Cooling Tower?

[GaryP]

OK, that would work. I have thought of doing something similar. The only problem with a plastic tubing coil is that the heat exchange capacity is low for plastic. The way to overcome that is with more surface area.

Have you thought about doing an in-ground passive cooling system? I knew a coral farm in New Orleans that did that. Its harder to do that here because of the rock. In some areas it would take a rock trenching machine. You don't have that problem in Andrews.

Your only energy cost would be the pump to push the water through some PVC tubing buried in the ground. The temperature at 6 inches deep stays at a pretty constant temp. year round.

Gary

[::pete::]

Gary
There was a reefer in NC that was building a house and he buried the 55 gallon drums full of tubing below his basement floor!! He also put a footer in under his tank and steel I beams up to support the area. :shock: A little over kill, but I thought the cooling idea was pretty cool.

[prof]

Search ebay for cooling coils. I see stainless and titainium coils out there every once and a while.

[bprewit]

Hmm found 50' length of titanium .5" OD tubing for $50 on ebay, and large fridge compressor, 120v-1/4hp new in box for $25. I suppose could actually mount the condensor and fan outside, like a home a/c unit, and mount the compressor and evaporator/heat exchanger under the tank. Would make for a definate permanent installation but should actually work pretty good. with a temp controler that basically kicks a relay to run the circulating pump. For a permanent type installation a small length of schedule 80 6" SS pipe with water/glycol mix, copper evaporator coil wrapped inside, titanium tubing inside, filled with water/glycol mix. The compressor would cool the fluid which would cool the aquarium water running through the tubing. Figure $150 for the pipe, tubing, and compressor and then use the condensor I have that came from old ford torino. I can sweat all the copper tubing connections for the compressor and actually have a vacuum pump and gauges to fill the compressor with R134A freon. 1/4hp chiller for under $200 and designed to fit in my stand dosent sound like a bad deal!

[NaCl_H2O]

I would be very interested to see how this turns out? If you do it, document it well and post the design & results!

Keep us up to date, good luck!

[GaryP]

I had a phone conversation with Mikeyboy about this today. He has access to some chillers at work and was wondering about the possibility of retrofitting them with a titanium coil. Sounds like a good DIY project.

Gary

[NaCl_H2O]

Gary
There was a reefer in NC that was building a house and he buried the 55 gallon drums full of tubing below his basement floor!! He also put a footer in under his tank and steel I beams up to support the area. :shock: A little over kill, but I thought the cooling idea was pretty cool.

Did it work? I have always thought the buried tubing would be a neat cooling system.

Let's dig a huge hole in somebody's backyard (not mine) as an experiment :-D

[Ram_Puppy]

I always have kind of wondered, if I ever build a house from the ground up, about just building the sump right into the foundation.