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The Tim Taylor Approach To Cooling Your Aquarium

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So, I get this "sale announcement" the other day in my inbox from a non-hobby vendor. Since we're all looking for clever ways to use things from other industries / areas to either do things better or to save money, I temporarily get the bright idea that perhaps I've stumbled upon something great that I can use as a crossover device to keep the tanks cool. Well, once I checked out the price (not to mention the amp draw) I realized that nothing clever was going to happen here.

However, it did occur to me that if they ever had done an aquarium themed episode of Home Improvement, Tim most certainly would have hooked this up to his sons' goldfish bowl to keep it cool on a hot summer day ... "argh, argh, argh".

Imagine this on your desktop nano ...

http://www.lesliespool.com/browse/Home/HeatingSolarCooling/Cooling/Glacier-Ice-Block-Pool-Cooler-25K-GAL/D/30100/P/1:100:8000:800040/I/85200


:)
 
Thats cheaper than a lot of bigger chillers, seems like a good deal for the volume of water it handles. Wonder why the 1.5hp chiller is twice as much as that pool chiller. Prolly cause that pool chiller would rust out in 2 days on a salt tank.

Expensive chiller
 
I don't know about the rusting / corrosion exposure since some folks have salt water pools and this doesn't say anything about limitations in that area. The only thing the ad says is "Non-rusting FRP casing and basin" but what that means in terms of actual resistance is anyone's guess. The other feature noted is that it doesn't run on freon and appears to be "fan based", so it cools in some sort of heat transfer manner.
 
Deltec makes some very nice evaporative coolers that still cost more than this.

http://www.theaquariumsolution.com/deltec-eco-cooler-small
 
hey if I had a 25000 gallon aquarium that might be something I look into for chilling :D

That said, do pools really get that hot in the summer? Granted I'm just a lil' ol SF city boy so I don't know much about pools, I thought that they'd be cooler than the ambient air temp simply due to evaporation that will occur... unless of course you have a very dark painted pool bottom maybe.
 
Swam in pools all the time growing up in S. Florida and never knew anyone with a chiller. The only reason I could think would maybe keeping the water cooler would cut down on the algae and bacterial growth.
 
Given this absolutely scorching weather we've had lately we haven't had that problem this year. However, a couple years back when there were a lot of really hot days (I think we topped out at 116 one afternoon), our pool got up well into the 90's. Still cooler than the air, but felt more like a giant hot tub. We basically jumped in to get wet and then climbed back out to hide in the shade and let the wonders of evaporative cooling work their magic.
 
Interesting product.
If you worry about corrosion, recirculate fresh water from the machine through a long plastic pipe looping
around in the sump. Incidentally, also a great way to put the unit outside.

But really : If your setup can handle an evaporative cooler, do it yourself.
The problem with those systems is humidity. The cooler MUST be outside, or vented to outside.
Don't even think of putting all that moisture into the air in your house.
Plus, humidity would rise, and it would simple stop working.
So if you have the vent/whatever, just put a big fan blowing across the water in your sump.
And make sure you have a really good top-off system of course.
Evaporating one gallon is about 8,700 BTUs!
 
I was in Palm Springs for a wedding and the hotel I stayed used a chiller on their pool. Day after day of 115 degree heat turned their pools into hot tubs.
 
In some places in Arizona they have sprinkler-like devices that line the pool to lower the temps. I can get quite warm there, and doesn't cool down much at night.
 
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