DIY= Do It Yourself Water Chiller that Works!

goofygolfer

goofygolfer

Well-Known Member
cruzer101 said:
ok here are the results of my diy water chiller.

I have been growing in a cabinet for about a year and a half. Pretty good results in hydroton
well now i want to try aeroponics. I got a larger cabinet and built a system out of a under bed storage container.

Thing is, i needed a chiller. I use a small res. Its actually the controller from a water farm eight pack i had drilled some holes in.
I circulate the water with a 180 gph pump.

Now i have posted this in my cabinet grow journal but i figured it was buried there and started a new post so people can find it.

First i tried the portable cooler. Low wattage thermal electric cooler.



i ran seven loops of tube inside and back to the res. Filled it with water and gave it a shot.



i realize this is with no insulation and i probably could get better hose but i wanted to see what it would do.
It got maybe 2 degrees cooler. I knew that wasn't enough to continue with this.

I read a diy using a small refer with tubing in it. Then one where a guy put the cooling tray right in the res.
I wanted to try that so i went on craigslist and bought one for $50

after i got the new small refer home i realized it was different then the diy i had read.
The evaporator or grid was not on the back. I figured it was just inside the back panel.

I disconnected the thermostat



then used my disk grinder to cut because i didn't have a cutting blade.



then basically peeled back the case to find the coils were ran around the fridge.



i looked at it and thought "how the hell am i going to get this to work" i went this far, might as well finish.



after cutting a hole for the cooling unit i slid everything out the front and left the system intact.



the lost my shade so i took a break until sundown. It was 97 degrees.

Then i took the res and set it inside the system and carefully bent the cooling tray inside.
It was still about 93 degrees outside but no direct sun.



here is the back



i let it run with the thermostat set in the middle for about an hour.

It cooled about 4 degrees. The thermostat was under water and i didn't know if that made any difference but
i drained about a gallon of water so it set in the air. Then i realized i didn't have anything to compare it to so i
got a home depot bucket and filled it with water too. I set a thermometer it that as well.
I turned the thermostat all the way up, kept the circulating pump on and left them until noon today.

Todays outside temps are 101 degrees.
Here is the uncovered bucket of water temp 84 degrees





i really didn't think this was going to work, well i looked inside,




then checked the temp. 58 degrees.





awesome! 26 degrees cooler without any insulation!
I am circulating the res with a small 180 gpm pump.

Now that is worth working with. Now i need to figure out out to insulate it.
I am thinking about sandwiching the coils between styrofoam and venting the compressor somehow in the cabinet.
It is a sealed system so i cant extend the tube to the cooling unit and set it outside the cabinet. Unless i cut a 4x8 inch
hole in the side of the cabinet to fit the cooling unit through and then it is not very stealth.

But for those of you who have a grow room this will work well.
My guess would be in say a 10x10 room you may see a 5 degree increase in ambient temps.
But in my 2x4 cabinet with 2 foot height in the bottom i am afraid it will be more like 15 to 20 degrees.

I guess there is only one way to find out.


Oh by the way,
here is a pic of the upper shelf of the cabinet i built. Totally stealth 48 by 24 and 79 inches tall.
I cut a hole in the floor for intake and made a window box for exhaust. I cover the build in the journal if your interested.




here i am just starting some seeds. The aerotub is under the red tray. The t5 is just to get them started.
The hid lighting is one of those new ceramic metal halide 400w bulbs and hydrofarm ballast.

The res will go on the lower shelf.

All comments, questions and suggestions are welcome.

.
​
Click to expand...
how do you like that c m h bulb
 
potpimp

potpimp

Sector 5 Moderator
Cruzer, you never cease to amaze me man; you are the Bob Villa of pot growing!!! If I could give you more rep I would; you are such a great contributor to this site bro.
 
J

jsgamber

Active Member
Okay I've read this entire thread and I am amazed at the ingenuity flowing through this thread. It's exactly what I've been looking for!

Now let me see if I got this right. We use the portable Air Conditioner to cool the water and we use the ice cube maker to cool the air? Only a fucking stoner can come up with brilliant ideas like this!! :D :D :D

Here's what I've been experimenting with. Small refrig with the coils and compressor on the very back. I've been playing around with a 1000gph pump and a small 4 qt res inside the fridge using vinyl tubing coils inside my 3-gallon nutrient res. I got uninsulated temps of 65* inside my 250W chamber. My next move was to put the pan in the water to see if I could get better cooling.

The issue is I ultimately want to be able to cool nine 3-gallon reservoirs, all in series, so I'm not sure the fridge is going to have enough capacity to do the job of cooling the water.

