using my water well for refrigeration?

[picmacmillan]

I have a 2' diameter by 20' deep well.....its in northern ontario and the water is ice cold all year round....the trouble is they used an old culvert for the casing and the water is rusty to say the least...and although it has been tested and is drinkable, i have decided to dig another well for drinking water......but what i would like to know is if anyone has ever used there well waters coldness for refrigeration of any kind and if so, how they did it....where we are i dug a hole for my mailbox in the middle of june and there was still frost in the ground at about 1 foot down....any help would be appreciated....pickster

[drdongle]

You could use it as a cold water chiller, but I doubt that you could use it to refrigerate, lots of people in this region had "spring houses" to chill milk, eggs, etc, before electricity was available.

Carpe Vigor

Dr.D

[picmacmillan]

thanks dr. D....i was looking at a post that was talking about using copper lines and chilling the water as it passed through....i wondered if there was some way of using the cold lines to emmulate a refrigerators cooling mechanisms...thanks again pickster

[sean]

Cool idea oops! Certainly one way keeping beer cool. Have you measured the temp? A low powered pump would is needed as far as could see...Sean

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/s.amesbury/homepage.htm

[wpowokal]

This is done, here is just one link.

http://www.canren.gc.ca/prod_serv/index.asp?CaId=150&PgId=769

The problem with a static water source is it will heat up faster than the surrounding ground will cool it.

The ability of any cooling system is governed by the temperature difference, pumping the water through a copper coil in house with a fan blowing over the coil would work but realy the cost of pumping would probally exceed the gain.

Not meaning to pour cold water on your idea but........

regards Allan

[nothing to lose]

My idea on this is to use well water to cool the frig coils. Like a heat exchanger so the well water stays safe. That should improve the effieciency of a normal frig compare to cooling the coils with ambient air.

I would say if you just wanted to use the well water itself. Measure the temp to see how cold it really is. If cold enough, take a chest type freezer, insulate very well on the outside. Place a safe small radiator inside and a small cheap low power fan, maybe 12v computer types.

 Run cold water through radiator and circulate the air inside the chest through it with the fan.

 You should be able to get it as cold as your water supplie. How long it takes would depend on many factors, size of chest, radiator, volume of water etc..

Beware some radiators may still use lead solders, it may be considered illegal to put your water back into the well etc...

If you use a coil of copper tubbing and use a sealed loop system you should be ok and be able to use a low powered pump.

You could use an normal upright type fridge, but you lose so much cold air everytime you open the door I dought it would keep up very well using just well water for cooling, or you would need such a large cooling system, pipes, pump, ect.. it's probably not worthwhile.

You could try the old Ice Box methode of cooling and just put the cold coils, radiator, in the top of the box and let convection work. Cold coils cool the air at the top, it sinks, warmer air rises cools sinks. No power needed other than the pump for moving the cold water. But since your working with mabe 40-50 degree water, not ice, I don't think it will work very well.

My total opion on this really though.

 This would be a good Idea for cold drinks, vegatables, and other things that keep well like eggs and cheese maybe. I don't think it will be cold enough to use as a normal frig for long term (normal) storage of meats and such that spoils fast. Then use a smaller more efficient normal type frig that gets real cold for things like meats and milk that spoil fast. Then you won't have to open the power hog very often and it should seldom run, plus you can use a smaller one. Use the water cooler frig for all the constant usage items like soda's beer, lunch meats, catchup, and things that get used fast often or keep well.

 Like a dozen eggs should last a week or more I would think, so keep about 3 days worth in the water frig and the rest in the power hog.

[John II]

Wow sounds like your water in your location is much less polluted than ours is here in S.W. Missouri ! I'm envious ! How about spacing your new well quit a large distance from your old well, then pump cold water from your new well through a heat exchanger connected to your refrigerator condenser and flow the water back into the old well. This way it would take much longer if ever to warm the ground up. It would only take a very small circulation pump, as the water going down one well would balance the pulling force to pull the water out of the other well.

With your refrigerator condenser being chilled, it would take much less energy to run your refrigerator. In effect what you are doing is treating it similar to a heat pump in reverse.

John II

[nothing to lose]

"The problem with a static water source is it will heat up faster than the surrounding ground will cool it."

To a point that is true. However you need to look at the full picture also.

 If you have 20' of standing cold water in a well and are only trying to keep 4 square feet cold and it's insulated very well, then you are not aborbing all that much heat to have to get rid of and the ground should be able to handle it. Of course it would be a problem doing the same thing with the entire house with the same size and type setup.

[K3CZ]

Be advised that the technolgy and hardware for an application like this is well developed for whole-house heating and air conditioning, and is called ground-source heat pumping, among other terms.  Up to 3hp or somewhat more, it is practical for residential use in temperate (!) climates.  However, the water cannot be totally one-source; it has to go back into another well, or else be closed loop via thousands of feet of earth-buried tubing (below the frost line), or use multiple driven wells.  Whether it would be practical for fractional hp use using a single dug well with a big reservoir remains to be determined.

Good luck!                                K3CZ

[erne]

If you want to run your refrigerator on water you will have to freeze it to get 40 degrees out of it don't make sense does it?? Let me explain. Last year I put 40 feet of pipe in a 55 gal. Rain Barrel and let it freeze. I had the pipe filled with antifreeze and circulated it to my refrigerator. It kept the temp at 40 degrees. I have a conserve refrigerator. It has 2 compressors. One for freezer other for refrigerator. My add on system wouldn't do anything for the freezer. (wouldn't get cold enough. I talked to a fellow on a different site that was saying he could freeze. I corrected him as to his errors. He then told me the secret to making such a thing work. Seems ice is not a good conductor of cold in that manner. If I would use antifreeze in the barrel  instead of my system I could in fact freeze also. I will have to run 2 lines and pumps but will be able to do both this year. I use a  mechanical thermostat to operate the system and set it lower than the refrigerator thermostat. I have pure sign wave this year. (outback). Last year I had modified sign wave and was able to save 300 watts of electricity per day by being able to get my inverters to go to search when not actually running the appliance. I was able to further reduce my consumption by 40% with my winter device. There is a photo in my photo section of the cut down  auto a/c condenser unit that goes in the refrigerator. Hopes this helps. I have a article in the archives on the system and its consumption numbers. ..erne

[picmacmillan]

weel, i jsut finished my first genny yesterday and my question has been fruitful in getting some great ideas on how to use my well.....thanks ...pickster

[John II]

Right off the top of my head, it seems to me that any additional cooling of a refrigerator's condenser couldn't but help improve it's overall performance. They run quite warm or hot to the touch.

Any unit I have looked at, they try to maximize it's cooling ability as much as financially possible. Running cold water over one should improve it's cooling ability and reduce compressor run time. Can anyone double verify this for me ?

John II

[ghurd]

Like K3CZ said. But they call it geo-thermal in some areas.

Common for heating and cooling.

[chammons]

Our family used a spring to keep milk and other items cold.  It was needed because our farm did not have electricity.  We simply created a dam in the spring and floated items tied to rope!  Not ideal but got the job done.