Active Aqua AACH50HP Water Chiller Cooling System

So far so good. I have the 1/2 HP active aqua on a fully insulated 150G Stock tank. (Still waiting on supplies to build and insulate the lid.) The 1/2 HP w the 150G stock tank was widely recommended. Some say the 1/4 HP is fine too. But Sarasota FL Summers peak in the mid/high 90’s and with this build being outdoors, I didn’t want to risk the chiller not keeping up with the heat. So far the chiller is keeping up and maintaining. (Just got it a week ago) I have it set at 60 F and it goes up to 62 F then kicks on to bring it back down. (It is spring time - the high today is 86 F) It is pretty quiet. The only function/feature I wish it had was the option to turn the display off at (Minor detail) A couple things to mention: 1. I do have this in my covered/shaded lanai. 2. It’s spring time in Sarasota FL. 84 F - 88 F 3. Home Depot - LP SmartSide Cedar siding. 4. Home Depot - Foamular NGX insulation sheathing + insulating spray foam. Follow up: May 3rd: Still going strong. Temp is set at 55 F. No problems. June 5th: Still going strong. Temp set at 50 F. No problems. The only thing I’ve noticed is that the chiller sweats/condensates every now and then. But it’s early summer in FL, so this is expected. I’ve also drained this twice to clean it and had no problem getting to temp over night. July 7: Still working great. Chiller set at 48F. No problems. There is a small puddle of condensation from the chiller (Normal). I now have it raised slightly for air flow. Oct 11: Had the chiller off for about a month and powered it back on. Still going strong. Lastly, if you are running this 24/7 (not on boost mode), it will add about $55 dollars a month to your electric bill.

My chiller stopped working after a little under a year of use. While still under warranty, Hydrofarm has provided very poor support and has indicated that any warranty claims would need to be processed by the original place of purchase, Amazon. Amazon indicated that this is a manufacturer warranty, and the manufacturer, Hydrofarm, should honor the warranty. Hydrofarm sent me a replacement temperature probe, as that is the only serviceable part on the unit. I told them the temperature probe was working fine (display temperature matched the temperature measured by a thermometer in the cooled water). But they insisted on sending me a temperature probe. I replaced the temperature probe, and had the same issue. Emailed Hydrofarm support back and got no reply. Unbelievably poor support for a piece of equipment at this price range. Unbelievable that they don’t offer replacement or repairable parts for the unit. Although it was great while it worked, I’d expect a longer life than one year from a chiller at this price point. Not sure if I’ll be able to justify a replacement…

I have been cold plunging for a year now. I wanted to start out cheap. I bought a soft portable plunge, and a cheap Vevor 1/4 hp chiller. IT all worked and I plunged at around 50 degrees, but I wanted colder. I upgraded to the 1/3 hp Vevor for around $360. IT got me down to 39, but it had to run all day to do it. I even super insulated my plunge to help. The Vevor chiller has the volume leve3l of a cheap walmart window AC. This may not bother most people, but we have the Plunge on our lanai, and my wife likes to sit out there and have a cup of tea. She does not like listening to all the noise, so she would often unplug it, and then forget to plug it back in. This lead to several days of running, to get the temp back down. That whole time it was very noisy. Finally I caught the Active Aqua on a great sale. They do this from time to time, so track the price on camelcamelcamel dot com. Its worth it! So I finally get my active aqua, and let it sit for 24 hours. This is important with any products that contain refrigerant. Not doing so, will shorten the lifespan. After letting the Active Aqua aclimate, I got it all set up. It had larger fittings than my previous Vevor. SO I had to adapt my plumbing. I probably should have just upgraded to new larger tubing, but I did not want to jump in to that much work right away. I just wanted to get this thing going. Right out of the gates, I noticed how quiet this chiller is. The down side is that it showed how loud my danner 950 pump is. I actually ended up making a hush box for my danner pump. It helped quiet my entire system, to a very manageable level. I used the foil backed foam and carpet padding to wrap the pump in sort of an envelope. This made my pump so quite! Since it has 39 degree water running through it all the time, when running, I figured it did not need to be air cooled. The next thing I noticed, is that my system does not need to run as often. I use an Inkbird controller set at 39 degrees. When the temp is above 39 degrees the inkbird turns everything on. This ensures my pump, chiller and ozone are running when they need to. If I just relied on the temp gauge in the chiller, it may turn off, but my pump and ozone would continue to run. I don't need 24 hour circulation. The Active Aqua only goes down to 39 degrees. That is my desired set point, so there was some issues with the chiller kicking off, and the inkbird letting things continue to run. So I went in to the active aqua settings and calibrated the AA to think it was a few degrees warmer than actual. This way, if the inkbird is calling for 39 and its at 39.1, the active aqua will show 41, and continue to run until the inkbird temp range is satisfied. You can calibrate up to 5 degrees warmer, which will push you down to 34 actual. For me, after a year of plunging, 39 still provides about 30 seconds of full shock and awe mode. Perhaps Ill eventually need it to be colder, and I have room to grow. At these temps ever single degree makes a big difference. I plunge for around 2 minutes, and at that time my feet hurt. Now, the bottom of my tub may actually be colder, as my tub is pretty deep, and long. It could be much cooler where my feet are. At the end of the day, I love this active aqua chiller. I spent a lot on cheaper chillers trying to figure it out. I was able to sell each, and not lose much money. But had I known I would still be doing this, the AA would have been the way to go up front. The sound level, and the extra power make this chiller the perfect choice for my set up. I have an inflatable tub I bought here on Amazon. Its 59 inches long, and probably close to 40 inches deep, 36 inches of water level. Its around 120 gallons according tot he amazon ad, but it feels like more. I wrapped it in 10 mm foil faced soft foam (also purchased on Amazon). I run the Danner 950 pump, and a spa ozone that I purchased, you guessed it, right here on Amazon. Now I am thinking about upgrading to a larger Danner 1200 pump. The 950 works, but more flow may help the filtration, and also help mix the water as I am plunging. If you're worried about price, buy the cheap Vevor, and try it out. But if, like me, the Vevor is not powerful enough, or its much too noisy, this Active Aqua is the perfect solution. 1/2 hp seems to be the perfect size for around 120 gallons, if you're insulated. I live in south Florida, so it it works here, it should work most anywhere in north America.

