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Burried Radiator writeup/results! PICS!

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FizzledFiend

Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2001
Location
Winston Salem NC
sorry for the attachements i will try to keep things sorted over the next few post. My ISP doesn't agree with me on a few things so I have no place to host pics @ the moment. therfore they are going to be small in nature to allow for board restrictions

First off I tried to dig thru and find the original pics of this "radiator" and came up shorthanded. So for working purposes I used the link provided by others that matches this radiator exactly : http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/productdetail.jsp?xi=xi&ItemId=1611779157&ccitem=
5E301.JPG


I picked this baby up several months back for way way less than they are selling here..they had about 4 or 5 of these on the self @ the time.

A quick breakdown of the dimensions of this unit:
Code:
Element Copper/Aluminum 
Length (Ft.) 5 
Type Commercial 
Tube Size (In.) 1 1/4 
Connection Sweat Thread 
Fin Size (In.) 4 1/4 x 3 5/8 
Fin Thickness (In.) 0.020 
Fin per Feet 50 
Fin Material Aluminum 
Application Hot Water or Steam Heating Systems
 
location location location

location was everything here. as you can see in the first attachment I was restricted by utilities outside of my labs window. this propossed a problem (pump) we will discuss that later.

brown is septic lines green is data cable line, yellow is power, and blue is phone line. so directly under my lab window won't work...so we move right..dern more lines..move left..AC/Heat pump...more left..PRIME!

I was using a pondmaster pump from my previous ventures in liquid cooling and it had a max head of 5 foot...and whelp by my calculations i was reaching 6 to seven foot. new pump was called for.
 

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jumping hurdles

the pump problem was bad enough, but luckly I had a friend who is into coral reef aquaria that had a pump to suit my needs and he gave it to me..WOOHOO! It's a rena flow 1250: http://www.aquarian.com/cgi-bin/trans.pl/en/products/rena_range/rena_flow.shtml

@ the estimated 6 to 7 foot head I am getting around 400 GPH if I find a better chart I will post it. with all this pressure I am still geting better flow than before so I am happy with that.

next up was going from the 1 1/4 inch fittings down to 16mm pump fittings and again to 1/2 id tubing.

Lowes Hardware's plumbing section to the rescue..these guys run when they see me coming...especially when I have a part in my hand. They just know i have some wacky plumbing problem to solve :D
 
bring on the pics and get to the meat!

ok basically what i decided to do was dig a whole 6 foot in length and 4 foot deep. it rained for 4 days straight here so the red clay ground was good and soft to work with.
 

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I really wanted to make a nice wooden enclosure for my window that would house some of my 172MM straightside fans for room ventelation, but with me being out of work for 2 months and starting a job the fallowing week of this project I went for a quick "will have to do for now solution"
there are soft rubber like accordion style sides on my window AC unit to close of the gap between the window and the ac unit. i pushed the top of this in and poked my lines thru there. I used halfmoon hose clamps to hold the tubing to the house. I insulated the tubing with regualr everyday tubing insulation found @ home improvement stores.the pump is able to run submerged or inline. for maintenance reasons i wanted the pump above ground. So now I have 2 1/2 inch ID tubing and 1 AC power wire running thru a crack in my window seal. I ran into my first "human error" problem. I sealed the unit and had no water in it..DOH. so I decided to utilise my 1.5 gallon resivor from my previous project for filling. I mounted this to the house using plumbers straping. this needs refinement..the whole project. i would like to go with copper tubing and eliminate the resivior all together.

as for temps I am well pleased.

Due to me burning up my bobo ram I had to fall back from ddr400 to ddr333 my max oc on my mobile barton 2500+ was 2.23 and a load temp of 35 celcius before this mod. (FOLD! FOLD! FOLD!)

after the mod I am getting max load temp of 32 celcius :D
 

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now for some system specs.

mobo: Abit An7
cpu: Barton 2500+ Mobile OCed to 2.2 (max ever achived stable 2.7)
Ram: I dunno some cheap Naya ddr333 I ripped out of an upgrade
Water Block: RBX (polytop, stock jet plate, and 1/2 chrome fitings)
pump: renaflow 1250
idle: 30
load: 32
noise: BLAHM thats the jewl here more than anything..loudest part of my system now is the 80mm fan in my PSu and the blasted HDDs.
I suspect it will even drop down more once I get everything in a case!

Thanks for reading and fire away with the questions and comments :)
 
Interesting, Wish I could do a watercooling mod where I just burried a rad in the ground, but I live in Texas.... Where its hot in the summer and you hit clay/stone 8" down.
 
ugh...whelp in north carolina..least ways where I am @ I might run into a good sized bolder that low, but it would be an excersise in futility to try and hit bedrock @ 100 foot
 
What I can advice - is to use high-diameter pipes, as length of them will be enough to limit waterflow. And make sure you protect this rad from corrosion, as it would really suck to find rust in rig.

Idea is nice, but I wonder if you wouldn't get nice results by just havingradiator outside with some fan.

Anyway - problem might be low temperature during winter - need to use anti-freeze + almost certain condensation.

If you continue - please document whole process on photos - I'd love (perhaps as many other forum users) to see this extreme rig.
 
Ven0m said:
What I can advice - is to use high-diameter pipes, as length of them will be enough to limit waterflow. And make sure you protect this rad from corrosion, as it would really suck to find rust in rig...

Thats somethign Ive always wondered about...

I remember reading something in the Washington Post a few years back about marble buildings and statues in DC that were slowely being destroyed, and have been for centuries, by acidic rain. And that the concentration was rising or something like that.

Heres a nice little tidbit:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/acidrain/2.html

anyways what does that acid do to metals? Im sure any large city gets around the same pH levels as DC. OH, NY, and PA seem to have it the worst from that map. Im right on that orange/red boarder line so for people in my are it would definitely be something to think about.

Im sure acid rain will cause some form of corrosion on any metal but I have no idea how much and how pH levels change when passing through soil...
 
If I recall correctly, soil is base. Acid rain is well, acid. So it should come to about even. And how fast it will eat though the rad in the ground will depend on alot of factors. For me, I would have worry more about some ****tard teen from the local middle school thinking its funny cutting up the pipes hanging by the window. :temper:
 
Nice job FF! Wish I could bury a rad over here, but i live in a housing complex and I'm up on the 6th floor. I don't think they'll allow me to bust thru the concrete sidewalk and have over 500ft of tubing comming up the side the building and up to my window, lol .
 
Nebulous said:
Nice job FF! Wish I could bury a rad over here, but i live in a housing complex and I'm up on the 6th floor. I don't think they'll allow me to bust thru the concrete sidewalk and have over 500ft of tubing comming up the side the building and up to my window, lol .

Sounds like overkill :]
Central heating pumps are pretty good such rigs tho. Sealing would also be problematic - high pressure
 
It wouldn't matter if only you didn't put pump at bottom - then you need to check max pressure for which it's designed :] But yes - when it's full ther should be no greater problems with pumping that water ,except for friction over pretty big length...
 
Acid rain is natural, but is made worse by air pollution. Water in air combines with CO2 in the atmosphere to for carbonic acid, so normal rain pH is like 6. Bad acid rain occurs when sulphur and other air pollutants combine with water and make the rain more acidic...

Anyways, Do you think it would help if you bury it lower? Also: Why not make two loops, one with a small pump and block and the other with the big pump and the radiator and then let them combine in a mixing tank?
 
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