Diy water chiller imput

AdamBlack760

AdamBlack760

Well-Known Member
I want to get some ice boxes And one of the water cooled co2 gens from hydro innovations and the 1 hp chiller they have is baicly two grand. So I was thinking of making my own. Useing a small deep freezer for $100 to $200. As much soft coper tube to make the biggest coper coil to fit. A 12 or 20 gal
Cooler for a rez. Pump and all the plumbing suplys needed. I've made stainless coil for a jocky box I made befor I got my kegarator so I believe I can make this. Just have a few questions. What diamater coper tube should I use and what gph pump should I use? Any help is welcome. And I plan on doing a full diy write up when I start and complete the chiller an water cooling set up. Thanks.
 
reggaerican

reggaerican

Well-Known Member
that is a great idea man, im sure it will work fine if you do your homework.. and will prob only cost you about $10 a month to run the freezer.. thing is you would have to have the water flowing at all times to prevent tubing from freezing or i guess you can put freezer on timmer with lights also.. Hmmm now my wheels are turning cause i been wanting to get a cooler for a while, way cheeper than running an AC
 
reggaerican

reggaerican

Well-Known Member
i would think in your chiller box if you ran like 1/4 copper inlet and like 1/2 polly overflow back to res that would work good? to be honest i havnt seen many coolers so i dont know how they are set up.. but in theory sounds good..
 
AdamBlack760

AdamBlack760

Well-Known Member
My idea would be have the Rez with a pump pump h2o into the deep freeze in the cooling coil or coils in to a PVC water main half inch probly. With ball valves to each unit then a waste main probly 3/4 because I don't need to keep pressure up back to the Rez. Plan on keeping the pump runing full time. Hydro innovations has a fan controller that during lights on will slow the fans down and not off when room temps get ideal and when lights off will only turn on fan foe cooling since the inline fan is hooked up to the hoods. Only reason for the mini deep freeze is I would like to get water temps to 40 degrees. Don't think a mini frige can do as well pluss I can keep frozen snacks in a freezer (sence I have a kegarator to keep my beer cold). If I have a problem with freezing in the coils I would boost up the flow rate of the pump and add salt to the h20 to raise the freezing point. Just trying to figure out how many btus needed to cool 2 1000 watts the water cooled c02 gen and have sumpmental cooling for the room. Then help with the diameter of the coper tube used the diameter of the coil how many coils needed. The jockey BoX was easy because I just followed diy online. And help with any thing I forgot is greatly appreciated. Like I sayed a full diy write up with photos will be posted. Maybe I'll build one for some one for materials only if they help me with the math/kinks. Thanks for looking!
 
reggaerican

reggaerican

Well-Known Member
dude im gonna do some research tonight and prob start some sketching and math on tube sizing and so forth this should be fun. i curently have no heat issues in my bacement even in 110 days.. but a friend that i just set up a grow with is having major heat probs right now

also i think the freezer it totally the way to go.. with the right size tubing and pump you will have no freezing issues
 
AdamBlack760

AdamBlack760

Well-Known Member
It would be on if I had a bacement but I don't so I have to cope. I just want to seal the room for the c02. Went to Costco checked out mini deep frezer 6.3 cubic feet drew 280 kwatts a year even if we double power used still not anything. I'm going to start researching 1/2 inch copper tube for the heat exchanger in the freezer. Keep me poasted. I do know to make the coils we need a spring tube bender to get a good coil with out flattening the tube. Trust me trying to bend tubeing around some thing dosnt work well. I'll post what I find out.
 
