Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Probably 1.5-2HP, which seem to be about the largest suitable ones I've seen online. The ones I looked at are all pretty much the same type, in that they use a refrigeration type compressor.

As fas as misting goes, I dont think that is likely to provide much in the way of water cooling, as tests I've done previously struggled to get the wet bits below 20C, so I'd only use that to cool GBs, so that they didn't add significant heat to the system water. If the air was extremely dry with a dew point down around zero, they you may be able to get lower temps, but often in summer, apart from the occasional extreme fire danger day, dew points here are in the teens to low 20sC.

Rairdog,

That is just plain cool. If you put a tank in that room and used it as a water to water heat exchanger.

I have been wanting to build one for a few years. A deer cooler in the early fall and year round trout would be nice. I know there is outstanding customer service and a bunch of them out there. From what I have read these are costing 30-50 dollars a month at around .13/kwh to run if insulated properly. I think that's running it in the 30's(f). If you bumped it to 50f it should be pretty reasonable. They will drop the temp from 85 to 35 in a couple hours from what the guys on my hunting forum have said. Problem is, everyone wants to bring their deer for you to store.

Domestic even commercial chest freezers are not going to cut it for system cooling. First they are small and second they are not designed to run all the time.

Chillers on the other hand can be found that are designed to run all the time. Then you just need to find one that is the right size.

That would be the best idea but I didn't want a coolroom in the backyard and I wanted to separate and chill half my existing AP system.



Yes I have to look around, talk to fridgie who is a friend of a friend, at least I have a few months to think about it.

dbird i have just caught up on your thread,intrigued by your shade cloth cooler as i am struggling here with high temps,the water spray is that mains pressure or is it pumped ? Does any of the water make it off the bottom off the shade cloth ? i take it you use a small irrigation fitting to spray the water on to the cloth,sorry for all the questions but i never thought of doing anything like this and your pics really got me thinking....

Aquasonic sell a Korean made 2hp chiller for $2200. Thats the wholesale price but he didn't say he wouldn't sell it to me. He reckons that would keep 4,000 litres of aquaponics below 20c during a Sydney summer.
http://www.aquasonic.com.au/product/water-chiller-2hp-240v-50hz/

Yes, I got prices on that too and a few potential backup pumps - all well beyond the budget for now.

I got him to send me specs on pumps and the 1 and 2HP chiller too, but I'm not sure the chiller's really add up, thermodynamically.

yea if you are looking for a chiller, i would find an aquaculture specific one.... maybe a medical one.....

i could get a really good chiller from drycleaning suppliers..... but they are made to cool water from about 90c+ down to about 20c- in one pass.... i dont think the fish would like the water running through the internals of that thing.... and i dont think the internals would like the fish water either.

they are used to cool a condensor that condenses 120c+ solvent, on return it should be as cold as possible.

i dont think paying for the extra cost of running a second loop would really be worth it for a home system.

I don't think any of these ideas are worth it for a home system

depends how much fish you and your extended family eat, lol

im not aware of guna trying to start a commercial system.

is he?

are you?

i mean he runs his farm.... but is he branching into a trout farm too?

I've got 125kg to eat at the moment

Just my opinion. I don't think it is worth the effort but then I don't have to worry about keeping my trout through the summer.

I'd like to be able to keep trout over summer -fresh fish any time of the year is more fun than killing, gutting and freezing 300+ fish over a short period. There isn't really anything else I want to run during the Nov-March period when the water can get a bit hot. Fingerlings are available over spring-summer nearby here, and I haven't been able to take advantage of that.
If I can keep the GBs and WBs productive all year, powered by fish poo, that will be a bonus, because there is a twice weekly growers market starting up in town later this year, where I should be able to sell all the vegies we don't consume here.
Having a buried FT, ST and 5 GBs with 13000l of water should help to limit water temperature rise, but a chiiler would be a nice safety net to have. ATM I'm seeing only half the diurnal temperature variation in the new system as in my smaller system, which is a promising sign.

If I were to seriously think of keeping trout through summer months stress free (me not the trout ) effectively and efficiently I would use a small cooling tower. One of my future projects in the pipedreamline.

cooling towers work well to get rid of large amounts of heat, im not so sure they would work greatly for a few deg c.
i replaced a cooling tower at work i have thought about trying to use for such a purpose, but im pretty convinced it will actually raise the temp in summer.

i can see exactly why you wouldnt want to kill heaps at once Guna, i saw the post of stus with a bucket full of head and didnt envy him at all.