good idea prb123
used them for drinking water in Centera America, never made the connection for cooling water

hit eBay guys, lots of types
not too practical for a single box system however

You're not gonna get any sterilization from UV CCFL's if thats what you have in mind. Look on some aquarium sites for more info on UV Sterilizers.

Kinda late now, but I use products made for humidifiers to clean and sterilize my system. You guys might wanna check them out. Not sure how well they remove algae but will find out soon. Last time I setup my system I used distilled water and UV dye only. No water wetter and none of my humidifier bactrostat. I got a nasty build up of what appears to be algae in my fill tube. I've taken it out of my system and will be cleaning it this weekend. Although aglae isn't apparent in the rest of my loop, once I drained it I found that everything is pink. I've ran into this before and always thought it was water wetter causing it, but it obviosly wasn't. Now I haveta assume its either some sort of bacteria or my UV dye breaking down. I'm leaning towards the dye break down as I've had pink stains before while using bactrostat. I'll post my cleaning results soon.

peace.
unloaded

One thing that might be worth looking for on Ebay for a ghetto system is an Ultraviolet EPROM Eraser.

These were used when EPROM's had little quartz windows in the top. (often covered by a sticker)

To erase the EPROM, you exposed it for a period to the UV light.

I don't know the emission specs, but from the warnings and built in protection hardware, I suspect it was fairly 'harsh' UV light.

Edit:

Just recalled, I actually 'sunburned' my hands using one of these in a really stupid way to quickly cure some conformal coating.

If you do this, make sure you control where the light goes.

This is what I'm talking about http://www.aquaultraviolet.com/sterilizers.html, they are plumbed inline. I put some barbs on it, clamped the hoses from my canister filter on. It's been running for 2 years now.

Nice link, I particularly like the frog .

Actually, here is a retailer that has then for reasonable prices:
http://www.aquadynamite.com/aquauv.html
$87 for the 8 watt unit, $97 for the 15 watt unit.
3/4" barbs on both ends.

TO sterilize, max flow is 700 GPH. thats more than any one of us is gonna be pushing.

He doesn't know me very well, does he?

i know this thread has been dead for a bit, but hats off to airspirit.

I just flushed my system with a pinesol/water mix (readily available in my house). Connected my system to an old milk gallon container full of the pinesol mix (10% pinesol/90% water) and let it run while I watched a video. Came back and 90% of the white film on my tube walls (clearflex 60) and in the waterblocks (dd maze and z-chip) are gone. I've flushed out the pinesol, and am going to do another run with a new mix of pinesol, then flush the pinesol out with just water. tried to take some before and after photos but its dark and the white gunk doesn't show well under the camera flash.

here are some before and after pics. I did have an piece of the original tubing I took out. wish I had a pic of the all the white stuff in the maze3 as that has all but disappeared now.

Cloudy tube...:cry:
http://mysite.verizon.net/res1p0bi/s...ures/algae.JPG

After the pinesol enema...:D

http://mysite.verizon.net/res1p0bi/s...cleantubes.JPG

You should have tried it with some Lysol in the mix as well ... it would have burned the goo off much faster. I wish I had a way to mass publish this ... perhaps I'll just submit a "how to" to overclockers.com and throw some stuff to the NZ crowd ... it'll get spread by rumor from there. There isn't any reason to have nasty tubing anymore ....

I was too lazy to run out and buy lysol the other day, but I will note that for the next cloudy day...:drool:

also note that I used a weaker mix of pinesol so that may have explained why it took longer. eitherway, glad I don't have to take everything apart and manually scrub...!!!

