Advice on cooling fans in canopy

I have 5 3" PC fans in my canopy. One below and behind each MH blowing in air. The fans are mounted at the rear of the canopy just below the MH bulbs and blow toward the front of the canopy. Then I have 3 more of the same fans mounted in the top of the canopy just forward of the reflectors which is about 2/3rds to the front. The 3 upper fans blow air out which would be straight up.

The canopy is only open at the rearand stands 15" tall. Half of that is enclosed from the top down. I don't have any noise issues. You can hear the fans running but they are not that noticeable in a fully tiled living room. The heat that they extract is very noticeable. You can place your hand over any of the 3 upper fans and feel the heat vacuumed out. Whenever I open the canopy I never get the heatwave effect like opening the oven.

I purchased the fans on ebay for pennies literally. I bought a box of 30 for $10 shipped to my door. They were all brand new. I used 5, saved an extra 5, and gave the rest to my LFS friend to sell to his customers. They were gone in a week.
 
Lots of options here depending on your space and limitations. I am using two icecap 4” variable speed fans to cool my canopy. Fans that size can be quiet to noisy depending on the speed. These units kick up to 102cfm on high at 47.8 dB - very noisy. On low speed the noise is half and the flow drops to about 50cfm - I can still hear them across the room. They have never run on high as both are timed to the lights. The canopy temp hovers at 80F.

On my home audio cabinet I opted for a different design. There, I use several slow speed 12 volt dc cooling fans ( for pc cooling) that move the same volume of air but because the fans speed is slow it requires more units. The offset is I cannot hear it â€"œ even standing next to it in a quiet room. My current project involves a 200G in-wall system where cooling will be handled by a Panasonic “whisperquiet” ventilator mounting in the ceiling and ducted to the outside. Panasonic uses a slow speed, but large, squirrel cage to achieve the airflow volume without noise â€"œ about 10dB or less. Amazingly, the cost of this Panasonic unit was the same as both icecap fans. If I had to do a tank/stand system again I would use a Panasonic vent installed in the cabinet and duct the airflow up behind the stand (between the stand and the wall) and put a diffuser on the end of the duct directing the airflow across the canopy. It would be invisible to the viewer and completely silent.
 
Westsidewholesale.com has the best prices. Check out the "whisper value 3" low profile series at 50 and 80 cfm
 
The ones I picked up tonight at Office Depot are rated at 36 CFM each. Do you think that these two plus an open back on the canopy will be enough to keep it cool in there?
 
I have 3 x80mm vantech stealth fans off ebay. I wired them to a variable voltage transformer (wal-mart) w/an in-line fuse on the hot wire. They kick in as low as 4.5v (real quiet) and can boost to 12v (can hear it). Do a good job of evacuating heat with very little noise. The 120mm were way too loud for me. I have the fans on the same timer as the MH ballasts. Keep your bubbles and such down if you don't want to worry so much about salt creep.
 
Probably with both moving air into the hood. As a comparison. The back of my hood is open. Without any forced air the temp reaches 120F. With 50 cfm using the icecap units the average temp is 80F.
 
Probably with both moving air into the hood. As a comparison. The back of my hood is open. Without any forced air the temp reaches 120F. With 50 cfm using the icecap units the average temp is 80F. It's a small area so 50 or so cfm should do.
 
48 dBa will sound like a vacuum cleaner! Stay in the 20 or you will be sorry. Even the low 30's is irritating. You won't need that much CFM. My canopy is 60" long, 18" deep and 16" high so its only 9.375 cubic feet volume. With two Vantec 120mm fans blowing in at 53 CFM each I am changing the air completely in the canopy every 11 seconds or so so it stays nice and comfortable inside. I couldn't imagine needing any more than that.
 
I have seen many posts here complaining about the noise of Icecap fans, apparently they are not all that quiet. I just use a variable voltage power supply and adjust my fan speeds manually and it works fine for me. I tried several temp controlled fans but found the way they come from the factory the sensor is mounted on a very short wire next to the fan and the speed didn't vary much at all, they ran almost full speed all the time.
 
In retrospect I would not go with the Icecap product only because of the noise. Now, mind you, "noise" is very discretionary to the listener. The fans on low make no more noise than the circ pump. The fan is "trick" in that it has temp sensors for speed control. They are very effective if noise is not an issue.
 
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