A little relief for working in the garage... (1 Viewer)

[Mtbcoach]

I saw a link on Facebook where someone made something similar for the house, I needed something for the garage so I can get a little relief during the summer. I've got decent propane heater for the winter but summer's kill my pasty-pale @ss. So, I took my big garage fan, a bit of copper tubing I had fabricated into my wort chiller (I've upgraded that process in the beer brewing equipment), an old 5 gal water cooler, a pond pump, zip ties and too much time, making myself a decent "swamp cooler".

I drop all the "blue ice" packets I have into 4gal of water in the cooler, cut a 1" hole in the top of the cooler to run the power/water line output/return through, plug the pump and fan in, 38-40 degree water running through the copper cools the air down, giving me a bit of relief while working in the garage.

I'd been thinking about putting a window unit in one of my windows but the cost and efficiency of them didn't motivate me enough to pony up, I've got less than $100 into this and it works well...

 

[CharlestonG8R]

Genius!

 

[GLTHFJ60]

That's pretty slick man. How long does the cold last?

 

[lt1fire]

add this to my list

 

[LockedNLoaded]

Hell yeah man I love that idea and I like the way you think coming up with that.

 

[fourtrax]

nice, you could tap into your hot water heater in the winter

 

[Mtbcoach]

Thanks guys, not my invention, just slightly modified and super-sized. I'll find out how long it last today although its not supposed to be that hot today. I'm using the blue ice packs for cooling the water, a frozen 1gal milk jug might work better, if I was using science, I'd check the temp of the returning water to see how much drop there is after going through the coil. As an Athletic Trainer, its why we use ice instead of "cold packs", big words like enthalpy where changing the state of water takes more energy than cold pack does since it doesn't change states, so, I frozen gal of water "should" keep the water colder longer than the blue ice packs.

But, maybe its just the placebo effect, it feels much cooler with the coil cold, you can see the condensation on the copper and the breeze helps knock the bugs down when the skeeters are out...

 

[mtweller]

That's dope! Nice job putting your noggin to work on this one for sure.

R

 

[GarnerFJ40]

Jerry, if you add some salt to your frozen water jug, you'll depress the freezing point to lower than 0 and it'll require more heat for the entire jug to melt and come to temperature equilibrium. Giving you longer cooling capacity. And since you're keeping the jug for multiple uses, you won't have to waste a lot of salt for each cool down.