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Homebrew Air Conditioning for Under $25

Posted by timothy on from the ice-is-free-after-all dept.

inkey string writes "Summer has arrived, and I've been busy slowly overheating in my student house without central air. I decided to put my thermodynamics classes to work however, and produced this ~24$ homebrew air conditioner. It'll cool a room to a comfortable level in 15-20 mins, and will run for a few hours on a garbage pail full of water. It's cheap, environmentally friendly (just fire the waste water off to your garden), and makes a good one hour project for a quiet evening."

3 of 832 comments (clear)

  1. Congratulations by overshoot · · Score: 5, Informative
    At first I thought you'd reinvented the swamp cooler. On RTFL, however, I find that you've actually reinvented the 18th-century icehouse cooler, which is notably less efficient (like, where does the heat from the icemaker go?)

    It didn't seem all that likely that most /.ers would care about evaporative cooling, since even in Arizona they only work part of the year (like now, although today the Phoenix dew point got up to 10C. I woke up just knowing it had gone up because the cooler was blowing full speed and it still wasn't all that cool.) Never mind next month when the monsoons start. AC time then for sure.

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
  2. mirrordot by kryogen1x · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thank you mirrordot.

  3. addressing all the flames/legitimate concerns... by inkey+string · · Score: 5, Informative

    number one, yes i realise that in a closed system freezing ice to cool yourself off is foolish. this is why i make ice in the kitchen, and cool my room off at night.

    which addresses the why no recirculation/you need an infinite supply of ice criticisms. this was designed to cool me off before bed, so i could fall asleep without wanting to kill myself. once the bucket runs out of water/ice, it just becomes a regular fan which is fine once the house cools off in the wee hours. plus i dont have to worry about knocking anything over in a morning daze.

    ive rigged it up to a slowly flowing garden hose which will keep things cool indefinitely, but i find it easier and a bit cooler to just pick up a big bag of ice and dump it in when it gets really hot.

    anyways, take it or leave it. and to the graduating chemmie that said he was ashamed to call me a student - come visit me at my office by the weef lab (e2-1311), im sure i can address any of your concerns to my satisfaction.