My Chiller Setup **Lots of pictures**

tony hasn't answered because he has been wrongly banned from reef central by a few local moderators that are letting personnal matters get in the way of better judgement.
 
robthorn-the personnal matters would thay be home built chillers? It would be a good thing if the pics were but back because it would help so many on reef central. So no one would think that i am asking for the pics to help my self build a chiller i have been working on chillers for over 30 years and tony did a good thing by telling how he built the chiller. RGibson
 
no r gibson it had nothing to do with the chillers. if I go into it further they will probably try to kick me off too.
 
Am I missing something?

a 6000 BTU Whirlpool window AC unit. It is out in back of my house and the freon/refrigerant is piped in the house to a titanium chiller coil inside of a large PVC housing then my tank water is pumped through the PVC
Click to expand...

Isn't that what retail aquarium chillers are? My 1/4hp AquaLogic is exactly what you described "titanium chiller coil inside of a large PVC housing then my tank water is pumped through" and I bought it for $380.

How are these so much more efficient? Or is it just that you can buy one that is the size of the car for less than a smaller "reef ready" plumbed unit.

I think my 3000 BTU Aqualogic pulls about 5 amps, what does a 6000 BTU window unit use?
 
socal I built tony's chiller with his help. he has a 6000 btu unit. You have a 3000. There is nothing wrong with your unit or any mass produced unit that I know of. Tony and myself believe this is the best way to do it. 1st tony's chiller of double your size uses less amperage at 4.4-4.5 amps. We placed the condenser outside so all heat removed would actually be removed and not soaked back up by your home air conditioning unit then removed to the outside air. we left the evaporator indoors so we didn't need to run a larger water pump piped 20 ft around a couple corners so we conserved energy there also.
I don't know where your chiller sits I would just recommend the condenser outdoors. you avoid putting the heat you just removed from the water back into the air that will transfer pretty rapidly back into your tank through the glass.You also avoid the heat produced by friction in the compressor during operation.
hope this helps a bit. Nothing is perfect just preferable
 
another benefit of this set up is I charged the unit to run properly. It is charged according to the load not a generic charge. your water pump has alot to do with what happens inside the refrigerant circuit. All chillers and a/c systems should be charged according to superheat and subcooling. Some manufacturers recommend pumps form say 500-1000 gals an hr. that is a big difference and would make a substancial difference in efficiency of your system. the gallons were just an example that I did not research just making a point. there is no possible way to have the proper charge with such a load differential. an expansion valve would help but I haven't seen any small aquarium chillers using these. Unless of course it was home built.
If you need a second oppinion rgibson has been in the refrigeration business alot longer than myself and has given some appreciated oppinions and he always seems willing to answer peoples questions.
 
robthorn-you are right on the mark with the water flow all manufacturers should put a water flow control with each chiller that thay build then you could set the flow right were it should be, it would save much ele bill and the chiller would last longer. RGibson
 
nice to see tony and my design and effort was stolen and claimed as there own on this site. I have to say this guy is a mastermind lol
 
This design has been used for many years in the Tampa Bay area, to claim intellectual rights by anyone is absurd. In this area, the oldest hobbyist versions were being made by Dennis Galloway in the early-mid 90's. I am not positive, but Dennis probably got the idea from the large "homemade" units that were at Segrest Farms. Dennis could bend/weld his own titanium and split or all-in-one units were commonly produced. In 99'/00' he stopped making the units because of personal reasons involving his family. Since then this design has been copied by those who have been impressed with the efficiency, reliability and cost. In fact, I have been using Dennis' all-in-one chillers since 1996 and had robthorn split them in 2002 when I expanded my store. Minor changes have been made but the basic idea and design remain the same.
 
rob,

the design was never claimed as their own. There are tons of diy projects out their that people have on their websites that have generated from other projects. It's the fact that they did it themselves and want to share with others. Talk with David if you would like "original design" props. I'm sure he wouldn't mind.
 
Dear Reef Related, Great job!!! Thank God for Reef Central and all the great information provided by it's members. I'm a diy guy and would love to build my own chiller. I've looked at the chillers online and wondered why would anyone buy one of these when they could build there own. The tough part was finding the parts which you have pointed us all to. I have a 5000 btu window air conditioning unit will that work with the coil suggested by you or I can buy another A/C unit. Where can I find all the instruction and list of parts for building the chiller.
 
ichthyman said:
This design has been used for many years in the Tampa Bay area, to claim intellectual rights by anyone is absurd. In this area, the oldest hobbyist versions were being made by Dennis Galloway in the early-mid 90's. I am not positive, but Dennis probably got the idea from the large "homemade" units that were at Segrest Farms. Dennis could bend/weld his own titanium and split or all-in-one units were commonly produced. In 99'/00' he stopped making the units because of personal reasons involving his family. Since then this design has been copied by those who have been impressed with the efficiency, reliability and cost. In fact, I have been using Dennis' all-in-one chillers since 1996 and had robthorn split them in 2002 when I expanded my store. Minor changes have been made but the basic idea and design remain the same.
Click to expand...
So your system was all-in-one until Rob split it. I think Rob was also refering to the fact that Reefrelated's post on the first page of this thread on 04/17/2003 03:00 PM was copied almost word for word in the article on www.yourreeftank.com. I don't think anyone here is trying to claim they invented the whole idea, I'm sure bits and pieces can be traced much farther back. The first split chiller system I saw in a home was at a friend Lee's house in the mid 90's. I know for a fact this was the inspiration for this chiller design here. I was at Lee's house a couple weeks ago and his split chiller is still running like a champ on his 11' tank.
 
Shawn,

Lee's original unit was also built by Dennis Galloway. Merle Sanders' also had a split chiller built by Dennis. Heck, Dennis had a split unit built by Dennis.

I am not questioning Robââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s abilities at AC repair/installation or Tonyââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s knack for finding anything out on the internet.

Just wanted to be historically accurate by giving credit to were credit is due.
 
Well here comes the "theif" now....shhhhhh! I never claimed to come up with this idea but if you feel your creative efforts were somehow tarnished then by all means "robthorn" YOU DA MAN !!! I formally thanked everyone last year (on pg.7 of this post) for sharing the idea.
 
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