Water Tower add-on for IC

Hey guys, first post. Have been lurking for a while and have not noticed anything built like what I have here. I have seen many people say they stop brewing in the summer due to their tap water not being cold enough to chill wort with their IC. The idea here is using this water tower (bong) cooler, you'll be able to cool your water down below ambient air temp without peltiers or anything expensive. This design is based off of a PC water cooling design I used about 10 years ago (which was based off of a nuclear heat exchanger,) and in that system it worked wonders.

Parts:

-Aquarium pump (1/2" barbs, nothing too rediculously high in GPH because you need to match the input from your spigot otherwise you'll run the pump dry.)
-5gal bucket
-1/2 tubing (no need for high temp - this is on the cold side of the system)
-Shower head (we want to break the water down into as many droplets as possible to increase efficiency of the cooler.)
-High CFM fan (the more air it moves the more heat that can be transferred)
-An Immersion Chiller
-About 4' of 4"+ PVC pipe (go as large as your fan will allow you to, I can see 6 or 8" working well)
-A "y" PVC fitting to match your piping
-Duct tape/Zip ties to attach the fan to the piping




Beautiful artwork aside, the tap water has the heat removed and is cooled down below ambient. How much heat is removed will depend on the amount of airflow across the water droplets. A finer misting shower head and a high CFM fan will both help efficiency. Also, most of these items you could very well have laying around the house. Since I'm just getting the equipment together for AG brewing, I'm not in immediate need to build this, but I will be putting it together within the next couple months. PLEASE give me your comments/concerns.

I'd say try it if you can. I have thought about something similar, just never gotten around to doing it.

If you can get the water 5-10 degrees below your normal water temp, and maintain a similar flow through the IC, this could be incredibly valuable.

Thanks for the encouragement. 5-10F should be no problem. When I used this system before, I didn't account for condensation on the lines and fried a video card. So yeah, it should do that pretty easily. Last time it was a 4" system with a 120v tube axial fan (which pushed around 200 CFM.) I'm looking more along the lines of a 6" system with a very fine mist as well as 300+ CFM this time around.

Speaking of condensation, I'm a bit concerned about it dripping into the BK. Maybe some AC line insulation will help that.

Check out this link:

http://www.ringbell.co.uk/info/humid.htm

It seems that at 85°F and 50%RH, the wet bulb temperature is about 71 degrees. This is above my ground water temps already.

Just curious what kind of ground water temp your dealing with? My tap water is around 70 in the middle of the summer, so a CFC should be plenty good enough for me.

My initial thought is that for the time and money it would take to build your setup, you could build or even buy a Counterflow Chiller which would get your wort within a degree or two of your tap water in a more efficient manner.... and in a much more compact package. I'm in the middle of building my own CFC, as my IC is worthless in the summer.

Thanks for the link, It's been a while since physics class. For my location, average RH% peaks in August at around 89% at 86ºF...dew point is 81ºF in that case. So yes, condensation is definitely a problem I need to account for.

A couple of frozen milk jugs in the water reservoir works wonders for me.

bgrubb7 said:

Just curious what kind of ground water temp your dealing with? My tap water is around 70 in the middle of the summer, so a CFC should be plenty good enough for me.

My initial thought is that for the time and money it would take to build your setup, you could build or even buy a Counterflow Chiller which would get your wort within a degree or two of your tap water in a more efficient manner.... and in a much more compact package. I'm in the middle of building my own CFC, as my IC is worthless in the summer.

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Based off of historical data, in August here in Atlanta I can expect soil temp averages in the low 80's. I'd expect tap water should be slightly lower. A CFC could get the wort down to around the low 80's then? Granted I'm very new to brewing, I'm under the impression that I want to pitch my yeast a bit closer to fermentation temps.

riromero said:

A couple of frozen milk jugs in the water reservoir works wonders for me.

Click to expand...

You know, sometimes what's most simple is best. I think a CFC and a bit of ice may just be the way to go. Sure is fun poking around with ideas though

Mightyscoop said:

Based off of historical data, in August here in Atlanta I can expect soil temp averages in the low 80's. I'd expect tap water should be slightly lower. A CFC could get the wort down to around the low 80's then? Granted I'm very new to brewing, I'm under the impression that I want to pitch my yeast a bit closer to fermentation temps.

Click to expand...

Yes, a CFC of 20' length or more, should get your wort within 1-2° of the tap water. If you already have an IC, then you can use that as a prechiller in a ice bath to cool down your tap water even more before it hits the CFC.

Lot's of good CFC info here