Poorman's chiller

I remember the days of the ice bottle shuffle. That really blew chunks. But it was a step up from the "soil shuffle", potting and re-potting and mixing and the mess. I saw a thread that involved using coolers for rez's, which still require doing the iced bottle thing in most cases. About 6 years ago an idea struck me, and it led to the current setup I use now. Now my rez temps never vary from the temperature I set by more than a degree or so. None of you guys are running a scavenged mini fridge as a chiller yet? Oh, hey BTW Hi, This is my first post on this forum, nice to meet you all.

Hi ya Fink

Welcome to Riu

I have been busy for a while with other stuff but im back here on Riu for a while and thought i would give you a welcome

As i said , It's been a while , But i do remember seeing a thread about the use of a fridge eliment being used in a chiller , Search here is not great , But you may be able to find something on it with the reight set of keywords :0

Would love to see some pics of your DIY job and maybe some of the results you have had with useing it ?

Look forward to seeing / hearing more , Good Luck ...Again , Welcome to RiU and have fun here

V

Welcome Fink !
It's a must to post pics with such a statement.

Welcome. Like said above the search is very on and off. But when the information is found it is highly informative. A lot of people know their sh**. Some people think they know it all and will try to shoot you or your thread down but that percentage is much lower than the people that are very knowledgable and friendly. Ya I would like to see your set-up. It sounds interesting.

Ok, this is third attempt to post reply....sorry been a long day, so I'll keep it short.

As you can see by the last pic, the root system is healthy. These are the roots of 24 seeds I sprouted in order to sex them, in preparation of ramping up clone production for a couple different projects I have going.

Oh, thanks for the warm welcome, hope to be back soon, I've got some questions I need answering. Why must I change out the nutrient solution in a recirculating system every few weeks, but need only top off the solution in a system that isn't recirculating? Not sure where i picked that up or if it's correct, but that's what I told someone. Perhaps someone here can verify this for me?

im really interested in how you built this

You know i googled "DIY chiller from mine fridge" and there was a few hits that came up... in case Fink doesn't get back there is still a way to check out what others have done... i didn;t look to far into it but there you go... and as the others have said Fink....Welcome!!! and kudos on that set up!!! Roots look good...

I read a lot about this trick just never seen anyone actually do it....

that is a getto ass chiller but genius.. all he did was got a small fridge and took the evaporator out and placed it in res.. simple and efective and those small compressors only draw a few amps to run

Fink, You bastard!! Is what reggaerican said true?!?!.....YOU GENIOUS!! Love it!

This gets me thinking.. Garage time

I have a frige freezer in the shed thats a little bit bigger then a bar frige i might go give this a crack lol

Nice! Probably works better than the weird contraption I'm building... thanks! +rep

Quick question; did you manage to disassemble the fridge w/o losing the freon or did you have to refill it?

I've disassembled mini fridges without spilling any freon. You just don't want to tilt the device try and keep it standing up & down.

I have a similar coil chiller, but mine was made out of a scavanged out of a water cooler (the ones that have the big jugs of water on top)Keeps me from 65-68 I saw a DIY somewhere. I never thought of a mini fridge, NICE!

He spoke the truth. That's exactly what I did. In fact I'm getting ready to do another for a project I'm involved with, I'll take some pictures this time. I picked up a mini fridge for a couple bucks (used), just a matter of gutting it. I should be back with some pic's later today.

ScrogThis said:

Quick question; did you manage to disassemble the fridge w/o losing the freon or did you have to refill it?

Click to expand...

I was careful...if such can be said while using a sawzall. I never even kinked a line.

Cool! (cold?) thanks!

Another thought, i remember seeing a forum post somewhere, where instead of disassembling the fridge, they moved condenser,pump and evap, turned the fridge on it's back door facing up, and after properly waterproofing the interior of the fridge, used the fridge as a reservoir.