For summertime, hot dry, West Texas GH that's 33' L X 12' W X 10' H, roughly 400 sq ft, 4000 cubic feet, I want to try to delay fresh air ventilation exchange for as long as possible each day for experimenting with sealed system
CO2 injection.
I'll have a monster
solar heat build up challenge, to say the least, but I want to invite suggestions here for mass cooling setup that might could be used to extend that closed up period by any additional x number of hours on a daily basis.
I'll vent structure (abandoning CO2 for the day) and can even partially or completely shut off any additional
solar gain whenever this scheme to cool internal air has been maxed out and internal temps getting overly excessive.
I've no illusions of beating the sun at this game, just postponing and extending into the daylight hours a little longer the maximum time under CO2 closed system before surrendering and abandoning CO2 for the day.
Here's what I have in mind that I'd first be interested in suggestions to maximize its effectiveness, before suggestions for going in a totally different direction, though eager to explore whatever sounds like it'd work better.
I've got ten IBC 260 gallon totes I can fill with
water after I position them outside, nearly right up against and all along northern long side of GH wall, all in a tight row, and then airtight box them all in, on bottom & top, too, as a single group with 5" freezer panels (50 cents sq ft salvaged) through which I can pump hot exhaust air from GH into one end of this rectangle 'cooling box' and after that CO2 enriched hot air has wound all around, under and alongside them, hopefully cooled down some, air can next be inline fan pumped through either a swamp cooler or mister before it re-enters bottom of GH interior on opposite side where it'd been exhausted.
BTW, very low humidity there to begin with and GH can usually use some additional anyways. However, I don't have unlimited water to go crazy solely relying on evaporative cooler to do it all non-stop. I also don't have unlimited power for overly aggressive traditional mechanical cooling either. Everything's PV, batteries and inverters powered.
I'm also strongly considering that with all that water mass and the way it'll want to stratify, might be much better off just plumbing & pumping it to circulate through a radiator to where the air goes through it right before it next goes through that evaporative cooler or mister. Might could then get away with saving some water and
energy only employing evaporator when this radiator and all other measures had maxed out first and it's needed most then, as a last resort, to better cap rate of internal air temp rising.
Also, to 'recharge' these IBC totes at night, in the 'cooling box', they will all have been spray painted with the best high emissivity paint or coating I can find, still looking for that if any suggestions, and all the insides of this box will have highly reflective mylar and the top will flip open 45 degrees outward, so at night I'd have it opened to maximize radiant cooling of the IBC containers, besides being exposed to the typically 25-30 degrees cooler ambient night air temps. Also, north side of GH above top of this 'cooling box' will also have that same reflective mylar up its outside to better facilitate IBC totes reflecting their heat skyward. From down in the box, all the totes radiant heat 'will see' is reflective mylar to the cold black outer space above.
Additionally, if employing the radiator plumbed to and pumping the cooler water in the totes during the daytime heat to cool the GH exhaust air going through it, then I could also redirect in & out air flow through radiator at night to help cool that same water anytime the ambient air is cooler than the water by directing that cooler ambient air through the radiator then instead.
Anyways, that's the basic plan, appreciate any other considerations I've overlooked or other suggestions to maximize this set up or, if basically too little cooling gain for all this proposed effort above here, another way altogether to explore.
Some of the questions I'm struggling with...
How fast, how many air changes per minute or longer duration, do I need to ideally be aiming to move exhaust air round trip through the IBC and radiator and/or evaporative cooler gauntlet?
Slower, so it gets chance to cool down more in contact with totes/radiator/evaporator longer, or always fast as possible to have higher volume of air/water contact?
What range of size CFM inline exhaust fan and also pusher fan at radiator and/or evaporative cooler might I be needing then, considering air resistance drag along most it's tortuous path?
I'll need some radiator and pump flow and fan size 'rules of thumb' to get a fix on sizing that whole system and suggestions on sources, too.
BTW, Cool tubes in the ground I'm a big fan of, too, but cost of excavation and piping has it not on top of my list... yet.
Appreciate any thoughts, thanks!