Don't Buy An Ice Pod Water Chiller. Steal This DIY Idea and Save Hundreds!

all right if you're watching this video I assume that you have one of these ice pods or something similar and you're wondering how to keep it cold because when you bought it you thought that you were getting a really good deal at around $150 but now that you have to put in ice all the time you realize how expensive it really is so now that you've decided that you no longer want to use ice you've probably looked into the option of getting a water chiller and then you saw how much those were priced anywhere from $11,000 to over $3,000 water chillers are pretty darn expensive so in this short and concise DIY video I'm going to show you how you at home can make a DIY water chiller for your ice pod or anything similar for around $500 and it's going to be almost identical to the ones that they're selling online for well over $1,000 and it's actually going to function a lot better all right guys so this is your typical ice pod right here there's a lot of different variations of this particular pod out there and they're all about the same and they all share the same exact problem is the fact that they have pretty much subpar installation it doesn't keep things cold very long and so you add a whole bunch of water after that a whole bunch of ice and once you do that the ice is gone within a matter of minutes and it's hardly even chilled your ice pod and with how expensive everything is and bags of ice even being $4 to5 a piece that in the long run is going to cost you tons and tons of money all right guys so if you've gone on to ipod.com you've probably looked at their chillers and if you look at this Chiller right here you'll probably notice something that they look very very similar to each other and that's because they're nearly identical and actually the internals are the exact same and so the thing about this one is this actually is what's called an aquarium chiller and these will run anywhere from about $250 to just under $400 and you can pick these up on eBay on Amazon and a number of other places and the only difference again is that the other ones are called a cold plung Chiller and this is an aquarium chiller so by using this we're going to save a ton of money so this particular Chiller right here is a 1/3 horsepower Chiller it will be enough for the ice pod that we have it comes with just a few accessories we have the little attachment up here for the hoses that go into the chiller itself up here it comes with this cheap little uh pump right here some hosing and just a miscellaneous cords and and some other things right there but it's pretty basic and I'll tell you guys right up front that if you wanted to do this DIY with just this right here it is possible but it's really not the best way and that's what I'm going to show you right now it's the best way to get everything hooked up for this DIY let me go over the parts list obviously we're going to start with the chiller I'm going to use an active Aqua the 400 I'm going to use a sediment filter now this is a/ in it's a little bit smaller one you can obviously get bigger ones but I'm going to use this little one and then we're going to get these little Barb attachments right here I'm going to use these two angled ones right here this is 3/4 in to 3/4 in here and then this is actually 1/ in to 3/4 in right there and we're going to use use 3/4 in hose because uh that's going to allow for a little bit more flow now if you've done any research on the topic of building your own water chill you probably seen a 1/ in 3/4 in and 1 in hosing and you're probably wondering which one you should use I really personally I think 3/4 in is perfect for almost every single application out there uh I had mentioned that the hosing that comes with the the aquarium chiller uh you could use that the problem with that if you look at the hose it's actually it's really thin so you don't get a whole lot of water flowing through there and that's compared to the 3/4 in right here it's just way more water and so that's just going to increase the cooling capacity overall so let's talk about how we're going to put everything together starting with the active aqua pump again I got the 400 this is uh about 400 gallons per hour you can get larger sizes and and that's okay but for this one we're going to go ahead and use this one cuz I think it's plenty for our application It's relatively inexpensive when you get this pump as you can see this part pops right off and this is just like a pre filter and this part screws off as well and so what we're actually going to do for this application is we're going to use the include included barbs right here there's two of these barbs just like that and they also have two little rubber grommets right here and so all you have to do is put these rubber grommets on here on and then just screw them in to right there and this is the finished product right there they're just screwed in nice and snug and tight these pieces right here you can hold on to if you like but I'm probably proba never going to use them again I'll probably just end up throwing those away after that what we're going to do is I'm going to take you over to the ice pod here in a second but we're going to take a sediment filter and this is going to collect any of the large things like grass uh larger dirt uh anything like that bugs and this is going to screw right into the drainage valve and what I'm going to do is take this little Barb right here this is/ in to 3/4 in right there I really like these uh barbs right here you can get these at lows in the plumbing section I would look for them because they're very inexpensive these run anywhere from like 60 cents to like a dollar for all these pieces otherwise they're going to cost you a lot more than that uh I've paid like $67 for some of these things for other applications but for right now what I'm going to do is screw this right into here and then we're going to take this over to the ice pod and we're going to screw that into the drainage valve now just a quick reminder this is a DIY there's lots of different ways that you can do this and so I'm going to attach my sediment filter directly to that drainage valve right there and if you take a look at this Arrow right there that's the way that the water goes so you just want to be conscious of that and I have a little bit of plumber tape on there just a little bit and we're going to screw this in just get it nice and snug like that and so anytime that you want to drain the take out the grass anything like that you just unscrew this little piece right there and that's all you have to do and have the Barb right here we're going to attach the hose into here and that hose is going to go into the chiller so let's go ahead and Skip to that step all right y'all for for this next step we're actually going to uh go ahead and cut the hoses to size now here's a few things you have to consider you have to consider the placement of your ice pod and where your Chiller is going to be at now I recommend having the chiller either raised up on a little platform like up off the ground or at least have it a few feet away from the ice pod and also you want to give it enough room to breathe so you want to have it away from the wall any other obstructions make sure that all that hot air from the chiller can actually vent out what I'm going to do is taking all those things into consideration I'm going to cut these uh according to the size that I need having said that what we're going to do is we're going to take the hose it's going to go to that barb that we put onto the drainage valve with the sediment filter and what that's going to do is it's going to go into the pump right here okay so that hose will go into here and then this right here will go up into one side of the chiller and once it goes through the chiller