Yikes! DO NOT use sodium azide! Aside from the fact that it is a poison to humans on par with cyanide, it can react with copper (and lead) to form explosive metal azides.


http://www.orcbs.msu.edu/newsletters...diumazide.html

Most pertanant part:

"Reactivity and Incompatibility

Sodium azide should not be allowed to come into contact with heavy metals or their salts, because it may react to form heavy metal azides, which are notorious shock-sensitive explosives. Do not pour sodium azide solutions into a copper or lead drain. Sodium azide reacts violently with carbon disulfide, bromine, nitric acid, dimethyl sulfate, and a number of heavy metals, including copper and lead. Reaction with water and acids liberates highly toxic hydrazoic acid, which is a dangerous explosive. Sodium azide is reported to react with CH2Cl2 in the presence of DMSO to form explosive products."

Maybe a little late for this, but it's good advice:

Make sure when you FIRST assemble your WC rig, to make a first run with your favorite cleaning agents... Why? to remove the manufacturing extrusion oils from the tubes, and/or soldering resin residues from the radiator of course.

That whitish-creamy-powdery thing that may appear in tube's walls after a few hours days, most probably are these organic compounds decomposing and not any algae or bacterial growth at all. So you thought you had only pure ditilled water in your WC system.

What these decomposed organics will do for sure, is provide the nutrients for future healthy algae/bacterial growth.

iggiebee, good point. I think I've narrowed down my culprit to an old radiator I had reinstalled to run dual rads. it had been sitting around in open air since its removal half a year ago, so it must have been a ripe breeding ground... I noticed the tubes running from that rad had to worst white coating & spots.

When you say "Lysol" for the *sol mix, do you mean the spray lysol? or is there a liquid lysol floor cleaner (like pinesol) that I should use? :shrug:

Otherwise I'm just going spray some lysol in a cup to get the required amount and mix it with the pine sol and water... after I Get my res rebuilt b/c the isopropyl alcohol pretty much destroyed the seals on the end caps :(. Shoulda used plumbers goop instead of RTV I guess.

You're looking for the yellow lysol fluid, and none of those pussified floral types. You'd be hard pressed to use the aerosol types in your cooling system, though if you can I'd like a picture or two!

Seriously, though, the yellow lysol is what you want, and it is also the cheapest stuff they sell.

I kind of like that potpouri smell in my watercooler...:cool:

Sweet. I'll have flush my components with *sol and hopefully it'll knock the very light green film off the insides of the tubing as well as out of my radiator. I'm pretty sure its inorganic stuff, as most of it was concentrated on the copper and brass parts of my system. I took the block apart yesterday and cleaned it to a brand-new copper shine again with ketchup!

I'd have never thought of running lysol through an existing setup, but neat to see it work!

As for me, I must be entirely too lucky. I've got distilled water and waterwetter (actually a waterwetter clone) and nary a problem. On the other hand, I have an aluminum block (hand made, and I didn't have any copper stock), which means that galvanic corrosion is less likely. My cheapo vinyl tubing is still crystal clear after about a year of use with no maintenance.

Note to starbuck3733t: is that light-green film biological or inorganic? Sounds like you need some water additives to your distilled water mixture (I really hope you are using distilled water!).

This will not help inorganic buildup at all. If that is the case, consider running dilute metal cleaner through your system. If it is scale buildup from hard water, try CLR. If it is just copper surface corrosion, then try Brasso brand cleaner (dilute, of course). Be sure to flush the hell out of your system after using these, and you WILL need to run a *sol flush after a water flush to clean the buildup that both of these will leave off of your tubing.

Considering that the amount of crap (seen in my what's this crap thread) accumulated in 4 days, I'm pretty sure its inorganic. 2nd reason is that the system only got light for maybe 4 hours out of the 4 days, otherwise it was 100% in the dark in my basement. The water was distilled from the grocery store. the only non distilled stuff I had was an ounce or so of city water in my reservior left from leak testing it (none of the other components had ever had city water in them)

Try CLR or LimeAway and see if that helps. If it doesn't, you may need to run something like vinegar or brasso to clean out your pipes. I'm not sure about the vinegar, though ... might want to spot test that just incase.

