So I did it... bought the supplies and built a DIY A/C unit for my flower room. Parts list.... 1 44 can plastic cooler 1 16" Wall mount fan 1 396 gal/hr submersable pump 1 3' length of 1/2" blk vinyl tubing 1 20' 1/4" soft copper tubing 1 roll 3/8" clear tubing 1 bag of zip ties 1 barbed reducer 1/2" to 3/8" First step was to attach the copper tubing to the front grill of the fan. I attached the copper using zp ties. You can see where the intake for the coil starts... continue coiling the copper around the fan. I used all 20'... remember to route the tubing so you can return to the cooler. then cut the excess from the zip ties I mounted the fan on the wall of my flower cabinet then assembled the fan... you can see the temps with the door open to the flower room is 82... with the room closed it rises to 88... I will post up pics after the cooler has been running for awhile. I connected the 3/8" vinyl tubing to the intake and return of the copper coil. attached with zipties... ran the tubes through the wall to the cooler. Here is the cooler placed beween my flower and veg areas. I drilled holes in the lid of the cooler. ran the power cord or the pump and the input and return lines through the holes. Inside the cooler i placed the pump on the bottom... conneted the 1/2" blk tubing to the output of the pump... afixed the 1/2" to 3/8" reducer to other end of blk tube... secured with zipties... ran the 12" feed tube through one hole inthe lid.... then attached the 3.8" clear tube to the reducer and then through the wall to the input of the coil... secured with zipties... the attached clear tube to return side of copper coil... fed that throught the wall and into the cooler through the lid
already seeing 78 79 and only been 1/2 hr.... the copper is fridgid and its actually keeping humidity up arounfd 50%.... my flower cabinet usually gets way low like high 20s low 30s humidity
How many and what size bags of ice did you use? It's going to be interesting to see how long the ice lasts. I may be wrong, but if I am not mistaken, I think that you can put salt in the ice and it will get colder or last longer, one of those.
No co2 boost as the cooler is outside the room. I kmade blocks of ice and so far 3 blocks have lasted 3.5 hrs
ok its update time for the redneck A/C.... I made 6 "blocks" of ice in my freezer using a round plastic flat bottom container. It was aprox 9-10" across. I had my freezer set on the lower side... not sure if that matters. I placed 3 blocks in the cooler and they lasted the 3.5 hrs... I find that hard to believe as I ve seen blocks lat days in the woods camping. Anyways for tomorrow I am trying freezing multiple 2 liter plastic bottles with water with my freezer setting cranked up. I am also going to pick up a couple blocks of ice from the ice house. The system works but keeping the ice stable qwill be the issue... When I came home tonight it was just a couple mins after lights out and here is what the temps were... edit: the 86 hi temp was from before I activated the cooling aspect
It's not lasting long because of two reasons, the first is the heat of the pump, the second is that the warm air blowing across your coil is transferring heat to the cold water in the coil which then gets put back into the cooler. Id experiment with adding some salt in the cooler. The other thing you can try is to recirculate the cool air in the cab back to the input side of your coil/fan setup. Last thing, what temperature that you set your freezer to has no bearing on how long your block of ice lasts, the block of ice is going to be at 32 degrees when it's frozen, regardless of what you set the freezer temp to. http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/atmospheric/road-salt.htm "When you are making ice cream, the temperature around the ice cream mixture needs to be lower than 32 F if you want the mixture to freeze. Salt mixed with ice creates a brine that has a temperature lower than 32 F. When you add salt to the ice water, you lower the melting temperature of the ice down to 0 F or so. The brine is so cold that it easily freezes the ice cream mixture."
Adding rock salt on top of the ice will lower the temperature but melt the ice faster. You'd do better by freezing a brine in two liter bottles and using those. Depending on the density of the brine it will freeze at a much lower temperature thereby take longer to thaw out. watching this one opcorn-2:
ok so mix a brine in 2 liter bottles and freeze those then do i just use the frozen bottles? ur still use blocks?
Use the frozen bottles. The blocks are actually warmer than frozen brine bottles and could conceivably make them thaw quicker.
