Quote Originally Posted by bstreep View Post
It's not the temperature of the WATER. It's the air you are using as a heat exchanger. I go into a LOT of garages, every day. The only place worse for a chiller, is the attic. Put it outside. If you put it inside, you are just heating up your house, which will then have to be cooled by your A/C. None of these are very efficient - why dump heat into your house, that you then have to dump back outside with your A/C unit. Just put the chiller outside where it belongs. By putting it outside instead of in the garage, you can halve the size of your chiller.
The main reason is the chiller I have is not an outdoor chiller so I'm not sure how well it'll hold up. Also, how the garage is situated means I'd have to plumb across the garage which I'd like to avoid. I understand that the temperature of the air matters to the chiller, since it needs to export the heat out, but the amount of heat it needs to export from the water is lower since the ambient air temperature is lower inside the house. In other words, if my entire set up was in the garage, the water temp would be even higher than if half of it was inside. I wouldn't need the chiller if I wasn't putting my sump garage. It gives me a lot to think about though. I feel it'll just be trial and error until I find something that works.