Cooling System
Was working on the cooling system the past couple of days. I won't need cooling for a while (months, I hope), but I needed to get it working before I added water to that Brute can,
Here's the setup that I have used in the past:
1. Temperature controller for cooling is needed. I previously used a fairly expensive lab one from a company called Dynasense. The only ones they currently sell are more than a thousand dollars, which is out of the question. I plan to use an inkbird wi fi model that can control both heating and cooling.
2. When cooling is needed, the controller sends 110V to a solenoid connected to the cold tap water supply. (U.S. Solid 3/4" Brass Electric Solenoid Valve 110V AC Normally Closed Non-potable Water, air, Diesel). It is normally closed solenoid that only opens when it gets power, and only stays open if power continues to flow. I mistakenly got 3/4" female pipe thread connections while the supply is 1/2", so I needed some bushing adapters to connect it. Amazon, $27.
3. I wanted to be able to close it off from the water supply when there's no reason for cooling, and to slow down the flow when I am using it, so I got a valve to put between it and the water supply. $12 from amazon. Same 3/4" mistake and so needed more more bushings, but this is the one:
4. I connected some 1/4" ID plastic tubing to the solenoid and then over to the tank. This line was actually still in place from the old days, running along the ceiling of the basement. It is insulated with the usual foam pipe tubes to prevent condensation on it when operating in summer. Note: do not trust plastic tubing connections that are 20+ years old. More on that later. lol
5. At the sump, the tubing transitions to a large coil of 1/4" OD polyethylene (PEX) tubing, 328 feet long. $32 from Amazon. Used a brass coupling and hose clamps between the 1/4" ID and the 1/4" OD. Here's the guts of the system. Most of that coil is in the bottom and sides of the second Brute can in the chain. The other thing in that can is the skimmer near the top (helps provide good flow around the coils), and a cut down, upside down laundry basket to position the skimmer at just the right depth, leaving space under and around it for the coils. Zip ties help keep the coil from getting hopelessly tangled, or worse, kinked. A kink would be a big problem, blocking flow. Laundry basket from Ace.
6. The other end of the PEX goes out through a small hole in the basement window frame just above this Brute can, and out to the yard. I use it to keep a little pond filled and to water plants all summer. The backyard slopes down some from the house, so all I need to do is have enough PEX showing (now about 10') to enter an open garden hose end, and then I can just move the hose around the yard to where it is needed most at the time. Since I would be using water for these purposes anyway, it's a win-win.
7. The reason I needed to get a trial run on this system now is that without water in the coils, I was concerned the whole coil/laundry basket setup would float and be hard to deal with when water is in the can.
8. Trial run, water comes out the outside end. Big success. No hidden kinks or clogs. But then I hear something in the furnace room. Fail. An old connection between two sections of 1/4" ID tubing has cracked and water is spraying out. After shutting things down, I managed to get to fixed. Subsequent running of the system seemed fine. I'll do more trial runs as I get close to needing cooling, but for now the coils are filled and unkinked and things seem good.
9. In operation, the goal will be to close down the valve so that the water exiting the system is fairly close to tank temp, meaning I'm not using any more water flow than needed. That also ensures that the potential for overcooling due to a solenoid failure is low, and hopefully would not be more than the heaters could keep up with. It never happened on the old tank, and worked perfectly. Another failsafe is that the tank could not possibly get colder than the tap water. In much of the summer, when cooling is needed, it's not killer cold.
I know that such a system would not work in some places where the tap water is too warm, but here it does meet the need.
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