Dont buy a chiller ... use a heat exchenger

[StirCrazy]

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)

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

[mike31154]

Some interesting info I read in the local paper since it's 'water wise' week here. Not saying this would be the same for everyone, but food for thought. "Running a tap for 5 minutes can be equivalent to running a 60 watt bulb for 14 hours". As mentioned, your idea works fine, but as far as efficiency? Folks would have to do a bit of math depending on where they live to see if this method would really be as efficient as an alternative such as a chiller or fan blowing across the water surface.

One way or another you and I (the consumers) end up paying for the power to run the large pumps municipalities, cities or other water providers use to get potable water to our tap. Aside from or regardless of the actual abundance (or scarcity) of water, it still has to be pumped to your house. And in BC, that often means uphill, meaning plenty of head pressure to overcome. All you folks with sumps know what that means. Multiply the fraction of a horsepower of your little pump by several thousand (or more!) and it puts things into perspective. Then there's the issue of how that power is produced, in BC mostly dams, elsewhere.... coal, nuclear.... If you don't have a water meter, the city raises your property tax or the landlord raises the rent to cover his/her expenses.

[RuGlu6]

Originally Posted by mike31154

Some interesting info I read in the local paper since it's 'water wise' week here. Not saying this would be the same for everyone, but food for thought. "Running a tap for 5 minutes can be equivalent to running a 60 watt bulb for 14 hours".

If you take time to read my OP, you will find that i am not "running a tap", a slow drip of 2-4 drops per second is far cry from running a fully open tap.
When you have a car rad with fully open tap running thrugh to cool a house that's different, but at least the guy was watering his grass at the same time, got to give him a credit at least for that.

[Reef Pilot]

And when I was cooling the solarium/house with the car rad, I didn't have the tap wide open either, just enough to make the water sprinkler work so I could water my grass. My point also was that it didn't take a lot of water flow to provide a lot of cooling with the rad.

As to which way costs more to the environment, running water or using electricity to run a chiller or air conditioner, I don't know...

I do know that at our cabin at the lake, we have the best solution. We have solar power for lights and small appliances, etc (no hydro connection). Fridge, stove and hot water runs off propane, and costs us about $40 per year. And in the late evening the cabin gets shade from the mountain side trees, so it is cool enough to sleep. In the daytime, when it is hot out, we just jump in the lake to cool off. When it is cold out, we burn wood (no shortage of that out there) in a fireplace.

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

Fridge, stove and hot water runs off propane, and costs us about $40 per year. .

man either you don't use it much or you have super duper high efficiency stuff. most propane fridges will burn 100 bucks of propane in a summer by themselves.

Steve

[Reef Pilot]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

man either you don't use it much or you have super duper high efficiency stuff. most propane fridges will burn 100 bucks of propane in a summer by themselves.

Steve

We don't run it all the time, just when we are there (or know that we will be back in a couple days). It is not a large fridge either. But yes, it is very efficient, and always amazed just how little flame it takes to keep everything cool, incl the freezer. When you put your hand over the little chimney, you can hardly feel any heat at all. My guess it that a propane fridge would probably cost less to operate than a normal home electric one (but I could be wrong).

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

We don't run it all the time, just when we are there (or know that we will be back in a couple days).

ahh that explains it..

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

My guess it that a propane fridge would probably cost less to operate than a normal home electric one (but I could be wrong).

very wrong, propane fridges are very expensive to run, the older ones 3 to 4lbs of propane a day, newer ones 1.5 to 2lbs a day. so even if you buy your propane at costco (cheepest you can get for portable bottles) you are looking at 30 bucks per month for the most efficient fridges, up to 70-80/month for the old style.

Steve