Hey Watercoolers
I had a strange event occur with my watercooling rig. This might happen to other folks so I thought I should post. I have a lot of fluid in my system because I installed an automotive transmission radiator on my Quadcore about 2 years ago. Heres some fun pics:
http://www.orbitalmindcontrol.com/mollusk/quadcore/
Anyway, this dropped the temperature down to around 30C(to keep it cool during 10 hour 3DSMAX renders). Recently I've been fussing with it a lot and reconfiguring components and I decided to run pure water in it for a while to clean it out (I noticed sediment in the reservoir that I couldn't see in the green fluid) and see what happened. Then I forgot about it for a while with pure water in it. After a couple weeks a hose popped off the back of my machine, for the first time. PANIC! I refilled it and ran it on pure water again like a dope. A week later I noticed that the system had pressurized to the point that a pinhole stream of water was shooting out of the reservoir one morning.
I figure the one logical possiblity is that the water was contaminated (I use distilled water but its not air tight) and I must have been brewing some beer in my cooling system. The gas output from the bacteria/yeast/whatever was building up over time causing pressure.
I went back to a 50/50 with propelyne glycol/distilled water. I use Sierra automotive antifreeze which is supposed to be safer than ethylene glycol. The gas buildup has stopped.
Any insights on this phenomenon? I guess the chemicals do more than increase the cooling effect, they also disinfect the system and make it inhospitable for microorganisms.
Hope all is well.