6 months ago, I got a steal of a deal on this Environics thermal testing chamber. Brand new, these puppies can go for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. How much did I pay? Less than $1,300. And that included Delissio. Sorry, I mean delivery. Back when we unboxed it, we were blown away by how good the condition of it was. I mean, sure, it was decommissioned over 10 years ago and left outside, but there was next to no corrosion, and it even had full documentation, service history, and schematics in the box. I mean, how much more could it cost to integrate into our testing lab? A4 million. The good news is we got in touch with the guys who decommissioned this exact unit, and they got it in working for less than a tenth of that.

Oh, well, that's wonder. Wait, what does working mean? What does working mean for you? It means that we're going to tell these fine folks about our sponsor, War Thunder. Take command of over 2500 tanks, planes, helicopters, and ships of 10 major nations in one of the most comprehensive vehicle combat games. Join over 95 million players on War Thunder today for free on PC, consoles, or mobile using our links below. Before we get into why it's only working today and would cost us over $250,000 to permanently install in our warehouse, let's take a look at the progress that we've made on the unit. I mean, I can already see that a lot has changed here. And to get the details, it would probably be best to talk to one of the

technicians who's been here grinding away at this particular achievement over the last few weeks. First things first, Stefan, can you talk me through why you guys needed to bolt this sheet of plywood onto the side of the unit? So, basically what we ended up doing is creating a whole pump system for this unit because it's water cooled. It's not air cooled. So, normally this unit has a much bigger condenser or cooling unit up on a roof or a cooling loop in a building, but we had to make it work. One of our ideas to dissipate the heat from the unit was to use these scrap cooling towers that we dumpster dive. But unfortunately, it just plain wasn't enough capacity. So, why don't you walk

us through what we're oh lordy actually doing? We're using your water connection to cool the unit. So, we're just running cold tap water through it and then dumping it once it's heated up. Okay, city of Suri, if you're watching this, this is temporary. Okay, just like to do this video and like there was a heavy rainfall atmospheric river like a week ago. This is not permanent. Please don't be mad. To be clear then, we're not using this at all. No, we aren't. Okay. Anyway, there wouldn't be anything for us to cool if the system wasn't working. So, why don't we talk about what we did on the refrigeration side when you were going through the initial bit and explaining all the bits and pieces?

Spot on. Oh, really? You got you Oh, we got that on camera. Nice. No, abs. Absolutely. Cuz I was impressed actually. It's like, oo, this guy, you've you've you've done some homework on this. Most of it was actually back when I was a teenager. Yeah. Because I really, really, really wanted to build a DIY phase change CPU cooler. So, I learned about the refrigeration cycle and then ultimately never did it. And a big part of the reason I never did it was because handling the gases freaks me the crap out. And as we mentioned in the first video, that was one of the biggest challenges with this is that it came completely non-charged. So, it was empty. Um, and we really weren't

sure where or how we could get our hands on the gases. So, you guys have obviously got it charged up now. Was that a big challenge for us? Not a problem. We deal with Cascade systems all the time. So, getting the R508B, the ultra low tempmp gas, not an issue. Okay. So, it's not one of those ones that's restricted and you're not allowed to buy it anymore. No, it's it's just not that commonly available. Let's put it that way. What does that mean? That means you need to have a refrigeration license and it's bloody expensive. You're just going to keep hitting me with that stuff, aren't you?

Un unfortunately, yes. That's the way this project went. What kind of condition was all the mechanical side of it in? So, like you said, there's a there's no rust in here. But the question was is how did these age? And out of these two compressors, it was uh this one that was the biggest problem. When we decommissioned it, we put in nitrogen as a holding charge to basically protect everything, thinking that no rust, no rust. Whoever's going to whoever wants to buy it or whatever they're going to do with it, it's going to be safe. They can just turn it on and away it goes. Inert gas and it's not going to interfere with whatever you want to put in after. That's kind of the idea, right?

Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Problem is this compressor didn't have any like no gas. So that's on you guys then. No. There's a leak on there. There's a leak. I'm not taking the blame for that one. Okay. So, at some point while it was being stored outside, it sprung a leak. Yeah. it sprung a leak. And so what ended up happening is that um the oil that's sitting in this compressor becomes contaminated. And in order to refurbish it, not only do I need to take the oil out, but I also need to get rid of all the moisture that's in there. That was the biggest problem.

