chiller not chilling

[davelin315]

I don't have a chiller, but had to replace the compressor for my AC this summer and it had a slow freon leak and shut down. Don't know what the chiller is filled with, but if it's 8 years old, it's probably freon, and it's probably empty. Take it to a garage or an AC guy to get it recharged (I'd say do it yourself, but then you'd need to get licensed, and freon's on the way out with new coolants out there, but hey, then you could make $140 an hour doing house calls on busted AC units!) instead of your LFS, it'll be a lot cheaper than having them send it back to the manufacturer for you.

 

[Jeff Hood]

I was home and heard a strange alarm. The darn temp in the tank was 81 degrees. Thats not the really bad part. The bad part was my thermostat was set on 78 degrees. My chiller was running but not keeping up with the MHs.
So I took the coil out of the sump and it would slowly get very cold then freeze but it took some time ( say 2 to 3 min.). If I dipped it into the sump it would not feel cold and if removed again would do the same thing. I remember before the chiller would feel very cold to touch even in the water.
Does it just need to be recharged with coolant? How often do others have to do this?
My chiller is a cyclone chiller with the coil and is 1/5th HP. I have had it for 8 years or so and it set for a year last year when we moved. It has worked great for the last 7 months up to now.
Any thoughts

Jeff