Frankenstien Chiller Room

My existing HRV fresh air only system is working nice and quiet, but the studio's not staying cool enough. I was hoping to add an inexpensive window AC unit to take care of cooling a control room and small iso room in a fashion demonstrated in the pic below. It's based on Rod's chiller room, but uses the existing Fantech 1404 HRV and chambers off the supply and return sections of the window AC. Rod or anyone else, could you please tell me if this chiller room inspired setup below would work? Would it still pull fresh air if the AC was off?

Still looking for advice here, but I have a little update. I borrowed a small 5k btu window ac from a friend. I just sat the ac on cinder blocks outside in free air and did a quick and dirty attachment of the hrv ducts to it with tape. It was not air tight of course, but I was hoping to at least get some valuable info from the experiment. Well, the air inside was a little cooler then before, but not nearly enough to cool the place properly. I've read everything on this site in regards to exchange chambers, but none have been done with an HRV. Can someone with more experience then me tell me if getting a bigger AC unit and chambering it off like my sketchup would work as a real solution? When I put the HRV intake against the AC's grill it made the AC units fan move without it being on (no surprise). My main concern is if the fans on the AC unit and HRV will work in harmony or be bad to run with each other. I'm willing to take this experiment further and share the results with everyone, but it would be great to get some advice before I spend the time and money to do so. So breaking it all down: Will this setup at least work in theory? -or- Will this setup burn out the motors in the AC or HRV prematurely due to something I don't understand yet?

I'll chime in.... I think that setup would most likely cause strain on one or both fan motors unless they are moving exactly the same amount of air. I would just have the AC unit open in that chiller room and also have the HRV open at both ends into the chiller room. The air in the chiller room will blend and mix and you should get the results you are looking for. Make sure your window unit is big enough. How much space are you trying to cool? A 5K is good for only a very small space, perhaps a few hundred square feet. Depends on how much HOT gear is in there as well. You gotta do your BTU calculations as in Rod's book to get it close. -ashley

bassman wrote:

I think that setup would most likely cause strain on one or both fan motors unless they are moving exactly the same amount of air.

Thanks for chiming in Ashley! That is what I feared. The 5k btu AC unit was only borrowed from a friend for experimental purposes. For the record the both rooms in the studio are about 280 sq. ft combined. There's no gear in there yet except 2 lights and a boombox and it wouldn't even keep up with 2 people in there working. Hopefully a larger unit will fix that. I have Rod's book and will do the calculations as soon as I make up my mind on which approach to go with. I guess at least if I build a chiller room and it doesn't work out, I could use it as a storage shed. I'm going to watch this thread for a few more days with hope that I'll get some more feedback. The new main question now is: Would I be able able to still ventilate the place via the HRV with the AC turned off (if the unit was manually set to fresh air mode)?

Just put a "y" connection in the ducting for the HRV and switch it when the AC is not off. The second path could go straight outside. -ashley