House Water Tank Cooling

[Latif99]

Hi all,
I live in a Desert area where temperatures reaches 120F.
I use a 1000G water tank at home where it is supplied by municipal utility water and that water reaches over 110F which is very hot for shower or normal use.
Can a Radiator and cooling fan be installed at home water tank to cool the water in the tank? I am thinking about installing a radiator, fan, water pump all 12Volts and use solar panel to pump the water from tank through radiator and back to the tank.
If I can lower the water tank temperature by 10-15 degrees, then I achieved my goal.
Is this feasible project?
Chances of corrosion in the radiator?

 

[synphul]

I've moved this thread to another part of the forum since it's not computer related at all.

I don't know if you'll get enough power from the solar panel to power the pump or fan (or both if that's the plan). It would depend on the panel's ability to keep up with the battery or batteries since there are multiple combinations of hardware that could be used. An auto radiator would likely be able to lower temps with an auto radiator cooling fan (which is 12v).

It shouldn't cause corrosion of the radiator but my concern is if the water is meant for drinking. There are standards in place for the handling of potable water, ie for drinking or cooking. The inside of a radiator or the internals of the pump may or may not be clean enough or be able to be made clean enough for direct contact with water you want to drink.

If it's strictly utility water for bathing, washing clothes etc it should be fine.

 

[molletts]

Adding to Synphul's excellent points, it's also worth remembering that the radiator will only cool the water if the air you're pushing through it with the fan is cooler than the water. If the air temperature is 120F (I just converted that into units I understand - holy cow, that's as hot as my CPU!) then that's the "coolest" you can hope to get the water. If the radiator catches solar radiation and heats up above the water temperature, it could end up heating the water.

If you want to cool the water to below the air temperature then you either need a "source of cold" (so to speak - technically a heatsink) - maybe the ground below the house is cooler, an evaporative cooling system or a heat pump of some sort, such as a Peltier effect device or a phase-change refrigerator.

(In other words, a fan doesn't magically cool things - it only helps to move heat around from hotter things to cooler things.)

 

[synphul]

Good point molletts made. I didn't suggest sinking the tank into the ground since it would end up needing pipes and plumbing reconfigured and may turn into a costly project, may be impossible if the land/residence isn't yours (owned) etc. Placing the 1000gal holding tank into the ground would definitely help. It varies based on region, type of soil, how much rainfall etc but if it could be buried completely around 3-4ft under the surface of the ground it would likely keep it much cooler.

There's also an option to use a good length of pipe from the holding tank to the house and bury that so it winds back and forth to get as much pipe underground as possible. Much more achievable without heavy equipment, but time to dig trenches, depends on how much ground area you have to work with, cost of the pipe and so on. It would be most effective for short uses of water, once the volume of water in the underground piping was used up you'd be back to the hot water from the holding tank.

 

[l187l]

the water can only be as cool as the air, so if you keep you house 70F and use a large radiator, the water will be cooled. how large is the tank? You might need a massive pump and some 2-4 inch tubing to cool 50+ gallons(is this a loop or is it just a straight through 1 time cooling thing?). Try to find a radiator that is nickle plated or non corrosive, because regular tap water will have other metals/minerals that will cause corrosion.

 

[sharantk]

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[MU_Engineer]

So if I understand correctly, your water main feeds into a 1000 gallon tank mounted outside the house that you draw from, correct? That kind of a setup plus mentioning a solar panel and 12 volt equipment leads me to believe that you live well outside the U.S. in an area without a reliable water supply (hence you store water in the tank when you can get it, so you have it when the supply is not working) and probably unreliable or absent grid electrical supply. In that case, burying the tank is the best option as the ground will be cooler than the air. You will need a pump to suck the water out of the tank as you will have negative head pressure but otherwise it is straightforward.

Otherwise, the answer is simple, you eliminate the tank so you draw cold water from the buried water supply lines, or you run the water through a chiller such as would be used for hydronic cooling and you have cold water, or you move the tank inside to an air conditioned area and it cools off.