The Two Critical Factors in Chiller Placement

Where to place your chiller is almost as important as choosing the right one in the first place.

The reason is - you could end up putting it somewhere that results in it not working, or somewhere that could get your cold plunge shut down.

The first thing to be aware of with placement is ventilation.

It has to be in an area with clear access to fresh air.

But fresh air isn't enough - it has to be a lot of it.

Chillers push a lot of hot air through their fans, and that hot air needs to go somewhere.

If your chiller has access to fresh air, it just goes out into the atmosphere.

If it doesn't have access to fresh air, the area around it heats up quickly.

The hotter air the air gets, the less efficient your chiller becomes. Then it will stop being able to cool all together.

We even had an instance where a chiller was put in an alleyway.

Technically it had access to fresh air, but it was an enclosed space about a metre wide, 10 metres long and 3 storeys high.

The chiller was facing a wall.

As expected, the air in there got hot, the chiller became less efficient and the pools couldn't get below 15 degrees.

When it was moved outside the alleyway, the pools were held at 5 degrees easily.

The second placement issue - noise.

In this same example, the recovery room owner didn't check the surrounds.

There were apartments attached to the alleyway on the floors above.

Our chillers aren't loud, about the same as an outdoor air con unit, but these apartment residents were used to silence.

A few complaints later, the chiller was shut down by council until the chiller was moved.

So when you're planning placement of the chiller, take these two things into account.

It needs access to lots of moving fresh air.

And it needs to be located where it won't disturb the peace of those nearby.

These two small considerations could save you a heap of time.