Who keeps their Chiller in with the sump?

[Steph1]

I have been researching buying a chiller but settled on other means of cooling. Thing is when I was working on where I would place the chiller I saw quite a few people with pics of chillers in the sump cabinet. After a bit of thought I realised that that is kind of " A snake eating its own tail" the chillers exhaust will heat up the cabinet and the water in the sump and therefore the tank itself. Then the chiller will have to work harder to cool the water to compensate. Must be extremely inefficientand a waste of power. Then I realised to get maximum efficiency you would need to exhaust to outside.......am I wrong?

 

[725196]

You bring up a good point. If the chiller is in the sump cabinet, then yes, it will cause its own heat issues. If it is in a separate cabinet or in the stand and had its own compartment, then no, it should not cause any heat issues.

I do not currently have one but on my last tank I did. I didn’tvent it outside but it was stationed next to my air handler return. I can’t comment on how other do it but for me it worked very well with that set up. The warm, humid air went in the return and was cool and dry on its way out. This really didn’t effect my electric bill at all, at least not anything notable.

 

[Steph1]

Hi NanoReefLovers, nice to meet you as fellow nano reef lover I settled on some Aquarium fans as I live in a very hot climate. Today was the first hot day and I fitted the fans last night. The fans got tank temp 4.5 degrees below ambient I was amazed. Glad I have an ATO though as 3.5 litres evaporated today in a 58 liter tank!

 

[SPR1968]

My chillers in the sump in my big tank, but the sump cabinet is open backed so the air gets released
It didn’t cause me any issues and we had a hot summer here in England

Its certainly something to consider though when planning

 

[Paulie069]

I had my chiller on outside of cabinet in back of the whole set up tucked into a corner foot n half away from sump,, I just cut longer hoses for it

 

[muggle reefer]

I presently run a chiller, however I have a Red Sea max 130d with the hood, the lights being that close to the water in the hood add a lot of heat to the water. So I have had to run a chiller. My hope is that if I switch to a sump based system, and run a led about 8 inches over the water with no hood, I don:t need a chiller. My cabinet does not have room for both a sump and a chiller. If I upgraded to a red see reader 200xl I think I would be in the same boat. A chiller would not fit in the cabinet with the sump. My plan would be not to use a chiller at all anymore.

 

[Kershaw]

I have been researching buying a chiller but settled on other means of cooling. Thing is when I was working on where I would place the chiller I saw quite a few people with pics of chillers in the sump cabinet. After a bit of thought I realised that that is kind of " A snake eating its own tail" the chillers exhaust will heat up the cabinet and the water in the sump and therefore the tank itself. Then the chiller will have to work harder to cool the water to compensate. Must be extremely inefficientand a waste of power. Then I realised to get maximum efficiency you would need to exhaust to outside.......am I wrong?

Yes you are correct. My theory on a chiller would be for emergency’s only. Reefing since 2012 I have ever only wished I had a chiller one time. I was freezing larger bottles of water to float in tank to cool it down along with fans.
So if I ran a chiller that I could fit in my stand, I would set it to come on around 80-82 degrees. I run my tanks around 76-78 so in theory it should never come on.

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

I have been researching buying a chiller but settled on other means of cooling. Thing is when I was working on where I would place the chiller I saw quite a few people with pics of chillers in the sump cabinet. After a bit of thought I realised that that is kind of " A snake eating its own tail" the chillers exhaust will heat up the cabinet and the water in the sump and therefore the tank itself. Then the chiller will have to work harder to cool the water to compensate. Must be extremely inefficientand a waste of power. Then I realised to get maximum efficiency you would need to exhaust to outside.......am I wrong?

I like that anology, "snake eating its own tail". It is an inefficient way to exhaust the heat removed from the water and definitely seems counterproductive.

If it were an air conditioner you're right, if you were to run a portable air conditioning without exhausting the heat outside, you're essentially heating the space not cooling it. In other words the energy it takes to remove 1 unit of heat from a room is converted into heat and if you're exhausting all that heat into the same room it gets hotter not cooler. But a chiller isn't designed to cool a room.

The companies that make these small chillers hedge their bet that you're willing to sacrifice some comfort to cool your water. The heat released from your chiller will not be added back to the water in a 1:1 ratio. Of course the goal for an air conditioner is to cool a room by removing the heat and displacing it outside, the goal of a chiller is to displace the heat from the water to the room it sits in. So the snake is eating its own tail but not as fast as you think and if you have a means to remove the heat from the room then the snake isn't eating anything. The most efficient way to run a chiller is to exhaust the heat outside. But it's more convenient for most to just have a simple compact unit that doesn't require ducting that runs to the nearest window.... what an eyesore right?

 

[jda]

Sometimes, the chiller heat is a good thing. In my fish room, the chiller would come on late in the afternoon/evening and cool the tank and heat the room a bit. This helped my heaters run less in the evening when the temperature went down. We don't have much humidity here and on days where the temp even hits 95-100 degrees, it will be in the 50s at night. I just use fans mostly, but the same thing is true - the fans heat the room a bit from cooling the tank.

In other climates, chillers sometimes need to be mounted outdoors. There are a lot of in between.

 

[Jon Fishman]

My chiller sits next to the tank/stand. Sump is under stand. It’s not a terribly ugly device, and mine is very quiet, so I’m fine with it.

 

[Tastee]

I have a RSR 250 and RSR 525XL and both have chillers in the cabinet. In the smaller 250 it is next to the sump but in the 525 it has it’s own cabinet on the side. Both vent through the back of the cabinet however and as hot air rises not much is left inside. The room the tanks are in will of course get warmer, but proportionally not by much.

You are correct that the heat the chiller produces will contribute to the exact issue they are trying to deal with, and if you have the space locating them further away and/or venting them outside will be beneficial. In my case I can’t really do that and the house design is quite open so it’s not a big issue.

 

[ca1ore]

I have always located my chillers outside - not only for heat exchanger efficiency but noise also. Appreciate that this isn’t always possible and not all chillers are as noisy as mine (or as big).

 

[billwill]

Chillers put off tremendous heat, so even if they don't add heat to sump in cabinet they add it to your living space. If you don't have AC, then that heat goes into your house and your tank heats up anyway