Poor Man's Chiller

[MagicMan]

Rather than take the guts out of some AC unit, I was thinking I might just buy a dorm fridge from a garage sale. I could drill two holes through the top and/or side of the unit (right through to the inside). Send a length of hose right into it. Add a pump to send water through the hose and back into the sump (or maybe add an oscillating jet to the tank itself), and be done with it. As an added bonus, I could stock the fridge and make it my beer cooler.

Okay, now someone who actually KNOWS something about refrigeration, please let me know where I am going wrong here.

[gregt]

I don't think a dorm fridge has enough power but it might work on a small tank. You'd definitely want to use a bath in the fridge for better heat transfer.

[Mafiaman]

Remember you are not "Cooling" the water, you are removing the "heat".
A fridge is only set up to remove the heat on the volume of space inside of it. And then to maintain an ambiant temp.

[RobinsonFam1]

there have been many DIY's of the fridge idea that you might want to search for. i know that on RC's DIY section there are some ideas in there.

i just found on McMaster Carr that they have coolers and chillers for water. maybe you could rig one up for a tank. they are designed to drop the temp in water pretty fast so they would probably work. the price on them is about half of an aquarium chiller too!

mcmaster.com

[mrross]

I have worked in a science lab where a dorm refrigerator is used for chilling of laser dye, so it is possible. The laser generate have a few to ten watts of heat with so the refrigerators would have had compareable cooling power as small thermoelectric chillers available, however I suspect that this would not have enough power for a larger system. Also as to the post previously that the refigerator maintain a specific tempiture, I would point out that that is exaticly what you want to do.

Matthew Ross

[aka_bigred]

I'd think that if you got some other thermostat that controlled power to the fridge, you could maintain the correct reef temp.

@ 88 degs electricity turns on to fridge then at desired temp fridge power is cut.

Maybe dirty but would probably work with a powerfull enough fridge.

[erikhydo]

Actually you would never want the fridge to turn off. The small fridges take way to long to get back to operating temperature. Putting a waterbath inside of the fridge with a small pump for heat exchange would be best. Then you could just turn off the water movement pump when you wanted or control it with an electronic thermostat. This way as soon as your "chiller" started up it would immediately begin to cool. I saw a similiar design for super cooling computers.

[spykes2]

i wanted to do this drill two holes and epoxy fill the holes and stuff tubes in the mini freezer to the frig but i would leave the frig on constant but the temperature controller will control the pump going to the frig. so when it gets too warm it would power on the pump think that would work?

[Geoff]

Welcome to TRT, spykes2!!!



what size tank are you trying to cool? if you are trying to cool a 20 maybe a 30 just a couple of degrees than it could work. if you are trying to cool a tank larger than that than no it will not work. a dorm fridge generally use a 1/10hp compressor. real chillers start with a 1/5hp compressor.

i have made two different chillers. both have worked well. they both used 5g water baths and 1/5hp chillers. both of them were also at least twice the size of a store bought chiller!

G~

[Phishnoob]

OOOH OOHH....I know this one *waves hand frantically in the air*

My 90g has a beer fridge chiller with a smaller rio pumping the water through the vegetable tub inside. The key is to have a water bath in there and then run lots of tubing coiled inside it. I still have plastic tubing which has a crappy heat transfer coeffient so if I ever get around to MH lighting then it is titanium time.

The tubing to the fridge passes through my UV on the outside then back to the sump.

I got a whopping 2 degree drop doing this. The only problem is that I keep my fish food in the freezer and it gets too cold if the temp is dialed up. The beverages are not really ice cold in the fridge now.

Doing it all over the Geoffster has the right idea using some sort of AC or water chiller with a way better water to metal to refrigerant conduction of cooling.

I can't move the beer fridge now though because the cat would have no place to sit and growl at the fish.

[Geoff]

Originally Posted by Phishnoob

I can't move the beer fridge now though because the cat would have no place to sit and growl at the fish.

gottta keep the audience happy.

G~

[kellymm]

by the time you get done buying the fridge pump tons of tubing and dicking around with it, it still won,t work very well been there done that. just bite the bullet and get a real chiller

[kellymm]

p.s. poormen don,t have reef tanks

[Phishnoob]

[Phishnoob]

Between the cat, the dog and the redhead I have no fight left in me