Can I clean water cooling loop with vinegar and/or alcohol?

[Nightman]

The distilled water in my cooling loop has recently developed a brownish yellow color, and I'm not sure what it is. It doesn't appear to be affecting my temps, so rather than doing a full disassembly, I'm going to try flushing it out first, and see if the problem persists. Would it be a good idea to empty the loop, run it with vinegar for a few hours, run it with isopropyl alcohol and distilled water for a few hours, and then rinse it out with distilled water, or could this damage the loop? Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[DarkSable]

The isopropyl alcohol could interact with your tubing, depending on what it's made of.

How deep of a coloring are we talking about here?

 

[Nightman]

It's pretty light, I don't notice it unless there's a light shining on the tubes.

 

[Computer__GUY]

Sounds like it may be algae. You should get some kill coil to stop this from happening in the future and for now I recommend that you buy lime scale remover which only costs a few pounds from watercoolinguk. If that doesn't work then drain your system and refill it with clean distilled water or even a premixed solution.

 

[Nightman]

So just pour some limescale remover into the loop?

 

[Computer__GUY]

Yeah but not any kind of lime scale remover as many contain chloride, I would use this SysClean-HPD High Power Lime Scale Remover or any other kind available if you look around. A few drops is all that's needed.

 

[Nightman]

Okay, I will. Thanks.

 

[DarkSable]

Also, just throwing out there, premixed solutions are a bad idea. The best solution is water (distilled is fine, un-ionized is a ripoff) and a silver killcoil to prevent growth of anything. I also am among those of us who like silence and use a couple drops of unscented dawn dish soap, which damages nothing and works miracles on both pump noise and bleeding the last few bubbles from the loop.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

how old are your tubes? It may just be tramps toenail syndrome, Because tubes age and discolour over time anyway,
Also, what are you using for biocide if anything? At the very least you should have a killcoil or two in a loop, many of us prefer using only those in favour of putting chemicals in our water, U.V. light also kills algae but until I know how old your loop is, I'm assuming natural aging here
Moto