One Week With The D.I.Y AC Cooler | How Well Does It Work?

I've had this DIY AC cooler for about one week now. Let me share some tips and advice with you on how it works.

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[Quacker_Gaming]

So many things that need to be said.
First. Most people (in America) have freezers. They normally come as part of a fridge. If you are already using the freezer for food, why not throw some bottles of water in and freeze them overnight?

Second. This is NOT a swamp cooler. I would guess this adds very little moisture to the air compared to a swamp cooler since the air is not being forced through a pad that is soaked with water, thus transferring some of the water into the air. The air is merely passing across a very cold solid surface.

Third. I've heard many great ideas on how to improve these DIY coolers. Just because someone does it one way doesn't mean you can't experiment and try to improve the design. Insulate the Styrofoam using a plastic bucket or plastic wrap, use some sort of sink mat and add layers of ice for the air to run across, use a pipe surrounded by ice cold salt water, slow down the air flow or use a smaller fan so the air has time to get colder before being exhausted, place the exhaust pipe lower so the cold air won't need to be forced up as much, etc.

Lastly. People that complain about why not buy a small window AC... Those cost anywhere from $100-500 upfront on top of installation fee, and electricity to keep it running. This beats the cost of any ac unit by miles if you're looking to cool a small room in the middle of summer on a hot day.

[GiDD]

Thanks for letting us know how it performs. Everyone posts videos about how to make them but not how they work out. Thanks again

[thegods]

I've actually saved a shit ton of money on my electric bill by building this and putting them in every room and the living room ect and I haven't had to turn on the ac unit. Works way better then my ac and saves more money

[kevinbarnard]

Why not fill the cooler with salt water; run some sort of air duct through the water made of conducting material--glass, aluminum, copper--to the intake and exhaust. Keep salt water in freezer overnight first, dump in around ice bottles next day. At that point the ice will cool the water to around freezing, which it won't do cause it's briny and the thennear freezing water will help keep the ice bottles frozen longer. Remember an experiment of this I did decades ago in high school chem class. The ice cubes took 4 days to significantly melt away in the salt water. And, we did it in a fish tank, not an insulated cooler.

[huntermarsh]

AC just broke on my pregnant wife and this seemed like a good idea. Got all my parts (I used an aluminum semi-rigged duct and a smaller cooler since that’s all I could find) and so far it works...okay. We generally like to be colder so we like it to be around 68 F, and so far Id say we have gone from a hellish 93 to ~80. Hopefully it gets better with time. My advice to anyone else doing it is to definitely make your fit as tight as you can and use tape to fix mistakes, I was loosing a lot of its potential at first. Thanks for the vid fam.

[JackT]

The bottles are a great idea. Maybe add 6 more. Always have bottles in the freezer. Rotate them twice a day.

[jillk]

ya know what i've added to my cooler close like yours.... i had a metal plate, a metal dog bowl and some weights you put on barbell things. Well, i stuck them in there with my bottles and dang they are super gold!! helps keep everything cold longer. barly lost ice melt so far in two days worth of running!!

[leslie]

i think a way to make the ice almost last forever is to to cool the ice chamber with the cold air you're already making out of it.. so some how use a portion of the conditioned air and connect to a tube to blow at the ice. kinda like how an engine reuses it's exhuast to spool a turbo.

[TomBVoxman]

Thanks for this, it's great! What works better, a bunch of small frozen water bottles or a bunch of ice/cold packs? Those things fit in my freezer better.

[staginglightingsensation]

Heres an idea for you. A 5in pvc tower ac. Fan on top ice in the top part hold in place with a funnel with big holes and a boom part to hold water and holes on the outside pvc under the ice level. You might get it down to 60f

[LightsJusticeZ]

Well thanks for letting me know the bottles work better than ice. I have ice right now because I didnt have time to freeze anything, but great vid! Well, minues the dying fidget spinner trend lol

[bilatvendor]

1. You can find the plastic big coolers at Goodwill for less than $5. I wonder where you can buy those styrofoam ones cheap.
2. I would like to know what's the temperate at one corner of the room away from this unit.
3. How much more are you paying in electricity to freeze the water and run the fan.
4. That fan doesn't cost $12 anymore. More like $22 plus on your Amazon link, but you can buy them at Walmart online for a little under $13.39 today (rollback). There is another similar fan from the same brand for $11 something today (rollback). Offline Walmart might have it.

[congatex]

Ask any commercial refrigeration tech and they will tell you that freezing large amounts of water in your home freezer is very hard on the equipment.

[jeffsnell]

Heard from many sources that this system does NOT work as well as people advertise it on youtube Videos...Works MUCH better if you are sitting right next to the Air Ducts on the Cooler but it only cools off the room by only about 6 degrees

[andrez]

Shocked he's doesn't have like subs because of how he does everything

[alberteinstein]

it worked !!!! yes thank you very
yes yes yes yes yes

[ericchan]

To make so many big buckets of ice, first thing first, you must have a powerful freezer!! I had tried making two buckets one by one, in earlier time, with my ordinary fridge. It took me a whole day to get a big firm ice!! Then I placed another bucket into it. After around an hour, I found that compressor kept making unexpected noise and the outer case of the fridge got abnormally hot!! So I gave it up at once!! As a result, it turns out that one must have invested a big lump to buy a super freezer and then uses it to make the bulky ice continuously!! I would rather use a peltier module instead!!

[leofelix]

Brine freezing point is −21.1 °C (−6.0 °F) so yeah it is better than tap water. Liquid coolant, though would be even much better because its freezing point is -37°C (-35°F). Problem is coldest temp of a kitchen freezer is -20 C (-4 F). Only a lab freezer can get as cold as -40C (-40F) or even -80C (112F). So forget everthing I said about the coolant.

[RedrumGames]

Alot of people complaining about paying extra for electricity and im just chilling in the barracks for free xD Def gunna try this out Perfect for 1 room I'm sure

[CS-feyg]

nice weapon rack mate. good selection for the zombie apocalypse