Naja002

Hey Everybody,

After setting up the Bongs, a little further research lead me to "Volenti Coolers", but I could not seem to find any pix of what exactly a "Volenti Cooler" was/looked like. After swapping some PMs with nub about my bong coolers et al.....volenti coolers came up and I finally found some pix in nub's thread here:

Nub builds a (better) bong....

Very cool idea...no doubt, but I'm not a big fan of the appearance! It didn't take long to realize that this could be done horizontally inside of a cooler....and a little bit longer to work out the details in my mind.

I have the tub, pump, tubing.....just need a few pieces of 1/2" pvc pipe....hmmmm. So, yesterday I needed to kill a few minutes before an appointment. So, I killed it at Lowes. This is what I've come up with:



A small Via Aqua 480 pump pumps the water up to the manifold:



I drilled 4x 3/32" holes into each run hoping that they would not be too big or too many....worked out very nicely!



Here's a 10 sec video:




For experiments I often try to use what I have on hand just to get an idea if it will work, what changes (may) need to be made, etc. So, at the moment I'm just using some new wash clothes that I picked up for another reason, but never used. Nub and I both agree that having the cloth reach all the way down into the res water is the way to go. I may pick up some and cut to fit for this task. Anyway, here's a short 20 sec video--I was hoping to show the wicking from start to soaked, but it did not turn out that way. Being brand new cloths.....it took a bit for them to get soaked and start wicking well, but this will give you a good idea of what's going on:




Next, make a cut in the top, drill a few holes, add a small fan:



The towel is there to cover a 3rd hole. I've found that just having the fan hole and the open one on the end works fine, if not better.....

Results? Well, I don't know right now. I added hot water....probably about 4 gals of it. Temps went from ~100F to ~72.5 in ~1hr.....ambient is 82F and ~75% humidity. So, it's below ambient....it works. However, it's a no-load situation right now....so, how well it works?.....not sure atm. I'm not sure what I am going to do with it at this point. I really just wanted to put it together and check out the concept. But being who I am...... .........I did have to hook it up to my bong setup.....

Naja002

So, I hauled it out to the out-building:




Made a few cuts in the res top and Volenti tub in order to run the source flow (pump from res) and return (siphon tube):




Got my siphon starter setup:




After the res and the Volenti tub reach water height equilibrium.....I only had ~2" of exposed cloth above the water. Not ideal, but this is just an experiment and--it can be fixed with a little bit of effort....not something I'm in the mood for today though....

Within ~30mins though the Volenti temp was already about 3F below the res temp:



And the res temp is ~10F below ambient......@ ~ 46% humidity:



The 80F is the temp of the air coming out of the bongs.....5F below ambient....5F above res water temp.


The Via Aqua pump adds ~10w to the setup.


It's going to get warmer still today, so I'm going to keep an eye on everything and see what happens......may be more temp pix to come.....

Naja002

Well, once again....being who I am.....after a minute of thinking about--I just needed to fix the high water problem. Well, that tub had been used in a different application for a couple of years. The wood was already cut....all I needed to do was drain the tub a bit, move it, place the wood, move the tub back, and extend 1 end of the siphon tube....not a big deal really. So, I just got up off my duff and did it:




Added ~3.75" to the height....which was just about right!

Here's a vid (~20 secs) of it in action--with the top off:



~1/2" lower would have been perfect. Without the top on it's almost silent.


Everything else looks the same, except a few inches higher.

Don't get worked up, folks...whatever happens here: This is just a toy to play with for a bit. I have no idea what I am going to do with it or how long I'm going to keep it running. It does offer quite a bit of experimentation though...being mixed in with everything else....turn off the rads and bongs and see how this puppy does by itself!

nub

You could double this up. Using a sock cooler inline before the volenti cooler.
Basically a sock cooler would be the same thing, but with a copper heat exchanger tube, with no holes in it. The water would wick up into the towels by capillary action in it. Setting it up as a two stage like that should give you even better temps while remaining nearly silent.

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T3h_Ch33z_Muncha

interesting..very interesting. Would it yield any better results with heaps of tiny holes all the way along the pipes?

__________________
Please don't call me Muncha, as cheese is not the only insinuatable munchable object; Ch33z will suffice. Oh, and i almost forgot to express my love for Heru
Planned upgrades (kind of in order): 22" Monitor, Goliathus Omega (mousepad), new chair, Windows 7, CM 690, new desk, Ideazon ZBoard MERC, Sennheiser HD201, bong, DX 11 card(s)+necessary PSU
Epic things happening in 2010: Toy Story 3, new H.I.M album, Supreme Commander 2, MechWarrior, The Elder Scrolls V, Mafia II, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Bioshock 2, Crysis 2, Iron Man 2

nub

No. There just has to be sufficient holes for water to flow. It will spread itself out in the towels.

