anybody know about water chillers?

[roastadoro]

Hello,
I have a dwc with 8 34 gallon reservoirs. My temp is between 70-80 degrees. I need to find or make a system that will keep my water temp in all my reservoirs below 70 degrees. Does anyone have any ideas or experience. Thanks in advance.:pimp:

[tinytoon]

8 34 gal reses? outside of a chiller for each one ????

[keylime]

8 34 gal reses? outside of a chiller for each one ????

As tinytoon, mentioned EIGHT 34 gal reservoirs? Thats a lot. You should Try to cut that to perhaps 2 or three... especially if they are all at the same stage of flowering.
You have a couple of choices.

1. You have a chiller for each res... which is a huge expense. That is, if you have 8 reservoirs, you need 8 chillers. If you have 4, you need 4.

2. The only other way to do it, would be to make yourself a temperature exchanger. That may sound fancy, but is actually quite simple. For example you have several reservoirs you want to keep cool. Place a (say) 55 gal drum somewhere close to the reservoirs and fill it up with just plain water. Take your chiller (the bigger the better) and chill the water in the barrel to say 65F degrees. Place a SMALL pump in each res with a plastic line going to the barrel. Once its at the barrel,attach a metal coil, perhaps 3 or 4 feet long to the plastic line, since metal conducts temperatures better than plastic, into the barrel and attach another plastic line on the other end back to your reservoir. In other words, you take your 80F nutes pump them thru your plastic 1/2" tubing running thru the metal coil in the 65F water, cooling it, and then returning it back to your res. I have heard that copper is not good to use for this, but don't know for sure. Obviously you would need 8 coils in the barrel in order to leave your 8 reservoirs. Depending on the size of the chiller you will attain your temperature drop fairly easy I would start with a 200 gph pump going from each res. That means there would be approx 5 exchanges per hour of your warm nutes to the cold water. Once satisfied, you may want to insulate as much as you can, that is res, lines and water barrel.

keylime

[tboner1]

That's very innovative thinking. Hope I don't ever have to use it, but great to know it's there! Thanks keylime.

[Daddynobucks]

they get attatcked by the salt solution.

Better to drop a small pump in each rez. 1/4 plastic tubing in a loop that goes into and out of a small refrigerater back to the rez. each rez has its own loop,about 10ft in the refer. put all pumps on a timer
adj. time and refer temp as needed

this will work, and you always have cold beer available
Daddy

[Dawg56]

I'm a wonderin'....anybody ever messed with one of those "school hallway" water fountains? Seems to me that you could thermostaticaly control the temperature of either a res. or put it directly inline with sensor placement at various places to control the unit.

[reefplayground]

There are a couple different ways to cool 8 individual res's. Cheapest would be to do the heat exchange via a nearby cooling reservoir. But I would recommend cooling that water to the low 50's, so the heat transfer rate would increase. To do that you would need a decent chiller. Check out these: Aquarium Chillers (http://www.reefplayground.net/aquaeurousa.shtml)

Best bang for your buck

[MimbresValley]

Rostadoro, cool coils are the way to go, make sure to use stainless steal, Hydroinovations, sells them, but you can get them cheaper from a brewery.
What Up Dawg56, how the ladies looking today, that white widow sure does smell nice!!!:)

[Dawg56]

What Up Dawg56, how the ladies looking today, that white widow sure does smell nice!!!:)

Donno, but they're about to wake up. Can you believe that Maggie smells even better today? What a "bag seed" eh?