Watercooling With Toilet Water?

I think theres a intermitent air bubble in my water cooling loops... just can't figure why....
 
Major_A said:
Why not get a 5 gallon bucket with a lid from Home Depot? Put some anti alginate in it and pump away. It has to be better than pulling it out of the toilet. And what happens if someone drains all the water from the reservoir?
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I think the whole point was that he didn't need radiators too keep it cool, while also not needing to worry about changing the liquid for the water cooler. Flushing would put fresh new cold water to use.

It's exotic, but not something I would consider sanitary. Probably the most exotic idea I've seen is to bury the radiator outside underground. Even in the summer, the soil in the ground stays cool. Just make sure you get something that doesn't rust.
 
For less than $100, he could easily replace that POS with some fanless atom mobo, that would use less power, produce less heat, and probably run faster...

A neat concept, but I fail to see the point.
 
Ashbringer said:
I think the whole point was that he didn't need radiators too keep it cool, while also not needing to worry about changing the liquid for the water cooler. Flushing would put fresh new cold water to use.

It's exotic, but not something I would consider sanitary. Probably the most exotic idea I've seen is to bury the radiator outside underground. Even in the summer, the soil in the ground stays cool. Just make sure you get something that doesn't rust.
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Wouldn't the soil act as an insulator? I understand that it's cooler underground, but unless the radiator was huge, I would think it would just heat up and stay relatively warm.

Theoretically, could you put your normal radiator INSIDE the toilet tank... dissapating the heat into the toilet water, but not USING the toilet water in the actual cooling loop? Would also eliminate the potential of having air in the system since it would remain sealed.
 
Did anyone else notice the second line in picture P1000487 is not attached to the pump. It's open to all the funk and mineral buildup (or "crap" if you will) in the tank. It looks like an open loop utilizing the water that's in the tank and not some closed loop that's just using the tank as a heat exchanger.

I still think it won't take long before the mineral buildup (you know, the aforementioned "crap") in that toilet tank clogs up the tubing and the micro fine channels in the block itself. It might have been better if it was simply using the toilet tank as a heat exchanger.
 
DustMite said:
It looks like an open loop utilizing the water that's in the tank and not some closed loop that's just using the tank as a heat exchanger.
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uh..

that is the point of the post...
 
I've seen where the tank will get black because the rubber on the flapper valve has slowly deterioated over time and the fine rubber dust coats the tank.
 
c4v3man said:
For less than $100, he could easily replace that POS with some fanless atom mobo, that would use less power, produce less heat, and probably run faster...

A neat concept, but I fail to see the point.
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Maybe an experiment? There's no video cable connected but there's two lan cards, so i'm assuming it's a remote server of some sort. Not really sure what it would be doing that would need watercooling.
 
Ya it looks like an open loop using the toilet water. Based on the build up on the inside of the toilet probably a bad idea, not to mention air in the system like you guys pointed out.
 
MikeTrike said:
Oh my... I've never actually seen the inside of a toilet tank that's dirty. Out of all the apartments and homes growing up. As well as all of my apartments and now my own house. I have never seen a tank like that. How the f*** does that get like that?
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2 words. Upper decker.
 
I was eating popcorn shrimp when I clicked on this and saw the toilet ... yeah, I stopped chewing my food for a few seconds. That was gross.
 
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I guess he might be getting decent temps if that styrofoam lining is meant to prevent the tank from sweating (common, I guess, in colder, humid climates). Also, I really hope he's using a rad and a closed loop.

That tank really needs to be bleached, though.
 
Unless someone has recently used the tank for an 'Upper Decker' the water is generally clean and would be safe to drink in an emergency.
 
bigdogchris said:
Unless someone has recently used the tank for an 'Upper Decker' the water is generally clean and would be safe to drink in an emergency.
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The issue brought up here is the fact that he's using hardwater for cooling. That brown crud you see around the corners of your bathroom are the minerals that were dissolved in your tap water. Those same minerals are likely to build up on your cooling system as well.
 
