Coral Tank from Canada (1350gal Display Tank)

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Peter

If you want to cover the mobilization (from New Jersey) & materials, I have a drill rig with a 48" x 96" foot print that can install your geothermal wells and preserve the lion's share of the Mrs garden. I'd do the drilling for fine wine, reefing conversation and the chance to dip my arms in this awesome build! Shall I pencil you in for the spring? :D
 
Bax said:
Peter

If you want to cover the mobilization (from New Jersey) & materials, I have a drill rig with a 48" x 96" foot print that can install your geothermal wells and preserve the lion's share of the Mrs garden. I'd do the drilling for fine wine, reefing conversation and the chance to dip my arms in this awesome build! Shall I pencil you in for the spring? :D
Click to expand...

I've had company this evening so I haven't been able to respond to anything for a bit. The notion of restarting the geothermal initiative is very compelling Bax, except for the promise I made to Judy that there would be a moratorium on any more construction for at least five years. I'm prevented from even thinking about going outside the box..........

Peter
 
Am I the only one who thinks geothermal just to cool a tank is overkill???
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Chago-
While you may not be the only one, you and I Will have to disagree upon this. I implemented one when putting in a sprinkler system in my lower yard. WHEN the pump is running (not that often) it pulls a massive 28watts to cool roughly 500g. After running 1/2hp chillers, that ran all year round in the temperate NW, and could not keep up when ambient was over 80deg..... I think my option has fared well.


How much about this system is overkill? Isn't that part of what we admire? :)

Bax-
Quite the generous offer!
 
I have been thinking about geothermal and it's benefits with respect to my first large tank. I would love to through my idea out there and see what the community thinks.

As I understand it a geothermal system essently replaces the outside condenser unit with a loop filled with a glycol solution. My idea is to simply replace this glycol solution with the salt water from my tank. The only minuses that I can see are one that you may need to move the water rather fast to stop it from becoming Hypoxic and as such negating some of the benefits of the system (both the heat expense of pumping the water and not having enough dwell time in the Earth) and two how do you clean out 200 foot loops of pipe underground.

The reason that I was even thinking about cutting out the middle man so to weak by removing the heat exchanger is that given the Earth at a constant temp equal to that of the average temp of the air over the year (for arguments sake let's say 68 degrees) why add another inefficient exchange into the equation if it is unnecessary.

Thank in advance for the input.
 
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The glycol solution has better heat transference characteristics than water. You would not be saving yourself anything there. Depending on where you live, the ground below frost level is a constant 55°F. The savings comes from how small a pump (low electrical requirements) you need to move the glycol. Also, you wouldn't need a big buried network just to cool your tank. You'd need an engineer's assistance to calculate the correct length, but probably a pipe sent down about ten feet and then back up in a loop would do it. The cost is in the drilling, not in the system itself.

Dave.M
 
dave.m said:
The glycol solution has better heat transference characteristics than water. You would not be saving yourself anything there. Depending on where you live, the ground below frost level is a constant 55°F. The savings comes from how small a pump (low electrical requirements) you need to move the glycol. Also, you wouldn't need a big buried network just to cool your tank. You'd need an engineer's assistance to calculate the correct length, but probably a pipe sent down about ten feet and then back up in a loop would do it. The cost is in the drilling, not in the system itself.

Dave.M
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What our your thoughts on pumping tank water through the pipe network. My thought is that the cost of a large chiller and the problems with central air that Peter and crew are experiencing will make the cost of drilling about the same with operating costs being significantly lower.
 
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bbart12 said:
What our your thoughts on pumping tank water through the pipe network.
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Sorry, I thought I had made my thoughts clear that pumping tank water through would be a poor choice. Better to stick with a properly engineered GT system using ethylene glycol. There are any number of heat transference methods you could use between the GT system and the tank water, including some DIY methods.

It should be noted that GT systems, whether for your tank or your whole home are verrrrryyyy slow to change the temp. A sudden jump in house temp could take up to a whole day for a GT system to manage.

Dave.M
 
BBart- you are on track with the "costs"..... the cost of install can be as much or more than a standard electric chiller. The benefit is the onoging "green" cost savings of using the earth to cool at minimal electrical expense.

My system is a lake-source geothermal = I have a Titanium heat exchanger in the sump with 1" poly line to and from the lake to supply it. In the lake is a similar heat exchanger. Add a small pump inline and ta-da!
A similar (and likely less cost to install ) system would be to drill 10+ feet down into the earth. Less trenching involved to be sure.

I suppose the fluid in the loop could be salt water, and that may help freezing. A glycol solution has better heat transfer without freezing. Obviuosly, you would want to pressure test the system to make sure no leaks exist (I did 120psi with air first- look for bubbles).

