Putting a Homemade Air Conditioner to the Test | Consumer Reports

Do-it-yourself air conditioners can cost as little as $20 dollars to make. Our experts build and test two types to see if they can cool the air in Consumer Reports' test chamber.

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[cheeto.]

I made one in a pinch for my square drop camper its small 10x5x5. Definitely helped me relax watch a movie in the rain then sleep at night and used 2 1gal frozen water jugs. When I woke up I had cold water to drink too. Worked ok for me. I do have a window unit installed now it freezes me out but the cooler trick kept my balls cool 😎

[danielkinney]

I USED ONE IN MY GARAGE And it worked and saved my Kitty Kats mother and 4 babies during the summer.

[gene]

You MISSED THE WHOLE POINT of the HOMEMADE A/C UNIT'S and they were made for SPOT A/C and for people that don't have much $$$ and want to stay cool for short periods of time. And You can buy a block of ICE at most Grocery Stores. They're not made to cool down 90 degree rooms.

[brentcharles]

Consumer reports says: don't buy ice and a fan, buy expensive shit, CEOs need money 🤑

[wintime]

Funny how they say they don't work and them immediately say...but you can buy this one here for xx amount of dollars.

[hannawomack]

Let me tell you I live in south Texas....its over 100° out right now without the heat index I made two of these using two small styrofoam coolers two small fans couldn't find any regular tubing at the house
Used plastic cups and having the 2 of them going I was finally able to get some sleep the other night after my central unit has been out for 2 weeks waiting for replacement

[mentalhobo]

Dont forget to buy our 175$ air conditioners 😂 & dont DIY

[shepdshepd]

You didn't mention the relative humidity of the room. Considering that's the entire way these units work, your test was completely invalid and the results should be ignored. If you are in a humid environment, these devices will not help and worse, will make the room more humid, increasing the humidex rating (that is the case for where I am). If you are in a very arid area, these will help a lot and the added humidity will be welcomed.

[Shadoefax]

They're for small areas to cool a person & persons space, it's not meant to cool a giant room but if you're trying to stay cool in say a car or a tent than they 188% work perfectly & keep you & car or tent more than comfortable. You critiqued it as if it were meant to put the AC industry out of business & it's simply for those who have no means to get or build expensive traditional AC units. For small personal area it's the best & cheapest alternative & most can't tell difference.

[Thundersnort]

The homemade AC's are not designed to cool an entire house or even a large room. They're designed to cool you and or a much smaller area. Going to make one to try (I live in Georgia, high heat, high humidity) and see how it goes.

[cookiect]

This is a commercial for GE! Blowing the air onto the ice.... what the hell is that going to do? These coolers are poorly designed and the results are sketchy at best. "The room is set to 90deg." Are they constantly pumping heat into the room?

[RockymountainRobert]

This only works in a dry climate in the west or north, it does not cool a vehicle or home in the south with high humidity and dewpoint, temps above 95.

[davidshearer]

This seems like a very skewed or outright deceptive report.

My understanding of the use of home made a/c's is to provide auxiliary cooling to keep your main unit from running continuously, or to provide cooler air in a particular room/area. Keep in mind that a central air conditioning unit can only hold 20° less than the outside ambient temperature in optimum conditions - not great for a polar bear in Miami, but mostly acceptable for humans needing to cool off after a beach run...

It also seems strange that your output temperature from homemade unit would register only 15° lower than ambient temperature since you're blowing air directly across 32° ice in a very confined area (the bucket) - it seems your output would be more like 10°-20° above freezing - not 15° below the ambient room/area temperature. Maybe this is Consumer Reports is failing...

[DevinBigSeven]

Not sure how comparably priced AC units do; they compare it to units costing $100's. If you live in a northern climate where it only reaches 80F for maybe two weeks, its not worth spending $300, or $150 if you have an appropriate window for a window unit. You could keep a freezer in a garage to freeze water bottles, assuming that the garage's air circulation is separate from the rest of the house, and you won't have additional hot air being generated from the freezer going into the rest of the house.

[MrTwitch]

What if you took the fan and had it pull air in to the cooler down to the bottom so the air had to bubble up through the ice and water then blew that air into the room. Kinda like a bong chills smoke.

[matttumlinson]

I've seen a video of a 28 quart ice chest with a small fan blowing 46 degree air. They are clearly trying to get you to spend your money. Two frozen milk jugs covered in ice should last several hours.

[njitir]

The bucket they used was all wrong. Need Styrofoam in the bucket with a solid piece of ice not cubes.

[tieck]

Small window AC = 10, 000 BTU output or 1, 000 joules per second (ie 1, 000 watt OUTput). Melting one gram if ice to water, then heating it to 80 f or so takes the better part of 1, 000 joules. Round up to be generous: you need one gram of ice to melt every second to rival the AC unit. That's something on the order of 10 lb an hour, a gallon and a third or so. How even?

Now suppose you get your ice at 10 cents per pound. 100 days of cooling would be about $1, 000 plus a lot of work.

(And obviously you don't want to use your own freezer to make the ice. That would just dump the heat into your home.)

[coletanner]

So the air coming out of the plastic pipe was 15 degrees cooler than the air in the room..test your own floor or wall vents and see how much cooler they are..ideally..15 DEGREES! This proves that the bucket coolers are as cool as an HVAC unit!

[ericlogos]

You don't lower the room temperature, you just let it blow on yourself. That's it. It's a personal cooler. Screw the room. Consumer reports always does this kind of shit. They straw man a topic and then blast it like they've proved something. On a hot miserable day, put some ice together with a fan and cool down. What's the big deal or the harm in that?