Results 51 to 70 of 70
-
07-14-2021, 06:34 PM #51one of those sickos
- Join Date
- Oct 2005
- Location
- Tahoe-ish
- Posts
- 3,149
Version 1, which worked ok but was ghetto AF. There was a section of 10" flex duct on top going into a window.
V2 employs a big Rubbermaid bin and is a lot more elegnt5 but I don't have pics handy.ride bikes, climb, ski, travel, cook, work to fund former, repeat.
-
07-14-2021, 06:37 PM #52
-
07-14-2021, 07:08 PM #53one of those sickos
- Join Date
- Oct 2005
- Location
- Tahoe-ish
- Posts
- 3,149
I still don't buy it. He's measuring the temp of the coils with the laser, not the air exciting the fan. At best that would create a slightly cool breeze directly in front of the fan while rapidly melting the ice. Why not invest the same energy and less money in parts and create an evaporative cooler that will actually work?
Thermodynamics is hard, I know.ride bikes, climb, ski, travel, cook, work to fund former, repeat.
-
07-14-2021, 07:13 PM #54Registered User
- Join Date
- Nov 2011
- Posts
- 2,477
First I want to check, you realize the ice would melt as you circulate the water?
The coils don't have enough heat exchange capacity to make a noticable difference. If you got something better, like a radiator, it would melt your ice very fast.
Cooling anything is wasteful.
Toronto has a system where a company pumps cold (2-3c) water from Lake Ontario. Big business towers hook up to it and run heat exchangers between the cold lake water and building cooling loop. The lake water doesn't go through dirty building systems. The water then gets sent to the drinking water treatment plant a few degrees warmer. I scored from work a fan coil and I hooked it up to my faucet. It worked really well on scorching days.
-
07-14-2021, 07:32 PM #55
i didn't do well in HS physics, that is true. but I'm seeing enough independent evidence online that this approach works well. i may also try it with a transmission radiator (link below), though that may be v2 after the PoC with the coils.
why this approach? I've got nothing against EC. clearly works. i find this approach more elegant in that it has a more closed system. this is basically how an AC unit works so i don't see why it won't work when I try it. not afraid to be wrong and fall back on cheap, reliable EC.
re: ice melt rate, I'll find that out when I get there. the cost of making ice is basically zero so it's not a deterrent. huge blocks of ice in a thick-walled cooler should last a while. not trying to cool the Taj Mahal over here.
if it passes PoC i may start tinkering with cycling the water pipes through a chest freezer and see where that takes me.
https://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS/555/60374/10002/-1
-
07-14-2021, 07:42 PM #56
i do.
that's pretty cool and doesn't warm the lake by returning the water.
I'm just not keen on running the tap like that.
maybe I'll skip the coils (with their limited surface area) and go straight to the transmission radiator. 40' of 1/2" copper coil seems like a lot of surface area but I'm not running formulas here to validate or compare.
i appreciate the insights. when all is said and done this may be an educational exercise in verifying physical laws that you and CV point out. i wouldn't consider that a total waste.
edit: i bought two 10" x 16" transmission fluid coolers (alu, 2.4 lbs) which should work great and cover 80%+ of the fan output area. skipping the copper coil approach per your comment.Last edited by ntblanks; 07-14-2021 at 08:27 PM.
-
07-15-2021, 02:13 AM #57
Mr obvious here... If you're opening a window when using an EC, like shown in el chup's picture, it'll messed you up if the AQ is bad like from ozone or wildfire smoke.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using TGR Forums mobile app
-
07-15-2021, 07:36 AM #58
-
07-15-2021, 08:06 AM #59one of those sickos
- Join Date
- Oct 2005
- Location
- Tahoe-ish
- Posts
- 3,149
-
07-15-2021, 11:49 AM #60
-
07-15-2021, 12:00 PM #61
-
07-24-2021, 09:02 PM #62
Just a follow up for a a thread I forgot I started 9 years ago...
We bought the window shaker. Used it for a bit, bought a house with Central AC, gave the unit away to friends when they were pregnant and couldn't stand the heat.
-
07-27-2021, 06:25 AM #63
Where is the chest freezer? Making ice is definitely not free, it takes as much energy as an AC unit to move the same energy out of the water (probably more, since it's going colder) and the heat from the water comes out the back of your chest freezer. Unless you can cut some ice from the pond in the summer, of course.
Which brings us to: when? Do you make ice exclusively at night? This whole experiment may benefit from a 55 gallon drum or two and a radiator (EC?) outside cooling off your reservoir all night. Why not? It needs pumps anyway.
If you decide to try it, please put up a list of parts and where you get them just in case it works out.A woman came up to me and said "I'd like to poison your mind
with wrong ideas that appeal to you, though I am not unkind."
-
07-27-2021, 08:01 AM #64
thanks for the nudge, Jono. i threw together a mvp and it validated points raised by Climberevan and Cocximus around thermodynamics and ice melt rate. with the volume cooler I wanted to use i got the radiator temp to 69°, not low enough to do much damage. and that temp didn't last long before it started rising. the chest freezer idea is to run the tubes somehow through the freezer on a continuous cycle. but that's getting into a much larger concept than i want to right now. i learned a few things and am out a few $ from parts. here are some pics for posterity.
-
07-27-2021, 09:03 AM #65one of those sickos
- Join Date
- Oct 2005
- Location
- Tahoe-ish
- Posts
- 3,149
Nice follow through. Thermodynamics isn't just a concept; IT IS THE LAW.
ride bikes, climb, ski, travel, cook, work to fund former, repeat.
-
07-27-2021, 09:14 AM #66Banned
- Join Date
- May 2007
- Location
- Sandy, Utah
- Posts
- 14,410
cool so you're diying something thats already been invented....gotta believe there is a better solution, but tinkering is cool...keep at it.
-
07-27-2021, 09:41 AM #67glocal
- Join Date
- May 2002
- Posts
- 33,440
-
07-28-2021, 12:43 PM #68A woman came up to me and said "I'd like to poison your mind
with wrong ideas that appeal to you, though I am not unkind."
-
07-31-2021, 10:09 AM #69Registered User
- Join Date
- Dec 2018
- Location
- BC
- Posts
- 76
Love the tinkering! If you like this remote evaporator set-up for whatever reason, you might be able to find a busted beer draft line cooling glycol unit that's been sitting in a bar somewhere for years that just needs a leaky gasket replaced or whatever. Set that up in your garage and you're golden.
https://www.micromatic.com/glycol-co...ts/power-packs
But if you're already hunting around for broken equipment, it would be way more fun to have an ice machine continuously dropping ice cubes into your cooler/reservoir, ideally through a clear tube for maximum Rube Goldberg cooling machine effect.
-
07-31-2021, 01:23 PM #70
i welcome the ribbing. my imagination goes towards Willy Wonka or Dr. Suess.
the key initial design specs were small footprint (no bigger/more unwieldy than a smaller "portable" AC) and low cost. ideally, no more than $120 total. the chest freezer idea is more of a central AC concept running water lines through the floor/walls to strategically placed units (~1000 sq ft house) and coiling sufficiently inside the freezer to get wicked cold. yes, lots of challenges and possibly terrible ideas with that concept. the temps here retreated from their 1000-year highs and my mind is now elsewhere. but now i have one more cold generator to add to the mix. thx.
Bookmarks