my reservoir is 23'c so a few degrees above ideal. no way am I spending []250 on a proper chiller so I thought what if I bought a hose pipe a water pump and a mini fridge. something like those 50litre fridges you can usually pick up for about []60. what if I coiled up the hose and filled the fridge with it. drilled two holes in the side of the fridge and ran both ends of the hose through them and in to my reservoir. the pump on one end of the hose. has anyone tried this, I only want to drop the temperature by a few degrees
Use a stainless steel coil of tubing for the heat exchanger. I knew one guy who had access to "free ice" (he worked in a hotel) so he used a stainless coil and a cooler. IMO, bite the bullet and get a chiller.
bite the bullet isn't an option, I don't have 250 pounds to buy a chiller. I was thinking of buying a reel of central heating copper tubing. it's already coiled and heat transfer will be high . I'm still not sure if it will make a big enough difference.. I only have warm water for about 3 months per year
250 to make ur water a few degrees cooler. nonsense. you'd be better off getting another air pump and stone to compensate for the lost DO from the few degrees. it may be worth to try but if it doesn't work then ur out that money. imo i wouldn't do it find a more efficient way. you could insulate your res with some quality material for cheap and that would help a couple degrees itself
that's why I'm thinking of making a chiller, it would cost about 70-80 pounds to make. at the moment I'm putting frozen water bottles in the res every few hours when I'm at home but it's so tedious. there's no way I could insulate it. I think if I put the air pump outside of the grow box it would help but it's so noisy, I like it kept inside
Gold, You're growing flood and drain, aren't you? If so, your nutrient temps can be a little high, without a negative impact on your grow. If your roots need more oxygen, you can provide that by spacing out your flood cycles longer. That's the beauty of flood and drain. Keeping nutrient temps in check is mostly important for DWC type grows where the roots are suspended in the nutrients 100% of the time. Regarding a mini fridge, I don't think coiling up a tube inside it will do the trick. I have one in my bedroom (for snacks, not for growing) and was thinking you could take one apart build some sort of pipe system that would allow the coil from the fridge to come in direct contact with the nutrient solution as it's moved over/past the coils constantly. Someone on these forums converted a window unit air conditioner into a water chiller. I believe that conversion would apply to a mini-fridge just the same. Finally, one trick from my reef tank days... you can quickly reduce the temp of a solution by increasing surface area (bubbles or a pump) and blowing a fan over the top of the solution. As long as your ambient temps are lower than that of the solution, you'll watch those temps drop pretty quickly.
Yo JJ has a DIY thread converting a window AC to a water chiller. I don't even run the AC anymore I just keep the res full and pump on keeps the 20-30 gallon res below 72. ;-) its fantastic stuff.
DO NOT USE COPPER ANYWHERE THAT CAN COME IN CONTACT WITH THE SOUP. The "soup" is highly caustic and will leach copper into the soup killing your crop.
I have several set ups, one if them is sort of a cross between F&D and DWC but I can't space out my floods, they are spaced at 15 minutes for a reason what size fridge are you talking about? they come in lots of sizes. the one I'm thinking of trying is 50litre I thought about putting the element in the nutrient tank but it would require a complete change around of my system. it's too much work for the short time I need to use it. air conditioners cost shit loads to buy and shit loads to run, no way I'm using one of those. not that I have room for it anyway it's the bubbling that is raising the temperature, adding more would just heat it up more. the running of the pump and the compression of air both create heat energy. plus as I said above my air pump is in the grow box so the air it's sucking in is warm I don't have room to put a fan in my reservoir, besides it would cause more humidity and I'm always fighting to keep that down as it is
YES I AM SURE. Sorry, I mixed up my terms, it is CAUSTIC. This was confirmed by both personal experience and the fertilizer manufacturer (GH). I almost killed everything by "upgrading" to copper plumbing. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why all the shit was dying.
He's right about the copper. However the coil part that is copper on the AC unit goes in a separate res. I made mine out of a tote. This res gets a water pump in it, this pump hooks up to half inch tubing that runs to a 20 foot(I think) stainless steel wart meant for brewing beer. The wart goes into your soup and gets that water line from your new res hooked up to one end. The other end of the watt gets another return tube that dumps back into your new res. WALA heat exchange! You could bury a more solid container at least 6 feet deep and do the same thing.. AKA geo thermal cooling. something I am really debating for my next setup, you can't beat free water chilling, well except for the cost of running the pump.
pH less than 5 will cause copper to corrode at a much quicker rate than 7 or 8. A trace amount of copper in the water isn't bad, our plants actually use very small amounts of it. Personally, I don't use copper pipes in my nutrient solution, and wouldn't recommend it either, especially if you grow for a co-op, as people with MS are particularly sensitive to heavy metals in their weed. I would recommend a titanium or stainless steel system instead. You'd probably want to set up counter flow double containment pipes, similar to what's used in brewing beer. Gold, how big is your reservoir? If it's like 10 gallons or so, a Peltier unit might do the trick. http://www.adafruit.com/products/1335?gclid=CMauj76q_bgCFed_QgodDUoA8w
Put the air pump outside the tent and put a box over it to muffle the noise. Or mount the pump up high in the grow box away from the buckets.
I have it as high as it can go and I don't have any buckets but putting it outside will probably help. I think insulating it in a box, although will make it quieter it will also make it harder to dissipate heat and inevitably get warmer further heating the air running through it. I feel that will most likely counteract moving the pump outside. thanks for all the suggestions guys but I can't justify big spends and loads of work. it just isn't that much of a problem. my res has now dropped to 21 degrees due to the weather cooling off a bit so I'm not sure if chilling the water is going make any big differences anyway thanks for the heads up on the copper piping, I still can't quite see how a nutrient solution could react quite that dramatic, undiluted nutrients yes but at an EC value of less that 1 I just can't imagine it. either way I shall look in to it throughly before deciding on anything so you may well of saved my white widows there haha.
Believe what you want. You want proof? Drop a few REAL copper pennies in your next grow and see what they look like after a few days.
Hey GG, check out a DIY chiller from Jake Jamming. JJ less than a hundred bucks and it's it's awsome from the writeups. if you search you'll find it, and plus he's already worked out the bugs. I paid 450 for mine and wish I have one size bigger, but ah hell I only grow 2 plants at a time, gotta stay under the felony law. HD
I do not believe what I want, I believe in proof and probability. And I'm not willing to test it out on my plants. I would be willing to put some copper pipe in a bucket of nutes and see if the EC level rises. Would you consider that proof?