Water chiller

Drop That Sound

Drop That Sound

Well-Known Member
Your system looks pretty easy to cover with rigid foam panels, and sleeves over the pipes. Its a shame to cover up such a cool looking system, but i would if I was planning on chilling it, and lived in a hotter climate.

I'm using aquarium fish tank heaters to keep my water warm right now, lol.
 
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xX24nuggetsXx

Active Member
Drop That Sound said:
Your system looks pretty easy to cover with rigid foam panels, and sleeves over the pipes. Its a shame to cover up such a cool looking system, but i would if I was planning on chilling it, and lived in a hotter climate.

I'm using aquarium fish tank heaters to keep my water warm right now, lol.
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Hahaha living on different sides of the world! Yeah I mean I’d rather not cover it up but if Im going to chill it and it means that the chiller won’t have to work as hard I think I’d rather go that way just means more money in my pocket
 
futurebanjo

futurebanjo

Well-Known Member
Drop That Sound said:
Your system looks pretty easy to cover with rigid foam panels, and sleeves over the pipes. Its a shame to cover up such a cool looking system, but i would if I was planning on chilling it, and lived in a hotter climate.

I'm using aquarium fish tank heaters to keep my water warm right now, lol.
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hahaha yeah I've got the same issue, that said, insulation or reflective tape will help to stabalise the water temp so it wan't heat up too fast, or cool down too fast either
 
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xX24nuggetsXx

Active Member
futurebanjo said:
I just used aluminium tape on the top of mine, it seems to have made a good difference.



Whether you need extra insulation .. for example an air gap/bubble wrap is kinda down to your personal heat/cold issues - remember insulation works both ways, but it will make for a more stable temp, so in theory, the chiller will have less work to do, reletivley speaking.

Check out my grow diary in my sig below to see what I did.
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Yeah nice I’ll have to look into it a little bit more and work something out!
Yeah nice I’ll go and have a look at your diary
 
futurebanjo

futurebanjo

Well-Known Member
Good point-- it's an expensive system and it looks from the stock photo to have white/reflective buckets anyway, rather than black plasic which loves to soak up heat.

Can you do a dry run and just measure the water temps? I wouldn't go crazy buyin heaters and chillers unless you already know which way it's gonna go.

I Imagine heat will be an issue in Aus, but then if your growing indoors in a basement or air conidioned room, it won't be so much of an issue? it really just depend on your local environment.
 
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xX24nuggetsXx

Active Member
futurebanjo said:
Good point-- it's an expensive system and it looks from the stock photo to have white/reflective buckets anyway, rather than black plasic which loves to soak up heat.

Can you do a dry run and just measure the water temps? I wouldn't go crazy buyin heaters and chillers unless you already know which way it's gonna go.

I Imagine heat will be an issue in Aus, but then if your growing indoors in a basement or air conidioned room, it won't be so much of an issue? it really just depend on your local environment.
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Yeah in that case I guess it worked out in my favour buying this system.

do you just mean fill the system and then just let the temp stabilise and see which way it goes?

I’ll be growing in my spare bathroom which will be air conditioned throughout the day whilst lights on as I’ve got a lot of solar power on the roof as well so the cost through the day doesn’t concern me just at night time
 
futurebanjo

futurebanjo

Well-Known Member
xX24nuggetsXx said:
Yeah in that case I guess it worked out in my favour buying this system.

do you just mean fill the system and then just let the temp stabilise and see which way it goes?

I’ll be growing in my spare bathroom which will be air conditioned throughout the day whilst lights on as I’ve got a lot of solar power on the roof as well so the cost through the day doesn’t concern me just at night time
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pretty much.. just run it with plain water and see what happens,, tempertaure wise, it's pretty critical the water doesnt get above 19/20c. I'd maybe add a glug of bleach/ peroxide too, just to make sure its all nice and clean.

Mosst of my headaches have come from contaminates in the water.
 
futurebanjo

futurebanjo

Well-Known Member
I should qualify this by saying I'm still a DWC noob, so don't take my word as verbatim... I'm just about to flip to flower and it's a steep learning curve.

I've had major issues with bacterial growth and sludge/slime takes a lot of effort to clean up... prevention is better than cure as they say!

So I'm basically winging it into the flower phase.
 
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xX24nuggetsXx

Active Member
futurebanjo said:
pretty much.. just run it with plain water and see what happens,, tempertaure wise, it's pretty critical the water doesnt get above 19/20c. I'd maybe add a glug of bleach/ peroxide too, just to make sure its all nice and clean.

Mosst of my headaches have come from contaminates in the water.
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I mean without ac and my light on the room will sit around 40 degrees due to the heat from outside so I’d say the reflective container won’t be able to reflect that sort of heat but I’d say with ac on it’ll sit around 21 degrees which is right on the outer edge of the safe side so definitely will have to watch it! Whether this is true or not I don’t know but I’ve read plants grow better with beneficial bacteria over bleach/peroxide? Whether you know if it’s true or not I don’t know I’ve just read that somewhere.
 
Bucsfan80

Bucsfan80

Well-Known Member
xX24nuggetsXx said:
many the whole system is 180L but obviously that’s with the buckets completely full so I’d assume with the water being roughly an inch below the net lots the system would probably be 130-150L in total running so it’d be 35-40 gallons of water

Yeah I’m not that smart when it comes to that sort of stuff maybe if there’s a video I could watch I might be able to do it but I’d be clueless doing anything like that hahaha
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It's not hard for real. Just bend it slowly and don't kink it.
 
futurebanjo

futurebanjo

Well-Known Member
xX24nuggetsXx said:
I mean without ac and my light on the room will sit around 40 degrees due to the heat from outside so I’d say the reflective container won’t be able to reflect that sort of heat but I’d say with ac on it’ll sit around 21 degrees which is right on the outer edge of the safe side so definitely will have to watch it! Whether this is true or not I don’t know but I’ve read plants grow better with beneficial bacteria over bleach/peroxide? Whether you know if it’s true or not I don’t know I’ve just read that somewhere.
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I guess you mean 40f rather than 40c.. that will cook your plants pronto.

why does everyone hate the metric system? it's much easier to calculate.
 
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xX24nuggetsXx

Active Member
Bucsfan80 said:
It's not hard for real. Just bend it slowly and don't kink it.
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I’d have to look into it
futurebanjo said:
I guess you mean 40f rather than 40c.. that will cook your plants pronto.

why does everyone hate the metric system? it's much easier to calculate.
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no I mean 40c it’s just coming into summer heat and where I live the coolest days will be 35c so that’s why I’ll definitely have the ac on with a chiller
 
J232

J232

Well-Known Member
xX24nuggetsXx said:
Yeah my issue is the power consumption though does it run at full power all the time or when they go into sensing mode does it cut back to say next to no power and then when it kicks back in it goes back to full power? If I could get one that say runs at half the power but still does the job I’d rather do that. I get what your saying though about cheaping out though cause it usually doesn’t end well
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It cycles as needed, it’s off more then on but there are a lot of variables to that, insulation, water volume, ambient temp. I don’t watch my power consumption, I just pay out the ass every month. I use it to chill my 30 gal res now, for coco, but I have used it for my 100 gal rdwc.
 
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xX24nuggetsXx

Active Member
J232 said:
It cycles as needed, it’s off more then on but there are a lot of variables to that, insulation, water volume, ambient temp. I don’t watch my power consumption, I just pay out the ass every month. I use it to chill my 30 gal res now, for coco, but I have used it for my 100 gal rdwc.
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Yeah there seems to always be a lot of variables with this method of growing I’ve read. What size chiller do you use?
 
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