Oh, cuz here's the thing. water is also, you know, a refrigerant in a sense and that it has its own behavior around freezing and evaporating. And so if you've got any of that in your other more different refrigerant, unless it's part of a gas mixture you intended to make, it's a big problem. This fix was a lot cheaper. This was just a coupling, right? Able to put it back together cuz this forms part of the water loop that cools that low stage compressor. Got it. Okay. This is such a tiny silver lining on a giant raincloud. Mhm. But there is some good news. One of the big challenges we were not looking forward to was dealing with the control system for this thing. You guys might

remember there was a little touch screen here. And then inside here, let's crack this open. There was like a Windows XP era machine, was it? Well, that's gone. And what are we using now? So right now what we're using is a little Watlo F4 controller. So this is primarily what a lot of chambers use. And we dumb this thing down a lot. What are you saying? Take a really good PC from the 2000s and throw in a Raspberry Pi instead. Oh, I thought you meant you dumbed down the simplicity of the interface for the target audience.

Well, maybe a bit little bit of that, too. Fair enough. I mean, realistically, our needs are not that complicated. We want to be able to over the network, I assume, tell it, "Here's my target temperature. Here's how long I want it there, and here's my next target, and here's when I want it to turn off." Absolutely. And we can do all of that these days with a Raspberry Pi rather than a full-fledged PC tower. And look at this. There's so much space. It's free real estate. And all of the other relays and stuff that are in here, these are all just the originals.

Uh, yes. That is so cool. So, do you guys just refurbish and repair these things or do you like build them? We don't build them. So, we service them, we repair them, but we work on a host of other equipment that uses cascade refrigeration. So, if you had uh a minus 80 freezer, uh if you remember a little thing called co and the co vaccines, they need to be stored in at minus 80. Those are the freezers I typically work on as well as this. Carmichael does all that laboratory stuff. Cool. Okay. Can we fire it? Can we fire it up then? Absolutely. We need to turn on the water first. Okay. Uh well, I can do that.

Yeah. Turn that one. Hold on. Got to turn on this one, too. Nice. Solid. Yeah. There we go. Okay. So, now we've got water coming through. Flowing out. Uhhuh. And flowing out to what? The garden where at least it can be used by our plants. Absolutely. Yeah. Is that where it's going? Yes. Okay. You can tell that this man has experience working with organizations where the executives don't want to know because once they know, they have to deal with it.

I just fix things. Yeah. As far as you're concerned, everything's fine, sir. That's exactly it. All right. So, our cooling is doing our first stage compressor, essentially the hot side of our first stage compressor loop. Correct. There is a small circuit going to the second stage but for primarily really what would the water be doing for the second stage compressor because I thought the second stage's hot side is cooled by the first stage's cold side and that's the whole idea. Yeah. And you're you're absolutely right about that. But what this unit has that's unique is called a duper heater. So you end up be you essentially make the second stage compressor run cooler, run more efficiently, run better. Oh,

but yeah, primarily the condenser uh for the first stage does all the cooling and transfers the heat cuz ultimate that's what this chamber is. It pulls Sorry, you mean the evaporator? Depends which system we're talking about. Wait. Right. Because it heats and cools. Speaking of which, what kind of a temperature range can we do with this unit? Because we didn't know that much about it when we bought it. Um - 73. That cold enough for you? All right. So, the water's on. Yeah. The unit's energized. Yep. Do we just press the button?

Pretty much. Holy. Elijah, I don't know if you're going to be able to talk me out of us not deploying this. Yes, I will be able to cuz I'll get you another quote. It's all good. So, that's just the internal fans. Mhm. And those are not responsible for cooling any of the hot sides or anything. Those just circulate the air through the what I guess it would be in a vap inside here and also just circulate the air in the chamber so you have a constant temperature throughout because if you need an environmental control chamber, then you obviously care about the consistency of your bloody environmental control.

How cold do you want to go? Cold. Minus one's fine. Minus one. All right. Okay, there we go. Right arrow turns on. Wow. That simple, huh? That simple. And then how long should this take to pull down? So, the specification, the original unit ran at Yeah. ran at 1.75° Celsius per minute. Oh, okay. So, pretty fast. Wow. For a chamber that's this big. But that was with a load, correct? That was with a 600lb aluminum load in it. Oh, so when it's empty, she'll rip. She should. But remember what I what we were saying about it's almost working. Yeah.

Well, it works. Just not as it was originally designed. It's a little bit slower now. Kind of like me as I age. As you age. Hey, just so we can have this conversation where it's a bit quieter. Why do you think it's slower? Did we not put enough refrigerant in or like the refrigerant is correct. I know that. The problem is the controls. So, because we dumbed it down so much, eventually we can fine-tune it to get its original performance back, right? But for all intents and purposes, it's working at about 80%. Okay. Which still pretty quick. And it's not going to damage it in any way to run it this way.

No, it's just not as efficient at cooling at pulling out the heat. Got it. Okay. I'm good with that. Let's go see what kind of progress we've made while we've been standing here. Wow. We got better than our one degree. I mean, given the size of the things that we would ever put in something like this, that's actually perfectly fast for us. Want to go in it, Elijah? It's really loud inside. Double up the hearing protection. We might have to. It's over 100 dB last time we measured it.