it comes out the other side and the other side will go back into the ice pod and that will be the cold water now there is one thing I failed to mention in the parts list getting some hose clamps just like that will definitely be a really good idea to keep every all the hoses attached the other thing is is when you're putting the hose onto the Barb just like that here's a little tip get water boil it for about 2 minutes get it nice and hot and then all you do is you stick the tip of the hose in the water for about 20 seconds that'll get it nice and pliable and it'll go on here no problem and this is the final product so we have our drainage right there with the sediment filter it's attached to a Barb that barb has the 3/4 in toes attached to it that go straight to the pump the pump has a small hose that comes up here goes in one side of the chiller and then exits that other side of the chiller has a longer hose which turns the cold water into the ice pod now a quick word on the chiller that this is bidirectional so it doesn't matter which way you attach those hoses it just has to go in one way and go out the other another quick word it's really good idea to have this all plugged into a GFCI outlet just in case there's any kind of shorts in electricity it will just shut off immediately now the only thing I don't like about this setup is the fact that we have the water return line going over the top like that and unfortunately in this case we have to do that now ice pod just be aware they do actually have an ice pod that has two of these spets right there one down below and one up top and it's made specifically for their Chiller so if you can get that one pay a little bit extra I would definitely recommend getting that however for now this absolutely works there's no problem with the hose going over the top like that before turning on the chiller one thing I do recommend is going go ahead and turn on the pump first let all the water cycle through the whole system check for leaks make sure there's no leaks have it run just for a few minutes before you do that uh before you turn on the pump make sure that you actually open up the valve right there and let the water flow through then turn on the power and then after it's been running for a couple minutes then we'll turn on the chiller it just turned on the pump as you can see the water is flowing through the entire system pull this out really quick yeah that's a nice flow of water that's a good amount of water that's flowing back and if you can hear it all the pump is very very quiet doesn't make a whole lot of noise at all I've let it run for a couple minutes the only place that I saw a small leak was with the strainer I didn't have it on there tight enough everything else looks really good now what I'm going to do is this this Chiller in particular comes with this little small basic remote going go ahead and use that turn this thing on right now it's reading that the water is 66° f so what we're going to do we're going to go ahead and set the temperature we're not going to go that low I'm going to set it to we'll just say 50 for right now there's a 1 minute delay on this particular Chiller so it'll turn on here in 60 seconds but what it does is it starts at this temperature and as soon as it reaches actually yeah there it goes it turned on already and so what it'll do is it'll just keep going until it reaches your desired temperature and then it'll shut off and anytime that it goes about 2° above that it'll turn back on keep in mind that so the chiller It won't always be on but what will always be on unless you turn it off will be the pump that'll be constantly running and I think that's a good idea because it just makes it so that there's no standing water or anything like that and it's constantly kind of filtering through now I apologize if you hear the chiller in the background so I'm going to just keep that running now a 13 horsepower Chiller depending on the starting temperature uh it will definitely take a few hours to get cold if it's uh really really warm water coming out of the hose like 80° say in the middle of summer it could take anywhere from about 10 12 hours to cool all that water it's a lot of water and it's really trying to drop the temperature quite a bit depending on where you have it set at now one question you might have at home is how do you keep this thing clean because I will tell you that the ice pods if you're hopping in every single day within a week it's going to be disgusting no doubt about it and you know having to sit there and refill about 50 to 60 gallons of water every single week that's a lot of waste but there is a way that you can keep everything clean and these are the three products I highly recommend and the first one is going to be the sanitizer you just follow the directions on here you don't put a whole lot in here now this bottle will run you about $30 or so it's a very small bottle and you're probably thinking that's a lot of money but the thing is it only takes a very very very small amount of this stuff and I've I've been using this for the last year and it's still about 34 away full so you don't have to use a whole lot of this so this is the cerona sanitizer and then to keep all of the like body oils and things like that to help dissolve it there's a natural uh clear enzyme dissolver go ahead and again follow the instructions you don't have to put a whole lot of this in there and this will help uh make sure that it takes care of all the oils from your body and your hair and whatnot and then the last thing that I recommend is getting a food grade hydrogen peroxide now this is 3% I probably next time I got this I'd probably go with a 7% Just a Little Bit Stronger initially when I first fill it up I'll do about a half a cup of this into the water and then every time that I use it I'll just do like a c full of that and this will help again just keep everything sanitary and clean because if you use these products I've gone up to well over 2 months of using the ice pod in the past and I haven't had had to clean the water that's something to kind of keep in mind a lot of people think it's up to the filter and this filter that we have that's just filtering out grass and dirt and things like that this is how you're going to keep it clean and this is a really good investment because again these products they go a really long ways even though they might initially be a little bit more expensive this is just one more look at the setup that I have here in my garage now as you'll notice the sun is kind of beating down on the chiller you want to avoid any extra heat as much as possible so I'm actually going to close the door here in just a little bit keep the chiller keep it away from the wall give it plenty of and if you do that it'll work way more efficient and it'll cool the water a lot faster than it would otherwise so there you have it that is the DIY how to hook up a water chiller to an ice pod this DIY is very very simple and it's going to save you a ton of money with the ice pod the water chiller the sediment filters the hoses and everything included it should run you right around $500 maybe a little bit more uh hopefully a little bit less it's incredibly simple to do there's no reason why you shouldn't do it because this setup as I mentioned in the very beginning is the same exact Chiller that you're going to get from Ice pod if you have any questions comments anything like that go ahead and leave those questions comments below I ask that you like and subscribe I try to make these videos informative for you I hope you guys have an incredible day thank you for watching

Channel: Recovatech

Views: 45,804

Keywords: Ice Pod, IcePod, coldpod, ice pod chiller, chiller for ice bath, cold plunge water chiller, diy water chiller

Id: 99_YJotgl2s

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2024