Quote:
Originally Posted by RuGlu6
Agree wit a lot of what you saying:
2 buck system yes,
Inefficient not so much , it is efficient and it works. (how would you know if you don't try? when i built it i didn't know until i did. Now that i know it works i can share it with people "open source idea" sort of thing)
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not intending to say don't use it, yes for down on the coast/Victoria or north where people have cooler climates it is a good idea for occasional heat waves, but I did try this very same thing oh probably about .. what was it Brad, 15 years ago when I was the cheapest reefer on the planet?
anyways yes it is horribly inefficient (doesn't mean it won't work though) plastic has more insulating properties than not, and its heat transfer is pour compared to other stuff. plus the non recovery of the cooling medial makes it inefficient.
in my first house in Victoria I had no physical way to use a chiller, no AC int he house, tank was in the middle of the front room and no where to hide the chiller or vent the waist heat. so I had 200 feet of 1/4" line that I would go from he kitchen to the front room and back to the sink, the rest being coiled in the sump. I did this for weeks at a time in that house as it was poorly isolated, I had lots of MH lights ect.... and yes it did work. when I bought my next house in Vic, I had a 4' crawl space and where I put the tank I could cut small holes and run lines under the stairs to the crawl space. this is where I put the chiller, no noise, no anything, wouldn't even know it was there and kept my tank to a 0.3 degree temp swing. with the poly tube system I was always watching my temp and adjusting the flow.
up here in Kamloops, I would have to be pretty crazy to use tube as a regular cooling system as our water is ok up to a specific volume then it is unjustly expensive, and if you didn't have central AC the amount of cooling you would need would be crazy. most days from June to end sept mid oct are in the high 30's at my house and I get lots of day in the low to mid 40's and unlike Vernon it doesn't cool down much at night and yes Kamloops is a semi arid dessert. usually the lows are low 20's.
so as I said, everyone should have a 100' roll of polly tune, for the 10 bucks it can save a tank during the unexpected heat wave, and for some people if the water prices are right and the heat not to extreme might work good, other it might not be enough.
I will be the last person to say an idea is bad, just look at some of the stuff I used to post 15 years ago.
I may point out some issues, or make some suggestions though...
I just remembers, for a while the craze was using chloroplast sheets to make tap watter chiller plates that was kinda cool to. another thing people were doing is digging big deep holes in there back yard and putting coils int hat also then making a closed loop geothermal cooling set up.
Steve