1 water chiller with multiple res'es?

[ShroomDr]

I tried the mini fridge thing and it really dont work. A chillers the only way to go. I even went so far as to take the fridge apart and dip the evaporator coils directly into the liquids I was chillen. That did the trick. You need a thermistatic switch for this tho cause it can chill your nutes too cold like this. It only ran bout 2 months like this too. When it did finaly go it discharged oil into my chillin pool. The coils musta ruptured. I got a chiller rite after this. By the way, I did this in the middle of the winter too so I dont know how it will do in the summer heat. I dont know anybody who had good results usin a dorm fridge in place of a chiller.

and ive been corrected.

but i have to tell you, i am still intrigued. you said placing the actual refrigerate lines in the res made it too cold. That makes me think there must be some happy medium.

 

[HairlessCaveApe]

I think there is. I think if you put the evap coil in a plastic bag or coated it with plastic or somethin and you used a thermistatic switch to regulate the comp it mite work. It ran prety constantly the way I had it and it actually froze the top layer of water in my chillin pool(I cool my nutes differant then most Folks). It was kinda like an ice probe style chiller. I shure was glad to get my chiller. I got an Artica 1/10th horse flow threw.

 

[clowntown]

Should be pretty easy to rig up using a sprinkler timer from Home Depot ($20+).

 

[Whatever]

Adding more ac is likely your easiest solution.

For sure. He has some basic air flow/cooling design inadequacies and he's not willing to dump money into the situation and will most likely be moving the grow.

Seemed like he was looking for a fix to just deal with res temps over the next few months. The extra AC would help and also probably reduce the size of chiller necessary...if he ended up needing one at all.

The fan idea would help but it's a closed system and think the increased humidity would exacerbate the heat issue he has in the room...which could be rectified with a dehumidifier but don't think that's the route to go.

Should be pretty easy to rig up using a sprinkler timer from Home Depot ($20+).

Good idea and that way cooling fluid running through coils would be concentrated in one or two of the nute res's and make the system more efficient and possibly could get away with a smaller chiller. If you ran like a couple of cooling cycles per res per light cycle and really chilled em down at night...to like 65F...that should really help get you through the light cycle and if ya insulated the res's properly it would really help.

 

[ResinGoat]

I'm bumping this thread since I'm interested to see if anybody has successfully chilled multiple reservoirs with 1 chiller.

 

[Tr33]

I'm bumping this thread since I'm interested to see if anybody has successfully chilled multiple reservoirs with 1 chiller.

I have. What I did for my 2 - 115 gal res was to get a lenght of 2" pvc and hook up the 2 res at the bottom between each res. Now they are one system. Then I set the chiller "in" pump in one res and the "out" line in the other res. solution was drawn from one res and chilled and dumped into the other res creating cycled system with the solution flowing between the 2 res, this cooled them perfectly to 65F as I needed.

 

[junior_grower]

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/stainless-steel-immersion-wort-chiller.html

a wort chiller in each reservoir with cooled water ( chiller cools separate tub) or the chiller can cool one tub and pump water from that tub through the chiller in the other tub and back.

 

[Bigge]

I made two PVC Y connectors with four valves....each res connects to the top of my chiller...The "A" in and out are for res "A" and the "B" in and outs are for res "B". When valves are in "A" configuration A res is cooled...when in "B" configuration B res is cooled.

A res feed-----|
................... |-----Chiller feed
B res feed-----|

A res return---|
................... |-----Chiller return
B res return---|