Chiller

[mr_alberta]

Anyone in Edmonton using a chiller? If so, what brand/model and type are you using? How loud is it? I'm thinking about saving my pennies for one this comming summer. I'm already having heat issues :eek:

[guysmiley]

Hi there,

I have a chiller. It's a 1/4 horse power drop in chiller made by Aqua Logic. It only make noise when the fan is running. It basically sounds like a small fan. The compressor is as loud as your fridge. What I like about it is that because it's drop in, you just put the coil in the sump and you're done. You can take it off in the winter and put it away without having to replumb everything. I just moved into a house with AC so it might be for sale....


Garrick.

[mr_alberta]

Hi Garrick,

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I don't have any room for a drop in chiller. :sad:

[guysmiley]

It's actually not that big. I put the coil in my sump and sat the unit ouside of the stand to help it vent better.


You're welcome to check it out if you want. It might give you an idea about the level of sound.


Garric.k

[doch]

Not sure how well this would work, but I'm going to do the DIY method... take a 'beer fridge' with a small freezer in it and run a bunch of tubing in the freezer part coiled up and run a pump to feed it... done. Cheap. $200 for the fridge, $100 for the pump, $5 for the tubing, $5 for the silicone, and it will only be as noisy as the pump. And the bunus... you now have a beer fridge beside your couch!!!

[guysmiley]

Before I bought my chiller I researched DIY methods. None of them proved suitable. I think you'll find that the beer fridge approach won't work and then you'll have a beer fridge with holes in it....


Do some digging online. Fridges are designed to cool static loads not dynamic. If you put a can of beer in the fridge, it gets colder and colder over a long time. The problem with tank water is that you keep pumping new warm water through all the time so the fridge never gets a long enough time to bring the temp down before new warm water is there.

Buy a proper chiller, you won't be dissapointed.

Garrick.

[geopod]

Hey DOCH,

I like your plan.It sounds good to me. What better can you ask for.A chiller for your tank and a beer fridge beside the couch.Dont even have to walk to the kitchen
Logical thinking....
george

[doch]

Hey GuySmiley... do you know for a fact that this won't work or are you just working on theory here? I think that the trick to this DIY is to have a LOT of tubing coiled up as much as possible in the fridge so that the warm water passing through has as much time as possible to be in the cold environment to chill. It seems to work in my head, but if you know that it won't work from experience let me know.

Geopod: I KNOW!!! Greatest idea EVER!!! Hopefully it works when I do it. Worst case scenario I guess will be that I have a beer fridge beside the couch... oh well. The unfortunate part if it doesn't work will be that there will be siliconed holes in the top of the fridge... that's why we have plants I guess... to cover the hole... lol

[guysmiley]

I don't know from experience but when I researched it I read alot of articles on the reasons it won't work. They talked basically about how the fridge isn't designed to run all the time etc...

I'll try and find the links.

Try it if you want but I think for a few bucks more you'd end up with a solution that you know works. How big is your tank? I have a chiller for sale that I used on a 135 Gallon. I'm in a house now with AC so I don't need it.


Garrick.

[Chin_Lee]

Hey GuySmiley... do you know for a fact that this won't work or are you just working on theory here? I think that the trick to this DIY is to have a LOT of tubing coiled up as much as possible in the fridge so that the warm water passing through has as much time as possible to be in the cold environment to chill. It seems to work in my head, but if you know that it won't work from experience let me know.

Geopod: I KNOW!!! Greatest idea EVER!!! Hopefully it works when I do it. Worst case scenario I guess will be that I have a beer fridge beside the couch... oh well. The unfortunate part if it doesn't work will be that there will be siliconed holes in the top of the fridge... that's why we have plants I guess... to cover the hole... lol

Geopod and Doch
try this for a test before you start drilling holes into your fridge.
1) plug in your fridge and put it to the highest coldest setting.
2) get a 5 gallon bucket with a small power head and a heater that will keep the temp at the highest you want to see your tank at (i set my chiller to turn on at 83-84 degrees F)
3) stick it into the beer fridge with the small powerhead running to circulate the water and the heater on to continue heating the water
4) put in a thermometer or the probe of one of those thermometers with a long probe (for outdoor temp)
5) calculate how long it will take for the 5 gallons of water to be cooled down to the temperature you wish to maintain with the heater and powerhead plugged in. (in the summer i am happy with 81-82 degrees)

This test will simulate two things:
1) a heat source (metal halides on your tank or ambient room temperature in reality compared to the heater in the bucket in the test)
2) circulating water (water being pumped through the pipes in reality compared to the powerhead in the test)
3) a body of water that needs to be cooled (your tank water in reality compared to the bucket of water in the test)

IF the fridge can cool the water down to 81-82 for 5 gallons of water, note down the time that it took to accomplish that.
THEN divide the volume of your tank by 5 (for five gallons of water) and that will give you a VERY vague idea how long it will take for the fridge to cool down your tank.
Although this is probably not the most accurate test that you can do, it will give you a general idea why it will not work which are the exact reasons that GuySmiley had indicated in his post.

HOWEVER for the same reasons that GuySmiley had stated, I think the following method MIGHT work because it will be a static body of standing water. I haven't personally tried this, but i did give it some thought before I kicked myself in the head, woke up and I did a completely different DIY chiller.

1) get the biggest and flexible plastic rubbermaid container that will fit into your fridge with the door closed of course
2) fill the container with salt water (lower freezing point)
3) run the tubings through the fridge and coil the tubing inside the rubbermaid container. Limit the amount of tubing (ie 30% tubing volume, 70% water volume) in the container and make sure the tubing is submerged in the water
4) turn the fridge on the highest setting to the point that you can freeze as much of the water in the container as possible
5) make sure you have two pumps on the tubing (small one thats on constantly to keep water moving inside and big second pump thats on a thermostat to turn on when heats too high)

I thought maybe if you are pumping warm tank water through the tubing thats inside a body of water that close to freezing that the tank can be cooled through the process of heat transfer. The icy water in the rubbermaid will eventually warm up but there is a larger volume of water that is at around freezing point that will require a lot of heat transfer to bring it to the same temperature as the tank. Once that happens, there is no more cooling effect.

just a thought... may or may not work but give it a shot if you have a spare beer fridge lying around.

personally , iwould just spend an extra few hundred bucks and buy a chiller.