Artificial Water Cooling.down in Texas

[Norm Smith]

Hi, my name is Norm Smith and I'm very knew to the design and operation of an aquaponic system. Having said that, I do have some questions that you may able to help me with.I'm interested in growing trout and perhaps land-locked salmon (if legal), but i'm concerned about temperature.

I have a running 23 cubic foot chest freezer. Would it be possible to run flexible pvc pipe around in the freezer in a heat exchanger fashion while using the remainder of the freezer for food? The only down side would be setting the flow rate so fast the water doesn't cool off or too slow to where it doesn't get cold enough.

 

Allow me to thank ya'll for any help you can give me.

 

Norm Smith

Watauga,Texas

[Jeremiah Robinson]

Very creative - I like it!

That would work, except for the fact that you would have to cool (read: pump) all the time or the water in that pipe would freeze.  You could use glycol, and use the same kind of heat-exchanger loop in your fish tank with a submersible-thermostat controlled pump.

You can find some other ideas for cooling here.

[Max Gfx]

I certainly wouldn't use it for food storage because you're going to be constantly putting heat into it. I do something similar with a little dorm room refrigerator and a couple jockey-box draft coils in it. The fridge gets down to 35 degrees and works perfectly fine for cooling a 350 gallon system with rainbow trout. My water is 71 degrees year round, trout and plants are both happy.

[Norm Smith]

Thanks Max,

As I said in my question I am SO new I don't even know the right questions to ask, but I must ask this. What the heck is a jockey- box?  Again, thanks for all the great, if bewildering, info.
 
Max Gfx said:

I certainly wouldn't use it for food storage because you're going to be constantly putting heat into it. I do something similar with a little dorm room refrigerator and a couple jockey-box draft coils in it. The fridge gets down to 35 degrees and works perfectly fine for cooling a 350 gallon system with rainbow trout. My water is 71 degrees year round, trout and plants are both happy.

[Max Gfx]

A jockey box is an ice box with beer taps on it, those beer taps are connected to coils old stainless steel tubing inside of the ice box, covered with ice. They cool the beer as it passes through the coils.