Anyone have experience hooking up heat exchangers

[bovsbaitboxes]

looking to run all my tanks on one filter and heating using a pool heat exchanger. anyone a plumber or have experience with this concept? thanks John

[nick a]

Can you post a link to the 'pool style' hx? I've only used large industrial style hx's but would guess that the concept has got to be relatively similar.....incoming (colder) fluid passing thru multi-tubed interior/surrounded by (hot) fluid within the shell.

General concept is to size the hx and to manage the flow-thru rate to achieve the temp delta desired. Some form of recirculating water heater (with some pretty good temp control) system would be needed.

If you're trying to use a hx to get a narrow temp range for your output water, you'll need to have a very good control scheme.

[AMBUSHPREDATOR]

John I agree , I think you'll have too have a split on heated water . one goes to the house and the other goes to sump. Before the sump youll probably have a ball type valve adjusted by a sensor in the sump. A thermostat. So you don't fry the fish. The only other thing that would worry me is when your heat goes on after being off for a while will the house not warm up quickly since the sump is definatedly going to be in the opened position waiting to warm up. It depends on the heater size.

[bovsbaitboxes]

http://www.poolexchangers.com/ here is the heat exchanger. also there is something used (forget what my friend called it) that mixes hot with cold to get desired temp and then the thermo will turn on the heater exchanger I will try to keep everyone posted as this goes on. cost is about $1200 BUT i AM SURE TO SAVE THAT IN 6 MONTHS ON ELECTRIC BILL (oops caps)

[Spooky_Fish]

If your looking to run it off your homes boiler you can make the heat exchanger custom for your reservoir cheaply by bending thin wall stainless pipe:
http://www.jehmco.com/html/heaters.html

Then install a new heating zone, connect up the exchanger and control it with a probe type thermostat:
http://www.jehmco.com/html/temperature_controller.html

I have never done this but will probably be doing it this Sunday. Just ordered all the supplies from Jehmco this morning. C'mon by on Sunday and you can see it being installed!

I'm running a zone to heat the two 1,000 gallon tanks. I think the application is similar to yours. Total projected cost $260

[bovsbaitboxes]

thanks spooky take pics and let me know everything you do so I can show this to my plumber thanks. check in the mail tomorrow and I will pm for more food thanks again John

[bovsbaitboxes]

Spooky are you using the whole 50 ft or do you want to sell the extra thanks john

[bovsbaitboxes]

Spooky sorry one more thing are you doing this or someone else if so please let me know I will pay someone to come do this for me thanks John

[Spooky_Fish]

Spooky are you using the whole 50 ft or do you want to sell the extra thanks john

I may have some excess, but if it works well, I am going to install another zone for the 675's and will have to buy another roll. I should have a lot of extra if I do the second zone and buy the second roll.

are you doing this or someone else
When I installed the zone for the fishtank room, I had the guy install all the plumbing, except for zone valves, for three additional future zones. So all I have to do is install a zone valve, run PEX, make some connections and install a thermostat to complete any additional zones. That part CruelSun and I can and have done ourselves.
The plumbing to add the zones to the boiler is something I would not touch. If ya screw it up your going to be out of heat and hot water...you definitely want a pro to do this.
The parts for adding a zone are pretty inexpensive but there is a lot of labor. You may want to install an extra zone or two since it's not much more labor when your already installing 1. Just don't buy the zone valve until you need it, that's the only pricey item ($80)

check in the mail tomorrow and I will pm for more food
Thanks. I have about 15-20 lbs. of each type of food left.

[Spooky_Fish]

Plumbing for four additional zones added to heating system
81

[bovsbaitboxes]

yes I have seen the pic I have a friend that is a plumber and have 1 extra zone on boiler so I may do it that way please take pics as it goes so I can show my buddy thanks John

[fischfan13]

Plumbing for four additional zones added to heating system
81

Looks like something that Willy Wonka might have used.:biggrin:

[zallyn]

If your looking for the most reliable and cost effective way to do this ......



Here is a simple piping diagram of how the system should be piped. http://www.bradfordwhite.com/images/shared/pdfs/Piping/1H_1T_TCRCMV.pdf The water heater can be substituted with a boiler.

You should include a thermo on the mixed hot water out line, this way you can adjust the outgoing water temp of the mixing valve.

The mixed hot water out and the system return are connected together with a coil located in the sump such as the one linked to earlier. You can have the pump run continous run or you can start and stop the pump with a controller http://www.automatedaquariums.com/ranco.htm .

The water supply is hooked to the water line from your house.

Z

[nick a]

Nice info--even nicer tag line:beerchug:

[Spooky_Fish]

Okay, CruelSun showed up with the Pex tools and we put it together. Here ya go:
100
50 foot spool of stainless cut in half to form two heat exchangers
101
Exchangers affixed through a 12 foot piece of Trex to stabilize and fix their position in the tanks while allowing the entire system to be lifted out of the tanks for tank maintenance. This also isolates all the connection above the Trex so potential leaks are obvious and will not drip into the tank.
102
CruelSun composing the Pex connections to supply and return both exchangers including valves to adjust flow through each exchanger independently
103
The platform now in place over the tanks, the exchangers are in their tanks and the Pex feed and return lines connected
104
View of one heat exchanger submerged and running

The exchange of heat is astonishing. The feed side of each exchanger is way too hot to touch, while you can hold the return line in your hand comfortably. The water really sucks the heat out of those coils quickly. I was able to add 3-degrees to each 1,000-gallon tank in about 2 hours. With the electric heaters that would take days. Also the electric heaters were almost constantly one, judging by how cool the Pex is this morning I don't think the exchangers have been on for about the last 5 hours. Not bad since we turned it on about 10 hours ago and set the thermostat 3 degrees higher than the tank temps!

[Spooky_Fish]

You can have the pump run continous run or you can start and stop the pump with a controller http://www.automatedaquariums.com/ranco.htm .
Z
That is the same controller I am using. The probe is quite long and it has the facility to lengthen it. It also allows you to add up to 4 probes in different locations in the tank and you can set it to average the temps or trigger off the highest or lowest. Once you have it set correctly, you can flip a switch inside the thermostat that disables the buttons on the panel...that way nobody can accidentally change the temp on the thermostat.

The only problem we had was that it did not pull the 24 Volts from the thermostat wire to power the display...it needed a second power source. What we did was replace the thermostat wire with category-5 wire and used one of the extra pairs to draw 24volts from the boiler power supply. I'm sure that's not the way to do it, but we wanted it up right away. I think you can get the same thermostat which takes 120volt you can plug right in the wall. That would be easier but then you have 2 wires connected to the thermostat.