Do-It-Yourself Air Conditioner

Do-It-Yourself Air Conditioner FARM HOME Miscellaneous 29-5-10 You can cool a hot room with an ordinary room fan, some copper tubing, and a supply of cool water, says Geoff Milburn, a University of Waterloo civil engineering student who came up with the idea. Basically, he wrapped some copper tubing around the back of a large fan with plastic zipties, and then put one end of the tube inside a garbage can of ice water and ran the other end outside. After sucking the water through the tube to get it circulating, he had an air conditioner that cooled off his room enough so he could sleep. "The system will cool an average room to a comfortable level in approximately 15 to 20 minutes," he writes on his website. "Depending on flow rate, a full garbage can of water will last about 1 to 3 hours." Once the water drains, the fan continues working since the room is already cooled. Geoff notes that you could also hook the tubing up to a cold water faucet and let it run at a continuous trickle. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Geoff Milburn, 256 Phillip Street, Unit 36, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 6B6 (gmilburn @gmail.com; http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/%7Egmilburn/ac/).

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