Homemade chiller?

FlyingW

FlyingW

420 Member
I've had a problem keeping my res temp where I want. I use this frozen plastic packs they work great but have had to rotate them twice a day. So I got an idea, I bought 100ft roll of plastic tubing 3/16 id. I have a a/c vent in the spare room where my grow closet is located about 10ft away. I plumb one end into the res pump, out to the vent I threw most of it into the duct and then back to the res where it drips cold water. After 3hrs res temp only went up a few tenths. So far so good.
 
Is $100 bucks too much? I managed to build a legit chiller for $95. Would work well up to 15-20 gallons or so. I could drop my temps from 80's to 50's with a 10 gallon rezzy. I ran it at 65f constantly and it worked great.

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Do a search on the Internet for DIY water chiller using a humidifier - there are even a couple videos on Youtube about it.

Here's the instructions I followed: DIY Chiller from air dehumidifier

Basically, you can get a used humidifier for really cheap, you just pop off one of the panels to access the condensor and then bend the brass piping so the evaporator sits in a bucket of water. It literally takes all of about 5 minutes to do this. A dedicated 'water chiller' as they are sold for fish tanks and hydroponic setups, is basically the same exact thing as a dehumidifier. The only difference is that in the commercial water chiller unit, the evaporator sits in water, while in the dehumidifier the evaporator just sits in the open air. So you bend a couple of soft brass pipes and allow the evaporator to sit in water.

And these work very good. All you need is a timer and you're good to go.
 
straightup said:
Do a search on the Internet for DIY water chiller using a humidifier - there are even a couple videos on Youtube about it.

Here's the instructions I followed: DIY Chiller from air dehumidifier

Basically, you can get a used humidifier for really cheap, you just pop off one of the panels to access the condensor and then bend the brass piping so the evaporator sits in a bucket of water. It literally takes all of about 5 minutes to do this. A dedicated 'water chiller' as they are sold for fish tanks and hydroponic setups, is basically the same exact thing as a dehumidifier. The only difference is that in the commercial water chiller unit, the evaporator sits in water, while in the dehumidifier the evaporator just sits in the open air. So you bend a couple of soft brass pipes and allow the evaporator to sit in water.

And these work very good. All you need is a timer and you're good to go.
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Oh boy...
That's gonna murder that poor unit in no time. Those evap coils are not designed to be submerged much less exposed to high salinity environments like a hydro reservoir.
 
TurboBucket said:
Oh boy...
That's gonna murder that poor unit in no time. Those evap coils are not designed to be submerged much less exposed to high salinity environments like a hydro reservoir.
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I've got one that's been running for just over a year and a half, cost me $60 on ebay for a brand new humidifier and even if it were to die right now, I would say I got my moneys worth
 
TurboBucket said:
Nice. For that price I wouldn't sweat it either.
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Ya. And I should've clarified. The coils aren't sitting in reservoir water - they cool water that gets fed to 2 immersion wort chiller coils that sit in my reservoir, so the two systems aren't mixing liquids. You would be surprised just how well it actually works. I get ice forming on the wort chiller coils if I run the humidifier continuously.
 
Haha yeah I do refrigeration work.
In college our final project was to build a coil that could freeze a coffee can of water as quickly as possible. We managed under 20 secs for our fastest run. The second place time was over a minute. Third place was two+ minutes most took over 5 or wouldn't freeze it in under ten minutes.
 
Hey everyone I'm new here but I know of a cheaper way to build a chiller and it works great I found it on the do it yourself section on this website Diy ghetto-fab chiller under $20 hope this helps.... It helped my girls during those crazy temps
 
Rayden said:
Hey everyone I'm new here but I know of a cheaper way to build a chiller and it works great I found it on the do it yourself section on this website Diy ghetto-fab chiller under $20 hope this helps.... It helped my girls during those crazy temps
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inbox me, help me!
 
Look at my Cherry Cookies grow in my sig and you’ll see what Sgtsativa is talking about. I spent $35 on the mini fridge and the rest was stuff I had laying around.
 
This is my attempt to keep the water temp down in a couple diy waterfarms. Lost the first plants and haven't restarted that grow... Waiting for a couple mother plants to get big enough to take large clones.. Plan on cloning directly in the WFs hydroton..
Waterfarm recirculating reservoir and scrog screen add on
 
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