Quote:
Originally Posted by vpur  Yeah Luke your a technical guy, all those probe chillers are Peltier Coolers. You could build one up, simple reverse thermocouple. As for chillin hydro, they suck. |
I couldn't agree more on the fact that peltier chillers suck. Peltiers are very inefficient for cooling needs... The only place they shine through is in very small applications where efficiency doesn't matter and the size of the device does (such as cooling computers) For a hydroponics op they're complete wasters of electricity. Kinda like the difference between using an incandescent and a HPS
But I think that luke was talking about Drop-in chillers when he was refering to the "probe type" chillers. Where the heat exchanger is on a long flexible wand that drops into your reservoir, it doesn't use a pump to pump it into the chiller. The internal cooling components are the same. Like this one:
as opposed to one of these that pumps the water into the chiller.
The main disadvantage to the drop-ins is they're hard to locate outside the growroom which is almost essential unless you compensate with extra ventilation. Unless of course... Your reservoir is located outside the growroom
I still like drop ins, they're easy to clean... They're just less efficient, but still plenty more efficient than a peltier and perfectly suitable for growing if you can deal with the heat issue.