Sly said:
The issue brought up here is the fact that he's using hardwater for cooling. That brown crud you see around the corners of your bathroom are the minerals that were dissolved in your tap water. Those same minerals are likely to build up on your cooling system as well.
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Could be rust, actually. I get reddish-brown water out of one of the taps downstairs for about a second or two, usually when it hasn't been used for more than a week.
 
Well it's a conversation peice, until you tell them where it's connected.. :Silence:.. ;)
 
c4v3man said:
Wouldn't the soil act as an insulator? I understand that it's cooler underground, but unless the radiator was huge, I would think it would just heat up and stay relatively warm.
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Soil actually transfers heat fairly well, but it has a huge amount of mass that makes it very hard to heat up thoroughly. The sun beats down on it all day, every day during the summer but it still heats up only the first few inches ;)

I've actually seen a guy who built some long snaking copper tubing into his basement floor as a radiator for his PC, which seemed to work pretty well for him: http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=800958
 
GushpinBob said:
Could be rust, actually. I get reddish-brown water out of one of the taps downstairs for about a second or two, usually when it hasn't been used for more than a week.
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That would be worse.

This is what it's like after a few months of using hardwater.

HardWaterKettle.jpg


I'd imagine your water cooling system getting clogged with this after a few months and getting a layer of calcium inside your waterblock.
 
This doesn't seem like that bad of an idea. I would never set it up the way he has, but using the tank water to cool the water in a separate closed-loop system might work well. Possibly a few loops of copper tubing submerged in the tank. My toilet tank is always cool to the touch - I hypothesize that you get the benefit of the thermal mass of your entire water system since the plastic of the fill valve would be a very poor insulator.
 
I've done something like this with a 10 gallon bucket. You still need a way to exhaust the heat eventually, the water doesn't hold terribly much if your parts are putting out any worthwhile heat.
 
Ashbringer said:
I think the whole point was that he didn't need radiators too keep it cool, while also not needing to worry about changing the liquid for the water cooler. Flushing would put fresh new cold water to use.

It's exotic, but not something I would consider sanitary. Probably the most exotic idea I've seen is to bury the radiator outside underground. Even in the summer, the soil in the ground stays cool. Just make sure you get something that doesn't rust.
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What about the guy who used his pool? A big evaporative sink and filtered, chlorinated water...
 
Well, at least with that setup, the tank won't sweat as much during the summer. :p
 
Looks like he's only using watercooling on the hard drive, which wouldn't really need it hanging on a wall, unless the room is really hot. not sure why you would hang a PC on a wall like that, looks like ass.
 
martmann said:
Looks like he's only using watercooling on the hard drive, which wouldn't really need it hanging on a wall, unless the room is really hot. not sure why you would hang a PC on a wall like that, looks like ass.
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Same reason you would watercool with a toilet I guess
 
I wonder what happens when you flush a couple times, does the water cooling become air cooling and overheat?

Why back in the day I had a water cooled AMD XP processor, fluorescent dye and black light uber cool loking. The pump died, I didn't know it and fried the cache in the core. I could turn the cache off in the old bios and still run it...boy was it slow!
 
All the folks getting their panties in a twist over the brown stains in the inside of the tank (notice I said inside) need to understand that one, the toilet pictured is older than 90% of [H] members and two, hard water for that many years destroys the porcelain surface. You could bleach it out and it would look exactly the same again in two weeks. How many of you OCD types wash the bottom of your car?
 
Magnus said:
All the folks getting their panties in a twist over the brown stains in the inside of the tank (notice I said inside) need to understand that one, the toilet pictured is older than 90% of [H] members and two, hard water for that many years destroys the porcelain surface. You could bleach it out and it would look exactly the same again in two weeks. How many of you OCD types wash the bottom of your car?
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I do. But then again, they use magnesium chloride on the roads in the winter here.

I do agree with you, though. As long as there's no particulate in the tank, no scales sloughing off, that's sometimes as good as it gets.
 
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