable as my dehumidifier for dropping the humidity, based on the amount of condensate each generates. I'm getting nearly the same amount of water in the dehumidifier tank as I'm feeding the plants, if I don't count the runoff. I guess that's to be expected when the room's sealed.

Could also be that I'm drying the air so much with the dehumidifier that the AC has little left that it can remove.