DIY Chiller Alternative Method

[BigDave]

You can see it in the graph. During the day when the house is at 80, it can take almost 5 hours to pull the temp down one degree.

This chiller was used when I got it, and I think it's low on refrigerant. Even at night with the house at 76 it can take 1 hour to lower the temp.

Even if the temp just maintains at 80 all day, that's better than what I was getting. And I'm sure running the two fans is less electricity draw than that chiller cranking up.

 

[SuperSaltwater]

Buy a chiller, nothing beats it. Works fast and last years. Stop being cheap and bite the bullet. You won't regret it. Why risk expensive fish and coral. Imo

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[sleepydoc]

Yes, a chiller will undoubtedly lower your tank temp, but at the expense of increasing the room temp and dramatically increasing your power consumption. (It also requires additional plumbing to install.)

Fans, in contrast, are cheap to buy, cheap to operate, easy to install and have minimal effect on the room temp.

Unless your temps are such that you are already bordering on a catastrophic crash, there is little downside to trying the fans and potentially significant cost advantages.


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[Ukreeferguy2020]

Wow i forgot about this thread and haven't been following. I managed to pick up a second hand chiller for £125 and works great. Wish I hadn't of hesitated before. To be fair I wouldn't pay £500 new for it, but second hand fleebay bobbie... perfect.

 

[Windy2]

Melting ice gives requires about 200 btu/lb to melt. If you evaporate 1 lb of water you will generate 900 btu of cooling. Evaporation is by far cheaper than anything else. Unfortunately, high humidity makes it harder to get the evaporation you need. I live in an Oregon desert and have high temps with 15-20 humidity. Evaporation works great and actually helps keep the humidity up in my home.

 

[karimwassef]

DIY evaporative cooler

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/Designs/0_zpsd0dword6.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/Designs/0_zpsd0dword6.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 0_zpsd0dword6.jpg"></a>

They use these to cool large pools at hotels. This one's made with a vent fan on top of a plastic trash can with bioballs for evaporative media.

Here's my inspiration:
http://www.glacierpoolcoolers.com

 

[karimwassef]

Water goes in from the red pipe & out of the blue. There's a 5 gallon bucket inside the trash can and the red pipe goes into that center bucket. The blue pipe is connected to the water between the center bucket and the wall of the trash can. There's an eggcrate box holding the bioballs.

There's a little pump in the center bucket that pushed water up to the 4 pipes with small holes drilled sideways so it "rains" on the bioballs.

The holes drilled into the sides of the trash can are intakes for air. The fan sucks air from the bucket and blows it up.

The yellow is an emergency overflow (requisite in everything I do).

I was fiddling around with the design of the water chambers (recirculating vs one shot flow)

It's cheap but totally untested DIY. I haven't had the time or the need yet. I find that my corals grow faster at 84F, so I stopped working on it.

 

[karimwassef]

Radiator fans (DC) can handle wet running. I have all the parts- maybe I'll do it just to see.

Anyone have any ideas on how to improve I before I do?

 

[Georb]

I use large heatsinks on my fuge with a coiled radiator drawing the heat off.. go buy a transmission cooler. Fill it with coolant and then electric pump and fan under 150 for the setup

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[karimwassef]

Heat sink cooling really works well if the temperature gradient is high ~ cooling 100F with 80F ... but if the gradient is small, it won't do much unless the water volume is small. That was my experience anyway. It works great cooling a small GPU chip runing 120 but I couldn't get much for my 660 gal system.