Better to run a heat exchanger for a water chiller?

Would like to try and run more than one 5 gal reservoir on a single water chiller. Anyone think having a coil of plastic hose in the bottom of the 2 reservoir buckets running to the chiller (1/10 HP for 10 gals total) would be sufficient to drop the reservoir temps 10 degrees? That way too i’m not running salty water in my water chiller. :clown_face:

A little more expensive, but copper tubing would work much better than plastic. When I was messing with ebb and flow a few years back, I used a water jug (five gallon job type), coiled 3/4 black plastic tubing about ten coils with a water pump in the reservoir. And fkilled it with ice from the ice machine from my job at the time. Circulating my nute solution through the tubes. Dropping my reservoir temp 7 degrees and melting the ice down in 14 hours. When I switched over to copper, I dropped my temp 23 degrees, and the ice lasted for 19 hours.
I know that set up is much different from what you are after. I don’t blame you for not wanting the salts running through your chiller. But the effectiveness of the plastic tube vs copper tube is the point in trying to make. Probably save you money in the long run too considering how much easier the chiller would have to work.

Was worried about running medal in the system , that’s why the plastic. And lucky me , found the chiller in a lost package store new for $120 . Im sure one day i’ll find a $3000 rosin press for $300 , that’s what I was looking for when I found the water chiller. :clown_face:

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Nice find! I doubt that copper would have any ill effects. It doesn’t bother us…

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I have a 1/10 hp chiller than I have run nutrient water through it day after day and it never missed a beat, I’m sure it will break down at some point. I think many are made to handle salt water because they were originally designed for salt water aquariums.

My 1/10hp chiller will accommodate up to 40 gallons I believe

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Trying to run 2 or 3 small res’s off one chiller :clown_face:

As long as you don’t exceed the gallons capacity in the mfg’s recommendations, and all the reservoirs are interconnected to cycle with one chiller, you should be fine.

I don’t know how big these reservoirs are your talking about

It would be two 5 gal bucket’s with about 3 gallons nutrients in each water pump in one and airstone in both with gravity feed back to bucket with water pump. There would be two of theses to cool. Should be EZ, going to the surplus story right now looking for the heat-exchangers and hose I need.

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I’m surprised to here all of you saying that you run your nutrients through your water chillers… I was always taught to put the coil in the res and run fresh water through the chiller and never mix the two… so basically the water that runs through the chiller never comes in contact with my nutrients in the res… :thinking:
And yes that’s using soft copper water lines… it comes in a coil…
:v::sunglasses:

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