Project 360 - Benefits of Air Exchange
Air Exchange Installation
I finally dragged myself back under the house to run the exhaust duct for the air exchange system. The crawl space is not a nice place to work in. Prior to running the exhaust duct I had been running the air exchange for about a week. I have some PVC pipe in the area of the fan as well as some other odds and ends from the project, all of this stuff was covered in condensation. I’m glad I decided to run the exhaust vent when I did! So I ran about 25 feet of flexible ducting to the nearest crawl space vent where the moisture laden air is vented out of the house. My tank temperature is steady at 77.5 degrees F with all lights and pumps running.
Project 360 - Got Air?
Yes we do!
Anyone remember this fan from a post long ago?…
The air exchange is now hooked up under the house. I pulled the electrical run for it (good to have some cable in my conduit finally), wired up the fan, and connected it to the ducting going to the tank as well as the ducting to the foundation vent (don’t want all that warm moist air under the floor boards). We fired it up and it blows… in a good way of course. The duct noise is not too bad, sounds about like the A/C running in the house. The final tie-in to the canopy is yet to be done. On that note I should probably mention that I may scrap the canopy that I built! Wouldn’t you know it - another idea came to me in the shower recently. Stay tuned!
Project 360 - Air Exchange System
I need some fresh air!
Salt water aquariums tend to evaporate water quickly due to the constant water movement, warm water temperature, and large surface area exposed to the air. In my experience it’s not unusual to evaporate 1-2% of the total water volume per day.
My system will be about 400 gallons total water volume including the sump) which equates to about 6 gallons of evaporation every day. That’s over 2100 gallons a year of evaporated water. In order to remove all the moist air I decided to build an air exchange system. It’s fairly simple:
- Make the stand and canopy as air tight as possible.
- Using ducting create a loop from outside the house, through the stand and canopy, and back out of the house.
- On the outlet side of the loop install an inline fan to pull fresh air through the loop.