However, it does seem that by separating the box from the coils/compressor/pan (shrinking it down) and rigging the pan within the air intake of my grow chambers, 48x36x18, that I can get my summer air cooling situation solved, even if it means buying two more $20 Craigslist fridges for my two other chambers.
IMAG0005.jpg
IMAG0006.jpg

Now I think that the portable AC I've been trying to rig up can then become a water cooler!! :)
IMAG0007.jpg

Now a question. I've heard mention that putting the copper coils and fins of the AC unit in water is not a good thing. Is that because of corrosion? If that's the case would attaching zinc anodizing plates (like on the bottom of boats) keep this from happening?

Any advice?
 
C

cruzer101

Well-Known Member
Sorry man, I guess I missed this post last week,
If you haven't already taken it apart you may want to condiser this, The longer the water is in the fridge the colder it gets right?
How about you get like 10 or 15 feet of tubing and roll it up, put it in there and stick the ends through the side of the fridge.
That way you could circulate water from your res through it like a regular chiller. If you had three different small reservoirs maybe you could put them inline. By using the same size pumps in all three it should work. No?

Actually what I would do is set up sprayers in three different tubs and drain them back to one res. I do it with two now.
 
J

jsgamber

Active Member
cruzer101 said:
Sorry man, I guess I missed this post last week,
If you haven't already taken it apart you may want to condiser this, The longer the water is in the fridge the colder it gets right?
How about you get like 10 or 15 feet of tubing and roll it up, put it in there and stick the ends through the side of the fridge.
That way you could circulate water from your res through it like a regular chiller. If you had three different small reservoirs maybe you could put them inline. By using the same size pumps in all three it should work. No?

Actually what I would do is set up sprayers in three different tubs and drain them back to one res. I do it with two now.
Click to expand...
Hey bro it's no worries here! Follow the link back to my thread where I have a conversation all about this whole thing and what I've been experimenting with. Please feel free to jump in starting about this point rather than have to read through everything. Again thanks for this thread because this work has been a lot of fun! :)

===> CLICK HERE <===
 
MrMoores

MrMoores

Well-Known Member
Wow fuking brilliant. man i love this site sometimes. Well it looks like ill be at the scrap yard soon piles of fridges there, guys at the scrap will be thinking "wot a dirty s.o.b"
thxs guys
 
Danielsgb

Danielsgb

Well-Known Member
MrMoores said:
Wow fuking brilliant. man i love this site sometimes. Well it looks like ill be at the scrap yard soon piles of fridges there, guys at the scrap will be thinking "wot a dirty s.o.b"
thxs guys
Click to expand...
Check out my build journal in my sig link A Medicinal Refridgerator
to see another use of a fridge or freezer. They came up with a Creative and effective solution didn't they. A Craigslist ad for a free one works too.
Daniels:peace:
 
J

jsgamber

Active Member
Hey Guys,

I just wanted to do an update on what became of my mini-fridge.


I cut the whole front of the box off, just in front of the compressor. The cut is perfectly flat all the way around and then I use 2 strips of foam weather stripping to seal the entire edge. Then a carefully bent the cooling pan flat and back into the upper compartment above the compressor.


Next step was to cut two 4" holes in the side of my cabinet. One for inflow and one for out flow using a 135 ft3 fan blowing into the cabinet.


Using 4" angle braces to mount the cutoff mini-fridge directly to the side of the cabinet right over the two holes. :)


The "notch" is for access to the temp controller inside.


And here's a shot from the inside of the cabinet.


The air temperature exhausting out of the mini-fridge is a constant 64*. This allows me to keep a 400w CMH flowering chamber between 80* and 86* during lights on.


I've got a few tricks up my sleeve having to do heat sinks in order to get better cooling effect to the air flow! More to come!
 
C

cruzer101

Well-Known Member
Now I understand what you were talking about. Looks like a good idea.
I assume the unit runs constantly while the lights are on right?
 
J

jsgamber

Active Member
cruzer101 said:
Now I understand what you were talking about. Looks like a good idea.
I assume the unit runs constantly while the lights are on right?
Click to expand...
Right now it does. The thermostat in the fridge only senses up to 55* before it would consider to turn itself off...which means never. Gumball led me to look into a thermostatically controlled outlet from Lowes or HD and then use that to turn it on and off. I have one of those outlets on an attic exhaust fan and it works well.
 
C

cruzer101

Well-Known Member
Gotcha, Right on man, Sometimes I gotta see something in action to understand.
Thanks for the pics in the post, helped out a lot. I'm thinking how I can do it myself now.
 
J

jsgamber

Active Member
Keeping the air temps down has gone a long way to solving my water temp issues! :) Especially when using well insulated reservoirs!

This setup works great for now but I'm not sure how well it will keep up in the middle of summer when ambient temps in the garage climb up into the 80*'s. I was going to use my portable AC unit to be a water cooler. But now I'm thinking of using the mini-fridge concept I just created but modify the AC unit to work in the same "closed loop" setup I have. The AC unit can also be controlled with a thermostat which triggers on and off between 60* and 99* and the temperature probe is easily placed to control everything. The last consideration is this is what AC units do best!

