cooling system

[swiatoniowski]

Hello,

Do you know any system, which can reduce temperature during night ? As yet I use simply ice, but I plan to built larger orchidarium and I wish to it be more automatic.
If there is any possibility to connect small fridge ?

Please, write something or tell me the link to such article.

Best regards,
Piotr

[keithrs]

I have seen people make orchidarium out of small wine coolers. Another option is a water chiller hooked to a CPU radiator and have a fan turn on/off at preset temps.

[swiatoniowski]

thanks for info, I will look at chillers. I am looking rather for something outside the orchidarium. Plants in winde fridger perhaps feel happy, but I wish to see them better.

[Discus]

I've been thinking of making a hybrid cooler by hooking up the radiator from a computer watercooling setup to an aquarium chiller. I think it would work well, but I don't have an orchidarium to test it with.

There are also companies that make quite large peltier (thermoelectric) coolers that could be effectively adapted to cooling a terrarium/orchidarium/paludarium. (for example PowerCool Series Air-to-Air Thermoelectric Assembly on Laird Technologies Some are available as "ruggedised" meant for external use, which would be better in this application IMO)

Neither option is particularly cheap though.

[swiatoniowski]

Thanks for reply. Here in Poland such chillers are extremply expensive, they started from about 400 USD. They are probably not enough popular to have good price.

[orchidsarefun]

if your orchids were in a sealed small room, I suppose you could leave the fridge door open and let it run until the room temp was reached.
I like the ice idea to get temps lower even if for a short time, probably work for me.

[Discus]

orchidsarefun: No, that won't work, because fridges put more heat into the room than they remove by leaving the door open. It might work if the back of the fridge (where the cooling radiator is) was outside of the room, but an air conditioner would be far better.

[NatalieS]

Originally Posted by Discus

orchidsarefun: No, that won't work, because fridges put more heat into the room than they remove by leaving the door open. It might work if the back of the fridge (where the cooling radiator is) was outside of the room, but an air conditioner would be far better.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not usual for air conditioners to run at such low temps. Even the aircon unit I have in the server room at work won't run any lower than 16 C. I'm guessing Piotr needs the temps to run lower than that.

[Discus]

Originally Posted by NatalieS

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not usual for air conditioners to run at such low temps. Even the aircon unit I have in the server room at work won't run any lower than 16 C. I'm guessing Piotr needs the temps to run lower than that.

Not sure what temperature he'd like to run at, but indeed, most aircons don't go very low. Of course, if you change/bypass the thermostat, you can likely go outside this temperature range, although you may have problems with icing. Thinking about it, all the aircons around here only go down to 18, including the one in my office (where the servers also sit, my poor ears!).

[NatalieS]

Originally Posted by Discus

Not sure what temperature he'd like to run at, but indeed, most aircons don't go very low. Of course, if you change/bypass the thermostat, you can likely go outside this temperature range, although you may have problems with icing. Thinking about it, all the aircons around here only go down to 18, including the one in my office (where the servers also sit, my poor ears!).

You sit in the same office as the servers?!? Poor you! I loathe having to sit in the server room for any amount of time. Thank goodness for virtualisation and remote desktop!

You definitely would get problems with icing running it at lower temps. I was constantly told off by the guys who service the aircon because I liked to run it at 16 - now I just leave it at 19. Still doesn't feel cold enough for my servers.