What to buy to keep my small room cool in the summer?

[Midwayman]

5 gallon bucket swamp cooler

Yup. Swamp cooler is the answer (Though an ice chest with ice in it is more effective than a bucket.)

 

[Kwatt]

Does this actually work?

No.

It may make you feel better if you stand in front of it.

Overall it will make the room warmer.


.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Don't swamp coolers increase the humidity? Normally that's half the battle when it comes to heat as the humidity makes it feel worse and more sticky.

Anything to do with leaving a freezer or fridge open will also produce more heat. Those devices don't actually destroy thermal energy, they just move it. I don't think it's actually possible to destroy thermal energy. That's why AC units have an outside coil, they are moving heat from inside to outside. A fridge is moving heat from inside the enclosure to inside the house (through the back).

I always cringe when I see these "DIY AC" projects on the internet that involve ice from the freezer. Same deal, producing that ice generates more heat than the ice will remove. Though I suppose those work if you are just trying to cool a small room and don't care about the rest of the house. I'll admit I've used ice in desperate situations just so I can have cold air blowing directly on me.

Before I bought an AC unit I kept trying to think of all these ways I could cool myself in the summer months. Finally broke down and just bought a portable AC unit. All my windows are crank so window units don't work but with portable I was able to rig something with a sheet of plywood that fits where the screen goes and I just put it there in summer, it seals around so bugs can't get in, and I just open the window to turn on the unit. I eventually want central air though. It's one of those things that's a bit low on the priority list of expenses given our summers are like 1 month now. They used to be 3, but we pretty much lost June and August. It's rarely nice in those months now. As I type this, my furnace just kicked on and cat is hogging all the heat.

 

[Red Squirrel]

No.

It may make you feel better if you stand in front of it.

Overall it will make the room warmer.


.

Not to mention there's not really an intake lol, the whole design of that is just flawed on so many levels. My theoretical degree in physics says that it won't work.

 

[Hacp]

Buy a compressor. hook it up to some tubing and fan. Add gasoline as the refrigerant. Instant AC for cheap!

 

[HeXen]

Used window A/C.
I noticed some of the new model A/C units lately are really tiny by comparison. Now if they could just make them quiet...

 

[Red Squirrel]

Buy a compressor. hook it up to some tubing and fan. Add gasoline as the refrigerant. Instant AC for cheap!

I'd use propane instead of gasoline. But yeah that would work.

There may be safer gases that would work too. Wonder if nitrogen or helium would.

Window units are pretty cheap though I'd just go for that if you have windows that can handle them. If not it may not be too hard to build a box to house a window one and add some ducting to the outside, basically convert it into a portable. You'd box in the front of it (part that would normally go outside) and add two pipes going outside, one of them would have a blower sucking air. Idealy you want to force the air over the coils. It probably has a fan inside to do that so you want to follow that same air flow.

 

[John Connor]

Run several of these past a fan.

 

[John Connor]

They do sell swamp cooling fans...

 

[Red Squirrel]

Run several of these past a fan.

The peltier is still just a thermal transfer device, the hot side will be the same amount of heat that was removed from the cold side + electrical inefficiencies so it will not cool a room on it's own.

No matter what cooling technique you use it will require part of it to be outside or to continuously move the heat out of the house.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Buy a compressor. hook it up to some tubing and fan. Add gasoline as the refrigerant. Instant AC for cheap!

Dude, you enjoy suggesting dangerous crap??

 

[madoka]

Third world AC:

http://mashable.com/2016/06/09/eco-cooler-plastic-bottles-no-electricity/#f4Si6XaEn8qR

 

[midwestfisherman]

You're not going to find anything that actually "cools" for $50... Maybe a used window AC unit.

This!

 

[zinfamous]

depending on where you live, and based on your tiny budget, one of those double window fans (suck and blow!) might work.

Though I'm not sure if these really work--seems to me that having the push and pull next to each other creates a little feedback bubble around the unit and never effectively addresses room temperature.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Overall it will make the room warmer.

Ok I will admit to being dumb at physics, but how so?

To my dumbass brain just having frozen stuff in the room with you should cool the room, fan or not.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ok I will admit to being dumb at physics, but how so?