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DIRTYDUCK

This is pretty darn cool! I love all the fountains! Going sideways with it makes me wanna facepalm myself into a coma...I can't believe I didn't think of that. One of the biggest problems about evap cooling is that your pump has to be strong enough to get the head you need but not so huge that you have a ton of heat dump. It seems like you were able to take one of the weakest pumps on the market and make it work like a champ! 3c is not a bad drop for a first run! At least its working!


The next time your at the store (and I know you have talked about this with Nub) grab a pack of that microfiber cloth. its SUPER cheap and it might get you a couple more C's because its porous and will allow the air to mix with the water better.

I freaking love the fact that people are getting into the evap cooler trend. Its so much fun to tinker with and you learn a TON about cooling while you do it.

I am interested to see how that little box will do on its own though...

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nub

Hey DD, I read that to mean that the volenti cooler temp is 3F below the tower bong coolers reservoir temp. And that the bong reservoir is 10F below ambient. Meaning that with the volenti in the loop, his water is now 13F below ambient.
He really needs to lower the water level a bit to expose more of the wicking material (looks like hand towels to me) for that volenti to handle the loop on it's own. If he doubles it up and puts a sock cooler in the loop too, then he should pick up another 2C or so, maybe 3C.

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T3h_Ch33z_Muncha

how far can this be taken? 4-6foot tall towels/some sort of material?

__________________
Please don't call me Muncha, as cheese is not the only insinuatable munchable object; Ch33z will suffice. Oh, and i almost forgot to express my love for Heru
Planned upgrades (kind of in order): 22" Monitor, Goliathus Omega (mousepad), new chair, Windows 7, CM 690, new desk, Ideazon ZBoard MERC, Sennheiser HD201, bong, DX 11 card(s)+necessary PSU
Epic things happening in 2010: Toy Story 3, new H.I.M album, Supreme Commander 2, MechWarrior, The Elder Scrolls V, Mafia II, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Bioshock 2, Crysis 2, Iron Man 2

Naja002

Not sure what you mean. I can think of a few possibilities that fit within your description....some might help, some probably would not. Got a pic? I'm a visual aids kinda guy here.....


I can and might add a few more holes, but there's a breaking point. We need even flow down all of the runs. Too many holes or holes that are too big will allow the water a path of least resistance. If you look at the pic/video--all of the little fountains are about the same height--that's a good thing: Equal flow down all of the runs. However, the height of the fountains means there's pressure....lost flow. By adding more holes--very carefully--flow can be increased as the back pressure is decreased (fountain height reduces). But again, there's a breaking point--once there are too many holes or they are too big....flow will become uneven.




Those little Via Aqua pumps are more then they seem. Yes, they are inexpensive, but those little 480s offer ~46-58" of head. Yeah, I tested them a few yrs ago when I first started buying them--straight up in a 3/8' ID tube.

One thing to keep in mind is that that's 3F more off of 10F below ambient. The water coming into the HVC was already 10F below ambient....this little HVC took another 3F off that....


Where would I find that at walmart? The sewing section? Would the women know what I was talking about if I said "microfiber"?

One thing holding some folks back is the disinfection. I think I covered that pretty well in my Bong thread.....

Hard to tell really. I turned off the rads and bong fans and, of course, temps started to climb (~0.1F every ~30secs--roughly). But my WCing setup absorbs ~800w--probably a little more--so that's a bit much for this little HVC to deal with. I think it could handle 1 pc, but there's no way I could expect it to do much with 3x OCed crunchers with 5x OCed vid cards.....

Buuuuuuut, I just turned off the rad fans and bong fans. It's currently 57F outside. Set a timer for 1 hr.....we'll see what happens. Sun is coming up, so outside temps will rise a bit....probably not much over the next hour....

You read it right with 1 exception. The res temp was 10F below ambient, but that's total. Think about it: The HVC temp is 3F below the res, but the res is receiving cooler water from the HVC. So, without the HVC....the res temp would be what? 8.5F below ambient? 9F? 8F? Ya with me? Water is being taken from the res....cooled a bit further in the HVC and then returned to the res, but it's not actually being done in a 2 stage format--that make sense? A true 2 stage format would send 100% of the water through the HVC, but right now--we don't know what % of the res water is going through the HVC. We just know that the HVC is cooling whatever the amount of water that goes through it by ~3F.


They are hand towels. In this exact setup--I need to raise the water level maybe 1/2"--that would make it silent except for the little fan. But ideally, I would pick up some cloth and cut it to fit at a longer length allowing me to lower the water level and expose more cloth to the airflow. However, again: with it setup the way it is right at this moment--lowering the water level would just increase the noise....

Setup properly--Yes.

I'll post back in probably ~1 hr with some screen shots....