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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. Re:Air Conditioning for $1500/month by kfg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    San Francisco, Paris, whatever. :)

    Ah well, if you aren't lucky you learn something new every day.

    I'll make two notes though, Twain was a public speaker, and just because this particular witticism can't be found in his writtings is not actually an indication that he didn't say, and even orginate, the quote, it simply means it can be proven from the written record. There is such a thing as oral history. Many things I have orginated and said are not recorded in print, despite my post count, and the printed version of not a few things has been lost even to myself.

    The second note though is my observation (and I believe that of others before me) that sooner or later every American will attribute every witticism to Twain, especially as he often used the witticisms of others, often without direct attribution since the people of his time were well aware of their actual origin.

    KFG

  2. Swamp Coolers... by GI+Jones · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I had never heard of a swamp (evaporative) cooler until I moved to AZ. At first, I didn't like the idea of adding a ton of humidity to the air in order to cool some space, but when I bought my first house, I learned that I LOVE swamp coolers.

    Newer homes never have them, but the older house that I bought (built in 1979) had a monster one installed on it. During the early parts of summer (when the humidity is low) I can keep my house at 72 degrees when the outside temp is about 100 and my electricity bill is $65/mo.

    If I ran my AC unit and kept the house equally as cool with it, I would be looking at no less then a $150 in early summer and $200+ as the temp gets into the range of 110+.

    At this point, what I would love is a thermostat that runs both my swamp cooler and AC unit and can determine when to use one versus the other and switch automatically between them. Anybody know of such a device?

    cheers.

    --
    "Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
  3. While the freezer probably isn't the best way... by foxtrot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...to cool a room, as has been noted repeatedly, a few refinements that can be done easily and cheaply:

    1) Get a second trash can. Drain to trash can number 2. This will allow you to save water, plus:

    2) Put salt in the water. The ice and chilled water mixture gets colder with salt.

    You probably don't want to drain salt water to the yard. :)

    You can run from one trash can to the other, then when it's done draining, swap one can for the other and ice down the other can. If you've got some freezer space to dedicate to the project, the bottles of ice are probably an excellent idea-- have a set in the freezer and one in the heat pump.