Instructions are here.

Materials:

Salvage from around the house a:

large fan
garbage can
Grab from Home Depot:

25 feet of 1/8 inch outer diameter (OD) copper tubing (~ $14)
20 feet of 1/8 inch inner diameter (ID) vinyl tubing (~ $6)
a package of zipties (~ $3)
2 small hose clamps (~ $1)

Worst. Design. Ever.

Thumbs up for the idea to DIY it, but thumbs down for doing it very, very badly. What's the temperature of the water leaving the system? Probably still somewhat cold. Nice way to simply pour away water. Slightly better would have been to use a fishtank pump to move the water (instead of siphon action) and pump the water back into the bottom of the tank. Suck the water off the top and add ice whenever needed. Close the system, basically.

A swamp cooler would have been even better. Take some padding and setup your system to circulate water through the pads, keeping them wet. Then suck air through them. The evaporation process sucks the heat out of the air. It works great if you live in a dry area, although if the humidity is high, it turns the place into a swamp.

Since he has a window, and seems opposed to buying a $50 window AC for some reason, he could run the water through a radiator (old car radiator from a junkyard would do nicely) outside before pumping it back into his holding tank. That would give the water a chance to pass the heat along to the outdoor air and thus keep the water cool.

So let me get this straight...he uses cold water...from refridgerator...which works by "pumping" the heat outside itself, to the room...which heats the room...the he uses cold water to lower temperature.

Least-effective-design-ever.

Eliminate the middle man... just leave the fridge door open, or set an airconditioner in the middle of the room.

SIde note: One way of rating air conditioners is "tons" in which 1 ton is equivalent of melting 1 ton of ice per day. (= 12,000 BTU/hr)



If the waste water is warmer than the outside air, that implies that the inside air (after cooling) is even warmer. In that case a window fan might be best. If he *had* an old car radiator, it would be better taking the place of his fan coil... once he gets his ice production sorted out per the opening comment.

Only negative comments
I think the design is pretty cool. Yes, a radiator works better, but this looks IMO cooler.

He uses water, tap water has usualy a lower temperature then ambient air.
If you use ice the water temperature stays cool. This is obvious better then just leaving the fridgedoor open because:
1) everything would spoil
2) a frdige has a relative low cooling capacity
3) as long as you dont have +100% efficiency, you are just warming up the room

Using ice out of the freezer works better because the freezer can take all night to freeze it, so the ice is in fact a cooling battery . If you need a constant supply of ice this argument doesnt count obviously.

I think cool tap water has a higher cooling capacity anyway (compared to a fridge), so the ice doesnt even matter that much.

Doesnt an airco use a lot of electricity. It differs from country to country, but isnt the cost of electricity more expensive on the long run then the price of the airco itself?

If its really warm, the garden might also benefit from the water which is useed to cool. So you can turn of the garden sprinkler.

All in all i find it a pretty creative solution

Leaving the fridge door open is a great way to make your room get warmer!

You're right. I was not thinking clearly. If the outside air is hotter than the inside air, then a radiative cooling system won't cool the water because it won't get hotter than the inside air. It would just add heat to the system from the outside air. That's no good.

He could bury the car radiator and thus discharge the heat from the water into the ground (which is nice and cool several feet down). But that's not going to get rid of enough heat to make a huge difference, methinks. Ground cooling systems which use that method involve burying pipes over a wide, wide area or running the pipes through a pond/lake or something large that can take the excess heat. If he was near a deep body of water, then sinking pipes down to the bottom of it would work great.

Ultimately, he needs a heatsink to dump the heat into in order to not have to dump bags of ice into the system. There's just not a good heatsink around that's easy to work with.

But frankly, a more effective cooling solution would be to get into the tank of water and let the fan blow air on you.

You are talking about how to cool down the water. Why not use tab water. Thats always pretty cool (where i live). Instead of using a a bucket you can also attach a garden hose to the tab. You can then also use a radiator without a pump since the pressure is already available. but the bucket and copper plumbing is more to my liking


detokaal could you give some "real live experience" with your "invention". Im very interested

Well, yeah, but the idea was to not waste water like that. Water costs money. Not much money, but if you're going for the long term cheap solution, buying a $50 AC would be more effective.

I once purchased a beat up, broken down, 15000 BTU window AC for $25. It didn't have a front cover on it and the controls were long gone and I had to manually straighten the radiator fins and the fan motor was big time shot (starting it up involved actually giving the fan a hard push to get it to spin enough to get the motor to kick on), but it worked for a couple years and got the shack I was living in nice and frosty.

where i live electricity is expensive . If it wasnt i already had an AC.

And many ppl give the plants water in warm weather so the water might be wasted anyway

Sorry - not my invention - just saw it on another site and got a good laugh from it. If you read the full link, he tells of his experience with it. However, I know that when it is very hot indoors, just lowering the temperature even a few degrees makes a noticable difference. This gizmo can at least do that...

The fridge works by moving heat from the inside to the outside of the box. It will warm the room no matter what.



It won't use as much electricity as it takes to make the ice.


This is really the only working solution. THe plants would probably like 80 degree (F) water better than 50 degree tap water anyway. If the system is at line pressure, then you can still put it out through a regular sprinkler.

The coil will also condense water from the air if it is humid, so make more comfort that way.. but be sure to drain it somewhere other than the rug.

I think a blue or green trash can would have looked much better in that room.

Or maybe paint a nice mural on the garbage can.

how about a mod your garbage can website?

another idea is to find out which brand and type of garbage can is most effective in keeping the water cool for the longest amount of time

nonsense, pink gc rulez!
geez, it's been there for AGES... do some research before posting next time, will you?!
www.mod-your-garbagecan-to-make-it-look-real-real-cool.gc
clearly the pink colour metioned in my first statement reduces the stevbta waves, so it will make it much cooler than e.g. yellow.

I highly disagree,

definetely the lowest end color, white, of the spectrum will ensure optimal refraction for heat

Also: MOD-YOUR-GARBAGE-CAN-SO-IT-LOOKS-REALLY-REALLY-COOL.gc

has been shut down. Apparently they were not complying with the digital media laws. I heard there is a lot of jail time for some people

One more thought,

Maybe it just seems really obvious to me, or I'm just a lot smarter than most people, but there are not any ventilation holes at the lower end of that can.

Ventilation holes would obviously bring the cooler water to the bottom of the can since heat rises.

people always miss the obvious solutions.

a funny hat on top of the can would be great too