I actually can't hear you. I didn't talk. I respect. Do you want a jacket like LD? Oh, yeah. Okay. That's our new one. Yeah, buddy. ldstore.com. Oh my god. It's so cold. It's high. It's only like zero. This is Canadian summer, baby. Okay, close this in. Let's see how long stay inside here. Okay, down five. Get down. It's very dry. Yeah. So, it's not that bad. It's not great, though. Do you want to go more? Okay.

There we go. Just set it for - 40, so it'll get a bit frosty now. My mustache is starting to ice. My nose is. Okay. Are you done? I'm done. You're good. All right. We'll call it. THAT'S so nice. Well, she works. What' we make it to? - 22. - 22, which okay, with how fast the air was circulating in there. I wonder what the wind chill was on that. Yeah, it was really bad. It was freaking cold. I mean, my nose started to run about halfway and then the last minute or so, I could feel my nose hairs freezing and I was like, "This is very uncomfortable." That was so fun, though. But it freaking works.

It's really And we That's not even as cold as can go. Can we see how much we can push it? Yeah. I just set it to - 40. So, let's Well, so let's let it keep going. In the meantime, you asked me a question while we were in there and the audio was obviously not usable. Like, what would we use something like this for? Yeah. And the answer is us not really anything. Our small chamber can accommodate what is realistically the largest thing that we would test which is a desktop PC. But what these are used for in a more industrial environment is uh validation of apparently this one's former life was validating solar panels. So really it would be for environmental validation of outdoor rated equipment. Got it. that

could be deployed anywhere from Arizona to Antarctica. Let's go take a look at 40. Remember how I was telling you we move energy? Yeah. Put your hand on here. That's the water inlet. Put your hand on here. That is a huge delta. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. This is warm water coming out of here. Can we throw the panels on right now? Yeah, absolutely. It's still really loud. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know. It's not at all conceivable for an open workspace like you guys have.

It is a lot better, though. It is. Stop. I'm just thinking we haven't even gone over why it would have cost $250,000 to keep it permanently yet. Okay, we should probably talk about that. But first, I want to experience -48°. Woo! Oh man, that's chilly. Oh my god, you're blue. Chilly, boys. I'm Canadian, but I'm like southwestern Canadian. Doesn't get that cold here. I have never experienced minus 50. That's crazy. I've never seen my breath come out like that. Like immediately my mustache started to freeze. I All right,

let's talk about the challenges of keeping it. There are several reasons we can't run this longterm. Starting with probably the most expensive. As you heard, it was too loud to operate out in the open like this. So, we would need to build a up to code room to house this thing. That means plumbing in case it leaks, fire suppression in case it blows up, you know, noise treatment and electrical and so much more. And it would have to be big enough that it can not only fit in it, but service technicians who would need to come at least annually need to be able to access every side of the machine in order to crawl around and find out what the mystery pit stain is. That's right. With that said, that doesn't sound like

a quarter million. You're right. We would actually need to reinforce the roof because for every energy unit of cool or heat that you put inside of this chamber, you need to dissipate it, you know, somewhere outside of this chamber, preferably outside. So that's where like our cooling tower might come in. Except that we're talking about up to 200,000 BTU an hour. So that cooling tower ain't going to do it. And even something quite a bit larger might not do it. No. And I really don't want to reinforce the roof again. We already had to do it once in order to air condition the warehouse and it was terrible.

It took so long. However, no, no, we're not doing it. Okay, that's fair. But that actually doesn't mean that this unit's story is over. The quote from Carmichael, as I alluded to earlier, was extremely generous, considering the incredible amount of work they had to do here, thanks to some extra stuff they had lying around and also just wanting to be turbo bros. So, we're going to have them linked down below for your refrigeration and heating needs. Um, and that cost savings they gave us matters because now this thing is in pretty much fully functional, ready to be integrated condition. It's a pretty nice system and we'd be happy to let it go for what we paid plus transport. You will have to

capture the gas and reg it, but that cost is a fraction of what you'd spend on a machine of this size in class brand new. So, uh, slide into my DMs. You know what I'm saying? Hit me up. Yes, I'm up. You know what? I'm going to slide in here. The segue to our sponsor, War Thunder. Play one of the most comprehensive vehicle combat games for free on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and mobile. Take control of thousands of different vehicles from fighter jets, and planes to tanks, ships, and more. War Thunder does away with traditional health bars for a more immersive experience. Every vehicle is modeled after its real world counterpart with things like engines, fuel tanks, weapons, and everything else all able to

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pretty cool little piece of hardware, and we skimmed over some of the details from that video today.