As long as the heat exchangers are sized properly, the pump doesn't even have to pump high head pressure. Remember "fluid will seek its own level". All it has to beat is the friction related head pressure from the exchangers, piping, & .....that's it. Use large enough pipe (I have 1" poly) and exchangers (6 3/8" tubes on either end- in parallel) and that is solved. I figure that my Iwaki 20 is seeing less than 10' of head.
 
It should be noted that GT systems, whether for your tank or your whole home are verrrrryyyy slow to change the temp. A sudden jump in house temp could take up to a whole day for a GT system to manage.
Click to expand...

Dave-
Mine seems to do pretty well.... rarely more than a 2 degree swing (As determined by the controller I use to run the pump). The most that I have seen however is maybe 60f ambient to 90f in a day. Haven't even bothered to run the house AC for the last 2 summers. It did touch 82 briefly (moments) when we had a week+ of over 100f days last year.

Perhaps this is due in part to large tanks not changing temp quickly either....
Another blessing of large water volume!
 
mr.wilson said:
Sorry I missed that post. Someone PM'd me the link as well. Looks very promising. I have sent them an email. http://www.orphek.com/index.html

They don't have dimming, but they claim to run cool, no noisy fans, remote ballast to help with heat, slick design, deep PAR values, and 90˚ optics for good coverage in our 36" wide tank. If it's all true, I may be ready to switch to LED. The price is reasonable too :eek1:
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Hey Shawn, just wanted to ping you in regards to this light, did you get any more info that you can share?
 
danno14 said:
Mine seems to do pretty well.... rarely more than a 2 degree swing
Click to expand...
I was referring to an experience with a house that is on a GT system. Quite cool and overcast in the morning so they left the windows and doors open. It cleared up and was blazing hot by the afternoon. The whole house heated up. It took till most of the next day to cool the house down again. They went out and bought a big air conditioner for fast result with big energy bill.

But for sure, if you allow a GT system to stay on top of the temps then they vary very little.

Dave.M
 
danno14 said:
BBart- you are on track with the "costs"..... the cost of install can be as much or more than a standard electric chiller. The benefit is the onoging "green" cost savings of using the earth to cool at minimal electrical expense.

My system is a lake-source geothermal = I have a Titanium heat exchanger in the sump with 1" poly line to and from the lake to supply it. In the lake is a similar heat exchanger. Add a small pump inline and ta-da!
A similar (and likely less cost to install ) system would be to drill 10+ feet down into the earth. Less trenching involved to be sure.

I suppose the fluid in the loop could be salt water, and that may help freezing. A glycol solution has better heat transfer without freezing. Obviuosly, you would want to pressure test the system to make sure no leaks exist (I did 120psi with air first- look for bubbles).

As long as the heat exchangers are sized properly, the pump doesn't even have to pump high head pressure. Remember "fluid will seek its own level". All it has to beat is the friction related head pressure from the exchangers, piping, & .....that's it. Use large enough pipe (I have 1" poly) and exchangers (6 3/8" tubes on either end- in parallel) and that is solved. I figure that my Iwaki 20 is seeing less than 10' of head.
Click to expand...

Interesting thought that I will file away, no reason my pond couldn't work for the same reason right?
 
muttley000 said:
Interesting thought that I will file away, no reason my pond couldn't work for the same reason right?
Click to expand...

No reason at all it wouldn't work in a pond. Pumping glycol thru a heat exchanger is the way to go. Pond or salt water system it's way more watt efficient. If you pump your system water thru the GT loop, the heat of the circulating pump drains your effientcy too much in most cases to make it worth while.

And Danno

Really not such a generous offer at all. Have you seen Peter's house? I've already offered to be the live in fish guy like Ching has, but apparently, I posses the wrong chromosomal make up for Peter's requirements to fill that position. But I know that there must be limited number of reefing drillers with tight access drill rigs out there so this is my best shot to get my hands in this build. :hammer:

... Now if we can just get Judy on the Geothermal band wagon I'm IN! :bounce1:
 
chingchai and msr, thank you and yes the baby and mother are doing great. She had it rough though, 24 hours of labour which led no where. So they ended up going forward with a c-section. My wife has recovered really well though since.

Danno, your geothermal is in a lake? thats interesting. I wonder how much the cost would differ from our Ontario gerothermal systems. I know for a standard home of 2800sqft your looking at $35,000. I know cause I got a quote. When doing geothermal in Ontario its a pretty big dig. Needs to be very deep and very large to add all that tubing/hosing or whatever it is. Now I know were talking about using it for an aquarium only so it wouldn't need to be as big. But if you go back about 40 something pages you will see Peters wifes garden LOL If he touches those this will be the end of the thread LOL
 
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