Sierra_Bravo
Valuable Member
- Joined
- Jan 29, 2017
- Messages
- 1,898
- Reaction score
- 4,047
- Location
- San Antonio, TX
- What state or country do you live in
- Texas
I recently installed a UV sterilizer, which had the predictable side effect of raising my water temperature. Only happens late afternoon at which time enough heat builds to add 3-4 degrees to the tank and trigger alarms.
I don't have a plumbed in chiller, only a drop-in that I keep around in case of emergencies like my A/C going out. Using the drop-in chiller is a pain in the rear. It's noisy, heavy, cumbersome, and not something I can ask the wife to do if I'm away. I have no room to permanently place it and it's not going to fly sitting out like this (pardon the UV on the floor - it's temp installed until I get brackets for the wall):
I was looking into cooling fans, but even the largest one available that I could find was rated for 60 gallons. I looked at the iPetite six fan at my LFS and it just didn't have enough ooompf - each fan only producing about 32 cfm. I decided to try to build my own.
Going to my local electronics store I picked up four inexpensive 120mm DC case fans, each rated at 86 cfm. Now we're talking.
I glued up the fans in line, and cut a piece of plastic board to attach to the top and bottom for support.
Wire the fans together in parallel, not in series. So all negative wires together and all positive wires together. This will allow each fan to pull 12 volts each. If you were to run them in series they would split 12 volts between them and either turn at a reduced speed or not turn at all.
I bought a cheap 12 volt adapter and cut the plug off. The adapter needs to rated for more amps than the total of all the fans put together. A 2 amp adapter would have been fine in this case.
I had bought a terminal block, but realized I bought the wrong type that did not have separate positive and negative terminals. I had some connectors handy to put it all together:
Ahhhh, serious airflow happening here:
I attached two tabs to temporarily mount this until the weekend when I'll have time to come up with a bracket. Hooking it up to one of my open RKL energy bar slots I'm able to use the controller to have the fans kick in when the temperature reaches 79.5 degrees. But does it work?
In about an hour the fans reduced the temp by about one degree. I'm not sure if that will be enough when it's under the full load of LED's/T5's/UV, but it's worth a shot. Downside: They are noisier than I imagined. I don't know if I had bought higher quality fans if it would have been quieter.
I spent about $50 and three hours.
I don't have a plumbed in chiller, only a drop-in that I keep around in case of emergencies like my A/C going out. Using the drop-in chiller is a pain in the rear. It's noisy, heavy, cumbersome, and not something I can ask the wife to do if I'm away. I have no room to permanently place it and it's not going to fly sitting out like this (pardon the UV on the floor - it's temp installed until I get brackets for the wall):
I was looking into cooling fans, but even the largest one available that I could find was rated for 60 gallons. I looked at the iPetite six fan at my LFS and it just didn't have enough ooompf - each fan only producing about 32 cfm. I decided to try to build my own.
Going to my local electronics store I picked up four inexpensive 120mm DC case fans, each rated at 86 cfm. Now we're talking.
I glued up the fans in line, and cut a piece of plastic board to attach to the top and bottom for support.
Wire the fans together in parallel, not in series. So all negative wires together and all positive wires together. This will allow each fan to pull 12 volts each. If you were to run them in series they would split 12 volts between them and either turn at a reduced speed or not turn at all.
I bought a cheap 12 volt adapter and cut the plug off. The adapter needs to rated for more amps than the total of all the fans put together. A 2 amp adapter would have been fine in this case.
I had bought a terminal block, but realized I bought the wrong type that did not have separate positive and negative terminals. I had some connectors handy to put it all together:
Ahhhh, serious airflow happening here:
I attached two tabs to temporarily mount this until the weekend when I'll have time to come up with a bracket. Hooking it up to one of my open RKL energy bar slots I'm able to use the controller to have the fans kick in when the temperature reaches 79.5 degrees. But does it work?
In about an hour the fans reduced the temp by about one degree. I'm not sure if that will be enough when it's under the full load of LED's/T5's/UV, but it's worth a shot. Downside: They are noisier than I imagined. I don't know if I had bought higher quality fans if it would have been quieter.
I spent about $50 and three hours.
