LaserUser.com Forum (formerly RDWorksLab)

The aquarium heater in the 5200 chiller got a partial test last night.

Got up in the middle of the night, and was forced to make a detour past my computer to check on it. It was a bit surprising...

The main relay kicked on to power up the pump as designed. The low last night outside was only in the upper 20's and the building is insualted, so I wasn't expecting much. The ambient at the tube was only down around 50 when I went to bed. But the external pump surprised me. I did not expect it to put any heat into the coolant, but I watched it a bit, and it was adding a tenth here and a tenth there.

By morning the sun had warmed the ambient enough to shut off the main relay, but the coolant temp was still in the mid to upper 50's !!!

I didn't watch it for the two hours in between, but with the external pump adding just a little bit of heat, I don't think the aquarium heater actually came on. Pretty bad when you are hoping for a colder night just to test the system...

It appears that file may be zipped? I found my chiller has a heating element but it is very slow, it may have to be on all the time.

The link on the page goes to a google drive, no zip or encryption. The folder at the top labeled 'Heater. for Cloudray....' is just that. The first item is a word doc, the rest are pictures.

It opens fine now- old man pushing buttons, what could go wrong. Thanks Gene

What do you think put them in...

Update

Has been down in the mid to low 20's (F), and everything is running normal on the chiller heater. The ambient in the tube enclosure will drop into the low 40's, but the coolant with the aquarium heater is in the upper 40's to low 50's. Couldn't have done better if I planned it that way. Oh wait, that's what I planned for it to do!

Update

Had a 'good' test of my DIY aquarium heater in the CR-5200.

Got down into the low single digits (F) outside last night, that's around -16C for the rest of you.

The laser shed is insulated, but unheated. I got up twice last night and popped the monitor up. Ambient room temp 4' off the floor was in the low teens. Ambient air temp under the tube was in the mid 20's, but the coolant temp with the pump running was in the low 40's. Neither time did I see the indicator that the actual aquarium heater was on. Both the pump and heater on separate controls are set for 40F, and the chiller has an external pump but sits just under some of the tubing inside the chiller case.

It is starting the pump just as expected, but so far I have yet to see the coolant temp get low enough to trip the heat thermostat. Not sure if it's heat transmitted directly through the pump housing, friction heat, radiant heat from the motor up into the tubing, or some combination of all three. Only other possibility is that the heater has only came on for short times and not when I've stopped to check on it, but I can say that I'm happily confident in the arrangement that I may not keep checking it on these cold nights.