FYI, Unexpected plumbing result

[drhyne]

I was having heat issues after upgrading my fuge lights. The tank just wan't cooling off overnight and the main lights kept boosting the temps during the day.

I came up with an idea... I will use my lift pump to run water down to my basement freezer and back. It was about 25 feet of line to the freezer. Maybe 3-4 feet of coils in the freezer and 25 feet back. FYI, I just ran the lines up through the drain hole. I wasn't willing to drill a hole in the freezer! There was about 7 feet worth of verticle drop to the freezer. I figured this was close to the limit of the pump but it would probably work.

I hooked everything up and had the pump running from the refugium down to the freezer and back to the display tank. After plugging it in. The flow was barely a drip! I figured I would move the pump down to the freezer and just have it pump back up. When I pulled the pump I waited for the water to stop flowing so that I could place the line in the tank. THE WATER NEVER STOPPED FLOWING! It continued to flow nice cool water at a rate of about a gallon a minute from the display tank back to the refugium! What the ....

My fiance said "Is this from Newton's house of mystery?" I replied "I don't know!"

I am guessing that it is a basic siphon. I just never expected it to flow 25 feet into the basement and BACK with no assistance!

 

[Hawkeye]

welcome to NJRC...what an interesting first post!

do you have a pic of this homemade chiller?

 

[REEFLECTIONS]

i've often thought of doing this, with one of those mini fridges, i would just be worried with the freezer that a clog could happen, or the flow stop for some reason, then the line could burst and trouble could happen.

 

[Phyl]

Very interesting. You could use a soloniod valve to stop the back siphon. Or you could run it through the same water vessel (out and back to the sump, for example, rather than the tank). I think I could run to our freezer with ours too. You could try 2 or 3 aqualifters in sequence to see if that gets you the boost that you need to get over the hump. We've done that successfully in other situations.

I wonder if you could run enough hose through the house air conditioning vents...

 

[Jcurry@wesketch]

Yes it's a basic siphon, one that keeps siphoning even when the power goes out. I would make sure that you have some kind of safety device so that it dosen't drain your tank and overflow your refugium during a power outage.