Made a water chiller out of a cooler..w/pics

[uraceulose]

So I followed a thread here on the forum and a few youtube videos and here's what I came up with.

Standard water cooler with copper cooling coils on the bottom of the water canister.



Ripped apart, required a phillips driver, couple pairs of pliers, hammer, angle grinder, hack saw, some electrical tape. Some patience and about an hour.

The main goal is to get everything out other than the grate on the back which is attached to the compressor and coils at either end. The adjustable control and on/off switch were a bonus that this cooler happened to come with.

I bought the cooler for $25 on Craigslist, it came with 2 water bottles.

My res is about 12 gallons at the moment and it's at 68 degress after 24 hours.

Here's some pics of what I started with and how you want it to end up......




Although in the "finished" photo where it's sitting on the floor, you want to keep the grate part sitting vertical as it does when it sits normally. Not horizontal as it is in the photo. The copper line that is thinner needs to be on the 'top' and the thick line(one that runs direct to the coils) needs to be on the 'bottom'.

You literally take the copper coil and drop it into your reservoir, then fine tune the temperature knob. I wrapped the coil in 2 thick freezer bags then double zip tied the tops of the bags.

 

[uraceulose]

Thought it may be interesting to know...

This is now in a 47 gallon reservoir and it keeps it at a constant 64.5 degrees on the "middle/lower" temp setting. It will cool the rez solution within 24 hours from room temp to 65 degrees.

Again, cost me $20 with 2 water jugs

 

[Dream Time]

Very cool! Especially for only $20!!
Thanks for sharing.

 

[5th]

I've been saving an old water cooler for just this project.

 

[d'agua]

Hey nice post, my 2c is that you use this system to cool a heat exchange rez apart from yours as cooper, salts and lower ph don't get along. You might have some metal leached into the solution.

On the heat rez just put the copper tubes in barely cover by water (cold water tends to go down) and on the bottom of your rez add some plastic tubbing on circles (the longer the better) and connect that to a pump located in your nut rez, then connect the end of the platic tube to the nut rez

the plastic tubing going in circles will cool off the water and go back to your nut rez without having cooper in contact with your nuts