Cooling Cleaning Pipes, Nice and New!

Yesterday, with the help of my assistant dodge I changed the water in my loop. Took everything apart, dusting with a compressor etc.

My pipes were filthy thanks to water wetter a horrible hard to remove gunk!

So I tried pushing fabric through the pipe, but this did very little. Then I struck along the idea of wadding fabric down the pipe and connecting the air compressor to it, I used the pipe for the standard fittings, fits nice on my 1/2" pipe, maybe a clip for high pressure.

So:

1. Wad a strip of fabric (old sports socks work great!) down the pipe, use a stick of some sort to push it down.
2. Add a little water
3. Connect up the compressor, using a clamp to stop it shooting out.
4. Slowly increase the PSI until the fabric moves, and cleans the pipes.
5. Repeat

It cleans them up so they look brand new.

When the fabric comes out, it will come out FAST!
Dodge was at that end managed to fire a bit of sock through the bag.

Dodge has pictures on his phone but atm no way to get them off

Hope this comes in handy for someone.

'doc

 

hmmm might have to try that, i soak them in boiling hot water for a min or so, then use the fabric/string method, works ok, still abit cloudy tho

 

Aquarium tube cleaners come in a variety of sizes and work well. Especially when you use isopropyl alcohol, but make sure you let it dry very well before using it again. The best stuff is the 91% or 99% pure stuff you can obtain from the druggist.

The ultimate solution to this ongoing mess is to use a UV sterilizer in your cooling loop. Then anything that starts growing is killed immediately. However, a mid-size tower would be kind of cramped. Just about any pond or aquarium store should have it, but look around for a small 5-10w unit. Some people make their own and you can get the neccessary supplies at the aquarium shop as well.

 

A UV steriliser is only good for living organisms, not the coating left by WW.

 

I was just about to reply with the same, not a great deal can be done to stop the WW 'stains' besides not using WW.

'doc

 

would you need an adative if you used the uv stuf?

 

Generally, UV dye doesn't have anything besides a dye, you really do need a corrosion inhibitor aswell.

'doc

 

thats not what i meant... i thought you were talking about those uv water cleaners (use uv light to kill bacteria), not uv dye.

 

Ahh as we said before, after 'Top Nurse' enlightened us with his infinite wisdom , the UV sterilisers will only destroy bacteria and will not stop WW 'stains' and galvanic corrosion.

 

how long did you have the setup running to get all that 'orrible crap

 

Not that long, its only a discolouring of the pipes, not really 'orrible crap just unwanted.

'doc

 

Way to stall on those new pics of your heatercore 'Doc

 

thats what i was worried about

 

ROFFLE, I posted them 4 days ago, as I said I would

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=67082&page=2

'doc

 

Sorry never noticed Apologies for the OT.

 

ill try and get my bluetooth dongle back, to get the pics off.