Where did you read this? Because I still have 2 fridges I was going to do this with. I would love to find out if its not worth it before I complete it.
DIY chiller?
- Thread starter smijeha
- Start date
Compact fridges don't have the cooling capacity. It's not about the temp they can reach but about how quickly they can remove heat from a system; this is usually measured in BTUs (British Thermal Units) per hour. Dorm fridges move about 100 BTU/hr, which is just too little to do much good for anything but a tiny tank with little heat input. More detailed explanation here: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cap/raid/chillers/dormfridge/index.html
http://kegman.net/coldbox.htm Check this out - might be a pain in the rump but ??? The price is stupid - you could make a setup like this for cheeeep. I turned a small chest freezer ($189.00 new - often free on Craigslist ) into a kegerator fridge with the addition of an external thermostat (60$) It turns the freezer on and off to control whatever temp you set it to. Add plastic tubing and your a go. The freezer thing works good because they have a little more oomph to BTU capacity. Just a thought.
how much do you have to cool the water below the outside temp?
evaporation can cool the water a lot more than most people would think. a few spray bars may do the trick.
evaporation can cool the water a lot more than most people would think. a few spray bars may do the trick.
Yes how many degrees below abeint tempature are you looking to go?
btu in 1degree per pound of water, so (Gallons) x (8.34lbs/gallon) x (tempurater diff.)=btu's needed aslo 3.412 btu's per watt
btu in 1degree per pound of water, so (Gallons) x (8.34lbs/gallon) x (tempurater diff.)=btu's needed aslo 3.412 btu's per watt
Go to a school and rip a drinking fountain out of the wall...They have small chillers in them...
Instead of using a fridge try using a small window air conditioning unit from walmart or somewhere. They're just as cheap, if not cheaper than a mini fridge, they have compressors that can handle a heat load many times greater than the biggest refrigerator, and their compressors are designed to run continuously without overheating or burning out.
Two things that are not the best ways to do things.
1 fridges are not ment to be run on anything but upright level surface. If not you burn out the compressors a lot faster.
2 Freezers do make good chillers but instead of using an external thermostat to control temperatures ( all that on and off kills the compressor as well) you can switch out the internal empeture sensor form one out of a fridge made by the same brand. Most of the time they plug in to the same receptacle just have different temperature ranges.
1 fridges are not ment to be run on anything but upright level surface. If not you burn out the compressors a lot faster.
2 Freezers do make good chillers but instead of using an external thermostat to control temperatures ( all that on and off kills the compressor as well) you can switch out the internal empeture sensor form one out of a fridge made by the same brand. Most of the time they plug in to the same receptacle just have different temperature ranges.
