Cold Water Heat Exchanger for Garage

[newfiekid]

Looking to cool my garage down during the hot summer midwest days. I have an artesian well where the water flows out without pumping into a tank in my basement-and then the excess flows out of the tank out to the ditch/river. The water is 48 degrees F and flows at 5-10 gallons per minute. I am thinking of routing the overflow of water (from the tank to the ditch/river) into my detached garage and having it flow through a heat exchanger/radiator with a fan to push air through it. Goal is to cool the garage down to a more comfortable temp without having excessive humidity. It should be minimal cost to run as the only cost would be to run the fan (the water flows due to ground pressure).

Concerns/Questions:
Is the the heat difference between the water (48deg F) and the air temp (75-95 F) enough to effectively cool?
Will the heat exchanger in the garage sweat excessively causing humidity concerns?
How much resistance or pressure will be required to push the water through the radiator/heat exchanger? The well produces lots of volume but does not have standard water pressure.
Is a junkyard radiator sufficient or should i splurge and get a heat exchanger?

Feel free to tell me where my idea will have issues/fail. Thanks for the help/input!

 

[chinboys]

So you want to make and use water as the refrigerant in your design of a system to cool your garage.
You aren't the first and won't be the last.
The HVAC-R industry uses a combination of water and refrigerant to accomplish this.
I used to live in a co-op in NYC that used this system.
It is called a chill water system where water is circulated in a closed loop to the building radiators with blowers on them.
The water is chilled by R-123 refrigerant in its closed loop in a heat exchanger.

BTW, water is an excellent refrigerant or fluid for heat absorption.
And you have the right temperature for use too as most home-based HVAC systems might have their evaporator coils' temperature ranging from 40 - 50 F to cool and dehumidify the hotter air.

You will get condensate as part of the cooling process.

The flow of water should be adjustable as well as the speed of the radiator fan for the heat of the garage to transfer to the water to raise its temperature. The size of the radiator will determine this.

Good luck and let us know how you did.

 

[pcmeiners]

With 5-10 gallons a minute flow, little utility cost cooling...and here I thought I was doing great with minisplit costs.
Curious what you will use for heat exchange. Was thinking stacked up truck/automobile radiators, especially copper ones from trucks cars, as they have larger flow ability and less susceptible to corrosion than aluminum; with low cost exchanges such as salvage yard cores, no need to purchase expensive exchanges. With the flow you have you can cool a fair sized garage or house, the only main issue is the exchange needs to support high flow without a pump, again a truck or car radiator. Worked on a few artesian wells in the past, damn the water is cold.

 

[jlv03]

There is a company that makes a geothermal style small system to supplement heating/cooling.

Affordable Heating and Cooling | Well-Connect Geothermal

Choose affordable heating and cooling with a Well-Connect hybrid heat pump. Our geothermal heating and cooling system can help you heat and cool for half.

wellconnectgeo.com

From what I understand, it is rather expensive. Cheaper than a full blown geothermal system where you have to drill wells or trenches, but still a lot of money.

Maybe keeping with the automotive radiator design thought - what if you did a minisplit and put the radiator outside in front of the minisplit intake? You would still get some benefit by sucking in cooler air during the summer, but the minisplit would still work if you don't have the water flow.

 

[Firebrick43]

Looking to cool my garage down during the hot summer midwest days. I have an artesian well where the water flows out without pumping into a tank in my basement-and then the excess flows out of the tank out to the ditch/river. The water is 48 degrees F and flows at 5-10 gallons per minute. I am thinking of routing the overflow of water (from the tank to the ditch/river) into my detached garage and having it flow through a heat exchanger/radiator with a fan to push air through it. Goal is to cool the garage down to a more comfortable temp without having excessive humidity. It should be minimal cost to run as the only cost would be to run the fan (the water flows due to ground pressure).

Concerns/Questions:
Is the the heat difference between the water (48deg F) and the air temp (75-95 F) enough to effectively cool?
Will the heat exchanger in the garage sweat excessively causing humidity concerns?
How much resistance or pressure will be required to push the water through the radiator/heat exchanger? The well produces lots of volume but does not have standard water pressure.
Is a junkyard radiator sufficient or should i splurge and get a heat exchanger?

Feel free to tell me where my idea will have issues/fail. Thanks for the help/input!

The problem will be humidity. Our local university has chilled water cooling and walls sweat profusely and there is serious mold issues in some of them as a result

 

[pcmeiners]

With 48°F, moisture will condense out of the air so humidity will not be an issue. Jiv03 has the best idea, water to gas mini-split, basically a geothermal unit, without the need for a water pump. It should be dirt cheap for AC, even for heat it should be reasonable. No less very little installation labor. An issue, the water needs testing, needs to be close to neutral or stainless steel heat exchange is needed.

"The problem will be humidity. Our local university has chilled water cooling and walls sweat profusely and there is serious mold issues in some of them as a result"

Ran a couple large buildings, biggest problem of wall sweating is caused by leaving the ventilation system running in the early AM hours (3-7am). Air exchanged in the early am hours is saturated with moisture, deposits on interior surface due to the wall temperature lowered just before 3am. 7 day timer is needed to shut down building blowers after hours or at least from 11 pm to 7am.

 

[fitter30]

Chilled water systems for buildings is 40° to pull out humidity. Coldest system was a ice bank running 36°. Commercial chiller runs 10° temp drop water side. Standard design cw coil in the bottom out the top, coldest water leaving air side. Using a radiator have no idea about gpm or btu rating. Mechanical engineer might know how to figure gpm and cfm.

 

[Innovate1]

Seems like a workable system to me but may not remove as much humidity as you would like. Might need to limit how much you cool the air to avoid reaching very high relative humidity and in the midwest that will be a big limitation on the most oppressive days. Automotive radiators will be lots cheaper than any other exchangers and should handle a good amount of flow. You could also use the shroud and maybe the fan motor. Might need a couple to get enough capacity to make a difference. You could put one in front of the other and run the cool water into the one nearest the outlet and the slightly warmer water out of that one into the upstream one. Try some things, take some measurements and do incremental improvements. Interesting project - I'll be interested to see some future posts on this if you go ahead with it. You might want to take some flow before it goes to the basement tank as it sounds like you have more than enough flow - it will be slightly cooler that way.