I think vinegar was the reason that scrubbing my blocks out with ketchup worked as well as it did. Im kinda broke at the moment so the CLR/LimeAway/Whatever will have to wait till friday when I get paid. At least I Can work on putting my reservior back together after cracking it with an alcohol flush :( :cry:

hey airspirit would it be possible to get you to write this up as an article for the site? Would be a bit easier to disseminate the information at that point I would think.

Tomatos them selves are acidic , you can use catsup to clean a dirty copper pan , they used to do it at my middleschool to teach pH.

The vinegar helps though I'm sure.. I've been setting up a tank for my turtle "Frag" I've learned alot out algae and the like and think I have found a solution to keeping it at bay in w/c setups , If you have a big enough res to where you can add a bubbler into the res , you can ozonate and oxygynate <--sp the water , this keeps algae at bay, as the algae can't breathe oxygyn <--sp again..

This is the number one way to keep it bayed in my tank , and I don't see why it wouldn't work for tubes and res'.. --Bikr


p.s. this is just an idea if you think it sucks , think it out first , and then let me know your ideas opinions , if you're worried about getting air in the lines , dont' worry , just posistion the bubble wand above the intake.. --Bikr

doesn't ozonolysis produce free radicals? Maybe not the best thing for the long term flexibility of your hose (have you ever seen how a rubber band reacts to being in the sun for a long time) or the other organic compounds you may have in your system (glycol, water wetter).

wow , wasn't aware that glycol was organic , however , this shouldn't be any trouble for your tubing , I have ozonated drinking water that flows through tygon to my tap.. It's never had any trouble , we used tygon so we could see through it..

As for organic matter , it will nullify most anything organic in the water.. I do not however think this will have an effect on the heat transfer capabilities..

Another option is to use a UV filtration system , a closed UV product that the liquid passes through , it can kill up to 98% of all bacteria in the liquid at each pass..

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=20756

Like that.. --^

I would aviod running CLR through your system. I ran it through my last system to try and clean it out, and it made my pump develop a rattle (a ViaAqua 1300 that had run for a year without making a sound). It's possible that it was something other than the CLR that caused my rattle, or that CLR eats/reacts with some material only found in ViaAqua pumps, but I'd say be cautious and use at your own risk.

Hi All,

Quite a long thread to read, but I guess i've gone through it all.

One thing not clear for me, it has to do with my own setup.

I have tygon and clearflex. my tygon stays nice clear, but my clearflex gets a "whitish-creamy-powdery thing" that appears in the tube's walls......

I don't get it.. Why does my Tygon stay clear?

I quess I need to use some "pinesol". Does anyone no a brand name e.g., Ive never heard of it in The Netherlands.


To prb123: UV lamps only work for about a year. They still may shine, but don't provide enough UV after one year.

I have a professor who is an enviromental engineer with a strong speciality in aquatic systems. I talked to him about this today and it's something right up his area of expertise.

He said (from what I can remember amongst all the scientific stuff he was saying) most bleach you buy has about 2-4% chlorine, which is what is really great at killing stuff. He said 1 ml of bleech per liter of water should be more than enough to keep everything dead inside your system. However that will cause a slightly acidic PH, which will have an impact on the metals, so you'd want to add a little bit of a base (don't remember which he said) to make the PH neutral.

He also said general purpose cleaners/disinfectants that don't have amonia might be an alternative.

Also, distilled water would work good, but only for a little while. Salt water would also work, but you'd have to watch and make sure it doesn't precipate inside the system (especially if your using a block like the cascade, with lots of narrow parts).

As for the antifreeze thing, the reason nothing grows in your car is that those temps hit around 300 degrees, which is enough to kill them. There are lots of 'little critters' that love to 'chow down' on that stuff, which has caused some huge enviromental problems at airports and other places. Many of those organisms also grow the best at 35 degrees C.

Just some info that might help some of you. If anyone has any other questions I'd be more than willing to ask him. He really knows about little forms of life that live in water.