cooling water bath

[BrianMackey]

does anyone know of a under 200.00 water bath that can acutally cool the water down to 70 degrees? I need one to hold a 64 ounce bottle of developer

thanks in advance

brian

[Peter De Smidt]

You could adapt a used aquarium chiller. Try checking out craigslist. New one's will be more than $200, I expect. Check out Marinedepot.com .

[Gem Singer]

Use crushed ice or ice cubes in a plastic bag to cool down liquids in trays.

Place a one gallon container of filtered (or distilled) water in the refrigerator over night, and use that water to make up developer and stop.

A bottle of fixer will cool down to 70 degrees after about an hour in the frig.

Wash water is running water from the cold water tap, which can be 84-86 degrees here in Texas during the summer months.

No problem as long as the film is fixed and the temp. doesn't exceed 86 degrees.

[BrianMackey]

You could adapt a used aquarium chiller. Try checking out craigslist. New one's will be more than $200, I expect. Check out Marinedepot.com .

Awesome thank you ---

[Bill Burk]

Hey Brian,

Good luck it'd be great to know if you find a real chiller. I added an extra hose between the faucet and sink, coiled it up and tied it with zip ties. In the summer, when I want 68* I put the coil in an ice chest with water and a bag of ice. At a reasonable low flow rate I can cool tap water (or tap water with a little hot) to 68*. I suppose a copper coil would do better.

Bill

[BrianMackey]

I found this, you can insert into a plastic tube (size of choice) and it will hold it at 70 degrees :) but I think 25 minutes in the fridge will save me the bling LOL

http://www.marinedepot.com/CoolWorks_Ice_Probe_with_Power_Supply_Micro_Nano_Aquarium_Chillers-CoolWorks-CW1111-FICHMC-vi.html

[wentbackward]

You need to be careful cooling large bodies of water in your fridge/freezer, it can seriously affect the temperature in there and shorten the lifespan of frozen foods. My manufacturer recommends putting my freezer on deep freeze for min 6 hours before adding large things to the fridge or freezer compartment.

I use a cheaper aquarium cooler and large polystyrene packing box, free from our local greengrocer. It takes about 4-6 hours to reach 21'C but it works. It's 38'C here at the moment!

We also use it to chill beers and white wine when we have a barbeque!

[Wallace_Billingham]

also you can DIY a chiller using a cheap dorm room size refridgerator. Depending on the model you can easily drill a hole into the side or top and run a coil of PVC pipe/tubes that are held inside of a bucket of water. Then you can run a cheap water pump that they sell for garden ponds to keep the water circulating around.

I know of many people who have done just that for their Reef Aquariums

[ki6mf]

1. Get plastic water/soda bottles.
2. Freeze them.
3. Place in water to cool to desired temperature.
4. Place in chemicals to cool to desired temperature.
5. Wash off bottles before and after use to avoid contamination.
6, Re freeze bottles for the next time.
Use with conventional trays

[Helen Bach]

If you have a heated tempering bath you can use that - set it to 70 and then cool with frozen gel packs, not ice cubes which can lead to temperature fluctuations if they melt too fast and hence absorb heat faster than the tempering bath heater can supply it.

[Laura_Campbell]

My water cooling system is similar to Bill's. The cold water here runs very hot during summer and the ice chest/water/coiled hose system works great, and cools fast. I use a few plastic sports bottles filled with frozen water in place of ice.

[BrianMackey]

Hey Brian,

Good luck it'd be great to know if you find a real chiller. I added an extra hose between the faucet and sink, coiled it up and tied it with zip ties. In the summer, when I want 68* I put the coil in an ice chest with water and a bag of ice. At a reasonable low flow rate I can cool tap water (or tap water with a little hot) to 68*. I suppose a copper coil would do better.

Bill

I did find one for 119.00 and you mount it in a plastic tub, like the old petersons cooling bath in the 70's , but i foudn that i can putt he 64oz jugs prewash water and dev in teh fidge for 25 minutes and it gets it to 70 degrees so Im thinkin that should be good enough for now.. thanks for the reply and thank you to all who have replied :)

Bri~~