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Heating and cooling tanks
All this talk about heating and cooling, especially the economic
considerations with larger tanks, got me to thinking (ouch). At first I was
going to suggest a spa heater but that image triggered a memory of something
an A.C. tech told me once while servicing my A.C. and watching the pool guys
install (yet) another spa heater out back.
I should point out that I'm not a technical or mechanical type person so I
may be way, way off base here. Feel free to correct me.
As I understand it, a condenser produces heat while laboring under resistance
and doing it's compressing thing, as well as cold when the freon or other gas
is allowed to expand once again. Everybody has a refrigerator, right? If
there was someway to tap into a nearby existing refrigerator, one could
theoretically obtain heat from the condenser and cooling from the inside
compartment for little more cost than the effort to do so.
I think...
Even if there was no refrigerator right nearby the tank, I've seen those
little box 'fridges sold new for less than $100.00 on sale and even larger
units for less than $200.00 any day of the week. That's a lot less than the
cost of a chiller, right? Used, they're practically given away. One could
probably fit under the cabinet of a big 1000 gal tank and keep frozen fish
food and chemicals inside as well as cooling and/or heating the water.
If one could figure a way to turn the inside into a reservoir to run water
through, you could probably do multiple tanks, a fish room even with a
dedicated unit. The heat, of course, would come from rigging up a radiator
type system for the compressor itself to absorb and carry away the heat it
produces. This would be the hard part.
The A.C. tech told me a normal compressor could easily heat my 800(?) gal spa
to over 100 degrees. I don't know if this guy was totally whack case or what
but he did install and service a 3.5 ton A.C. unit on that side proficiently.
I though this concept might be worth mentioning anyway.
For instance, why hasn't this been done? It seems like there must be
something wrong here or this would have been implemented more by now or at
least appear in aquarium discussions somewhere. There's no way I'm the first
to have thought of it.
Planted tanks, with the lighting levels most successful ones employ, could
sure use an economical means of cooling things down.
Bob Olesen
West Palm Beach