Homemade Air Conditioning Project
Leading up to the Memorial Day weekend, our workload has lightened up a little, to the point that I actually get a lunch break. During these breaks, I've been working on a silly little project - a homemade air conditioner for my office (pictured to the right). It's just a half-hearted prototype that I put together in a total of 30 minutes, but it actually works pretty good.
I took a crappy fan we had in the warehouse, coiled some copper and PVC tubing around the back of the fan guard, and hooked the tubing up to a small aquarium pump in a bucket of ice water. I have a small golf towel to catch condensation, and put a remote control on the fan (because I'm lazy, and had a spare remote control).
Water slowly circulates through all the coils, absorbing heat from the passing air, and the fan blows the cooled air into the room. It's not an arctic blast, but it still noticeably cooler. This is particularly nice, since my room has three servers, a copy machine, a printer and a decent workstation with large CRT monitor pumping out heat into my office. It would be better if I had more copper tubing, but I only had some scrap tubing, and didn't want to spend anything on the project. If I make one in earnest, I'll use all copper tubing around the front and back of a more-powerful fan.
Cheap Homemade Air Conditioner