Make a turbulator?
 

I've been slowely piecing together a large water cooling setup revolving around a hydronic heater element. Probably end up putting it infront of a window fan.

Anyways the heater element is basically a 5' copper pipe about 1.25" in diameter with tons of aluminum fins. I understand that a turbulator would increase the radiators performance, but not really sure how to implement it. I saw this pic

http://www.fluent.com/about/news/pr/img/pr29i1lg.jpg

and made me think about buying some bare copper wire and making some sort of spiral design thats 5' long that I can insert into the heater element. This sound like a worthy idea? Id really love some ideas on a coil design too, cant really picture anything but the design of a TC-4 water block.

Sounds dandy. Not as extensive as a Hayden turbulator, but it won't suffer from the same pressure drop either. Let us know!

Wind the copper wire around a section of broom handle in a spiral? Just keep sliding it off as you go until you've enough.

Should help some. Like Ben said, let us know how it effects the performance of the set up.

Well I dont have blocks yet, and I dont have the pump I want, gonna use a mag3 until I can get an md20rz. I guess I'll try it with and with out a turbulator. I was going to wrap some copper wire around something like a broomhandle, but something with an OD closer to the OD of the copper pipe ~ 1.25" Thatd just be the same turbulator design as the TC-4 though. Dunno if I can explain this well enough but I was thinking of having one spiral with a smaller spiral inside. So Id make a full wrap around something thats close to the ID of the pipe, then make a full wrap around something smaller, like .5" OD then making another full wrap around the larger, etc etc. Not sure how Id do that though. No matter what it sounds like it will be a lot of wire and a lot of man hours and a decent amount of fun =)

Hrmmm now Im starting to lean towards buying some .75" OD copper pipe, maybe that flexible stuff and making something like this (thanks btw bigben2k):
http://www.haydenind.com/trans_t.jpg

I'll take the pipe, flatten 1" of the end, then move the pipe about 2 inches, rotate 90 degrees, then flatten another 1" section, do that until I ahve 5 feet. Would be easier to handle than wrapping wire around something.

Nice.

Just watch out for the pressure drop that it's going to create; don't make it too restrictive.

Yeah that hayden one looks really restrictive. They pinched that inner copper tube and made a bulb like design. Mine will be more like just straight slopes with only the very tips of the pinched parts touching the walls of the pipe.