kevin

kevin

Well-Known Member
AdamBlack760 said:
I want to get some ice boxes And one of the water cooled co2 gens from hydro innovations and the 1 hp chiller they have is baicly two grand. So I was thinking of making my own. Useing a small deep freezer for $100 to $200. As much soft coper tube to make the biggest coper coil to fit. A 12 or 20 gal
Cooler for a rez. Pump and all the plumbing suplys needed. I've made stainless coil for a jocky box I made befor I got my kegarator so I believe I can make this. Just have a few questions. What diamater coper tube should I use and what gph pump should I use? Any help is welcome. And I plan on doing a full diy write up when I start and complete the chiller an water cooling set up. Thanks.
Click to expand...
call around to the aquaium shops, i found a used 1 for 300 bucks
 
reggaerican

reggaerican

Well-Known Member
so i just got done doing some reserch on them coolers and i dont think it will be hard at all to build.. prob the toughest part will be the heat exchanger @ the lights, now on that you can just use 3/8 copper coil in a small seeled box.. however i do have a old window ac that i can strip down and use the finned coils to make it right the first time.. now for the box i can prob just make one out of sheet metal or even a small rubbermaid tote? sounds like it will work fine.. but them premaid heat exchangers are only bout $130 almost better off getting one of them and making the rest of system DIY thats the expensive part anyways.. what you think
also just FYI the coil in the freezer is called the eveaporator
 
AdamBlack760

AdamBlack760

Well-Known Member
For the heat exchanger for the lights I plan on buying them not to expensive. If you build them you want it to have fins to provide more surface area to beter the cooling effect.(like a radiator in a car) for the evaporator I think a vertical coil would be more affective do to the length of tube needed(50 ft or more). Just need to figure out the btu's needed for two 1k watt hps. The h20 cooled co2 gen and sumpmental cooling for the room. From thiere figure out the length of 1/2inch coper tube exposed to ( 30 degrees ?) to cool water to ( 40 degrees ?). Figure out that length make the coil do a little plumbing and chiller is done
 
reggaerican

reggaerican

Well-Known Member
sounds like we are on the same path Adam.. as far as the pump goes im thinking about getting a small pool pump on discount from my cuz.. with some ball vaves to regulate the propper flo.. what you think?
 
N!pples

N!pples

Active Member
Just a warning! I tried to make a chiller out of a extra fridge and freezer I had and the water that ran through the coil in the freezer was so warm that the freezer could not keep up! We wrapped the coil around a bucket that we filled with water and froze. The coil melted the ice block in less than 18 hours and the freezer could not chill to the point we needed it to.. You will need a large freezer and this freezer will run full blast trying to stay cold.. This could get expensive!!!

Let us know how it goes if you try! I'm curious!!

N!pples
 
reggaerican

reggaerican

Well-Known Member
for sure man, all the help i can get is way apreciated.. Adam got me thinkin about making one of these so now its time to put the thinking cap on.. what ever happened to yours? did you just abandon the project? was your pump big enough? come on man tell me something.. haha
 
N!pples

N!pples

Active Member
We did abandon the project and bought a real Chiller after that harvest... lol! Maybe the pump was to big and pumped the water too fast or the freezer just wasn’t powerful enough?! The Freezer still works fine and freezes stuff FAST but not a good chiller.... I don’t know maybe a nice top loading freezer box that you can turn down to like -0 or more.. lol

I'd love to help you more but We gave up on that after 1 round.. It did chill the water about 10-12 degrees! So it worked a little!!! ;)
 
AdamBlack760

AdamBlack760

Well-Known Member
N!pples said:
LOL, Sorry! Really didnt want to bust the bubble! Just thought you should know my troubles... :wall:
Click to expand...
Any input is welcome so that way we don't have to work out the kinks. ( how many feet of copper tube did u use) did u use a Rez for the return or was it a closed system) can you go over your design a little more thorough. I've seen the diy's useing mini frige's thought a mini deep freeze would be beter. All I know is that some one figured out how to make one and sell it then I should be able to rig one together.

Info I've found out so far hid lighting puts out around 3.41 btu's per watt so that's 3,410 btu's per 1k hps. Water chillers are rated in horse power. 1 hp is roughly 12,000 btu's.

( I don't see why a pool pump wouldn't work depends on gph to fAst and the water won't be in the
condenser long enough to cool the water to slow and the possibility of freezing. Same for the length of the condensing coil not long enough not enough cooling capacity to long wasteing materials.

So I emailed some companies that make water chillers saying I was doing a science project and was designing a water chiller and I needed help with my design. Well see where that leads.
 
Xare

Xare

Well-Known Member
What if you had a small freezer and just put an air pump inside. Then pump cold air from inside the freezer to stones inside the rez.
 
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