I am finally able to set up a long term aquarium and I'm trying to plan ahead. I was thinking of dumping excess aquarium heat in a well next to my house. The well water stays at approx. 56 degrees year round. If I pump fresh water through a closed curcuit water loop out through the well water to chill it, then run it back to a counter current heat exchanger on the pump side of my salt water return it should be a relatively low power way to cool the tank water. I know this may seem off the wall, but I don't want a chiller again if I can help it. If any of you engineering types or old hands out there have a suggestion let me know please.
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need help with an idea of cooling aquarium ..geothermal
- Thread starter lilred99
- Start date
I think that should work well. In one of these Aquarium USA, Aquarium Fish, or Tropical Fish Hobbiest I saw a readers setup in the readers rig section. They had a 500ga main tank, a 700 gallon sump, and to cool it they had a 400ga AGA tank burried in the ground outside just ouside the wall the Aquarium backed up too. According to the write up it cooled fabulously, and they where running multiple 1000watt M/H lights plus lights in the refugium part of the massive sump 700ga. Can you imagine a sump that big? Whats weird is they used the 700ga for a sump and a 500 for the display.
Sean
Sean
lilred99
I'm planning on doing something similar with my next tank. I am going to run a 1/2" or 3/8" diameter pipe in the ground under my basement slab and circulate the tank water through it. The pump will be controlled by my medusa controller. Just remember you want to use a small diameter tube for better heat exchange.
Jeff
I'm planning on doing something similar with my next tank. I am going to run a 1/2" or 3/8" diameter pipe in the ground under my basement slab and circulate the tank water through it. The pump will be controlled by my medusa controller. Just remember you want to use a small diameter tube for better heat exchange.
Jeff
My only concern is what your choice of materials will be. Definitely can't use copper, glass is a poor conductor of heat, aluminum corrodes is saltwater, stainless does too although to a far lesser degree. I have thought of a setup like what you are talking about and I couldn't quite get past that one question. I settled on evaporative cooling. You have to rig an automatic top off system or it will drive you crazy trying to keep up with it, but it does keep the take 10 to 12 degrees F cooler than it normally would be.
jcurry@wesketch":i105zo6h said:lilred99
I'm planning on doing something similar with my next tank. I am going to run a 1/2" or 3/8" diameter pipe in the ground under my basement slab and circulate the tank water through it. The pump will be controlled by my medusa controller. Just remember you want to use a small diameter tube for better heat exchange.
Jeff
Don't pump tank water through the tubing. You need to use fresh water int the tubing and a heat exchanger at you sump. The tubes will plug if you put aquarium water in them.
Similiar idea is used in some Northeast states to permit using heatpumps to heat and cool the homes. Heat pumps don't work well below 40 degrees so they run plastic pipe similar to irigation pipe down a well. That way the heat pump works even when the air temperature is 20 degrees.
The main problem is that you will need to overcome the friction loss of the system so the pipe size is a trade-off between the rate of heat exchange and the size of pump you have to run to move the water. They typically use 1" or bigger.
But, and this is the real issue. What is the temperature of the water in the well? If your located in Central Florida like me. You will be hard pressed to make this work. You need at least 10 to 20 degrees difference for this to work without some form of heatpump.
If you read swjim's link carefully, they had little or no idea if their system was helping them or hurting them in maintaining their tank temperature. They had assumed that the ground temperature would be closer to 50 degree F @ 4 ft. Where I am (~200 mile south of them) the ground tempature is 73 degrees F @4 ft during the summer. This give me less than 10 degrees. While it might work if I make really big heat exchangers, I don't have the space and it would be cheaper to buy and run chillers.
The main problem is that you will need to overcome the friction loss of the system so the pipe size is a trade-off between the rate of heat exchange and the size of pump you have to run to move the water. They typically use 1" or bigger.
But, and this is the real issue. What is the temperature of the water in the well? If your located in Central Florida like me. You will be hard pressed to make this work. You need at least 10 to 20 degrees difference for this to work without some form of heatpump.
If you read swjim's link carefully, they had little or no idea if their system was helping them or hurting them in maintaining their tank temperature. They had assumed that the ground temperature would be closer to 50 degree F @ 4 ft. Where I am (~200 mile south of them) the ground tempature is 73 degrees F @4 ft during the summer. This give me less than 10 degrees. While it might work if I make really big heat exchangers, I don't have the space and it would be cheaper to buy and run chillers.
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