Part two – Pump Introduction Fans update.

I’ve sprayed the earlier mod. a matching gloss black, I resisted much pressure from friends to do in contrasting ‘Ferrari’ red or other colours I’m pleased to say.

I’m grateful to Tekbunker member Todd_a for his suggestion regarding a suction tube design for the fan arrangement. I’m still looking into this one but a preliminary prototype using a single massive 172mm x 150mm fan and a highly conductive tube shows great promise.

To really do it justice needs a decent tube designed for the job and of course the fan itself.

My mate Toby lent the 172 - I personally didn’t even know they came that big in 12v - so I’ll need to buy one once the tube is sorted. The fan has a conveniently circular housing unlike the usual rectangular so suits a tube better. Coupled with quiet performance at low rpm, it’s ideal for the suction required.

Anyway on to a short preamble about pumps.
 
A cursory look at pumps in general soon quashed any thoughts of a thrifty fix for this next stage. I quickly recognised that flow rate equated to cash and my £50 budget firmly put me in the 600 to 900 litres per hour range for most pump models. A couple of exceptions caught my eye which I briefly look at later.

From the outset I found it handy to decide on a couple of basic preferences. If nothing else it filters out unsuitable models and brings the whole system into focus.

The first is power. A top flight Eheim 1262 for example draws 80W which is quite a demand for the PSU so external power may be preferable there. For my purposes I estimate only a 10-15W load so either option would be ok. Convenience is an issue here too because an external source needs to be separately switched on. If you forget - your precious chips are fried, whereas the PSU choice covers that expensive mishap.

You may though, like me, feel that leaving the pump on at all times is better and simpler, as it has the added bonus of chilling things even after shutdown and prior to powering up. The typical 50,000 hour lifespan of a pump is a healthy 5.7 years so that’s hardly a concern.

Another constraint is the tubing bore and joints. My current 12mmOD (Outer Diameter) 8mmID (Inner Diameter) tubing is staying so the several half inch bore pumps I’d seen wouldn’t be ideal though some do come with adapters. Besides I’m uncertain at this point what pressure the Reserator system will cope with before the connections start leaking all over the place so I’m keen to keep things fairly conservative.
 
At all stages I’m also thinking about the decibels so a thumper is definitely out. Just how you go about physically hearing a selection of pumps in action is a challenge in itself.

In my case the rather scary individual at my local pet shop was compliant enough at first but after 3 aquarium pumps I could see his years of dealing with errant clawed and fanged pets being directed towards me, so had to leave it there. I did come away with some idea though. As with fans it’s a subjective thing in the end, just bear in mind a silent rating isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be and may only be true at a much reduced rpm.

Given I already have a pump rated at 300 litres per hour it doesn’t seem much of a boost to just double up, however I have to be realistic here and anyway a 100% improvement isn’t bad. How this will translate into temperatures remains to be seen but a moderate gain will suit me just fine.

Pumps

The first I looked at seriously was this rather beautifully engineered model from Laing which is favoured by Alphacool systems and others.

Instead of hiding it away with the wiring I could happily imagine this being proudly on display it’s so appealing, still maybe that’s a geek thing.

It doesn’t quite perform that well at only 420 litres per hour but it’d almost be worth it for the looks alone. The price though sadly busted the budget by 20 quid so bang for buck was well on the low side.

Still a rare diamond in the rough IMO and welcome departure from the many typically industrial designs I’ve seen. The mechanism too is rather novel and cleverly features a spherical ball rotor which eliminates wear and works very quietly.

A variant of this pump has an integral reservoir in similarly elegant clear Perspex.

Next, more pump?