A little late to this thread, but back in the day when I kept reef aquariums, people were making DIY chillers out of small dorm refrigerators. Just drill two holes, one for the tubing to enter and one for it to exit. The simplest way to do it is just run lots of plastic tubing coiled up in the fridge. The idea is to keep the water in the fridge for as long as possible, so use a low GPH pump and lots of tubing.
The small apartment size freezer worked good for my set up,"eight buckets in a UCRDWC setup" and YES there are coils in the side of my freezer but not on the bottom. I took a DA grinder and cut a door on the upper back side of the freezer and dug the foam out. Placed a fifteen gallon plastic trash can in the freezer where it was going to stay and drilled holes to fit the grommets. I wrapped 1/2" poly tubing around the outside a six inch vent pipe and 3/8 tubing on the inside and inserted my coils into the trash can, filled the trashcan with windshield washing fluid rated for 20* below 0*. The 1/2" ran my nutes and the 3/8" was to cool the air from the air pump. I put the thermo coupler from the thermostat in-line to the pump and set the temp. TWO MAJOR FUCK UPS. #1 f.u. freezing condensation in air line, scraped that idea. #2 f.u. My coil came louse and nutes froze in the line, after that was taken care of, I pop riveted a piece of sheet metal over the opening I ground out for the door with two extra small holes and shot it full of foam. I also hooked a 1 1/2" sewer vent pipe check valve. When the pump shuts off, the check valve opens and allows the nutes to drain back fast without ice building up in the coil. I also had to raze the freezer up off the floor by about 16" to allow for good flow back. Freezer is set at 2 and keeps my nutes at 64. I don't see why this wouldn't work for a larger set up using coils inside each other.
You still got plants outside? I thought it already frosted for sure? Atleast it did here North of the Burgh.
SMC, do you remember the thread title for the DIY chiller you were talking about here? The link goes to another thread. I am wondering how well it works and what size res you used it on? Could I use it for a couple dwc totes?
Man it worked great. I'll hunt for it when I get to a computer. Basically you take a dehumidifier and a beach cooler and bend the cold radiator so it sits in the cooler. Once you have a cold water res in the cooler drop in a pump and pump the cold water through a stainless steel wort chiller that she rd in your nutrient res. If you've got more time than money it's a viable solution. However as far as projects go it was pretty fussy.
Thats the only thing I worry about, I get to cussing just hanging lights from chains, something always never goes right when I do stuff. But I bets its cheaper than buying a chiller.
Also what size pump is good? I figure to big would pump out the cold water to fast? I have no experience in using chillers, is it a major difference? I wanted to do a rwdc set up, so i may just do that since I need a pump, or do you think I could do a big tote with like 6-8 plants with the chiller in it with a small pump to Circulate the water or thats not the way to go and you need to pump it out of a chill res to plant set up??
I don't know how manufactured chillers work but I bet they come with a pump. The way I controlled the temp with the homemade jobbie was with the humidity setting on dehum. Here's the thread for that, minus pics of course, thanks to photfuckit https://forum.growkind.com/threads/cheap-and-effective-diy-water-chiller.42626/
Ok, I see after reading the thread how it works. So either a timer or thermastat is going to be needed. A timer would be easier to hook up for me. I guess my only thing is how much heat in a small area would the unit put off. Prob not enough to matter with decent exaust.
