Before I get started, I have to give props to Geoff Milburn, at http://www.gmilburn.ca/ac/
whose plan it was I copied. I'm not smart enough to think up
something like this on my own. That being said, one of the places I
work has no AC, but I'm allowed to have fans, so this seemed like a good
project for me. It's not perfect yet, but it does cool the air better
than just a fan.
Step 1: Attach copper tubing to the fan
I took the grate off of my fan, so I could put the heat exchanger
on the inside, hopefully making it look better. I'm using copper tubing
as the heat exchanger, although you could use something else, as copper
is not cheap, and not easy to work with. As you can see in the second
photo, it's very easy to kink the tubing, in which case, you stop the
flow of water. I grabbed a hole saw to use as a die to wrap the tubing
around, and the teeth held nicely against the grate of the fan. As I
was going along, I used zip ties to hold the tubing to the grate. Of
course, because this will be inside the fan, make sure to clip off the
loose ends. Also, make sure that you have both ends of the copper
tubing sticking out of the fan, so you can hook up the tubes to the
pump.
Step 2: Attaching the tubing to the pump
Now, the cheapie pump I bought would only fit 1/2" ID tubing, and
they didn't have anything that would downsize it to 1/4" for me, so I
just rigged it up. As you can see in the first and second photos, 1/4"
tubing fits quite nicely around the copper tubing. In the third photo,
you can see how I just inserted the 1/4" into 3/8", into 1/2" tubing,
which would then fit onto the pump. This of course leaked, which
necessitated the use of hose clamps, photo 4. I feel that this greatly
reduces the effeciency of my pump, but now I have a reason to buy a
bigger, stronger, more manly pump! Either that, or buy bigger copper
tubing, which is not as exciting.
Step 3: Submerging the pump and testing it out
I bought a foam cooler to hold my coolant(ice water), as I have
easy (free) access to both water and ice. Once I had it all hooked up,
with one tube going from the pump into the heat exchanger, and another
from the heat exchanger back to the cooler, I submerged the pump and
plugged it in. At this point you'll be able to tell whether or not you
have leaks real quick. If you do, just shut it off and tighten things
up. If you've got a hole in your copper tubing from over-zealous
bending, you might have a tricky problem to solve. I didn't have that
problem, so I couldn't begin to tell you how to solve it. (I am partial
to JB Weld for all things broken though) I've noticed that towards the
end of the copper tubing, I'm not getting any condensation, which means
by the end, the water has lost it's cooling effect. When I get a bigger
pump, the water will flow much faster, and hopefully won't warm up as
much. Well, that's about it, any suggestions would be welcome!
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