To my dumbass brain just having frozen stuff in the room with you should cool the room, fan or not.

Cooling devices basically move thermal energy from one place to the other, they don't destroy the heat (I don't think that's possible), the condenser coil is where it is moved to, to dissapate into the air. If the condenser coil is in the same room it will just heat that room. Any electrically generated heat will just add to that heat, so it will warm the room up. That's why window AC units have to go in a window and not just anywhere on a table.

Peltiers are the same idea, just use a different process to move the heat.

Same idea if you make ice in the freezer then take the ice out, the heat was sucked out of the water and put in the back of the freezer as heat, when enough heat is sucked out of the water it turned to ice. Bringing that ice out is not going to counter the heat that came out of the back of the freezer.

There there are ways to convert heat into infrared energy, that's basically what the cooling panels on the space station and satellites do. I'm not too sure how this process works though. But even then, those panels have to be on the outside of the space craft.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Same idea if you make ice in the freezer then take the ice out, the heat was sucked out of the water and put in the back of the freezer as heat, when enough heat is sucked out of the water it turned to ice. Bringing that ice out is not going to counter the heat that came out of the back of the freezer.

Sure but what if the freezer is in a different room? Like I freeze the water bottles and ice pack at home and bring them to work to cool my office like that. I get my house would be hotter, but wouldn't my office be cooler?

Ice is so easy to buy already frozen it seems trivially easy to outsource the heat made to freeze the ice.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Sure but what if the freezer is in a different room? Like I freeze the water bottles and ice pack at home and bring them to work to cool my office like that. I get my house would be hotter, but wouldn't my office be cooler?

Ice is so easy to buy already frozen it seems trivially easy to outsource the heat made to freeze the ice.

Yes this would work, or if the freezer is outside you could use ice to cool your house. The energy/heat produced by creating the ice would then dissipate outside and not inside.

 

[Kwatt]

Sure but what if the freezer is in a different room? Like I freeze the water bottles and ice pack at home and bring them to work to cool my office like that. I get my house would be hotter, but wouldn't my office be cooler?

Yes house would be warmer and office feels cooler.

Everything done creates heat no matter what. Nothing can create cold. Cold really does not exist. Only states are "heat" and "absence of heat". You can move heat but once created it exists.

Early refrigerators had the compressor and condenser on top of the unit. Instead of underneath and on the back. Because they where built to be as efficient as possible. People complained about the looks so efficiency was tossed for ascetics. So now we produce heat to chill our food and then produce more heat to move that heat outside with the AC.

Side Note: You can buy a split refer unit and build your refrigerator into the house and put the compressor and condenser outside. Just like the AC. Like commercial units do it.


.

 

[MongGrel]

Using a freezer outside your house to make ice or buying ice makes not much sense compared to just buying a cheap/used window unit.

Still have one sitting in the garage that works really well I used to have in the Florida Room to cool 400 Sq Ft, first time I used it actually over did it and had condensation on the sliding doors.

Cheap used unit or live with it, buying ice would help how ?

I see someone finally found out what a peltier cooler is and is still sounding like he's trying to be state of the art, those things haven't been relevant for most applications for decades. Granted, I have see them used in some satellite applications I have worked on. That was in a pretty specialized situation.

But then again, listening to Cuban "Spies" hasn't been a big thing since JFK either.

 

[Imp]

I want an overpriced Dyson fan.

<--Grew up without A/C in a room with piss poor ventilation and very hard to open windows.

 

[MetalMat]

Get a used window unit off craigslist, they work great though can be a bit noisy.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Grab a. Ox fan to circulate air on the floor

 

[John Connor]

The peltier is still just a thermal transfer device, the hot side will be the same amount of heat that was removed from the cold side + electrical inefficiencies so it will not cool a room on it's own.

No matter what cooling technique you use it will require part of it to be outside or to continuously move the heat out of the house.

So that's why you mount Hillary Clinton's ass to the back side.

:awe:

 

[John Connor]

Here's what I was talking about. My Bro. owns one. http://www.air-n-water.com/swamp-coolers-evaporative.htm