I have a design in my head and a couple scribbles on paper. I'll put something up when I get something firmed up. Sorry if I "over-hijacked" your thread!
 
C

cruzer101

Well-Known Member
Ha! I guess you did, this was about water chillers so hey, be sure to keep us informed on what you do with the a/c unit.
 
AlteredEgo

AlteredEgo

Active Member
Healing Herb said:
So I figured out how I busted the thermo... when I was cutting thru the thin plastic into the 'freezer' section I nicked the little copper tube that acts as a sensor... not sure if I can resolder it and make it work... but I will let you know.

To bypass the thermostat I just 'hotwired' the two black leads that go into the dial controller - you can ignore the ground wire (green) at the thermo cause the thermo is not getting power now - but the ground would need to be reattached if the thermo was unbypassed...

I am actually using this to air cool my seedling/clone cabnet I just built. I built a little box slightly larger than the 'freezer compartment chiller plate' and am running two small computer fans thru it. Works great keeping the temp a steady 75 lights on 65 lights off (125 EQV CFL) So I am thinking screw the thermostat... ok so 65 a little cooler than I would like for this cab... so I am going to see if I can just have it shut off for night and stay cool enough... I will upload some pics of the setup. BTW you can rebend the tubing to make it more compact if you are VERY CAREFULL and DO NOT CRIMP THE TUBING. I was able to get mine all onto one side of the cabnet exterior. Also I woke up this morning thinking how can I use this to cool the air AND my little 3 gallon res for this set up... I think I might have the answer if I can find a small auto heater core then put that inside the little box and run water thru it....hummm wonder how cheap a small core is...hummm - I will update.

BIG UPS AGAIN FOR THIS THREAD !!!!!

Looks like the heater core is prohibitive in size and cost ... perhaps I will do a mini tubing spiral in the chamber instead...
Stayed at a perfect 70 during the 'night' so looks like I will run it full for 'day' then just shut it down minus the air moving fans.
Click to expand...
Quick Comment about the tube on the thermostats for small refrigerators. They actually are tubes, and they contain a small amount of refrigerant, part liquid, part gas, and transport pressure from the sensing bulb to the diaphragm inside that operates a switch. This switch is designed to carry the full load amps of the compressor. They cannot be repaired once broken, but you can get commercial thermostats with remote bulbs that you can wire to the two wires going to the thermostat, which goes where usually does not matter, it is just a switch circuit. These thermostats can be set for temperature, and differential as well.

Hope this is of some help, and thanks for all the info posted here guys! I have just read Cruz's whole greenhouse grow from start to present, great stuff.
 
Mike Young

Mike Young

Well-Known Member
I read somebody mention copper tubing a page or so back. You're gonna get waaaay better results with copper. I'm not sure about corrosion, as in beer brewing we use copper tubing to chill our wort, and it works amazing. I can take 5 gallons of boiling wort and bring it to 70 degrees in 15 minutes with plain tap water. And a double chiller is gonna give even better results. Basically one coil in a mini-fridge and a second coil in your res. The water is pumped from the cold water in the fridge through to the coil in your res, and back to the fridge. This way your not actually running your nute water through the coil, but cold water is constantly circulating. A timer on your pump can easily maintain temp to your liking. Hope this helps. wort-chiller.jpg
 
C

cruzer101

Well-Known Member
Hi Mike and welcome to rollitup.
Yea, I considered using copper then I was told the copper would not be good for the nutrient solution, don't remember why but I trust the source. There are peeps lookin to cool lamps and such, it would be great for that. Thanks for the info.
 
T

talktuumee

Member
Cruzer 101 you are much kind with your wisdom.. I realize this is an old post, but water chillers havent went down much if any over here in the land of the big 3 (almost( and legal mmmp cards with doctors approval. Anyways I luv your mini fridge idea/invention with the freezer plate in the nute tank, I just wanted to ask you what size fridge that was and name brand.. I just dont want to buy anyone, what Im getting at is the one you used in your picture is white coated I guess? but its not metal, and for me thats good cuz I wouldnt want to put any exposed metal in my tank... and I'd like to know size to base off the tank you used to the fridge you used to compare with what Im planning on using.. One last thought.. What do you think of have disconnecting the cooling tray at either the closet point to the back wall or even see if you could cut it off from the condensor and pull it through the fridge back wall then take/break cooling tray off, with connections and thermostat still intact, and leave fridge totally intact and reroute tray from outside part of condesor basically instead of traveling inside the fridge you would reroute to rez even by longer cooling tray tubing/connection themostat as well but thats just wire or rewire (2) I believe but Im no expert but I will ask these questions to my heating/cooling/refridgerant guy )) first thing tomorrow I cant wait.. and you have a blessed one.. wisdom is a gift always best shared then hidden.. hope to hear back.. I invent a lil bit myself ))
 
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