I started cold plunging over a year ago (almost daily). I used my above ground pool all last winter and although I can’t control the temperature (I’ve had to break ice a few times) I can decide how long I stay in. When spring was coming and my pool was getting in the upper 50’s I knew I needed a summertime solution. Enter the Active Aqua 0.5 HP water chiller, a 100 gallon Rubbermaid tub with cover, some tubing and a filter. This is not recommended for outdoor use, but I’ve had it outside, uncovered, in all weather conditions and it has kept my water as cold as I want it (even on 100 degree plus days). It has worked flawlessly and I just brought it in for winter (freezing temps now) and am back to the pool until summer. Highly recommend!

I have a few 1/4 HP active aqua chillers in my ~60 gallon systems and work great, ambient temps are about 82 and set the chiller to 67 and have no trouble holding that temp. I upgraded a few of my systems to about 100-110 gallons and the 1/4 hp could not keep up with that much volume, was able to hold about 72 degrees is all running 24/7 so I purchased the 1/2 HP model. The 1/2 HP was only able to get it down to 70 degrees with running 24/7... I noticed before ordering that the 1/4 hp models are 3000 btu and use about 450 watts of power and the 1/2 hp was only 4000 btu and used about 550 watts.. I was a little skeptical when I saw those numbers before ordering.. thinking hopefully the 1/2 hp models are just that much more efficient.. well it turns out they just don't perform for their claimed size. I ended up returning the 1/2 HP and ordering another 1/4 HP, both running in the system have no trouble holding temps.

Bought this to use for a cold plunge after doing all the research and settling on this being a trustworthy brand. It sat at my house in the box for the last 2 months while I've been building the rest of the plunge. Finally the day came to hook it up and the results were promising. It cooled the water by 20 degrees in under 30min. But suddenly the unit shut off. After reading the manual and troubleshooting, the cause was that it was overheating and shut off as a safety measure. I checked the back of the unit, as it did seem to be very quiet while it was running, and found the cooling fan to be jammed against the cooling coil, preventing it from functioning. Upon calling Amazon the best they could do was return it with a $200 restocking fee as it was beyond the return window. The manufacturer has yet to respond, as this should be a warranty repair. Overall I'm less than pleased by this product and lack of customer service.

Excellent water chiller for the ice bath setup. I can get my 80-110 gallon Ice Pod Company cylindrical Ice Pod chilled to 44-47 F in roughly 8 hoursish. Once at that temp the chiller easily maintains the temperature with its auto chill feature. Once you go above your set temp by more than 2 degrees it kicks in to chill again to set temp. I am very pleased with this product and it's power. Ice bath sessions are amazing with the help of this efficient water chiller. I've gotten it down to as cold as 38 degrees. An interesting thing to note is that it appears to chill a bit colder than the shown temperature -this is according to my manual temperature gauge sent in by the Ice Pod Company. I am fine with this of course haha

I bought this unit for my pc or computer . My build was i9 10900k 32gb @ 3600mhz corsair rgb ram and 2080 Super. Both the GPU and CPU had a waterblock on it. This machine was sadly only able to cool the pc components down to 39 degrees Fahrenheit . Sure it could keep up with the wattage at load but the problem is the idle time. The unit is apparently programmed to allow 3 minutes for the compressor to cool down. During this time of course your cpu and gpu are putting heat into the water and temps are rising during this time. Despite setting the temperature at 39 degrees and deadzone at 1 the onboard control unit allowed temps to climb 10 degrees higher to 49 degrees before the compressor would cut on. I found a fix for this though by jumping the AC2 wire(red wire) with the compressor wire(brown wire) and the fan wire (forgot which color blue maybe?) with the ac2 wire. This allowed the compressor to run continuously where i got temps down to 26 degrees F. Sure this is a great temperature but its really not good for the compressor to keep it running 24/7. However, i can tell you this unit is very quiet. I wouldnt even mind it running. It is like a window ac unit. Overall I would recommend getting the penguin 1/2 hp unit though because it cam get colder (different refrigerant) and is better quality. I paid 600+$ for this and i dont think it was worth it. It is worth maybe 400$ in my book for our computers but i suggest if you are going this deep to go with penguin and get a chillerbox/freezer to keep you components away from condensation. Although if you are fine with the compressor running 24/7 and not really being able to control temps, go for it. Its at least maybe better than those DIY window ac unit conversions. Also youd need to be okay with the issues noted above. Also the chiller came heavily damaged upon arrival but the blame really is for the postal people who delivered this to me so no need to reflect this in the review.edit: second one i bought can only handle cpu and gpu under load to 45 f. I thus wouldnt recommend it if you want to go colder.

Keeps the temperature very well and it’s quite